Archive for March, 2022
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March 10th, 2022
Credit: NASA
How best to keep NASA’s sight on Mars? A status update and review of NASA’s Artemis program was held on March 1 by the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
It reviewed NASA’s plans and progress on Artemis—the heavy-lift Space Launch System, the Orion crew vehicle, the ground systems, the space suits, the human landing system, the cislunar orbiting Gateway station, and the many other systems, payloads, and operations that will support planned missions to the Moon in preparation for the next giant leap–being the first nation to land humans on the surface of Mars.
NASA’s Artemis program.
Credit: NASA
Missing in action
Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-TX) opening remarks are telling, noting that:
“More than four years after Artemis was started, NASA still has not established an overall architecture for the initiative, and NASA is now saying it hopes to have one by the end of the year.”
“More than four years after Artemis was started, NASA still has not developed the specific objectives that it is to pursue, or how they will fit together to support the goal of humans to Mars. NASA says it hopes to have them in the coming months.”
Credit: NASA
“More than four years after Artemis was started, no one appears to be in charge of the entire Artemis initiative. It is still largely a collection of individual projects rather than an integrated program managed by an empowered program manager, something that has been raised as a serious concern in the witness testimony for today’s hearing.”
Key witnesses
This March 1 hearing involved key witnesses:
– Mr. James Free, Associate Administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
– Mr. William Russell, Director, Contracting and National Security Acquisitions, U.S. Government Accountability Office
– Dr. Patricia Sanders, Chair, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
– The Honorable Paul K. Martin, Inspector General, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
– Mr. Daniel Dumbacher, Executive Director, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
To view the hearing, go to this video at:
Also, take a read of this informative charter for the hearing at:
https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/keeping_our_sights_on_mars_pt_3_charter.pdf
Posted in 
European Large Logistics Lander, EL3.
Credit: ESA/ATG-Medialab
The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen a consortium, led by Thales Alenia Space in the UK, to design and fabricate an experimental payload to extract oxygen from the surface of the Moon.
Following a competition, the winning consortium has been tasked with producing equipment that will evaluate the prospect of building larger lunar plants to extract propellant for spacecraft and breathable air for astronauts – as well as metallic raw materials.
Extracting oxygen
This ultra-compact, low power unit will need to extract 50-100 grams of oxygen from lunar regolith – targeting 70% extraction of all available oxygen within the sample – while delivering precision measurements of performance and gas concentrations.
An artist impression of Lunar Lander collecting a sample on the Moon.
Credit: ESA
Additionally, the hardware must be able to fly on a range of potential lunar landers – including ESA’s own European Large Logistics Lander, EL3.
Once on the Moon, the miniature processing plant would work for a 10-day period before the pitch-dark, freezing lunar night sets in.
The EL3 enables a series of proposed ESA missions to the Moon that could be configured for different operations such as cargo delivery, returning samples from the Moon or prospecting resources found on the lunar surface.
Credit: XinhuaVideo/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Mars sample return project will mirror to a large degree the technological prowess the country exhibited in their Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission.
Chang’e-5 landed on the Moon in December 2020 and rocketed back to Earth 1,731 grams of lunar rocks and soil.
Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, identified the challenges ahead.
Departing ascender imaged by the Chang’e-5 lander.
Credit: CCTV/CNSA/CLEP
Much heavier than lunar probes
According to a China Daily report, first, a landing capsule will touch down on the Martian surface and collect and seal samples. Next, it will lift an ascender to transfer the samples to a spacecraft orbiting Mars, and then the orbiter will release a reentry craft to carry the samples back to Earth.
“The spacecraft for a sample-return mission to the Red Planet will be much heavier than lunar probes as it will carry a greater amount of fuel to fly a very long distance,” Wu said on the sidelines of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
China is building upon a heritage of Long March boosters.
Credit: CALT
To carry out a Mars return sample initiative, there’s need for the super-heavy rocket, the Long March-9, for the nation’s prospective crewed lunar programs and other deep-space expeditions.
Lunar exploration
In a related China Daily article, Wu also outlined the next Moon exploration steps: The Chang’e-7 and Chang’e-6 robotic probes.
China plans to send its Chang’e-7 robotic probe to search for water and other resources at the Moon’s south pole.
“The Chang’e-7 mission is set to find traces of ice at the south pole, investigate the environment and weather there, and survey its landforms,” said Wu. “It will also be tasked with detecting the natural resources beneath the south pole’s surface. Moreover, mission planners are considering if we can use the probe to dig into the surface to check the underground structures and compositions.”
In this multi-temporal illumination map of the lunar south pole, Shackleton crater (19 km diameter) is in the center, the south pole is located approximately at 9 o’clock on its rim. The map was created from images from the camera aboard the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credits: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Major considerations
Wu said the selection of the south pole as Chang’e -7’s destination was based on two major considerations.
“The Moon’s south pole is likely to have a favorable solar illumination condition that means sustained power supply and stable temperatures, and those will allow for long-term robotic exploration and manned activities,” Wu said. “By comparison, on other places on the Moon, solar illumination is much shorter, and temperature changes between lunar day and lunar night usually stand at about 300 C.”
A second reason lies in water, Wu said. “The permanently shadowed craters on the south pole may harbor reservoirs of ice and other volatile compounds, and they will be valuable resources for manned explorations.”
Wu said Chinese engineers are developing a special craft able to fly from the landing site to a nearby crater to explore for traces of water.
The lunar far side as imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using its LROC Wide Angle Camera.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
Landing site decision
China’s Chang’e-6 mission, Wu said could land somewhere on the far side of the Moon or a place at the south pole.
The Chang’e-6 probe is a backup to its predecessor, Chang’e 5, so it is capable of collecting and bringing samples back to Earth, reports China Daily.
“If the probe is to conduct sampling tasks on the far side, then we will need to deploy one or two relay satellites in a lunar orbit to transmit signals between Chang’e-6 and ground control,” Wu said. “Similarly, landing it on the south pole and retrieving samples from there will also be challenging. So scientists need time to decide which plan will be adopted.”
Credit: NASA
With increasingly regularity, Earth’s ocean waters are the drop zones for incoming leftovers from space. For decades, Russian Progress spaceships loaded with tons of waste from the International Space Station are purposely augured into what’s labeled as the Pacific Ocean’s “spacecraft cemetery.” Similarly, there’s the Cygnus cargo supply vehicles, filled with rubbish from the space station crew that’s ditched over the South Pacific Ocean
In the past, other discarded orbiting facilities – such as Russia’s Mir space station and China’s Tiangong-1 prototype outpost came to full-stop in ocean waters. Then there’s the saga of America’s Skylab experimental station that fell to Earth in 1979, with odds and ends scattering across the southern Australian coast.
Splash down zone for the International Space Station, an area around Point Nemo, formally dubbed “the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.”
Credit: Google/Public Domain
Mega-hunk of junk
But more to the point, in future years, get ready for a mega-hunk of falling space junk. It will be the nearly 500-ton, abandoned-in-place, International Space Station (ISS). The plan is control the ISS to a splash down within the South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area. That’s an area around Point Nemo, formally dubbed “the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.”
Is this a good idea or merely another human dumping ground available? Simply put, an “out of sight, out of mind” disposal spot for surplus space clutter?
Go to my new Space.com story – “Watery graves: Should we be ditching big spacecraft over Earth’s oceans? It’s a form of pollution, after all” – at:
https://www.space.com/spacecraft-deorbiting-over-earth-oceans-ethical-concerns
Curiosity’s Location as of Sol 3403. Distance driven to this Sol is 16.98 miles (27.33 kilometers).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3406 tasks.
“The terrain continues to challenge us as we make our way up onto the Greenheugh pediment,” reports Fred Calef, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A recent drive by the robot ended sooner than expected when it sensed the road was rockier than anticipated, so it paused to wait for further instructions from Earth.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3404, March 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sedimentary structures
Scientists took advantage of this brief pause to “sniff” the rock field all around Curiosity. The chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and Mastcam were used to survey “Tobar Mhoire” and “Ardalanish,” both points on a gray-toned rock with laminations, Calef adds.
Curiosity Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3403, March 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Farther afield, the rover was slated to capture large ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photos and Mastcam mosaics of “Helmsdale Fault” capturing the pediment edge.
In addition, on tap was a massive (58 images) Mastcam mosaic centered about “Feorachas,” a remnant monolith in a field of various sedimentary structures, Calef notes.
Curiosity Mast Camera imagery taken on Sol 3403, March 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera imagery taken on Sol 3403, March 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Finally, the rover will look to the north and capture ‘Torflundie Mire,’ one of several scoured areas across the pediment, in a 11 image Mastcam stereo mosaic. Other standard imaging includes a Mastcam 360 for documenting the surrounding area, clast survey, and solar tau to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, as well as Navcam sky flats, line-of-sight to again look at the atmosphere in a different way, and a dust devil movie,” Calef reports.
Sand, sharp boulders
In an earlier report, Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, explains that Curiosity has been picking her way through sand, sharp boulders and ridges to find a way up onto the Greenheugh pediment.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left photo taken on Sol 3403, March 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“We briefly explored the pediment more than 600 sols ago, before resuming our traverse over the Mount Sharp group sedimentary rocks that we have been driving over since roughly sol 750,” Thompson adds. “The science team is excited to drive up onto and investigate the very different looking rock that comprises the more resistant pediment again. As we have been driving along the side of the pediment cliffs, interesting textures have been observed, which we are hoping to examine in situ.”
Curiosity Mast Camera Left photo taken on Sol 3403, March 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Thompson says, because of the tricky terrain, Curiosity’s recent drive stopped a little short of its intended location and the Mars machinery ended up perched on a rock, such that controllers were not able to safely deploy the arm and use either the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) or the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS).
“However, the rover engineers are confident that we can continue our drive in this plan to get us ever closer to the pediment surface,” Thompson explains.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China continues to press forward on construction of its Tiangong space station, scheduled to be completed before year’s end.
Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the nation’s manned space program, said the assembly phase of the Tiangong program will begin in May and will involve the launch of two astronaut crews, two space labs and two cargo ships.
“The era of space station is still at the beginning. We are verifying key technology. Obviously, there will be a lot of work to do,” Zhou told China Central Television (CCTV).
China’s space station agenda also includes lofting an optical module that carries a space telescope, touted as having a better field angle than the NASA Hubble space telescope.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Steps ahead
“We will build our space station in 2022, which involves the launch, the in-orbit rendezvous as well as the transpositions at their berthing port of the two space stations’ experimental cabins,” Zhou added. “After the construction of the space station is complete, we also plan to launch the China Space Station Telescope into orbit in 2023 or 2024, providing us with a very powerful observation method in understanding the universe,” he said.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Three astronauts in the Shenzhou-14 and another trio in Shenzhou-15 are on tap this year. Zhou said that the Shenzhou-14 crew will be responsible for monitoring the docking between the Tianhe core module and the two space labs and then configuring the two labs.
The Shenzhou-15 crew will fly to the space station before the end of this year and join the Shenzhou-14 crew in space. At that time, the space station will consist of three modules, two manned spacecraft and one cargo spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly 100 tons, Zhou told the Xinhua news agency.
China launched the Shenzhou-13 on October 16, 2021, sending three astronauts, Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and Wang Yaping, on a six-month mission to take part in the construction of the country’s space station. They are residing in the 22.5-ton, three-section Tianhe core module.
Shenzhou-13 crew members.
Credit: CNS/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Grand blueprint
In other China space exploration news, Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of the country’s first Mars exploration mission, said a “grand blueprint” for planetary exploration has been formulated.
“The next step is to collect and bring back samples from asteroids. We called it the asteroid exploration mission and it has entered the sample research and manufacture stage,” Zhang told CCTV.
Credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“We will also carry out early researching and manufacturing of collecting and bringing back samples from Mars. The task is very difficult. So far, no country has returned from Mars after sampling, but we have confidence to implement this task well,” Zhang said.
Moon landing phase
In addition to this Mars mission, the chief designer of the third phase of the China Lunar Exploration Project, Hu Hao, has made meticulous preparations and laid solid foundations to carry out a lunar landing with his team, after the third phase mission of the Chang’e 5 probe successfully brought back samples from the moon in late 2020, reports CCTV.
Many designs in the project were aimed at paving ways for the crewed lunar landing in the future, for instance, the rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, according to Hu.
Artist’s view of China/Russia International Lunar Research Station to be completed by 2035. Credit: CNSA/Roscosmos
China will be able to conduct a manned lunar landing by 2030 after 13 significant technology breakthroughs in rocket development are achieved, said Jiang Jie, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in an interview with China News Service. The development of China’s new-generation rocket able to launch humans is in a key technology tackling stage, said Jiang.
Zhou Jianping also voiced his confidence in China’s human spaceflight program, saying China will send its astronauts to Mars one day.
“When you see the Moon, you will be sure to dream about the Chinese myth, the goddess Chang’e Flying to the Moon. When you see the Red Planet Mars, you will also dream about how to send astronauts to Mars, which will be a great feat. I’m sure that Chinese astronauts will land on Mars,” Zhou said.
AGI, an Ansys company, reconstructed the stage impact circumstances using specialized software.
Credit: AGI
That out-of-control rocket stage has smacked into the Moon’s far side, given early predictions of its scheduled demise. The discarded hardware has been identified as a wayward Chinese Long March 3C rocket stage from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission in 2014.
Tagging the out-of-control stage to China comes from Bill Gray, manager of Project Pluto that supplies astronomical software, both commercial and freeware, to amateur and professional astronomers.
“I am quite confident that it impacted,” Gray told Inside Outer Space. “We had lots and lots of tracking data for the object, and there is nothing acting on it except the forces of gravity and sunlight. The effects of gravity are almost perfectly accounted for.”
The sunlight effects might be off by a few kilometers, Gray said, but nowhere near enough to turn the impact into a miss.
“Unless the object was removed by an occult hand, it hit the Moon a few hours back,” Gray said.
Nominal trajectory
Just to be sure the stage did auger in, there will be a search for the object along its nominal trajectory with optical telescopes next week to make sure nothing is there, said Vishnu Reddy at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Vishnu Reddy and his student researchers at the University of Arizona.
Credit: Mikayla Mace Kelley, University Communications/University of Arizona
Reddy and his student researchers have made early observations of the errant upper stage using the Rapid Astronomical Pointing Telescopes for Optical Reflectance Spectroscopy (RAPTORS) system, a telescope atop the Kuiper Space Sciences building on campus.
“Then we wait for the crater images from LRO,” Reddy told Inside Outer Space. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s powerful camera system will scan the anticipated impact zone — in the vicinity of the large Hertzsprung Crater — to look for the crash site.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
Upshot
Additionally, onboard LRO instruments are on tap to scan for any upshot from the rocket stage impact.
“LRO won’t be close enough to the crash to observe it as it’s happening,” said David Paige, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. LRO’s Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) sensor will attempt to point at the limb to observe the impact plume, he said.
“Eventually, we will hopefully find the crash site. However, the targeting of this is highly uncertain, so it might be like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Paige said.
If found, then LRO’s Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment can observe it and hopefully detect evidence of the crash from orbit, Paige said, perhaps in a few months from now. Paige is the principal investigator for Diviner.
AGI, an Ansys company, reconstructed the stage impact circumstances using specialized software.
Credit: AGI
Approach and impact simulation
Meanwhile, a physics-based animation simulating the rocket’s approach and impact has been issued by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI), headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania.
A Systems Tool Kit (STK) and other fancy computer software was put to the task said Alex Lam of AGI. “Nearly seven years after launch and several harmless flybys of the Moon, the orbit became altered. A series of three flybys set up the booster for its eventual demise,” Lam said. These flybys occurred on September 18, 2021, January 5, 2022, and February 5, 2022.
The tumbling of the China’s booster resulted in a time-varying force caused by solar radiation pressure impinging on the spent hardware’s sunlit side and introduced new complexities for an accurate model of the forces on its body, Lam added.
Using STK’s Electro-Optical Infrared (EOIR) capability, AGI modeled the LRO’s wide angle camera with publicly available technical specifications and created a rendering of what it might see on its pass at the end of March.
Credit: AGI
“With this newly processed data, we found that the booster will impact the Moon at 4.58° N, 129.06° W on March 4, 2022, 12:26:58 UTC. This changes our impact time by about one minute and moves the impact site prediction by just over [155 miles] 250 kilometers, closer to the center of the Hertzsprung Crater,” Lam said.
With a little bit of luck
While the impact won’t be viewed in real time, satellites orbiting the Moon may see the aftermath.
India’s Chandrayaan-2’s Moon orbiter.
Credit: ISRO
In particular, NASA’s LRO and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-2 may be able to pick out the new crater created by the booster’s impact, Lam added. “Both satellites have onboard cameras capable of imaging the predicted crash site, and if we’re lucky we might find it!”
“With these orbits, we expect that the LRO’s first post-impact pass over the sunlit Hertzsprung Crater will occur on March 28, 2022, and Chandrayaan-2’s first pass will come shortly after on April 4, 2022,” Lam said. “Pending instrument availability and a little bit of luck, we might be able to catch a glimpse of the booster’s remnants! Additionally, the impact crater is likely to expose some fresh lunar crust for imaging by these satellites, and the resulting data may have scientific value for geologists researching the Moon.”
To view the informative AGI video – “Alternate View of Chang’e 5-T1 Booster Impact” – go to:
Impact zone of the Chang’e 5-TI booster, expected to slam into the northern end of Hertzsprung crater, a large impact crater on the far side of the Moon.
Credit: NASA/LROC/ASU/Scott Sutherland
The time grows closer for that wayward rocket stage to bombard the Moon and the March 4 impact on the Moon’s far side has earned scientific attention.
The Goldstone Solar System Radar near Barstow, California was set to observe the object a few days before impact.
But the radar track had to be cancelled on March 1, one day before the planned track yesterday, due to an equipment problem affecting a powerful transmitter at the site, said Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“It is still being worked and I’m told there is no chance rescheduling a track prior to the March 4 impact,” Giorgini said.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will be used to look for burps in the Moon’s exosphere — a very thin layer of gases — due to the crash and then later scan the lunar surface for the impact crater itself.
“LRO is ready for the impact, the tracking from last week gave us slight updates to timing and a range of predicted impact points,” observes Noah Petro, Project Scientist for the LRO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “We’re ready! It may be some time for the data to be analyzed to see what we detect, if anything,” he points out.
Then LRO will set about to spot the crater, starting about a month from now when the spacecraft passes over the site in daylight, Petro adds.
At the ready! NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Credit: NASA/GSFC
The discarded rocket booster is on track to slam into Hertzsprung Crater on the far side of the Moon, the first known piece of litter to inadvertently smack into the lunar surface.
Booster identified
Originally, the booster was thought to be part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory in 2015.
However, the object is now tied to a Chinese Long March 3C rocket that blasted off in 2014.
Tagging the out-of-control stage to China comes from Bill Gray, manager of Project Pluto that supplies astronomical software, both commercial and freeware, to amateur and professional astronomers.
Following a circumlunar voyage in 2014, a return capsule parachuted to Earth. This test was a prelude to China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission.
Courtesy: China Space
“There really is no good reason at this point to think the object is anything other than the Chang’e 5-T1 booster,” Gray told Inside Outer Space earlier. “Anybody claiming otherwise has a pretty large hill of evidence to overcome.”
That Chinese booster tossed an experimental spacecraft tagged as Chang’e-5-T1 that looped behind the Moon and returned to Earth to test atmospheric re-entry capabilities for 2020’s Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission.
Chang’e-5-T1 also carried a secondary payload of scientific instruments in the upper stage of the Long March rocket on behalf of the Luxembourg-based company LuxSpace.
The LuxSpace 4M mission was dedicated to the late Manfred Fuchs. 4M stands for the Manfred Memorial Moon Mission.
Credit: OHB/LuxSpace
Cratering process
This event will be similar to the Apollo Saturn SIVB impacts in the past, in that the projectile is more or less a tin can, explains Jeffrey Plescia, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “The result is that a lot of the energy goes into crushing the projectile rather than excavating the crater,” he tells Inside Outer Space.
The SIVB stages, as well as U.S. Ranger Moon probe craters are shallower than a normal crater and typically have an asymmetric shape, related for the most part to the low impact angle, Plescia adds. “Always good to know the parameters of the projectile for better understanding the cratering process.”
The crater in the center of this image was formed by Apollo 14’s Saturn IVB booster, intentionally impacted into the lunar surface on Feb. 4, 1971. The impact caused a minor “moonquake” that scientists used to learn about the Moon’s interior structure. Seismometers placed earlier on the surface by Apollo astronauts returned data on the tremor.
Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University
Plescia notes that the impact event can be more reliably measured – such as depth of the resulting crater — as pre-impact images have been taken by LRO’s powerful camera system of the crash site.
“The only uncertainty at the moment is the orientation of the booster with respect to the trajectory. It is spinning but whether it is just turning in rotisserie mode or tumbling is not clear,” Plescia says. “I would hope the Chinese actually know this and would be forthcoming.”
Paint of a different stripe
Enter Vishnu Reddy and his student researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson that have made observations of the errant upper stage.
Reddy and his team observed the Moon impactor on February 7, obtaining a spectrum of the object. They utilized the Rapid Astronomical Pointing Telescopes for Optical Reflectance Spectroscopy (RAPTORS) system, a telescope atop the Kuiper Space Sciences building on campus.
Credit: University of Arizona
“Then we compared its spectrum to those of a Falcon 9 2nd stage booster of similar provenance as the DSCOVR mission and a Chinese booster of similar provenance as the Chang’e 5 T-1 mission,” Reddy explains. The differences in spectrum were chiefly due to the type of paint used by the Chinese contrasted to SpaceX.
Vishnu Reddy (second from left) and his student researchers at the University of Arizona with RAPTORS system.
Credit: Mikayla Mace Kelley, University Communications/University of Arizona
“Both these boosters were in Earth orbit and were launched around the same year as the Chang’e 5 T-1. The spectrum of the Moon impactor matches the Chinese booster better than the SpaceX booster. Given the dynamical evidence cited by Bill Gray, we feel that our spectral observations are consistent with a Chinese origin.”
“Radar will help pinpoint the impact location better as the booster is getting tossed around by solar radiation pressure,” Reddy told Inside Outer Space. “It will still hit the far side of the Moon around the Hertzsprung crater area, but the impact point might shift a kilometer or so either way.”
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
New color imagery taken by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has been posted.
These images were acquired by the aerial device using its high-resolution color camera, mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degrees below the horizon.
Photos were acquired on Feb. 25, 2022 (Sol 362 of the Perseverance rover mission). This was the date of Ingenuity’s 20th flight.
The craft flew roughly 1,283 feet, reaching roughly 33 feet in altitude and attained a speed of approximately 10 miles per hour.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
