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February 10th, 2020
NASA’s Artemis return humans to the Moon by 2024 program.
Credit: NASA
Between 1969 and the end of 1972, twelve U.S. astronauts kicked up the powdery regolith, the topside dirt of the Moon. They were later dubbed the “dusty dozen.” Along with invaluable lunar samples, Apollo moonwalkers brought back a significant message to Earth: The Moon is a Disneyland of dust.
A vial of Apollo 11 Moon dust from a lunar sample collected in 1969.
Credit: Marilee Bailey/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Those 20th century human outings confronted the harmful impact of lunar dust on the astronauts and their equipment, including their spacesuits. Lunar dust is an abrasive powder that clings to space suits, robots, and virtually all machinery.
Dust up on the Moon. Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan prepares to doff lunar dust-covered space suit.
Credit: NASA
Apollo expedition members tracked lunar material inside their Moon lander homes. After doffing their helmets and gloves, moonwalkers could feel the abrasive nature of the dust, as well as smell and even taste the Moon. Since the dust became weightless after departure from the Moon, the astronauts had trouble breathing without their helmets.
Go-to place
Now, fast forward to the 21st century.
Apollo 17 helmets and dusty spacesuits stuffed inside lunar lander following the last human treks on the Moon in December 1972.
Credit: NASA
Earth’s Moon is slated to be the “go-to” place as the century progresses, with crews exploring, mining and “settling in” on lunar territory, extracting ices likely hidden in Sun-shy polar craters for transformation into water, oxygen, and rocket fuel.
Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.
Power generation from solar cells, food production in greenhouses and construction using mobile 3D printer-rovers.
Credit: ESA – P. Carril
All that said, there’s need to deal with the impact of lunar dust on astronauts and their surface system equipment.
Research scientists are gathering this week at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas to appraise the impact of dust on future human exploration of the Moon. That includes health effects of Moon dust.
Unexpected discovery
“The Apollo Missions to the Moon led to the unexpected discovery that lunar dust has a very negative impact on the astronauts, their surface systems, including space suits and helmets, other surface equipment and on lunar surface operations,” explains Joel Levine of the College of William and Mary and NASA Engineering and Safety Center. He is convener of this week’s “Impact of Lunar Dust on Human Exploration Workshop.”
Credit: NASA
The next phase of the U.S. human exploration of the Moon, the Artemis Project, will send humans back to the Moon for longer periods that the astronauts will be on the lunar surface and exposed to lunar dust, Levine adds. “It is critical to the success of future human lunar missions that we develop techniques and technologies to reduce and mitigate the negative impact of lunar dust on the astronauts, their surface systems and surface operations.”
Astronaut John Young works at the mission’s Apollo 16 Moon buggie in April 1972.
Credit: NASA
Different century, same problems?
The challenges of lunar dust were well documented by the Apollo program. Engine blast ejecta, seal contamination, spacesuit zipper problems, as well as degradation of optical surfaces among them, reports NASA engineer, John Connolly.
“The physics of lunar crewed missions has not changed since Apollo, and the technologies, materials and systems have changed only incrementally,” Connolly notes. So the question persists: will lunar dust present the same challenges to 21st century lunar explorers as it did to 20th century explorers?
“The 50 years that have passed have given us a greater understanding of lunar regolith chemistry, physical properties and its interaction with exploration systems,” Connolly points out. “New understanding, however, often poses new questions,” he suggests.
Wanted: dust mitigation strategy
NASA’s M. R. Johansen explains it is well known that the Apollo lunar surface missions experienced a number of issues related to dust – which are sometimes referred to as “The Dust Problem.”
Moonwalking geologist, Apollo 17’s Jack Schmitt.
Credit: NASA
“The jagged, electrostatically charged lunar dust particles can foul mechanisms and alter thermal properties. They tend to abrade textiles and scratch surfaces. NASA and other interested parties require an integrated, end-to-end dust mitigation strategy to enable sustainable lunar architectures,” Johansen says.
An integrated dust mitigation strategy requires coordination from architecture to technology development, Johansen points out. “Many of the concerns associated with lunar dust can be lessened with early consideration. Through architecture and operational considerations and technology maturation, NASA aims to resolve The Dust Problem.”
Blast effects
Philip Metzger, a planetary physicist with the Planetary Science faculty at the University of Central Florida, has focused research on dust transport and its effects due to landing spacecraft on the Moon.
Apollo 12’s visit to Surveyor III landing site.
Credit: NASA
“Lunar lander engine exhaust blows dust, soil, gravel, and rocks at high velocity and will damage surrounding hardware such as lunar outposts, mining operations, or historic sites unless the ejecta are properly mitigated,” says Metzger.
Metzger explains that the best information about damage from impact of these ejecta comes from the robotic Surveyor 3 lunar lander visited by Apollo 12 moonwalkers two and a half years after the probe plopped down on the Moon.
Pieces of the Surveyor were cut off by the Apollo astronauts and brought back to Earth. The Surveyor’s surface facing the Apollo lunar module had been sandblasted thoroughly. On Surveyor, they crushed the paint pigment and mixed dust into the paint, Metzger reports.
Twenty years of research have developed a consistent picture of the physics of rocket exhaust blowing lunar soil, “but significant gaps exist,” Metzger adds. “No currently-available modeling method can fully predict the effects. However, the basics are understood well enough to begin designing countermeasures.”
Health consequences
Flagged by Peter Sim, an emergency medicine specialist in Newport News, Virginia, are the health consequences of human exposure to lunar dust.
Flow chart shows the possible health effects of breathing lunar dust, in both the short- and long-term.
Credit: Rachel Caston
Human contact with lunar dust has only occurred briefly, during the Apollo missions, Sim explains in his abstract for the meeting this week.
Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt’s exposure resulted in symptoms he described as “lunar hay fever,” Sim notes. “In the 47 years since Apollo 17, returned samples of lunar regolith and dust have been exhaustively analyzed, but there are still important gaps in our knowledge.”
The respiratory system is most at-risk, Sim says, but the eyes and skin will also be affected. “Obviously, prevention of exposure should be the primary objective, but plans to minimize and mitigate inevitable exposures must be in place. Keeping habitats dust-free will be a major challenge.”
Credit: NASA/ESA
The paper offered by Sim concludes: “Because of its physical and chemical characteristics, lunar dust, in sufficient doses, represents a toxic threat to human health when we return to the Moon and establish a long-term presence. The respiratory system is particularly at risk. Prevention of exposure should be our primary goal.”
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President Donald Trump signs S.1790, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 on, Friday, Dec. 20, 2019 at Joint Base Andrews. The act directed the establishment of the U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces.
Credit: Airman 1st Class Spencer Slocum, 11th Wing Public Affairs
The Trump administration established the Space Force as a separate military branch in December 2019.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper noted last month, nations have been in space for many, many years. “It’s just been recently that both China and Russia pushed us to the point where it now became a warfighting domain,” he said.
General John Raymond, U.S. Space Force chief of space operations, signs the United States Space Command sign inside of the Perimeter Acquisition Radar building Jan. 10, 2020, on Cavalier Air Force Station, North Dakota.
Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Melody Howley
As a result, Esper said, the United States has stood up Space Command and just recently, Space Force, “to make sure that we can preserve space as a global commons, he said. “It’s important not just to our security, but to our commerce, our way of life, our understanding of the planet, weather, you name it. So it’s very important that we — we now treat it that way and make sure that we’re prepared to defend ourselves and preserve space.”
Check out my new Space.com story that surveys a variety of experts in space policy about the practicalities, pathways and potential pitfalls ahead for the U.S. Space Force:
Space Force: What will the new military branch actually do? – The future is still a bit fuzzy.
https://www.space.com/united-states-space-force-next-steps.html
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Right B Camera image acquired on Sol 2668, February 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It is GO for drilling at Hutton reports Catherine O’Connell, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Curiosity is parked at the “Hutton” drill site, the rover’s new drill site on Mars.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2668, February 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Over the past couple of sols, Mars scientists have focused on assessing the suitability of the bedrock as a drill target.
Desired compositional range
The robot’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) investigated the chemical composition to make sure that it falls within a desired compositional range.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Right B Camera photo acquired on Sol 2668, February 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The engineers and rover planners at JPL assessed physical parameters and properties (for example looking at rock coherency, presence of veins, homogeneity of the surface),” O’Connell explains. “As the target was found to be a good candidate, drilling is a GO,” now underway is the beginning of the drill activity, with drilling planned for the second sol of a two-sol plan.
Discard site
During the first sol of the plan, the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) will take several images of the “discard site,” where our drilled sample will be dumped once the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite have finished analyzing the sample.
Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Drilling takes a lot of power, so other science activities were necessarily curtailed,” O’Connell adds.
The geology theme group (GEO) squeezed in two ChemCam Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) targets “Tarbat Ness” (bedrock) and “Creag na Bruaich” (a float rock). The environmental theme group (ENV) added a pair of Mastcam images looking at dust and opacity, a Navcam dust devil movie, and some standard Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) environmental monitoring activities.
Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Eagerly awaiting images
“Following a very long overnight nap to conserve energy, drilling is scheduled to take place on the afternoon of the second sol. Once drilling has completed, Mastcam will image the new drill hole (planning for success!) the “tailings” generated by the percussion drill method, and the drill bit used to ensure it is in good condition,” O’Connell reports.
“We will be eagerly awaiting the first images down after drilling,” O’Connell concludes, “to see if we have the 24th successful drill hole on Mars!”
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2667, February 6, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2667 duties.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B photo acquired on Sol 2666, February 5, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“After seeing our initial contact science results and our successful pre-load test, the plan is to continue preparing to drill and get a sample from the Hutton target,” reports Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Curiosity is continuing to do more contact science “on this fascinating workspace, including looking at “Traprain Law,” a place where our wheel scuffed the rock on an earlier drive,” Stroupe adds. “We also planned contact science on two other spots – “Moorfoot Hills” (a possible hollow nodule) and “Liberton Brae” (bedrock).”
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2666, February 5, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Interesting challenge
As a rover planner, Stroupe notes, the tall nature of these two targets, which are very close together, relative to the local surface made for an interesting challenge to determine how to put the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) down safety on each of these spots.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2666, February 5, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“We ended up touching between the two, to ensure we safely find the highest point, and then offset to get the desired APXS and [Mars Hand Lens Imager] (MAHLI) locations,” Stroupe points out.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera Right image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera Right image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“In conjunction with the contact science, Mars scientists did a lot of targeted remote sensing science as well, including Mastcam and Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) imaging of Hutton and a nearby vein.
“We also have some of our standard environmental observations – a Mastcam full tau and crater rim extinction,” Stroupe explains.
Credit: CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space Screengrab
China’s Long March-5B — a modified version of the Long March-5 rocket – has arrived at its launch site in southern China’s Hainan Province.
The rocket’s components were carried by two rocket transportation ships – Yuanwang 21and Yuanwang 22– from Tianjin, a northern coastal municipality and home to the launch vehicle’s manufacturing complexes.
Credit: CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space
Those rocket elements spent about a week on the trip to the southernmost island province, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing.
The rocket is 53.7 meters long, with a diameter of 5 meters. It will be propelled by liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen and kerosene and will have a liftoff weight of about 849 metric tons.
Credit: CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space
Ground drills
According to China Daily, Li Dong, the rocket’s chief designer, said that the craft will be pollution-free and will be the most powerful rocket when it comes to carrying capacity to the low-Earth orbit – it will be capable of placing 22 tons of payloads in such an orbit.
Hao Chun, Director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told CCTV Video News Agency: “This maiden flight of the Long March-5B is aimed at testing its functions,” adding that China has planned 12 missions to complete the construction of the country’s space station by 2022.
At the Wenchang Space Launch Center, the booster is set for ground drills with the prototype of the Chinese space station’s core module to verify the launch sequence for the space station.
Credit: CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space
After the drills, the Long March-5B will carry out its maiden flight in April to launch the prototype of the country’s new crewed spaceship, said the China Manned Space Agency.
Go to this CCTV Video News Agency regarding the Long March-5B:
Credit: OneWeb
As a batch of OneWeb satellites is set for liftoff Thursday, an international appeal/petition from astronomers is calling for a moratorium on satellite constellations.
A Soyuz-2.1b with Fregat-M booster, topped by 34 OneWeb satellites is scheduled to take off February 6 from Kazakhstan, kicking off a sequence of up to 20 launches from three countries to deploy nearly 650 satellites for OneWeb’s global Internet network.
An image of the NGC 5353/4 galaxy group made with a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, USA on the night of Saturday 25 May 2019. The diagonal lines running across the image are trails of reflected light left by more than 25 of the 60 recently launched Starlink satellites as they passed through the telescope’s field of view. Although this image serves as an illustration of the impact of reflections from satellite constellations, please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.
Credit: Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory
Growing ire
Meanwhile, deployment of satellite constellations has come under fire from thousands of astronomers involved with astronomical observatories and facilities.
The growing ire focuses on putting a hold on further SpaceX Starlink launches (and other projects) and carry out an accurate moratorium on all technologies that can negatively impact astronomical space-based and ground based observations.
Aggregated concerns
In a paper led by Stefano Gallozzi at the Astronomical Observatory of Rome in Italy, the aggravated and aggregated concerns about satellite constellations have been raised.
Starlink satellites visible in a mosaic of an astronomical image.
Courtesy of NSF’s
National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/NSF/AURA/CTIO/DELVE)
“The deployment of large fleets of small satellites planned or ongoing for the next generation of global telecommunication networks can severely harm ground based astronomical observations,” explains the paper. All private displacement of satellite constellation projects must be put on hold, the paper adds.
To view the February 4, 2020 paper – “Concerns about ground based astronomical observations: A step to Safeguard the Astronomical Sky” – go to:
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2666 duties.
Mars scientists are scoping out new assignments for the rover, notes Claire Newman, an atmospheric scientist at Aeolis Research in Pasadena, California.
There were three options at the start of planning:
(1) Stay put and prepare to drill;
(2) Do a “bump” to get into a better position to drill; and
(3) Perform a longer drive to find a better location.
Curiosity Rear Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B photo taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Significant tilt
“The issue with (1) was that, while the drive over the weekend left Curiosity in front of a very interesting outcrop, it also left the rover with significant tilt. So it was initially unclear whether we would pass the Slip Risk Assessment Process (SRAP), as required to be able to drill here,” Newman reports.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“For this reason, both the GEO (geology) and ENV (environmental) science theme groups had to come up with a few different plans! Due to power and other constraints, the science block was only 37 minutes long, which didn’t leave enough time to do ChemCam [Chemistry and Camera] activities as well as everything else,” Newman adds.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Close to the contact
However, this location is of great interest for ChemCam, Newman explains, because it’s close to the contact between the Greenheugh Pediment and Murray formation, hence chemical analysis could reveal important information on processes affecting the rocks immediately beneath Mount Sharp’s capping unit.
“The ENV group and Mastcam therefore agreed to give up all of our activities to ChemCam if we were going to immediately drive away (option 3). If, however, we were going to stay put or ‘bump’ (options 1 and 2),” Newman continues, “we decided that ENV and Mastcam activities would take up all of the time, leaving the ChemCam activities until a later sol.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 2664, February 3, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Even then, the science activities varied depending on whether Curiosity stayed put or moved a little. For example, ENV dust devil movies are ideally taken during a period with Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) coverage, because then scientists can compare any imaged dust devils (dusty vortices) with measurements of vortex pressure drops made by REMS.
“The ‘stay put’ plan (option 1) had the science block at about 2pm local true solar time on Mars, which was covered by REMS; however, the ‘bump’ plan (option 2) had the science block earlier, during a period with no REMS coverage. So if we went with option 2, we would have pulled the dust devil movie to make room for other activities,” Newman says.
Stay put
In the end, scientists discovered that the rover had passed SRAP and we would be staying put to drill (option 1).
“We therefore stuck with our bevy of ENV and GEO Mastcam activities,” Newman explains. “For ENV, these included a Suprahorizon cloud movie (looking for clouds above the north crater rim), a Navcam dust devil movie, and a Navcam ‘line of sight’ measurement of the dustiness across the crater.”
ENV activities were somewhat limited, as many of them rely on being able to image some distance away (e.g. to look for dust devils in all directions or to look for cloud shadows on Mount Sharp), whereas we are surrounded by high topography in many directions at this location.
Potential drill target
For GEO, activities included Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) of the potential drill target “Hutton,” followed by Dust Removal Tool (DRT) use, then a center and offset APXS on the potential drill spot.
Dust Removal Tool (DRT) result. Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Also in the plan, a Mastcam mosaic of the top of “Tower Butte” to document sedimentologic structures, a Mastcam observation of a light-toned target named “Dumfriesshire,” and finally Mastcam on a on a portion of the bedrock that had been scuffed by the rover’s wheel, to look for surface changes.
“The latter will be used to infer wind strength and direction at our current location,” Newman concludes, “which is valuable both for comparison with Mars atmospheric models and to determine the risk of drill samples being blown away.”
Curiosity Left Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2661, January 31, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2665 tasks.
“It’s not the ground that is tilted, we are!” That’s the report from Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity is near the contact between the clay-bearing “Glen Torridon” unit and the “Greenheugh” pediment, and the rover is parked at a mission-record setting 26.9˚ tilt.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2664, February 3, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Chemical information
Mars researchers are set to use the rover’s arm and remote sensing instruments to investigate the interesting textures and chemistry of rocks near the contact.
Fraeman says also on tap is use of the robot’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) to collect chemical information from a bedrock target filled with nodules called “Garron Point” and a dark float rock that may have come from the Greenheugh pediment named “Mull of Galloway.”
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2664, February 3, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Dust Removal Tool (DRT) is in use as is Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and ChemCam to make observations of “Berwickshire,” a typical-looking piece of bedrock.
Nodules and veins
APXS and MAHLI will also observe “Cairnbulg,” an area with nodules, and MAHLI will take some images of a vein named “Ross and Cromarty.”
Also on the plan is a Mastcam multispectral observation of Berwickshire and a stereo Mastcam mosaic of the contact between the Greenheugh pediment and Glen Torridon.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“ChemCam will collect more data from ‘Ramasaig,’ a dark vein near the rover, and ‘St. Monanas,’ another piece of rock with interesting textures,” Fraeman adds. “The rover will also acquire some environmental science observations that will be used to understand atmospheric properties and search for dust devils.”
Drill target
On the plan is a drive by Curiosity towards some flat rock outcrops that are nearby, but which the rover will be able to reach without having to park at such a high tilt.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 2664, February 3, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2665, February 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The observations we collect from this area next week,” Fraeman concludes, “will help us decide whether these flatter rocks would be a good target to drill!”
China’s farside rover images Chang’e-4 lander in the distance.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP
After landing on the Moon’s farside on January 3, 2019, China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2) has now driven 1,204 feet (367.25 meters).
Both the Chang’e-4 lander and the rover ended their work for the 14th lunar day on Saturday (Beijing Time), and switched to dormant mode for the lunar night, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.
Yutu-2 rover (Jade Rabbit-2) has now driven 1,204 feet (367.25 meters). Credit: CNSA/CLEP
Lander/rover experiments
During the 14th lunar day of exploration, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reports, the Yutu-2 continued to move along the planned route. The scientific instruments on the lander and rover worked as planned.
“The neutron radiation detector and low-frequency radio spectrometer on the lander worked normally and acquired first-hand scientific data. On the rover, the near-infrared spectrometer, panoramic camera, neutral atom detector and lunar radar carried out scientific exploration as planned,” Xinhua explained.
China’s Chang’e-4 mission was launched on Dec. 8, 2018, making the first-ever soft landing within the Von Kármán crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Chang’e-5 mission is intended to return lunar specimens back to Earth.
Credit: CCTV/Screengrab/Inside Outer Space
Next up: lunar samples
The country’s next lunar foray is the Chang’e-5 mission, slated for liftoff later this year.
The 8.2-metric-ton Chang’e-5 mission includes a lander, an orbiter, an ascender and a returner. The key tasks of the mission will be lunar sample collection, takeoff from the Moon, rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, followed by a high-speed reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Credit: CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Quality of samples
Peng Jing, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e-5 probe at the China Academy of Space Technology recently noted that the mission will depart Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province during the fourth quarter of this year.
If successful, this robotic spacecraft would attempt the first lunar sample return to Earth in over 40 years.
This mission is targeted for the northwestern part of the Oceanus Procellarum, a lunar mare on the western edge of the Moon’s near side.
Locations of proposed Chang’e-5 landing sites (marked by red stars) from new study.
Credit: Chisenga, et al.
“The quantity of samples it will bring back depends on many factors, such as the landing site’s geology. We hope that it can collect at least 1 kilogram, and if everything goes well, it may bring two kilograms or even more,” Peng said in the China Daily story.
Scientific outpost
Turning to future lunar exploration, Peng said scientists and engineers have proposed that two or three missions could be made to set up a simple scientific outpost on the Moon, which would be able to accommodate astronauts for short-term stays, to carry out experiments and explore the feasibility of long-term visits.
Go to this video describing the mission:
China to Launch Chang’e-5, Mars Probes in 2020
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera image acquired on Sol 2663, February 2, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
As many of the readers of this website know…I do inspect quite a number of Curiosity Mars rover images daily.
I was intrigued by a recent new image…and I asked Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist of the Mars Institute and SETI Institute to help me identify what I’m observing. Here’s his reaction:
“The feature at the top of the image does look like a terrestrial nautiloid-form (important to keep those two words together and hyphenated)! Given that the background rock is full of spheroidal mineral concretions of the same scale, however, the nautiloid-form is most likely just a cluster of concretions that has been differentially eroded and made to stand out like a fossil might,” Lee told Inside Outer Space.
Lee added that, even if this was a fossil — which it likely isn’t” – “we should be reminded of what Carl Sagan used to say: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Credit: Pascal Lee
Tree of life…forest of life
However, Lee said, this also does bring to the fore the important point, which he has been harping about for some time, that, even if this were fossil life, no amount of fossil-finding on Mars will establish that we’ve found alien life. We would have found signs of “life off Earth,” but not necessarily established that it is life “that is not of the Earth.”
Lee said that alien life would be “establishable” as such…only if we could show that it does not fit on Earth’s Tree of Life, to which all known life forms on Earth belong (based on phylogeny, i.e., shared genetics).
“It would have to belong to a separate Tree of Life, one resulting from an independent origin. Once we’ve established that there are at least two Trees of Life in the solar system, we can speculate confidently that there must be a Forest of Life out there,” Lee advised.
Deep diving on Mars. Cavers deploy for underground exploration of the Red Planet.
Credit: Pascal Lee
Mars underground
To establish that scientists have found an alien life form on Mars, Lee added, we have to do genetics — not necessarily “DNA” sequencing, but genetic analysis in a more generic sense. To do genetics, the life form has to be alive – or dead since a very short time; biochemically still intact, he said.
“To find life that’s alive, we need to explore Mars’ underground where, deep enough, conditions at present would be warmer, wetter, and more sheltered than at the surface, sheltered especially from ionizing radiation, micrometeoritic bombardment, low atmospheric pressure, and drastic day-night temperature variations, which are likely to be bad news for any life,” Lee advised.
Loaded to the brim with samples, a robotic Mars Ascent Vehicle rockets off the planet under the watchful eye of an accompanying “go fetch” mini-rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL
Return sample
Even if we found fossils in samples returned from Mars, Lee said, “we would be hard-pressed to establish that it’s alien, as opposed to just life derived from life shared with the Earth in the past, via impacts, unless the samples actually contained extant life, which they would likely not…given that they would be from the surface of Mars or would have sat there for a long time.”
So in short, Lee said, the nautiloid-form pictured by Curiosity is indeed “weird and cool,” but ultimately, he added, “to have any chance of finding life that we’d be able to establish as alien, we must go and look for it underground.”
Interesting texture…but
“It is an interesting texture, could be anything from melted volcanic glass to weathering sedimentary concretions to slime molds from outer space sent to take over our Solar System,” adds Penelope Boston, Senior Advisor for Science Integration at NASA Ames Research Center. “I don’t know the size scale on the image nor the context of where it is from, etc.”
“I would add that finding any fossil material on Mars would be extremely exciting but would require the building of a major framework case of the geological context, the search for any biomolecules that might have been preserved in the material ranging from organic carbon to remains of lipids,” Boston told Inside Outer Space.
Confirmation of the existence and extent of life on Mars, whether ancient or current, will benefit human exploration. Here an exobiologist examines what appears to be a porous relic of a hot spring that has fallen from the canyon wall.
Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
Weak evidence
Boston said there are many additional techniques to try to see whether a form is a “one-off” or is in a setting with more than one example of a form. In addition, is there a stable isotope value consistent with what we know that life on Earth does to carbon (i.e. make it lighter than the source CO2)?
Similar in view as Pascal Lee, “we cannot tell from any of that whether it is related to Earth life or a second genesis,” Boston said. “Morphology alone is weak evidence, albeit possibly critical in drawing our attention to something to investigate, so it is super helpful but very far from definitive in any way,” she concluded.
Biological origin
As for the new Curiosity imagery showing an interesting feature, “it’s hard to say,” explains, Chris McKay, a noted Mars researcher at NASA Ames Research Center.
“There are certainly biogenic features that look like this but that’s quite a long way from saying these have to be biogenic features and could not be produced abiotically,” McKay adds.
Mars expedition probes the promise that Mars was a home address for past, possibly life today.
Credit: NASA
There are now a slew of papers that look at Curiosity images and some photos taken from the Mars Exploration Rover missions (Opportunity and Spirit) and say “these features look biotic to me,” McKay points out. “Very few people are convinced. These may or may not be biological.”
On Earth, McKay suggests, “such a claim of biological origin would be based on much better images, thin sections, etc. and backed by extensive analysis of the samples with multiple laboratory instruments. It is possible that someday a picture from Mars will be so good that its biological origin will be clear. Not yet,” he said.
