Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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September 21st, 2023
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: Inside Outer Space
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Image credit: NASA
NASA has issued a Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) – a craft to dump the International Space Station in a controlled manner at the outpost’s end-of-life to avoid populated areas.
Proposals are due no later than November 17 to design, develop, manufacture, test, integrate, deliver to NASA, and sustain the USDV, such that the USDV can perform the final deorbit of the space station.
The USDV shall rendezvous and dock with the ISS as well as perform ISS attitude control, ISS translational maneuvers, and the final ISS orbit shaping and reentry burns.
Shared responsibility
The safe deorbit of the International Space Station is a “shared responsibility” of all five cooperating space agencies — NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the State Space Corporation Roscosmos — that have operated the station since 1998.
“In the future, the United States plans to transition its operations in low Earth orbit to commercially-owned and -operated platforms to ensure continued access and presence in space for research, technology development, and international collaboration,” NASA states.
Proceeding with plans
Over the years, a number of options to safely deorbit the space station, including the option of using up to three Russian-provided Progress spacecraft at the end of station operations.
“These efforts indicated that a new or modified spacecraft is needed to provide more robust capabilities for deorbit,” NASA adds.
Now NASA is engaging with U.S. industry and is proceeding with plans to procure a USDV that will perform the final, safe, deorbit maneuver of the space station.
Image credit: AWI/ Michael Trautmann
An experimental greenhouse in Antarctica is sprouting ideas in the development of techniques to train prospective crews headed for the Moon.
More than one ton of vegetables, salad ingredients and herbs have been harvested at the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse.
According to the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), the EDEN ISS has spent five years on the seventh continent.
The facility is being transformed into EDEN LUNA as part of a planned conversion. Astronauts will be able to train in the cultivation of vegetables, salad ingredients and herbs, as well as in the technology and procedures – all integrated into the LUNA test and training facility planned jointly by DLR and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Image credit: DLR
Fresh vegetables
“Over the past few years, the EDEN ISS greenhouse has demonstrated in Antarctica how plant cultivation on the Moon and Mars might look and function using artificial light,” says Anke Pagels-Kerp, DLR Divisional Board Member for Space. “But the project also showed how fresh vegetables can be supplied to climatically challenging regions of our planet while using resources efficiently.”
Those fresh vegetables were supplied to the crews of Neumayer Station III that is operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) just 400 meters from the German Antarctic station Neumayer III.
Image credit: DLR
Since the beginning of 2018, the EDEN ISS greenhouse operated by DLR has been located in Antarctica, just 13,000 feet (400 meters) from the Neumayer III station.
“The greenhouse has brought color into the lives of our overwintering teams, as well as meals enriched by fresh vegetables and herbs. The research shows that plant life is good for people and innovations for growing vegetables in extreme habitats are relevant for the future. Antarctica is an ideal test area for this,” said Antje Boetius, Director of the AWI.
Overhaul
The greenhouse is now being overhauled at the DLR site in Bremen, Germany, outfitted with new technology in preparation for training of future lunar astronauts.
In the mid-2020s, the greenhouse is to be integrated into the newly constructed LUNA hall at DLR’s Cologne site.
NASA guest scientist Jess Bunchek is investigating how astronauts on future Moon and Mars missions could grow vegetables and herbs using as little time and energy as possible.
Image credit: Linda Ort, DLR/NASA/AWI
“The EDEN LUNA greenhouse will become even more digital, networked and resource-saving with the conversion,” explains Daniel Schubert from the DLR Institute of Space Systems in a DLR statement.
In the future, Schubert adds, a robotic arm in the greenhouse will support and relieve the work of the astronauts undergoing training. Additional cameras and an AI-controlled greenhouse management system will optimize the monitoring of the plants and their care.
Also, the processing of urine as a nutrient solution will be integrated into the greenhouse cycle. The technology for processing urine for plant cultivation will be provided by the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine.
Moon base structures will include housing green thumb expeditionary crews.
Credit: LIQUIFER Systems Group 2018/René Waclavicek
Training facility
Astronauts that will be travelling to the Moon are to be trained in the LUNA test and training facility at the DLR site in Cologne.
Construction and commissioning are planned for the middle of this decade. The converted EDEN LUNA greenhouse will be integrated into this research facility.
LUNA is being built on DLR’s Cologne campus in close proximity to DLR’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine and ESA’s European Astronaut Center.
For an informative video on this work, go to:
Image credit: EDF
Early next year, the Environmental Defense Fund is launching its own spacecraft, MethaneSAT – a name that is exact about what this satellite is seeking.
Methane is a troublesome gas. While far less abundant, it is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide in entrapping heat over a 100-year time period. Furthermore, methane affects air quality as it contributes to ground level ozone, a hazardous air pollutant.
Private initiative
Planet-wide, high-resolution detection and quantification of methane emissions is viewed as part of an action-based, data-gathering agenda. However, gauging which specific sources are responsible for variations in the methane annual increase is multifaceted.
MethaneSAT carries a high-performance spectrometer-based methane sensing system. Shown here is the satellite and instrument fully integrated.
Image credit: Ball Aerospace
MethaneSat is a private initiative, reportedly a $90 million venture on the hunt to find destructive global methane emissions with extraordinary precision. A New York-based advocacy group, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has a long-standing interest in the methane topic of concern, but this space approach is unique.
For more information on MethaneSAT, go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story – “MethaneSAT — A Watchdog in Space to Spot Whiffs of Methane” – at:
https://spaceref.com/newspace-and-tech/methanesat-watchdog-space-spot-whiffs-methane/
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at Jezero Crater performed its 58th flight on September 11.
Details posted by NASA’s JPL list the following flight statistics: Horizontal distance: Roughly 571 feet (174 meters); Maximum altitude: roughly 33 feet (10 meters); Duration of flight 106.8 seconds.
Flight 59
Meanwhile, the aerial craft was slated to carry out Flight 59, with JPL posting an expected flight date for September 16. This flight would be a “pop-up” with an expected flight time of 142.94 seconds, to a maximum altitude of 65 feet (20 meters).
Newly posted black and white images from Flight 58 include the above photo, taken by the craft’s Navigation Camera mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.
Color imagery was produced by high-resolution color camera mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degrees below the horizon.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Maps of the south and north polar region of the Moon with the age of permanently shadowed areas. PSR ages are indicated in the legend and the angles in parenthesis are the maximum elevation of the Sun above the south pole. The background grayscale map is maximum direct solar irradiance for the present day.
Image credit: Norbert Schorghofer/PSI.
New research points to how much water ice may be lurking in the Moon’s permanently shadowed areas. Given that back-to-the-Moon plans by various nations are being shaped, in part, by that resource being available to sustain operations there, new data can be welcomed, or viewed as bad news.
Permanently shadowed regions on the Moon, known as PSRs, are thought to have trapped ices and are a main focus of lunar exploration.
Planetary Science Institute senior scientist, Norbert Schorghofer, is lead author of “Past Extent of Lunar Permanently Shadowed Areas” that appears in Science Advances.
Ancient water ice reservoirs
“These findings change the prediction for where we would expect to find water ice on the Moon, and it dramatically changes estimates for how much water ice there is on the Moon. Ancient water ice reservoirs are no longer expected,” said Schorghofer, in a Planetary Science Institute (PSI) statement.
Permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) on the Moon are those sunlight-shy craters that are believed to contain precious water ice. Credit: Hongyu Cui
The crux of the new research paper is this: Early in the Moon’s 4.5 billion years old history, Earth’s celestial partner was bombarded by comets and volcanism-released water vapor from its interior.
Schorghofer notes that continuously shadowed areas on the Moon, however, started to appear only 3.4 billion years ago.
“By that time these processes had started to die down, so most of the water that was delivered to the Moon or outgassed from its interior could not have been trapped in the polar regions. Any ice in the polar regions today must have a more recent origin,” Schorghofer explains in the PSI statement.
LCROSS impact
“We have been able to quantify how young the lunar PSRs really are,” Schorghofer said. “The average age of PSRs is 1.8 billion years, at most. There are no ancient reservoirs of water ice on the Moon.”
But throwing cold water on gobs and gobs of available PSR water ice, well it’s not totally a slam dunk negative.
Artist’s rendering of the LCROSS spacecraft and Centaur separation.
Credit: NASA
Schorghofer points to the impact site of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) project, a robotic pile-driving mission that in October 2009 purposely crashed within the Cabeus crater at the lunar south pole.
The resulting impact excavated roughly 350 (metric) tons of lunar material and created a crater estimated to be about 66 feet (20 meters) in diameter.
Plumbing the plume
Schorghofer said the plume of LCROSS-vacated volatiles — which include water and carbon dioxide – must be young, he said, and lies within a PSR that is less than 1 billion years old.
In a way this is very encouraging, Schorghofer said, because even the young PSRs contain ice. Older PSRs should contain even more ice.
Rendering of Artemis astronauts exploring a lunar south pole crater. A water ice-rich resource ready for processing?
Image credit: NASA
The bottom line of the new research by Schorghofer and colleague Raluca Rufu of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado: Overall estimates for the amount of cold-trapped ices have to be revised downward.
“Impacts and outgassing are potential sources of water but peaked early in lunar history, so the age of PSRs is a dominant factor for the amount of water ice trapped in the lunar polar regions, which is the prime target of upcoming crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon,” Schorghofer notes in the research paper – “Past Extent of Lunar Permanently Shadowed Areas” that can be accessed at:
Image credit: SpaceX
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) SpaceX Boca Chica Project Team reports that the FAA has not authorized SpaceX’s proposed Flight 2.
The report comes in the form of a September 15 update on FAA license determinations for SpaceX’s proposed Starship-Super Heavy Flight 2.
SpaceX conducted a test flight of the Starship/Super Heavy at Boca Chica, Texas on April 20, 2023. As a result of that launch, SpaceX completed a mishap investigation with FAA oversight; this investigation analyzed the launch, mishap events, and corrective actions.
Modified license
According to the FAA team statement, before SpaceX is okayed to conduct a second Starship/Super Heavy launch, “SpaceX must obtain a modified license from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements.”
As part of that license application determination process, the FAA will review new environmental information, including changes related to the launch pad, as well as other proposed vehicle and flight modifications.
Drone view of recent SpaceX Booster 9 static fire test.
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Written reevaluation
The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required.
“Accordingly, the FAA has not authorized SpaceX’s proposed Flight 2,” the team statement notes.
The FAA will provide updates with notification of any license determination or results of additional environmental review.
Starship vehicle is fully stacked at Starbase in South Texas on Sept. 5, 2023.
Image credit: SpaceX
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson provides remarks during a media briefing to discuss the findings from an unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) independent study team. Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
NASA’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Independent Study Team published on September 14 its final report containing a series of recommendations for how the agency could help to move the understanding of UAP forward.
Reaction to the study’s release has sparked several groups to review the findings and offer viewpoints.
Scientific openness
For one, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) wholly endorses NASA’s decision to follow their study team’s recommendation and embrace the scientific questions surrounding the nature of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and appoint a NASA Director of UAP Research.
Image credit: SCU
“NASA is the right U.S. agency to lead this effort,” the SCU said in a press statement. However, the group flags NASA’s avenue to contribute to UAP studies via the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
“NASA is our premier aerospace organization with the necessary capabilities to address the UAP question with scientific openness. NASA should lead the entire UAP science endeavor over the long term, not AARO,” said the SCU. “AARO is tied to national defense organizations and is driven by the needs of our defense industry, which necessarily cannot promote scientific openness.”
Image credit: Yannick Peings, Marik von Rennenkampff/AIAA
Independent lead
NASA’s UAP program should be funded, the SCU statement continues, to support academic research within our nation’s universities and scientific organizations to further the study of UAP. “This necessitates funding and guidance directly from Congress, not via AARO.”
While SCU acknowledges that AARO is necessary to investigate the defense-related aspects of UAP, the group “strongly recommends” that Congress provide the necessary funding and resources to allow NASA to independently lead U.S. UAP scientific research programs.
Historic development
In a statement from Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA), this group saluted NASA for listening to pilots about UAP and committed to a serious research and data collection effort to identify what is in our skies.
UAP have been reported by Navy pilots unlike anything they have ever witnessed.
Image credit: Enigma Labs/Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich
Ryan Graves, co-founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace and a former Lt. U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who was the first active duty military pilot to come forward about UAP and recently testified to U.S. Congress called NASA’s report “a historic development in UAP transparency.”
“It’s clear that NASA values pilot reports to study UAP as an aerospace safety, national security, and scientific issue. NASA is leading the charge to solve the mystery in our skies by following the data and eliminating stigma,” Graves said in a statement.
Confidential…voluntary…non-punitive
Graves said that NASA’s recommendation to adapt the space agency’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) to receive UAP reports from commercial pilots “is significant progress and will enable widespread UAP data collection for the first time in U.S. history.”
Image credit: Statista
According to the ASRS website, the system is founded on a “confidential…voluntary…non-punitive” standard.
The majority of UAP witnessed by commercial and military pilots go unreported, explains the statement from Americans for Safe Aerospace. “Stigma and the lack of official reporting channels for commercial pilots remain a barrier to assessing and evaluating UAP.”
Americans for Safe Aerospace launched an aircrew and military UAP witness program earlier this year.
Graves along with the ASA team has met with dozens of pilots who have confidentially shared their accounts of UAP activity routinely sighted during their flight routes.
To access the video of NASA’s press event in releasing the UAP study, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoY2sGo7ZiY
The complete UAP report from the independent study group is available at:
Image credit: Barbara David
NOTE: Late Thursday NASA re-released a UAP press release, sharing the name of the NASA UAP Director.
According to the statement: “While NASA still is evaluating the report and assessing the independent study team’s findings and recommendations, the agency is committed to contributing to the federal government’s unified UAP effort by appointing Mark McInerney director of UAP research.”
McInerney previously served as NASA’s liaison to the Department of Defense covering limited UAP activities for the agency.
Per NASA, in the director role, McInerney will centralize communications, resources, and data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAP.
McInerney will also leverage NASA’s expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and space-based observation tools to support and enhance the broader government initiative on UAP.
Since 1996, McInerney served various positions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the National Hurricane Center.
Transparency
Of all the revelations today from a NASA-released study of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) by an “independent” study group was keeping the identity of its new UAP Research Director under wraps.
“We will not give his name out,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate.
Meanwhile, NASA leader, Bill Nelson said the NASA UAP Research Director would work on the implementation of the agency’s vision for UAP research, like using NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP, making use of artificial intelligence and machine learning “to search the skies for anomalies.”
Nelson repeatedly opined that NASA will do its UAP work “transparently” and evoked the mantra of “scientific process.”
I guess you need to bring your own Windex when you spot-clean those windows of transparency?
For more information, go to:
NASA has released its Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) report completed by an independent study team the space agency commissioned in 2022.
On June 9, 2022, NASA announced that the agency is commissioning a study team to examine unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) – that is, observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena – from a scientific perspective. The study will focus on identifying available data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use that data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward.
In an earlier posting, the UAP study group made note that there are currently a limited number of high-quality observations of UAP, which make it impossible to “draw firm scientific conclusions about their nature.”
That just-issued report is available at:
Image credit: NASA
Whole-of-government framework
In an executive summary, the report explains that “NASA is in an excellent position to contribute to UAP studies within the broader whole-of-government framework” – led by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
The report explains that the study of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) presents a unique scientific opportunity that demands a rigorous, evidence-based approach.
“Addressing this challenge will require new and robust data acquisition methods, advanced analysis techniques, a systematic reporting framework and reducing reporting stigma.”
Public engagement: crowdsourcing
The new NASA report explains that engaging the public is also a critical aspect of understanding UAP.
Image credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
The panel sees several advantages to augmenting data collection efforts using modern crowdsourcing techniques, including open-source smartphone-based apps that simultaneously gather imaging data and other smartphone sensor metadata from multiple citizen observers worldwide.
“NASA should therefore explore the viability of developing or acquiring such a crowdsourcing system as part of its strategy.
According to the report, NASA’s very involvement in UAP will play a vital role in “reducing stigma associated with UAP reporting, which almost certainly leads to data attrition at present.”
According to NASA chief Bill Nelson, the space agency has selected a still-to-be-named Director of UAP Research, a person that will develop and oversee the implementation of NASA’s scientific vision for UAP research, “including using NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies. NASA will do this work transparently for the benefit of humanity.”
Airspace threat
Finally, the report also points out that the threat to U.S. airspace safety posed by UAP is “self-evident.”
“NASA’s long history of partnership with the FAA should be leveraged to investigate how advanced, real-time analysis techniques could be applied to future generations of air traffic management (ATM) systems.”
Image credit: Yannick Peings, Marik von Rennenkampff/AIAA
As the report concludes, “at this point there is no reason to conclude that existing UAP reports have an extraterrestrial source. However, if we acknowledge that as one possibility, then those objects must have traveled through our solar system to get here.”
“Using unclassified data was essential for our team’s fact-finding, open-communication collaboration, and for upholding scientific rigor to produce this report for NASA,” said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and chair of the UAP independent study team. “The team wrote the report in conjunction with NASA’s pillars of transparency, openness and scientific integrity to help the agency shed light on the nature of future UAP incidents. We found that NASA can help the whole-of-government UAP effort through systematic data calibration, multiple measurements and ensuring thorough sensor metadata to create a data set that is both reliable and extensive for future UAP study.”
A weather ballooon sails into the sky after release from the Cape Canaveral weather station in Florida. Image credit: NASA
