Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category

 

 

 

The Ingenuity helicopter flew its 54^th time, a pop-up flight with the device achieving hovering mode to altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), staying aloft for 24.62 seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These rotorcraft images were acquired on August 3, taken by its navigation camera mounted in the craft’s fuselage and pointed directly downward. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of Ingenuity and its surroundings using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. 

A just-issued report offers a new avenue for exploring Mars, one that would entail flying lower-costing missions to the Red Planet.

A Mars Concurrent Exploration Science Analysis Group has scoped out the highest priority science that should be conducted in parallel with the NASA/European Space Agency Mars Sample Return (MSR) program – the mega-billion dollar undertaking now being blueprinted.

Interconnected network

Flinging less-costly missions to Mars in the next decade (2023-2032) is tagged the “Braided River” approach. The tactic is an interconnected network of low-cost missions working together to address major outstanding Mars questions, driven by the sheer dynamic nature of the planet itself.

Multiple small, low-cost missions, orbiters, soft and hard landers could work together to address larger outstanding Mars questions.

Final five

The study group identified a “final five” Mars science objectives that can benefit by the Braided River approach: planetary evolution; early environmental change; recent climate evolution; dynamic modern environments and modern habitability – the search for currently or recently habitable environments and present-day life on Mars.

Although challenging, a lower-cost mission initiative as envisioned by the group offers the chance to augment or replace existing infrastructure, provide landing site evaluation, make on-the-spot resource utilization assessments, and perform weather monitoring, “all of which will be critical for both future robotic and human exploration,” the group’s study report notes.

Search for life

As for the search for modern/extant life on Mars, the report explains that accessing the deeper subsurface where liquid water could be stable will be crucial to accessing habitable modern ecosystems where the harsh surface conditions are minimized, such as radiation.

A first key investigation to better understand the habitability and likelihood of extant life in the subsurface today would be to confirm or refute the hypothesis of a global deep aquifer on Mars.

 

Spotlighted in the report is subsurface sounding via a lander.

Also, a single lander or network of landers might make rapid, accurate measurements of the abundance of potentially biogenic gases like methane at the surface of Mars. Taken at hourly to annual timescales, data collected could help resolve many outstanding questions. Such a mission would also benefit from wind measurements to help further pinpoint the source of emitted gases.

Landing forces

One concept for a hard lander system able to deliver payloads to Mars is called SHIELD, short for Small High-Impact Energy Landing Device being developed at JPL. The SHIELD design omits heatshields, parachutes, and thrusters. It uses a basic impact attenuation system to help squelch much higher landing forces as contrasted to past Mars soft landings.

An ultra-compact ground penetrating radar is also under development as a Mars science helicopter payload.

Such a high-flying radar could map layers in rock to a depth of approximately 65 feet (20 meters) and in ice to greater depths. By flying over troughs in the north polar layered deposits on Mars, this technique could potentially map a few hundred meters of ice layers spanning hundreds of thousands of years of deposition.

Business model

Highlighted in the report is need for adoption of a well-developed business model, one that “balances optimism and practicality through sound business acumen” and incorporates viable involvement of the commercial space industry.

To that end, the report points to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program for the Moon as a possible model for low-cost Mars exploration.

“To date, however, no CLPS missions have flown, and so it remains to be seen the level of success attained by this program,” the report adds.

Clear, cohesive, inspiring

The Braided River approach to investigating Mars in a less-costly manner can fill major knowledge gaps within a clear, cohesive, and inspiring program.

However, the report concludes that, for such a program to be successful and paradigm changing, “it would need to be well supported by frequent solicitations, regular launches, and robust technology development programs.”

It is the opinion of study group members that this Braided River proposal would be highly complementary to the existing Mars Exploration Program mission portfolio “and inject the excitement and novelty of a decidedly new approach to exploring the Red Planet.”

To review the full report by the Mars Concurrent Exploration Science Analysis Group, chartered by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), go to:

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/mepag/reports/reports/MCE_SAG_Final_Report.pdf

How can you transport materials across the Moon’s surface and keep annoying, debilitating dust out of lunar habitats?

Enter a Caltech team that is designing a Lunar Architecture for Tree Traversal in-service-of Cable Exploration, space speak boiled down to LATTICE.

The LATTICE team is looking into a self-deploying modular robotic system for transporting ice and other assets in and out of craters.

The ski lift-like system would work like a zip line on the Moon, complete with driving stakes in the ground, cables are then attached to the stakes, and cargo would be transporting by the cables in robotic shuttles.

Prototype tested

LATTICE was among seven finalists in NASA’s 2022 Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

 

Last November, the LATTICE team tested a small-scale prototype of its system in a desert in California’s Lucerne Valley.

The Caltech team has also blueprinted HOMES – shorthand for Habitat Orientable & Modular Electrodynamic Shield.

 

 

Check out this video at: https://youtu.be/i8O0wPSCtjg

Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and a veteran of three shuttle missions, created the highly-informative Kathy Sullivan Explores podcast.

Since June 2021, the podcasts have focused on science, art, space, and the most memorable moments of Sullivan’s life so far.

Listen to her short “Farewell for Now” episode and also revisit the wellspring of past podcasts that embrace the spirit of curiosity, adventure, and discovery.

Go to: https://www.kathysullivanexplores.com/podcast/farewell-for-now

And while there, go to Sullivan’s “Seven Astronaut Tips for Improving your Life on Earth,” at

https://www.kathysullivanexplores.com/life-on-earth

India’s ambitious Moon exploration spacecraft, the Chandrayaan-3, is now en route to its lunar target. The lander is to unleash a rover, both stuffed with scientific instruments to inspect the lunar surface in the southern lunar hemisphere.

“Next stop: the Moon,” declared an Internet posting from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). All appears on track for the Chandrayaan-3 to swing into lunar orbit on August 5.

 

India’s lander will then head for a touchdown on August 23 within the southern region of the Moon’s near side, soft landing about 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of the Manzinus U crater rim.

Go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story – “India’s Moon Shot Adds to Country’s Growing Space Endeavors” – at:

https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/indias-moon-shot-countrys-growing-space-endeavors/

 

China’s Moon exploration plans call for deep diving into permanently shadowed areas of the lunar south pole. The country’s Chang’e-7 mission is slated to take place around 2026 and utilize a mini-flying probe to investigate the permanently-shadowed bottom of an impact crater.

 

The Chang’e-7 mission consists of an orbiter, lander, the hopper and a rover and is targeted for a touchdown in a southeastern area of Shackleton crater.

A drilling tool on the mobile probe will sample lunar soil water-ice before a mechanical arm moves that sample into a heating furnace for spectral analysis. A Lunar Water Molecular Analyzer (LWMA) on the mini-flyer will appraise lunar soil water-ice in the surface frost layer.

Different depths

According to Yingzhuo Jia of the National Space Science Center in Beijing, the LWMA has the ability to “analyze samples for many times and can take samples at different depths and locations for many times, so as to obtain the data of water-ice content varying with depth and region.”

Yingzhuo and colleagues note that results from the on-the-fly hopper “can also provide evidence of the composition and content of direct volatile matter, whether it contains H₂O, H₂S, NH3, SO₂, and other volatile matter, and whether more volatile matter is deposited in the permanent shadow areas compared with the existing results of Apollo samples or lunar meteorites.”

 

An overview of the Chang’e-7 mission objectives – “Research of Lunar Water-Ice and Exploration for China’s Future Lunar Water-Ice Exploration” has been published in the open access journal Space: Science & Technology at: https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/space.0026

In related Moon work, also published in the journal, go to – “Overview of the Lunar In Situ Resource Utilization Techniques for Future Lunar Missions” – at:

https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/space.0037

The European Space Agency performed an assisted/semi-controlled descent of its retired Aeolus, a wind profiling spacecraft lofted into Earth orbit in 2018.

Mission scientists and engineers took on the tricky task of targeting a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean for the plunge to Earth of Aeolus. A key aspect of assisted reentry is that for any spacecraft leftovers believed to survive the plunge, those bits and pieces would fall into a remote area.

ESA confirmed that Aeolus reentered Earth’s atmosphere on July 28 above Antarctica, also verified by the U.S. Space Command.

The “adios to Aeolus” action underscores a novel approach for the safe return of active satellites that were never designed for controlled reentry.

 

Windage

But “above Antarctica” versus the Atlantic Ocean caught my eye. Sounds like something didn’t go as planned?

“In an assisted re-entry you have to accept inaccuracies along the desired target coordinates and we required that it was maximum +\- half orbit centered in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” responded Tommaso Parrinello, ESA Aeolus mission manager, a target zone that was called a corridor.

“We re-entered within less than a quarter of an orbit. Better than expected,” Parrinello told Inside Outer Space. It took almost a year to develop the assisted re-entry or semi-controlled concept, he said, designing the best corridor of re-entry, changing the satellite configuration, and designing the timeline, along with check and more checks via simulation.

As for the price tag of the Aeolus assisted re-entry, “the funds were within the foreseen operation costs…there is not a figure to give,” Parrinello said.

Minimize risk

“With the growing number of objects being launched into space, we certainly expect that many will re-enter over time, so I think ESA’s efforts to develop and test an assisted controlled re-entry is important to minimize the risk to human life on or near the surface,” said T.S. Kelso of CelesTrak, an analytical group that keeps a sharp eye on Earth-circling objects.

Similar in view is Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow for LeoLabs.

“This is significant for several reasons,” McKnight said. “First, it is critical for everyone to note that sometimes the act of reducing orbital collision risk comes at the cost of risk to aviation and ground impacts. The U.S. has a self-imposed threshold of 1/10,000 chance of ground casualty from a reentry but that is not accepted worldwide.”

McKnight said that it is laudable to see others minimizing this re-entry risk. He added that this spacecraft was not designed to do these maneuvers yet performed them admirably.

Continual innovation

“Much of the positive space safety behavior over the last few years has been by systems not designed to perform that way. The continual innovation by many has been impressive,” McKnight told Inside Outer Space.

Lastly, McKnight said that “active debris removal is a complex, but greatly needed operation to improve the state of the debris environment in low Earth orbit and it requires several steps: identify, rendezvous, grapple, de-tumble, and de-orbit safely. This exercise builds confidence in the ability to do the last critical stage of safe de-orbiting of large spacecraft.”

Responsible behavior

Aeolus had a dry mass of 2,425 pounds (1,100 kilograms) and the most critical removal sequences, McKnight said, will be performed on objects over 1,000 kilograms.

“It should be noted that any spacecraft above 500 to 800 kilograms in mass is likely to have sufficient debris survive re-entry as to warrant controlled reentry to meet the 1/10,000 threshold for ground casualty,” said McKnight. There are currently nearly 800 rocket bodies and over 300 non-operational payloads in low Earth orbit with a mass over 1,000 kg, he pointed out.

“This demonstration showed how individual responsible behavior can contribute to the growing space safety expertise highlighting that space safety does not have to be debilitating for space operators,” McKnight concluded.

Detrimental effects

On the other hand, there remains the issue of rubbish from spacecraft falling out of orbit having harmful effects on global atmospheric chemistry.

Some experts are concerned that the growing scale and pace of space activities may lead to new unforeseen impacts on the environment and climate. Furthermore, what appears required is improved monitoring of the situation, as well as regulation to create an environmentally sustainable space industry.

These are observations from recent research on atmospheric impacts of the space industry led by Jamie Shutler, associate professor of Earth observation in the Center for Geography and Environmental Science, College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter, Cornwall.

Full impact, not known

As for the outcome from assisted re-entry, like that done with ESA’s Aeolus satellite, it’s a tough call, Shutler told Inside Outer Space.

“It’s good that agencies are now starting to consider the environmental aspects of these technologies and how previous standard approaches are not sustainable,” Shutler said, such as shifting satellites to a graveyard orbit or just leaving the satellite in its original orbit to slowly de-orbit.

“But equally, de-orbiting for burn-up in the atmosphere and with roughly 20 percent of the satellite landing in the ocean is not sustainable or environmentally good,” Shutler said. “The satellite components don’t just vanish, they instead get re-distributed throughout the atmosphere and the full impacts are not known.”

Ozone loss

For example, Shutler added, satellites are mainly made up of aluminum and we know that aluminum in the upper atmosphere can promote ozone loss. “Whilst being claimed to be ‘harmlessly falling in the ocean’, it’s still littering in the ocean on which we rely for food, and for regulating our weather and climate.”

Shutler said the ESA effort is a step in the right direction, “but only if this is the start of greater efforts by all agencies and private organizations to question and reduce the environmental impact of space activities.”

Sustainable space?

In Shutler’s view, greater efforts need to be made, for example, in controlling the overall quantity of satellites in orbit, like sharing resources efficiently, rather than large scale duplication, as we see now with commercial activities. Also needed is reducing the quantity of aluminum within those satellites, “and showing greater consideration for the atmosphere, the ocean and whole of Earth’s environment, instead of just protecting the land, whilst simultaneously considering everywhere else as being acceptable for littering.”

Shutler’s bottom line: “Overall I would hope that the approach of simply de-orbiting all satellites is not the future. Much more needs to be done to address the problem, and recognizing this wider issue, as it seems is being done by ESA…a good first step. But despite the social media tagging, we have a long way to go before we have anything close to ‘sustainable space.’”

Re-entry regime

Also noting the Aeolus outcome is Aaron Boley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

“It is positive to see the ESA using available spacecraft capabilities to reduce the risks of lethal re-entry debris, instead of leaving the re-entry outcome entirely to chance,” said 

For large satellites in orbit that were never designed to conduct controlled re-entries, assisted/semi-controlled re-entries are a step in the right direction, Boley told Inside Outer Space.

“It should nonetheless be recognized, while things went well in this case, that such maneuvers are not a controlled re-entry and still carry substantial re-entry time uncertainties. Not all large spacecraft in orbit will be capable of such a semi-controlled re-entry, either,” Boley pointed out.

Moving forward, Boley said that states and operators need to work together to develop a controlled re-entry regime for new satellites and launch vehicles in an effort to limit the risks of re-entry debris to people on the ground, at sea, and in airplanes in flight.

“Such a regime would include requirements for controlled re-entries, and in circumstances where a controlled re-entry is not feasible, the requirements would include risk reduction measures as part of the satellite design,” said Boley.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3904 duties.

Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, reports that rover engineers have navigated Curiosity through tricky terrain of fractured blocks and sand.

“Our parking spot is on the rim of one of the larger craters within a cluster of craters that we have been driving towards for the last few weeks,” Thompson adds. “A number of people on our science team advocated for visiting these craters to learn more about the cratering process on Mars.”

Crater morphology

Thompson explains that researchers are interested in variations in shape and morphology of the craters, the amount of degredation and erosion, and the composition of any impactor material (if present).

“Sadly, there were no obvious meteorites in our workspace and this plan focused on capturing the view of the craters and surrounding terrain. We are taking a 360° Mastcam mosaic, as well as smaller, higher resolution mosaics of the two largest craters within the cluster,” Thompson notes.

Laminated bedrock

Despite the significant time and power resources required to accomplish rover imaging, Mars investigators were still able to squeeze in some chemical analyses and close-up imaging of the rocks within the crater rim.

Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) is to analyze the laminated bedrock target, “Aire de Repos,” which will also be documented with Mastcam.

The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) was scheduled to acquire compositional data on the dark, vertical face of an upturned block (“Guainia”), and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) is to take close-up images of this target and a differentially eroded, laminated bedrock fragment, “Mocambo.”

Gediz Vallis ridge

To continue monitoring changes in the atmosphere, also on tap is acquiring a Navcam large dust devil survey and line of sight, single frame image.

“Once we have completed all our targeted science observations, Curiosity will hopefully execute another successful drive to take us towards our next area of interest at the base of the Gediz Vallis ridge (stay tuned to hear more about this interesting feature as we get closer),” Thompson reports.

Once that drive has been executed, the robot is to acquire images of the new terrain beneath the rover with its Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).

Standard Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) and Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) activities round out this plan, Thompson concludes.

Eroded craters

In an earlier report by Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, Curiosity worked her way through the “Jau” crater cluster, “with the goal of trying to understand how all of these small craters formed and have since been eroded.”

To do that, Edgar adds, the team is hoping to assess the target rocks, any evidence for the impactor, and the morphology of the craters. “While the craters are very easy to see in orbital images, the view from the ground is a bit harder to assess.”

“Through a detailed imaging campaign and contact science, the team hopes to gain more insight into the origin of these features, before getting back on the road to continue climbing up Mount Sharp,” Edgar adds.

GOLDEN, Colorado – The pace is quickening for using Earth’s Moon as a near-term, go-to location to land, live and explore.

NASA’s Artemis back-to-the-Moon agenda is jelling. So too are long-term plans by small and large firms, academia, along with international space agencies.

That was in evidence at the twenty-third meeting of the Space Resources Roundtable, held here last month at the Colorado School of Mines. A record attendance of some 250 participants spoke on lunar economic models, results of in-the-lab tests, and legal and policy issues. A number of entrepreneurial groups shared their strategies to turn the Moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.

 

 

Key glue

The key glue that anchors future Moon use is labeled in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU: on-the-spot activity.

ISRU involves the extraction of oxygen, water and other available materials for cranking out rocket fuel and to “gas up” life-support systems. Then there’s pulling out metals on the Moon, say to fabricate lunar housing, landing pads, along with other structures and products.

 

 

 

 

To dig into this quickly evolving topic, go to my new Space.com story – “Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy” – at:

https://www.space.com/moon-mining-gains-momentum

 

 

That ill-fated dive of the Titan submersible and loss of its deep ocean exploring occupants has sparked conversation and debate in the world of public space travel.

 

 

 

 

There are similarities, some of which offer lessons learned as commercial suborbital and orbital passenger flight flourishes.

Please go to my new Space.com story – “How will space tourism be impacted by the Titan submersible tragedy?” – at:

https://www.space.com/spaceflight-titan-submersible-tragedy-impacts