Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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July 6th, 2023
NASA’s venerable Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), on-duty since swinging into orbit around the Moon on June 23, 2009.
Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Around and around it goes. The veteran NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) continues to circuit the Moon since June 2009.
Over the decades, this spacecraft has spit out images and data proven to be transformational in our ability to eye and better value Earth’s celestial neighbor.
While the aging craft remains on assignment – now helping plot out where NASA Artemis astronauts will boot their way across select lunar south pole regions – how long will this venerable orbiter last?
Informally tagged as Malapert massif, this feature is thought to be a remnant of the moon’s south pole – Aitken basin rim, which formed more than 4 billion years ago. This peak (lower left) was picked as one of the Artemis III candidate landing regions for an expeditionary crew.
Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University
Uh-oh factor
There’s a new call for how to sustain vigilance of the moon, chart forthcoming landing sites of robotic craft and expeditionary crews, the position of wheeled rovers, even spot and help interpret the “uh-oh factor” behind failed landing attempts.
And given the constant volley of moon-bound vehicles being lobbed by multiple nations and private firms, Earth’s celestial companion is going to be one busy place.
For more information on LRO and what next, go to my new Space.com story – “This NASA probe has been revealing stunning moon views for 14 years. How long will it last?” – at:
https://www.space.com/moon-nasa-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-how-long
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Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Wheeling and dealing with Mars – not an easy assignment.
Remington Free, Operations Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, notes in a recent report use of the robot’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to inspect its wheels.
Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“This is an engineering activity we perform at a regular cadence in order to assess the state of our wheels,” Free explains. “This is crucial for us given the wear and tear we experience from drives due to the sharp rocks and bumpy terrain.
Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Full MAHLI wheel imaging (FMWI) is accomplished during a drive by rotating the wheels by a fixed amount for each imaging position so we can get a good look at the entire wheel state,” Free adds.
Here are a few images from the recent inspect of Curiosity’s wheels…some doing fine, others showing a beating.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3878, July 4, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
MMX to explore the moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos
The Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is slated for launch in the mid-2020s.
A project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the MMX spacecraft consists of three modules. The exploration module has landing legs, samplers and some instruments as well as the MMX rover onboard named IDEFIX.
A trilateral cooperation within the framework of the MMX mission involves JAXA, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the French space agency (Centre national d’etudes spatiales; CNES).
The German-French rover is to be integrated into the Japanese MMX mission for a landing on the martian moon Phobos in the second half of the 2020s.
After release by the MMX mothership and falling to the surface of Mars’ moon Phobos, the rover is to right itself and power up.
Image credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Low gravity
Samples from the martian system, specifically from the martian moon Phobos, will be brought to Earth by the Japanese MMX mothercraft. The IDEFIX rover is to move across and explore the surface of Phobos in conditions of extremely low gravity – roughly two-thousandths of Earth’s gravity.
During the course of the mission, the rover is scheduled to land on Phobos. This will involve setting the rover down from an altitude between roughly 130 feet – 330 feet (40 and 100 meters) above the surface.
After landing, the rover will autonomously upright itself and then become operational, lasting about three months.
MMX rover being readied for delivery from Bremen, Germany to the French space agency, CNES in November 2022. By the summer of 2023, rover instruments and subsystems will be installed.
Image credit: DLR
Towards the end of the mission, ground samples will be collected by the mother spacecraft, making use of the rover surveillance data collected. These samples are to be delivered back to Earth in the MMX return module for more detailed analyses.
According to the DLR, the completion of the rover, including instruments and systems, is on the home stretch towards summer 2023.
Unsolved mystery
The origin of the martian moons Phobos and Deimos remains an unsolved mystery in planetary research.
NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery captures the two moons of the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA/University of Arizona/MRO
Both moons are irregularly shaped and resemble asteroids.
Accordingly, one theory is Phobos and Deimos were captured by Mars, possibly originating from the asteroid belt.
On the other hand, both moons orbit Mars near the ecliptic plane on which all planets and most of their moons move around the Sun. In addition, both orbits are almost circular.
Those facts seem to counter the “captured asteroids” theory, with the prospect that Phobos and Deimos are leftovers from a huge asteroid impact on the Red Planet.
Moon as observed from the International Space Station.
Image credit: NASA
What is going on with Compton-Belkovich?
This feature on the Moon, a suspected volcano, is indeed glowing at microwave wavelengths.
A new instrument type has discovered evidence of a volcanic process on the Moon that had only been seen on Earth, reports Matthew Siegler, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and lead author of “Remote Detection of a Lunar Granitic Batholith at Compton-Belkovich” that appears in the journal Nature.
Using data from both China’s Chang’e-1 (2007) and Chang’e-2 (2010) lunar orbiters, researchers have been able to map temperatures below the Moon’s surface.
Image credit: Matthew Siegler, PSI.
As noted in the paper, “the surprising magnitude and geographic extent of this feature imply an Earth-like, evolved granitic system larger than believed possible on the Moon, especially outside of the Procellarum region” on the Moon.
Extra heat
“What we found was that one of these suspected volcanoes, known as Compton-Belkovich, was absolutely glowing at microwave wavelengths,” Siegler said in a PSI statement. “What this means is that it is hot, not necessarily at the surface, as you would see in infrared, but under the surface.”
Siegler added that the only way to explain this glow is from extra heat coming from somewhere below the feature within the deeper lunar crust.
“So Compton-Belkovich, thought to be a volcano, is also hiding a large heat source below it,” Siegler said.
On the Moon, a granitic batholith is a huge body larger than 20 kilometers of what was once subsurface lava that never erupted.
China’s Chang’e-1 Moon orbiter. Image credit: CNSA via NASA/NSSDCA
Unique data set
Tucson, Arizona-based PSI’s Jianqing Feng is a co-lead author, along with other research colleagues.
Making use of an instrument looking at microwave wavelengths – longer than infrared – sent to the Moon on both the Chinese orbiters — enabled the mapping of temperatures below the lunar surface.
“It was a neat project in that China made their data public – as does NASA – and we were able to work with this unique data set to figure out something really interesting about the Moon,” Siegler noted.
Image taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s LROC image system. A small portion of the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex. The upper two thirds of the scene shows the volcanic complex, whereas the lower third of the image is outside of the complex. The terrain outside of the complex exhibits a greater abundance of impact craters than inside the complex. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Science and politics
Following the rules, there was not direct collaboration with Chinese researchers. All funding for the project came only from NASA, “so we had to follow the breadcrumbs to crack this dataset open” Siegler said.
“Jianqing’s ability to come to the U.S. through the J visa system to navigate the data and existing literature on the topic was very valuable,” Siegler pointed out. “It is a great example of what can be done if science and politics can work together.”
Siegler’s and Feng’s work on the project was funded by a grant to PSI from NASA’s Lunar Data Analysis program and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
To gain access to the Nature published research – “Remote detection of a lunar granitic batholith at Compton–Belkovich” – go to:
Curiosity rover overlooking a canyon of rocks on the Mars surface and was taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard Curiosity on Sol 3872, June 28, 2023. You can faintly see rover tracks in the center of the image, left behind as the robot slowly made its way up the hill.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 3877 duties.
“We made it!” That’s the report from Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
“We are peeking up over the edge of the ridge that we have been trying to climb for a few weeks now. The view ahead is spectacular but it’s worth pausing for a minute to look back down into the canyon,” O’Connell-Cooper adds. “Lots of slipping and sliding, and drives ending too soon or terminating on precarious footings, but we finally made it!”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera taken on Sol 3874, June 30, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Brushed bedrock
A recently scripted plan calls for a “Touch and Go” activity.
Before the robot pushes out onto the ridge, researchers will characterize the local bedrock at “Madero” with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on some brushed bedrock.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3875, July 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“This workspace has mineral veins running perpendicular to the rock layers and fragments of a dark layer that is parallel to the other layers,” O’Connell-Cooper notes.
Vertical vein
“MAHLI will image a vertical vein at “Vesini” to look at its relationship to the host bedrock and some of the dark layer around the vein, reports O’Connell-Cooper whilst the Chemistry and Camera’s (ChemCam) Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument will analyze a vein fragment at “Mega Spilaio.”
Curiosity Mast Camera (Mastcam) Left photo taken on Sol 3873, June 29, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mastcam will acquire a multispectral image of the same target and was also slated to take four stereo mosaics in a recently scripted plan.
Crater cluster
“The largest mosaic (28 images) looks at the nearby crater cluster, as well as further ahead to “Gediz Vallis ridge” and the “Texoli” butte. Two smaller mosaics look at laminations and erosionally resistant features in bedrock in this area and an area of more active sand,” O’Connell-Cooper points out.
The smallest mosaic (3 images) uses color Mastcam imagery to support a black and white ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) observation, which focuses on erosionally resistant features in the direction of Curiosity’s drive.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3875, July 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Slip-and-slide
“Our drive on the afternoon of the first sol [Sol 3873] is relatively short, [about 50 feet (15 meters)] further out onto the ridge,” O’Connell-Cooper adds, “where we hope to catch up on an important housekeeping chore in the upcoming 4th of July long weekend plan.”
Full MAHLI Wheel Imaging (FMWI) uses a combination of Mastcam and MAHLI to image the rover’s wheels and monitor them for wear and tear, and was last done just before Thanksgiving.
“This activity needs some flat ground to be executed, so it had to be delayed while we were playing slip-and-slide on the hill and we are hoping to get it done as soon as possible now in order to keep to our routine cadence (every 1000 meters),” O’Connell-Cooper observes.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) RMI taken on Sol 3876, July 2, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Dust devils, clouds
Environmental researchers have planned some basic tau measurements for this plan, where Mastcam will help to measure dust in the atmosphere.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) RMI taken on Sol 3876, July 2, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
On the second sol of the plan, the Environmental Continuous Air Monitor (ECAM) will look for dust devils and survey the clouds overhead in Gale.
The plan rounds out with scheduled Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) and Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) data collections, for a full suite of environmental activities, O’Connell-Cooper concludes.
Depiction of Shenzhou-16 spacecraft approaching docking port.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China intends to alter the country’s space station complex, adopting other new configurations in coming months.
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has noted that currently the configuration of the orbiting Tiangong space station consists of the Tianhe core module, the lab modules Wentian and Mengtian, the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft, and cargo spacecraft of Tianzhou-5 and Tianzhou-6.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
In the next few months, the CMSA said, there will be some changes in the configuration of the space station. However, no further details have been disclosed.
Back in late February, in a China Central Television (CCTV) interview, Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station system, said China’s space station will have over 50 different configurations in the future, enabling it to accommodate more spaceships.
New Shenzhou-16 crew onboard with Shenzhou-15 astronauts during handover ceremonies.
Image credit: CCTV/CNSA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Current status
On June 6, the Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft, which separated from the space station on May 5, completed its second rendezvous and docking with the space station after 33 days of independent flight in orbit.
According to CCTV, the return of the Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft is intended to provide additional space for the storage of waste generated by the Shenzhou-16 crew in orbit.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Tianzhou-5 will depart China’s space station once again prior to the arrival of the Shenzhou-17 crewed spacecraft. The cargo ship will then be targeted for a destructive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Presently onboard the orbiting outpost, the Shenzhou-16 crew consists of Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, China’s first civilian astronaut. Gui is a university professor who specializes in spacecraft dynamics and control technology for aerospace systems.
This trio was sent to the space station on May 30, 2023 to carry out a five-month mission aboard the facility.
Go to this informative video at:
Artwork of Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has captured navigation camera images during the rotorcraft’s 52nd flight on April 26.
Images were taken by its navigation camera, mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.
“Sixty-three days is a long time to wait for the results of a flight,” reports JPL’s copter central, “but the data coming in indicates all is well with the first aircraft on another world. If the remainder of Ingenuity’s health checks are equally rosy, the helicopter may fly again within the next couple of weeks.”
Targeted for Flight 53 is an interim airfield to the west, the JPL posting adds, “from which the team plans to perform another westward flight to a new base of operations near a rocky outcrop the Perseverance team is interested in exploring.”
Re-established contact
The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.
Contact was re-established June 28 when the NASA Perseverance rover crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.
The goal of Flight 52, a 1,191-foot (363-meter) and 139-second-long flight, was to reposition the helicopter and take images of the Martian surface for the rover’s science team.
This select set of images were acquired on April 27, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photo from earlier sky skim by Mars helicopter, from flight 51.
After a prolonged hiatus, NASA’s Mars helicopter has made its 52nd flight.
The craft flew on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Ingenuity as it descended for a landing.
“The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL,” according to a JPL statement.
Artwork of Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range. That led to re-establishing contact on June 28 when NASA’s Perseverance rover crested the hill and was in communication line-up with Ingenuity again.
Flight 52 was a 1,191-foot (363-meter) and 139-second-long flight, taken to reposition the helicopter and snag images of the Martian surface for the rover’s science team.
Active gullies and gully stratigraphy on Mars. Image credit: University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)/Dickson, et al.
A new study spotlights how gullies on the slopes of craters on Mars could have formed by on-and-off periods of meltwater from ice on and beneath the planet’s surface.
The results from the new study suggest that gully formation was driven by periods of melting ice and by carbon dioxide (CO2) frost evaporation in other parts of the year.
Additionally, the researchers report that this has likely occurred repeatedly over the past several million years on Mars with the most recent occurrence about 630,000 years ago.
Turn up the volume
“Our study shows that the global distribution of gullies is better explained by liquid water over the last million years,” said Jay Dickson, the study’s lead author and a former researcher at Brown University and now at California Institute of Technology.
Uppermost vertical extent of gullies on Mars.
Image credit: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera (CTX) global panchromatic mosaic overlain by MOLA topography of the Thaumasia highlands/
Dickson, et al.
“Water explains the elevation distribution of gullies in ways that CO2 cannot,” Dickson noted in a Brown University press statement. “This means that Mars has been able to create liquid water in enough volume to erode channels within the last million years, which is very recent on the scale of Mars geologic history.”
Bridge between warm and wet
The paper, published in Science magazine, raises anew the fundamental question of whether life could exist on Mars.
This is because life, as it’s known on Earth, goes hand in hand with the presence of liquid water. Mars will eventually tilt to 35 degrees again, the researchers said.
“Could there be a bridge, if you will, between the early warm and wet Mars and the Mars that we see today in terms of liquid water?” said James Head, a professor of geological sciences at Brown and a study co-author.
Life on ice
“Everybody’s always looking for environments that could be conducive to not just the formation of life but the preservation and continuation of it,” Head noted in the Brown University statement.
Image credit: NASA
“Any microorganism that might have evolved in early Mars is going to be in places where they can be comfortable in ice and then also comfortable or prosperous in liquid water. In the frigid Antarctic environment, for example, the few organisms that exist often occur in stasis, waiting for water,” Head added.
This research underscores the importance of these gullies in terms of potential targets to visit by robotic or human means during future exploration missions on Mars.
Go to – “Gullies on Mars could have formed by melting of water ice during periods of high obliquity” — at:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk2464
Also go to this video, A time-lapse of gullies forming in the Upper Wright Valley of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. Video courtesy of Jim Head, Brown University at:
What equipment can work well while withstanding the tough lunar environment? Shown here is technology that has potential for fabricating structures on the Moon utilizing local materials for construction purposes.
Image credit: Contour Crafting and University of Southern California
While the Artemis return to the Moon effort is indeed one giant leap for the United States to regain a foothold there, much work is ahead to sustain living and work-a-day activities within the harsh and stark lunar environment.
A next step for getting hardware to run in tip-top shape on the Moon is establishing a pilot program to assess what technologies work best once down and dirty on the lunar terrain.
Leslie Gertsch, a space mining expert, sees the Moon as a resource-rich world.
Image credit: Barbara David
NASA is pressing forward on creating public private partnerships for companies – large and small – to ace out hardware bugs, not only here on Earth, but also in real-time on the Moon.
NASA senior technologist Rob Mueller talks with Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin about the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) that was developed at the Kennedy Space Center Swamp Works.
Image credit: NASA/John Smegelsky
Work is underway to identify technology gaps that could be bridged by innovative companies with fresh ideas.
For detailed information, go to my new Multimedia SpaceRef story — “Wanted: Lunar Proving Grounds – Testing Technologies for the Moon” – at:
