Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 22nd, 2023
Image credit: A Sign in Space
Break out your secret decoder ring!
There is an open call for the public, specialists and experts from all fields to take on the decoding of an extraterrestrial message, a communiqué crafted for A Sign in Space, an interdisciplinary project.
Shout out
As part of the venture, on May 24, 2023, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in orbit around the Red Planet will send out an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
Artist’s impression of the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Putting their ear to the sky to receive the shout out is the Green Bank Telescope (West Virginia), the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station (Italy), the Allen Telescope Array (California) and the Very Large Array (New Mexico).
The subsequent decoding and interpretation process will determine both the technical and cultural content of the message.
Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico.
Credit: Bettymaya Foott, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Interdisciplinary project
A Sign in Space is an interdisciplinary project by media artist Daniela de Paulis, an established interdisciplinary artist and licensed radio operator who currently serves as Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory.
De Paulis brought together a team of international experts, including SETI researchers, space scientists, and artists to stage the project.
The idea is to rehearse and prepare for the scenario of a received ET broadcast through global collaboration – “an open-ended search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines,” according to the project’s website.
Media artist Daniela de Paulis.
Image credit: de Paulis/SETI Institute
Take part
All are requested to submit your scientific data, thoughts, sketches, drawings, and ideas for the technical decoding and cultural interpretation of the message.
Contributions will be posted on the project’s website and social media associated with the project, sharing the process of decoding and interpreting the message with the world.
To participate, go to:
https://asignin.space/decode-the-message/
Go to the general website at:
To view an informative video on the endeavor, go to:
Posted in 
Image credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/China Central Television (CCTV)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China rolled out to a launch pad Monday the combination Shenzhou-16 crewed spacecraft and the Long March 2F Yao-16 carrier rocket.
The three-person crew, still unnamed, will depart the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, reportedly on May 29-30.
According to China Daily, the Shenzhou-16 crew may comprise members of the third generation of the Chinese astronaut corps, civilians recruited from researchers and engineers. There are 17 men and one woman in this generation in three groups: seven spacecraft pilots, another seven as spaceflight engineers and the last four as payload specialists.
Image credit: CNSA/CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Now in Earth orbit, China’s station residents are mission commander, Major General Fei Junlong, Senior Colonel Deng Qingming and Senior Colonel Zhang Lu.
Mission readiness
Image credit: CNSA/CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The Shenzhou-16 crew members will be arriving soon to take part in the tests and rehearsal. The Shenzhou-16 spacecraft served as backup vessel for the Shenzhou-15 mission.
“First, we have fully restored the ground facilities and equipment and created rescue conditions for emergency launch. Second, before the transport of the combination, we worked with colleagues from all relevant departments to run a comprehensive and systematic review and re-examination, including running operational examinations, in order to fulfill the mission at our best,” said Wang Xuewu, deputy director of Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in a China Central Television (CCTV) interview.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
According to CCTV, the new crew will carry out spacewalks like their predecessors, and conduct scientific experiments and technology verification.
Station components
China plans to launch two crewed space missions and one or two cargo spacecraft into space every year, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
The now-orbiting Shenzhou-15 trio are occupants of the China space station, a T-shaped basic structure that has already accommodated four groups of taikonauts.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) orbital outpost currently consists of three major components: the Tianhe core module and Wentian and Mengtian science lab modules. Also now part of the complex are the two visiting craft, the Shenzhou-15 crew ship and the Tianzhou 6 cargo ship.
China launched the Tianzhou-6 cargo spacecraft on May 10, which carried supplies for the Shenzhou-16 crew to the space station.
If all goes according to plan, the Shenzhou-17 crew will be launched in October.
For video of the Shenzhou-16 rollout, go to:
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 3834, May 20, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 3835 duties.
There has been confirmation of the success of the sample drop-off to the robot’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite and the start of the Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA).
“So for now, we’re still in a planning holding pattern until SAM decides if the Ubajara drill sample is tasty enough for further analysis,” reports Natalie Moore, a mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 3835, May 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Veins/nodules
“Something I’ve noticed at Ubajara is that everyone’s excited about the surrounding geological contacts and chemically-interesting veins/nodules in the bedrock around us,” Moore adds. “We’re also at a high vantage point of our traversed path, including Marker Band valley and its towering buttes like Deepdale, Bolivar, Amapa, and Chenapau – not to mention the crater rim shining through the fairly low atmospheric opacity. All of this visible diversity means our remote science teams are eager to fill up the plan as much as our battery will let us.”
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Right B Camera image acquired on Sol 3835, May 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A recently scripted two-sol plan (Sols 3832-3833) was slated to start off with a Mastcam multispectral of the Jardinopolis dark vein target the rover’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) shot with Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) on sol 3830.
Rim shots
“ChemCam is using their one-LIBS-per-sol on a bedrock target named “Les Trois Dents” and treating the clear atmosphere as an opportunity to get high-resolution imaging of the crater rim,” Moore explains, “supplementing Mastcam’s most recent observation on sol 3830.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3835, May 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Evening and night of sol 3832 is to feature environmental data collection from the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) and the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and pick up in the afternoon of sol 3833 with more Mastcam images of the atmosphere for tau measurements, the drill fines for measuring wind presence, and the ChemCam LIBS shots for color context.
“ChemCam will shoot the same block we drilled on a target named ‘Madeira’ for spectral diversity, and Navcam will take horizon movies to watch for any dust devils,” Moore reports.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo taken on Sol 3835, May 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Decision point
The plan was to finish with more environmental measurements and another Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) analysis of some Ubajara drill sample to see if chemistry results differ over time.
“Our next plan’s fate now rests in the hands of the SAM team: to continue analyzing or wrap up this campaign and move on,” Moore concludes.
Image credit: Axiom Space
The upcoming liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon Freedom crew of four private astronauts headed for the International Space Station, also makes possible technology testing of an array of new-to-space hardware.
The Axiom Mission-2 crew is led by former NASA astronaut and Ax-2 commander Peggy Whitson, also Axiom Space’s Director of Human Spaceflight. She leads first-time space flyers pilot John Shoffner of Knoxville, Tennessee and mission specialists Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
AX-2 crew.
Image credit: Axiom Space
The multinational AX-2 astronaut crew will conduct more than 20 different experiments while aboard the space station.
Axiom Space is a private company eyeing expanded access to the International Space Station and low-Earth orbit. The organization’s intent is to lay the groundwork and establish the key capabilities needed to build out and operate Axiom Station – the world’s first commercial space station.
Image credit:
Rachel Frances Bellisle
Intravehicular apparel
One item for testing is the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit. This intravehicular (inside habitable volume) activity suit is sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative in Cambridge.
The suit has been developed to simulate some effects of Earth’s gravity and help mitigate certain physiological impacts from microgravity, including spinal elongation, muscle atrophy, and sensorimotor changes.
“This wearable system is intended to supplement exercise during future missions to the Moon and Mars and to further attenuate microgravity induced physiological effects in future low-Earth orbit mission scenarios. The purpose of this study is to characterize the Skinsuit and its physiological effects on a short-duration low-Earth orbit mission,” explains an Axiom posting about the Skinsuit.
The Skinsuit Team. (left to right:) Rachel Bellisle (Project Lead), Allison Porter, Ciarra Ortiz, Dava Newman (Principal Investigator).
Image credit: Rachel Bellisle
Form and function
The goal of this project: Can the Skinsuit restore sensorimotor functions that are typically altered in microgravity?
The Skinsuit produces a static load from the shoulders to the feet with elastic material in the form of a skin-tight wearable suit.
This wearable system is intended to supplement exercise during future missions to the Moon and Mars. Exercise equipment at those locations may be too large and bulky, so the Skinsuit is a hoped-for way to further attenuate microgravity-induced physiological effects.
The Skinsuit was tested during a 2021 Zero-G parabolic flight, during which the participant performed arm movements with and without the Skinsuit for comparison to typical 1-G muscle activation patterns and postural control strategies.
Rachel Bellisle tests the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, an intravehicular activity suit for astronauts that has been developed to simulate the effects of Earth gravity.
Image credit: Steve Boxall/ZERO-G
Tech demo
The Skinsuit team is sponsored by the MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative and led by Rachel Bellisle, PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab is the principal investigator of the Skinsuit.
“Anytime we can get something into space as a technology demonstration, it’s an advantage,” Newman told Inside Outer Space. Having academia engaged means developing experiments in months, not years or decades, she added.
“We have the technology. Let’s demonstrate it in the real environment,” Newman said.
Image credit: Blue Origin
NASA has given Blue Origin’s Blue Moon program team a $3.4 billion go-ahead as the second company to build a lunar lander for the space agency that will transport Artemis 5 astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
Blue Origin is putting in their own cash, well north of NASA’s contract award dollar number.
Blue Origin’s National Team partners include Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.
“Honored to be on this journey with NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay,” said Blue Origin’s leader, entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. “Together, we’ll be solving the boil-off problem and making LOX-LH2 [liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen] a storable propellant combination, pushing forward the state of the art for all deep space missions,” he announced in a Twitter posting.
Lockheed Martin is building the Cislunar Transporter, the refueler of the lander.
“Congratulation to Blue Origin on this achievement. Lockheed Martin is excited to be part of the Blue Origin’s National team and we are looking forward to building humanity’s first Cislunar Transporter,” said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lunar Exploration Campaigns at Lockheed Martin Space, in a company statement.
SpaceX Starship
SpaceX Lunar Starship off loads crew and cargo onto the Moon’s surface.
Image credit: SpaceX
This new contract decision follows NASA’s pick in 2021 of the SpaceX Starship vehicle to “re-boot” the Moon since the last Apollo manned lunar landing in December 1972.
Under NASA’s Artemis program, the powerful Space Launch System booster is to hurl astronauts toward the Moon aboard the Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule, then rendezvous and dock with a lunar lander that transports crew to a select site on the lunar surface.
NASA chief, Bill Nelson, announces Blue Origin’s selection.
Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
The space agency is already working with SpaceX to develop lander capability for the Artemis III and Artemis IV missions.
Go to NASA’s statement on today’s decision at:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-second-artemis-lunar-lander-provider
Go to Blue Origin’s statement at:
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/nasa-selects-blue-origin-for-mission-to-moon/
A spectacular, specially produced near-ground level oblique view of the “Connecting Ridge” between Shackleton and Henson craters. The lunar south pole (SP) occurs on the rim of Shackleton crater. The ridge along the rim of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin is a potential Artemis landing site (001) and another (004) occurs on the rim of Shackleton crater. (Image credit: ETHZ\LPI\Valentin T. Bickel and David A. Kring)
We are on the cusp of learning far more about the projected icy situation of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs. Multiple nations are eying the Moon’s south pole with research teams plotting out how and where to explore the bottoms of the sun-shy features.
In some circles, however, there are suggestions of placing a moratorium on up-close inspection of PSRs.
SpaceX Lunar Starship off loads crew and cargo onto the moon’s surface.
Image credit: SpaceX
While PSRs might be chock full of extractable ice, it could be necessary to protect these features for the science they are likely to offer.
For more information on this “volatile topic,” go to my new Space.com story – “Can NASA’s Artemis Moon missions count on using lunar water ice?” go to:
https://www.space.com/moon-lunar-ice-poles-artemis-program
Artist’s impression of the breadcrumb scenario, autonomous rovers can be seen exploring a lava tube after being deployed by a mother rover that remains at the entrance to maintain contact with an orbiter or a blimp. Image credit: John Fowler/Wikimedia Commons, Mark Tarbell and Wolfgang Fink/University of Arizona
Engineers have developed a system that allows autonomous vehicles to scout out underground habitats for astronauts.
Researchers at the University of Arizona’s College of Engineering have developed technology that would allow a flock of robots to explore subsurface environments on other worlds.
Their patent-pending concept the “Breadcrumb-Style Dynamically Deployed Communication Network” paradigm is admittedly a nod to the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.”
Maintaining awareness
According to a university statement, continuously monitoring their environment and maintaining awareness of where they are in space, the rovers proceed on their own, connected to each other via a wireless data connection, deploying communication nodes along the way. Once a rover senses the signal is fading but still within range, it drops a communication node, regardless of how much distance has actually passed since it placed the last node.
Cave opening on Mars as imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s powerful HiRISE camera. Protected from the harsh surface of Mars, such pits are believed to be good candidates to contain Martian life, making them prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots and even human interplanetary explorers.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Wolfgang Fink, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Arizona, explains that the breadcrumb approach provides a robust platform allowing robotic explorers to operate underground or even submerged in liquid environments.
One idea detailed by Fink and colleagues is sending an orbiter carrying a balloon and a lake lander to study one of the hydrocarbon seas on Saturn’s moon Titan.
Such swarms of individual, autonomous robots could also aid in search and rescue efforts in the wake of natural disasters on Earth, Fink adds.
Search for off-Earth life
The communication network approach has the potential to herald a new age of planetary and astrobiological discoveries, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, president of the German Astrobiological Society, as noted in the university statement.
“It finally allows us to explore Martian lava tube caves and the subsurface oceans of the icy moons – places where extraterrestrial life might be present,” Schulze-Makuch adds.
For more information on this intriguing concept, go to:
To read the research paper – “A Hansel & Gretel breadcrumb-style dynamically deployed communication network paradigm using mesh topology for planetary subsurface exploration” – at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117723001187?via%3Dihub
Artwork depicts Russia’s Venera-D design.
Image credit: Roscosmos/NPO Lavochkin
Russia is pressing forward on creation of a new Venus exploration spacecraft – Venera-D.
A “draft design” for Venera-D is scheduled to begin in January 2024.
Champion spacecraft design leaders, Russia’s NPO Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association, have blueprinted the Venera-D space complex.
Based on Lavochkin results, work schedules, technical specifications and the contracting of co-executing organizations for Venera-D have been formed, as has a Council of Chief Designers.
Image credit: Bulletin/NPO Lavochkin
Image credit: Bulletin/NPO Lavochkin
Refusal of the United States
Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and implementation of US sanctions, then Roscosmos head, Dmitry Rogozin, announced that any continued participation between Russia and the United States on Venera-D was inappropriate.
Both Roscosmos and Lavochkin made clear in Internet postings that “the refusal of the United States to cooperate in no way affected the tasks of the Venera-D mission for remote and contact studies of the atmosphere, surface, internal structure and surrounding plasma of Venus at the modern scientific and technical level.”
Russia’s Roscosmos and the Russian Academy of Sciences are also working on the possibility of returning to Earth samples of the soil, atmosphere and aerosols of Venus – tagged as the Venera-V mission. “Its concept involves the consistent launch of completely new search-and-return and landing spacecraft,” reports Roscosmos.
The former Soviet Union, now Russia, has a rich history of Venus exploration, one that between 1961 and into the early 1980s scored a number of milestones in reconnoitering the cloud-veiled world – even from its hellish surface via short-lived landers.
Image credit: NASA
The world is abuzz, perhaps befuddled, about the growing use of artificial intelligence then strapping it to ChatGPT, the AI-powered language model.
“It” can respond to queries, discuss a lot of topics, and crank out writing pieces.
So let’s blue-sky a bit…but mix in the mystique of the Red Planet Mars.
Could robots on Mars be super-charged with AI/ChatGPT to perform on-the-spot research, relaying their discoveries in real-time?
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Well-paginated
Say that data is digested, assessed, appraised and assembled in some scientific form. Then the product, in well-paginated condition, with footnotes to boot, is transmitted to a scientific journal, like Science or Nature, for publication.
ChatGPT is an AI-powered language model, “trained” and fed vast amounts of Internet information.
Image credit: OpenAI
I reached out to several leading researchers, presenting this off-Earth, on-Mars scenario, with a variety of reactions in return.
For more information, go to my new Space.com story – “ChatGPT on Mars: How AI can help scientists study the Red Planet” – at
New drill site. Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera photo acquired on Sol 3823, May 9, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 3827 tasks.
The rover team reports successful drilling of a new hole on the Ubajara target.
Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada reports: “Drilling campaigns force us to sit and stop, whilst the ‘Ubajara’ drill sample is analyzed.” This takes a week or two, depending on the types of analysis that Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite chose to do.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image acquired on Sol 3825, May 11, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Busy and power hungry
“This might sound like we are sitting quietly, just waiting but drill campaigns are furiously busy and ‘power hungry,’” O’Connell-Cooper notes.
CheMin planned the first part of their analysis last Wednesday, later adding a second set of analysis, integrating over the drilled “Ubajara” sample.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3825, May 11, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
SAM will do a “preconditioning” activity, which sets SAM up for analysis next week. These activities are power intensive, which constrains what geology and environmental scientists can fit into the plan, O’Connell-Cooper adds.
In an earlier report, Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains: “Normally we take images of the CheMin inlet immediately before and after sample drop-off. This time we are doing the sample drop-off at night in order to minimize the time between dropping off and analysis. As a result, we have to take the images of the inlet outside of the arm activities. After a nap, Curiosity wakes up to drop off the sample to CheMin for an overnight analysis.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3825, May 11, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Science is very anxious to see how this sample differs from Tapo Caparo,” Stroupe points out, which was about 80 feet (25 meters) lower in elevation than the Ubajara location.
Small, raised resistant features
“Often, we leave a workspace with regret,” O’Connell-Cooper notes, as “there are only so many hours in a given day, and even though a given sol (day) on Mars is longer than one on Earth, we almost always identify more targets than we can possibly fit in!”
Curiosity MAHLI image of “Ilha Grande.”
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
So geologists are taking the opportunity to analyze everything that the robot’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) can reach.
A newly scripted plan focused on small raised resistant features.
Hard to target
Earlier last week, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) analyzed a really small nodule feature at “Ilha Grande,” and there was interest in analyzing this target with ChemCam’s Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument, which is well suited to hitting these types of targets.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo acquired on Sol 3825, May 11, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
“ChemCam will use LIBS on Ilha Grande and a nearby larger mass of similar material (“Tucuma”) (which was too rough to analyze with APXS as it posed a danger to the instrument) in this plan,” O’Connell-Cooper explains. “The raised features are so small (Ilha Grande is 1 centimeter at its widest point) that they are hard to target with any great confidence, so targeting this early in our Ubajara stop will allow them to be refined and repeated if necessary. Mastcam will also image both ChemCam targets.”
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI)
photo taken on Sol 3826, May 12, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Change detection
In parallel to the geological themed part of the plan, the environmental group also uplinked several environmental activities.
“Mastcam will take two change detection images. These are typically done when we are stopped in a place for a few days. Taking images at the same time of day on a number of consecutive days allows us to see how much sediment is moving in our workspace, giving us an idea of wind directions and strengths,” O’Connell-Cooper reports.
Curioisty Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 3824, May 10, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Navcam will also look for indirect evidence of winds, through “dust devil” movies that can also tell researchers about wind direction and strength.
Mastcam will take a “crater rim extinction” image and a full tau measurement, to measure dust both within the crater and overhead in the atmosphere, whilst Navcam will survey clouds above the rover.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3825, May 11, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The environmental portion of the plan is rounded out by Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) activities, looking at temperatures (REMS) and potential traces of hydrogen (DAN), O’Connell-Cooper concludes.
