Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 5th, 2023
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Tianzhou-5 uncrewed cargo spacecraft has decoupled from the country’s space station, successfully separating from the orbital complex on Friday.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the vessel switched to independent flight mode flying towards the Earth for eventual reentry into the atmosphere.
The Tianzhou-5’s departure now leaves open the docking hatch for the upcoming Tianzhou-6 fully-stocked cargo vessel that is scheduled to dock with the space station in early or mid-May.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
More equipment, materials
Back in November 2022, the now undocked cargo craft was lofted by a Long March-7 launcher, hauling roughly 5 tons of goods and materials, along with 1.4 tons of propellant to sustain crews onboard the Tiangong space station.
After the Shenzhou-15 piloted spaceship departs the station combination later this month, the Tianzhou-5 will orbit and dock at the forward port of the station’s node cabin, the CMSA said in a statement.
Compared with its predecessors, the Tianzhou-6 supply ship will tote more equipment and materials for scientific experiments and technological demonstrations at the station, according to China Central Television (CCTV).
To view a new video on the Tianzhou-5’s departure from China’s space station, go to:
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An image of the NGC 5353/4 galaxy group made with a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, USA on the night of Saturday 25 May 2019. The diagonal lines running across the image are trails of reflected light left by more than 25 of the 60 recently launched Starlink satellites as they passed through the telescope’s field of view. Although this image serves as an illustration of the impact of reflections from satellite constellations, please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.
That lyric has a number of astronomers wishing away the dawn of all those Earth-orbiting megaconstellations that are dotting the sky today and into the future.
The revered Hubble Space Telescope has been impacted by satellite trails in its images.
Image credit: NASA
With the advancing StarLink and OneWeb systems, as well as Amazon’s projected Project Kuiper internet network — and other initiatives — there is mounting concern by astronomers of being blinded by the light from an estimated 400,000 recent and planned low Earth orbit satellites.
Go to my new Space.com story – “Satellite megaconstellations are threatening astronomy. What can be done? – “The point is that we can’t come anywhere near duplicating major ground-based capabilities in space” – at:
https://www.space.com/satellite-megaconstellations-astronomy-dark-skies
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3818 duties.
Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The last weekend drive moved the robot into a good position to attempt to examine a block it may attempt to drill, reports Alex Innanen, an atmospheric scientist at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Curiosity Left Navigation Camera image taken shows “Ubajara,” which you can see on the left of the image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We don’t dive right in; we have to make sure this is in fact where we want to drill,” Innanen notes. “This means contact science on “Ubajara.”
Special target name
Part of the Mars Curiosity team spent some time picking a special target name, which involved looking at pictures of national parks.
“Ubajara (a national park in Brazil), it was decided, is a great choice – it’s a bit more lush and green than Gale Crater, but the mountains and canyons are reminders of the canyon Curiosity just climbed out of,” Innanen adds.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The plan called for a pretty typical drill scenario, with Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the drill target, and a brush with the dust removal tool (DRT), but then researchers learned that they will not be able to use the DRT until more images of this target are collected, Innanen points out.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Luckily, we were still able to move forward with the other activities in the plan,” Innanen notes, “and still prepare to examine this block to decide if we want to drill it in the future.”
Catch some clouds
A recent two sol plan (3817-3818) starts with a couple environmental activities – looking back towards the crater rim to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and then scanning for dust devils.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Then the rover’s Mastcam and Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) will both image Ubajara in advance of the contact science. After contact science, Mars environment experts plan afternoon observations to try to catch some clouds.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A next sol plan calls for targeted cloud and dust devil movies. Then ChemCam has a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) observation of “Bwesse Kiiki,” and a long distance Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) mosaic on a ridge to the north.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mastcam is also documenting the ChemCam LIBS target, Innanen concludes, and doing multispectral imaging on the layered block “Ekeni.”
An expeditionary crew on Mars sets up drilling gear in a quest to utilize ice for sustaining a human presence on the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA
If humans are to ever plant boot prints on Mars, where they need to go first is where the ice is.
One problem: Astronaut crews don’t have the luxury to ring down to the hotel front desk for that hospitality.
Work is on-going to tease out where and at what depth extractable ice exists on the Red Planet. Not only is ice a key ingredient for helping to sustain longer and longer human stays on that far-flung world, but ice is nice for science, as well as climate geology, including the search for life on Mars.
Noctis Landing site on Mars is an ostensibly flat transitional region between Noctis Labyrinthus and Valles Marineris proper.
Image credit: Pascal Lee
Please don’t cold shoulder my new Space.com story – “Mars ice deposits could pave the way for human exploration” – so go to:
https://www.space.com/mars-ice-deposits-astronaut-missions
China Mars finding
In a recent development, also go to this paper highlighting the work of China’s Zhurong Mars rover — “Modern water at low latitudes on Mars: Potential evidence from dune surfaces,” that states:
China’s Zhurong rover.
Credit: CNSA
“This discovery sheds light on more humid conditions of the modern Martian climate and provides critical clues to future exploration missions searching for signs of extant life, particularly at low latitudes with comparatively warmer, more amenable surface temperatures.”
Go to the paper here at:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add8868
CAPSTONE over the Moon’s North Pole.
Image credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter
What’s the latest about NASA’s Moon mission mouthful, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment?
Thankfully, it’s called CAPSTONE for short – and is operating in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).
Find out the latest with my new Multiverse SpaceRef story – “CAPSTONE Moon Mission – Challenges, Lessons Learned” – at:
https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/capstone-moon-mission-challenges-lessons-learned/
Explore Mars, Inc. has announced the release of the Report of the Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars (AM IX), held on June 14-16, 2022 at The George Washington University in Washington, DC.
AM IX assembled a diverse, select group of professionals from different fields to identify activities that are required for a comprehensive human and robotic mission strategy that provides the basis for a sustained and growing human presence on Mars starting in the 2030s.
For that to happen, this report looks in human health and performance, Mars science priorities that leverage human presence, operational strategies for transit and surface operations, and technology solutions, many of which can be tested on Earth, in low-Earth orbit, in lunar orbit, or on the surface of the Moon.
During the three-day workshop, as well as virtual meetings over the Summer and fall of 2022, participants developed a summary of recommendations as well as detailed appendices.
For the full report — The Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars — go to:
https://www.exploremars.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AM-9_Upload_v-1.pdf
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3816 duties.
Curiosity has arrived at a new location with some bright toned, and more rounded rocks in its vicinity, reports Elena Amador-French, Science Operations Coordinator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Unfortunately, we could look but not touch as our wheels were positioned such that we could not safely unstow the arm for contact science. We typically have a large suite of arm activities in weekend plans but with those now removed, the science team had ample power and time to do remote sensing,” Amador-French adds.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo taken on Sol 3815, April 30, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Rhythmic textures
In a recent plan for Sols 3814-3816, the first sol had the robot use Mastcam to image the target “Ekeni,” a target just in front of the rover’s right front wheel “with interesting rhythmic textures, Amador-French notes. “Could they be due to how the sediment was originally emplaced or how it has since eroded?”
Similarly, the target “Fazendinha” appears to represent a transition between rock textures.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
High resolution Mastcam images will allow scientists to consider the history of these blocks.
“We’ll also use our ChemCam [Chemistry and Camera] instrument to provide compositional information for the target ‘Sao Miguel,’ giving us our first ‘taste’ of the bedrock in front of us,” Amador-French reports.
More Mastcam
On the second sol, the rover was to continue investigating the area around it with more Mastcam and another ChemCam LIBS [Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy] observation on “Sao Tome” before taking a short drive – a scoot of just a few meters – to a potential sampling location.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mastcam will document this new location with a 360-degree mosaic, capturing all the terrain that surrounds Curiosity.
New location
On the third sol of the plan, ChemCam was slated to use its autonomous target selection capability, AEGIS, to collect compositional data from the robot’s new location.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
As is typical for weekend plans, it called for the rover to take a suite of environmental monitoring measurements – searching for dust devils with its navigation camera, studying the dust opacity in the atmospheric with Mastcam and engineering cameras, as well as a regular cadence of Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) observations.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image acquired on Sol 3815, May 1, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sample dump
In addition to these remote sensing activities, also planned were two Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) activities to set Curiosity up for potential sampling next week.
“Both activities are intended to ensure our instrument is as clean and prepared as possible to accurately measure mineralogy,” Amador-French concludes. “We’ll vibe CheMin’s inlet funnel, as well dump any potential remaining sample from the cell we intend to deliver our next sample to.”
As always, dates of planned rover activities are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico.
Credit: Bettymaya Foott, NRAO/AUI/NSF
A new processing system for the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is dubbed “COSMIC” – the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster.
COSMIC is spearheaded by the SETI Institute, in collaboration with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Breakthrough Listen Initiative.
Now a massive radio array is joining the SETI quest and use of COSMIC to scout for signals from other galactic civilizations.
Credit: Breakthrough Listen
Desert real estate
Enter the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), situated about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.
VLA is collecting data that scientists will analyze for the type of emissions that only artificial transmitters make, signals that would reveal the existence of a technically accomplished society.
The VLA consists of 27 antennas spread over 23 miles of desert real estate. Since 2017 the facility has been engaged in a radio reconnaissance of 80 percent of the sky.
Credit: SETI Post-detection Hub
Alien transmitter
While that VLA endeavor continues, observational data is being fed into a special receiver sporting very narrow (approximately one hertz wide) channels.
“Researchers expect that any signals from a deliberately constructed transmitter will contain such narrow-band components, and their discovery would indicate that the signal is not produced by nature, but by an alien transmitter,” explains a SETI Institute statement.
“COSMIC operates commensally, which means it works in the background using a copy of the data astronomers are taking for other scientific purposes,” said Paul Demorest, Scientist and Group Lead for VLA/VLBA Science Support at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “This is an ideal and very efficient way to get large amounts of telescope time to search for rare signals.
More comprehensive
By combining VLA sensitivity with COSMIC, the result is roughly a thousand times more comprehensive than any previous SETI search.
“History shows that major improvements in the sensitivity and range of exploratory experiments are often rewarded with the detection of a signal,” the SETI Institute statement adds. “If so, this effort might see the uncovering of a radio whisper that would tell us that we’re not the only intelligent inhabitants of the Milky Way Galaxy.”
If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space. In the movie Contact, a radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth…via the Very Large Array.
Credit: Warner Brothers
Also go to this interesting research paper — “Inferring the Rate of Technosignatures from 60 yr of Nondetection” — available at:
Image credit: ABS
The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) has published the first international requirements for the design and construction of offshore spaceports, announcing those publicized requisites during an Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas.
ABS provides classification and technical advisory services to the marine and offshore industries.
“The offshore space industry is growing rapidly, and ABS is already a pioneer in the field of offshore space support with our industry-leading work on autonomous rocket recovery droneships,” said Miguel Hernandez, ABS Senior Vice President, Global Offshore.
This new publication allows ABS, Hernandez adds, “to provide clear support for organizations that are engaging with regulatory agencies to reactivate assets such as offshore support vessels, barges and liftboats to support space flight.”
Offshore assets
ABS produced a new set of requirements based on service experience with industry leading aerospace rocket launch and recovery companies, according to an ABS statement, “to guide the burgeoning maritime aspects of the space flight industry in the safe design and construction of offshore assets.”
Up to now, there were no industry requirements “to address an offshore spaceport’s unique concept of operation,” said the ABS.
The ABS Requirements for Building and Classing Offshore Spaceports addresses several vessel types including barge type units, column-stabilized, offshore installations and self-elevating units.
ABS’ joint development project with SpaceX reviewed the remotely controlled functions of autonomous rocket recovery droneships used for booster rocket recovery at sea.
To view a copy of ABS Requirements for Building and Classing Offshore Spaceports, go to:
Image credit: Space Perspective/ABS
Spaceship Neptune
Last month, ABS and Space Perspective announced the first marine spaceport for human spaceflight.
Space Perspective is offering six-hour passenger-carrying balloon jaunts skyward in a pressurized capsule. The capsule accommodates eight passengers and a captain.
Called Spaceship Neptune, Space Perspective will launch from land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and now also from sea using the MS Voyager, which will reside on the coast of Florida, where the company is based.
According to the group, the first in a planned fleet of ships globally for Space Perspective, MS Voyager will also eventually enable flights around the Gulf and Caribbean.
Flexible launch locations
The ocean-going MS Voyager would transport passengers to an approved offshore location where a huge “space balloon” is filled with hydrogen and lift Spaceship Neptune and its passengers 20 miles above the Earth. At the end of the six-hour flight, the pressurized capsule will gently splash down in the ocean where MS Voyager will retrieve Spaceship Neptune’s captain and the aerial commuters.
Image credit: Space Perspective/ABS
ABS is providing class, engineering review and regulatory services for MS Voyager, with completion expected later this year.
Modifications to the near 300-foot-long offshore supply vessel are already underway and will include the addition of the balloon launch system and a space capsule A-frame, which will house Spaceship Neptune using a specially designed cradle on the aft deck.
“The future of space travel is on the water,” said Taber MacCallum, founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective.
“MS Voyager unlocks flexible launch locations, ideal launch conditions, and more frequent launch opportunities. Our collaboration with the experts at ABS is helping us make space travel more accessible to the world than ever before,” MacCallum said in a statement.
For more information on Space Perspective, go to:
The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites by Brian Harvey with Gurbir Singh, Edited by Paul Meuser, Cartography by Katrin Soschinski; DOM Publishers; (2022); 272 pages; Hardcover: € 98.00 incl. MwSt., excl. shipping costs.
This is a seminal work, a unique and fascinating overview of all major launch sites on the globe. All 25 major global launch sites – from Eurasia, Asia-Pacific and the Americas – even several rocket departure points you may not have heard about previously.
Loaded with some 500 images, this volume features 100 exclusive maps to pinpoint the world of launch sites that operate in weather conditions from cold arctic conditions to hot desert and equatorial jungle.
As editor Meuser explains: “With most places hidden away in jungles, deserts, or amid the Central Asian steppes, these places exist for the most part out of the eye of the general public.”
Some information on the book’s marvelous-detailed launch sites was easy to access, while some sites have been forgotten or are still shrouded in secrecy, Meuser adds.
This comprehensive Atlas comes with descriptions of each site that include an outline of the history of the site in question, why and how it came to be situated in its location, its current use and future prospects, and its distinctive features.
Author Brian Harvey and co-author Gurbir Singh spotlight the steps of space travel in an unprecedented way; a richly documented text offers insights that have never been previously presented.
“The purpose of this book is to tell the architecture of launch sites in an accessible way,” writes Harvey. The book situates launch sites in their context, history, evolution, development, changing use, and future prospects, he adds.
To that end, this volume fits the task and provides far more, particularly given its selection of specially captioned and distinctive photos.
The reader will treasure this book that portrays the rich legacy of well-known and not-so-familiar launch sites, and appreciate more than ever how humankind has echoed rocket countdowns around the planet to open up outer space for an array of purposes.
For more information on this book, go to:
https://dom-publishers.com/collections/monographs/products/the-atlas-of-space-rocket-launch-sites
