Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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August 21st, 2023
Here’s the scoop. The Phoenix Mars Lander confirmed the presence of ice and also surprised scientists by finding indications of perchlorate salts.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One finding from Mars exploration is that the Red Planet is a haven of pervasive perchlorate.
On one hand, the carpet of perchlorate chemistry found on Mars may boost the chances that microbial life exists on the Red Planet. However, perchlorates are also perilous to the health of future crews destined to explore that way-off world.
Then there’s the prospect of using perchlorate as a solid rocket propellant. It’s there in abundance and, quite literally, fuels the imagination of launching off that distant world to other destinations.
For more information, go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story — “Perchlorate on the Red Planet: How a Toxin in Martian Soil Can Fuel Future Exploration” — at:
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Pre-launch photo of Luna-25, now crash landed on the Moon.
Image credit: Roscosmos Television Video/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Russia’s revamping of Moon exploration is off to a rocky start – the plunge from lunar orbit of the country’s Luna-25 spacecraft, destroying itself as it crashed into the Moon’s bleak landscape.
Head of Russia’s Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, reports that the main cause of the Luna-25’s failed mission was an engine failure. Instead of a planned propulsive nudge of 84 seconds, the engine operated for 127 seconds, more than the “required value” in readying the probe for its descent burn. This added impulse to Russia’s Luna-25 led to it crashing into the Moon, Borisov told Rossiya 24 television.
Image credit: Roscosmos
Modern Russia history
Following its August 10 liftoff, the Moon-bound Luna-25 had switched on its scientific equipment. All systems on the spacecraft were working normally, reported Roscosmos.
Spending multiple days in lunar orbit, the spacecraft was targeted to set down at the Moon’s south pole region, near the Boguslawsky crater. Two backup landing spots were also in play: southwest of Manzini Crater and south of Pentland A Crater.
Topographic map of the southern sub-polar region of the Moon showing the location of Boguslawsky crater.
Credit: Ivanov et al., 2015 via Arizona State University/LROC
Designed, built and tested by NPO Lavochkin, Luna-25 was to work on the lunar surface for at least one Earth year.
Luna-25’s sendoff from the Vostochny spaceport picked up where the former Soviet Union’s Moon-probing projects left off. It was back in 1976 that Luna-24 successfully rocketed to Earth about 170 grams of lunar topside samples.
Heralded as the first domestically produced Moon probe in modern Russia history, Luna-25’s flight was iconic in both political and scientific terms. The implications of its failure are likely to be non-trivial.
Image credit: Roscosmos
Low point
Following the Luna-25 crash, Russia quickly appointed an investigatory committee.
“We should expect an initial report in weeks. The immediate cause seems, in general, to be clear enough,” said Brian Harvey, a noted author and space historian in Ireland with a keen eye on past Soviet Union, now Russian, space exploits.
“The Luna-25 engine fired for 50 percent longer than planned,” Harvey told Inside Outer Space, making the low point in the orbit of the vehicle not the 11 miles (18 kilometers) intended, but far below surface level, a “minus” 9 miles (15 kilometers).
“The deeper causes will take more unraveling,” Harvey added. “The crash came not at the most risky point of the mission — the final stages of the descent to the surface — but during what should have been a routine firing to lower the orbit before the final descent.”
Image credit: NPO Lavochkin/Roscosmos
Unless it was purely an engine failure, Harvey added that it seems this failure is yet another instance whereby computer guidance and engine control issues in various forms have doomed soft-landings.
Automated descents
Harvey points to the failures of Beresheet (Israel), Chandrayaan-2 (India), Hakuto-R (Japan) and the Schiaparelli lander on Mars (Europe).
“Ironically, the Soviet Union pioneered successful automated descents from lunar orbit using radar and pre-digital control and guidance,” Harvey said, the Luna-16, 17, 20, 21 and 24 missions.
“Only China has a clean sheet in computer guidance and engine control descent from lunar orbit. For everyone else, it’s hard. Ironically too, Russian quality control has improved greatly in recent years, but people will remember this exception,” Harvey said.
Onboard camera shows spacecraft emblem and the bucket of the LMK lunar manipulator complex, visible (top left).
Image credit: IKI RAS
Below ground level
Space expert, Bob Christy of the informative and authoritative website OrbitalFocus explains that Luna-25’s orbit was around 62 miles (100 kilometers) circular at 87 degrees inclination.
A thruster firing by the Moon-circling craft was set to lower it to 10 miles x 62 miles (16 x 100 kilometers) and the next phase would have been the landing burn to put it down on the surface from that 10 miles (16 kilometers) altitude. The inclination, he said, allowed Luna-25 to pass over the polar target area.
“The perigee-lowering burn went on for too long either through failing to shut down or through the engineers programming it wrongly,” Christy told Inside Outer Space. “It would have resulted in perigee below ground level. The time of signal loss probably marks when it hit the surface.”
As for the Luna-25 failed attempt, “Russia was probably starting from scratch in planning and executing this mission as its experienced engineers from the 1970s had long passed retirement age. It wasn’t a simple evolution of the previous lunar mission,” Christy concluded.
Image credit: NPO Lavochkin
Luna-26 Moon orbiter
Image credit: Roscosmos/IKI
Luna-27
Image credit: Roscosmos/IKI
China’s confidence
According to Brian Harvey, the traditional reaction to a serious failure in the Russian and Soviet space program has been a punitive “heads-will-roll” approach and less funding.
This time, though, that is unlikely to help Russia maintain a lunar program (Luna-26, 27) to match its partner China’s (Chang’e-6, 7, 8), Harvey said.
“Chinese lunar engineers attended the Luna-25 launch at Vostochny for the first time, a short distance to travel geographically but a longer one politically and Russia must recover China’s confidence.”
It is not known if there is a Luna-25 backup or if a replacement can be constructed, Harvey said, but waiting several years for Luna 26 will not encourage China.
Russia’s Luna-28 Moon sample mission.
Credit: NPO Lavochkin
Deeper causes
“Although sanctions on computer parts and a limited tracking system have been blamed for the failure, these are insufficient explanations,” said Harvey. “The Soviet Union ran a successful lunar program from 1959 to 1976 despite a sanctions wall and with limited tracking networks.”
The deeper causes of the Luna-25 failure go back to the 1990s, Harvey continued, the period of “chaos capitalism” when the whole space program almost collapsed.
“Russian space spending now lags far behind the U.S., China, Europe and even Japan,” Harvey said. Space science suffered the most, he said, exemplified by the failed Roscosmos-operated Mars 96 (sometimes called Mars-8) mission, “completed by candlelight in an unheated hanger in winter.”
Factory floor integration of science instruments on Russia’s Luna-25 Moon lander.
Credit: Roscosmos
Underfunding
Apart from two successful observatories, Spektr R and Spektr RG, there have been hardly any scientific missions, Harvey said. Experience in running such complex missions is low, he said.
Before all contact with Russia was cut off, European visitors to Moscow contrasted the situation of the Lavochkin design bureau with the more generously-funded human spaceflight program run by the Energiya and Progress design bureaus, possibly rightly so when human lives are at stake, Harvey pointed out.
“By contrast, meetings with Lavochkin took place not in the bureau but in adjacent hotels, not, it seemed because of secrecy but because under-investment in the science program would be so obvious,” Harvey said. “Underfunding may be the real root of what went wrong.”
Pre-launch photo shows Lander Module atop Propulsion Module.
Image credit: ISRO
India’s Moon orbiter from the country’s previous Chandrayaan-2 mission has established two-way contact with the ready-for-prime-time landing attempt on August 23 of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover.
“Welcome, buddy!” reports the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Meanwhile, new images have been released by ISRO of the lunar far side captured by the Chandrayaan-3 ‘s Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera. This camera will assist in spotting a safe landing area — without boulders or deep trenches — during the lander’s descent and attempted touchdown.
Image credit: ISRO
Image credit: ISRO
Image credit: ISRO
The National Security Space Association’s Moorman Center for Space Studies today released a paper entitled: “Strategic Implications of China’s Cislunar Space Activities.”
While some may discount China’s cislunar space aspirations because the United States has already gone to the Moon, the paper responds by saying there is risk of underestimating the political impact of Chinese astronauts landing on the lunar surface or working with Russian cosmonauts to build and operate the projected International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
Artist’s view of International Lunar Research Station to be completed by 2035. Credit: CNSA
“When Chinese astronauts walk on the Moon or establish a base there, it is likely to be a significant event not just for the PRC [People’s Republic of China] but for the world with global repercussions.”
Keep out zones
For example, the PRC could establish an Exclusive Economic Zone in cislunar space, declare a Space Defense Identification Zone and “keep out” zones to protect it, conduct in-situ resource utilization to support operations on the lunar surface, and extract valuable resources such as rare Earth materials and water on the Moon to increase its international competitiveness, wealth, and military power.
Image credit: NASA
Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party could move to monopolize the market for rare minerals on the Moon, the paper suggests, as well as the use of lunar water as an energy source.
To access the National Security Space Association’s Moorman Center for Space paper — “Strategic Implications of China’s Cislunar Space Activities” – go to
Image credit: Roscosmos/IKI/NPO Lavochkin
Russia’s Roscosmos has reported that Luna-25 has crashed into the Moon.
On August 19, the Moon-orbiting lunar lander adjusted its orbit prior to a landing attempt. However, communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted.
Subsequent measures to search for the spacecraft and re-establish contact “did not produce any results,” Roscosmos noted in a Telegram communiqué.
Collision with lunar surface
“According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” the statement added.
A specially-formed interdepartmental commission is being set up to help clarify the reasons for the loss of Luna-25 at the Moon, the terse Roscosmos statement concluded.
The implications of the Luna-25 failure were indicated in this earlier story posted on Multimedia’s SpaceRef — “Russia’s Return to the Moon: High Risk, High Stakes” at:
Pre-launch photo of Luna-25, now crash landed on the Moon.
Image credit: Roscosmos Television Video/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying through the Red Planet’s skies. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flew a 55th time on August 12. The jaunt involved a horizontal distance of 263.99 feet (roughly 866 meters); altitude reached of 10 feet (roughly 33 meters); and air time was 142.9 seconds.
Imagery taken included these images making use of the mini-copter’s navigation camera mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.
Also released are images from the craft’s high-resolution color camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degrees below the horizon.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: Roscosmos/IKI/NPO Lavochkin
NOTE: Russia’s Luna-25 in trouble? According to Roscosmos, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight program, today an impulse was issued to transfer the Moon-circling probe to a pre-landing orbit.
Russia’s Moon-circling Luna-25 has started to churn out science as the craft is readies for descent onto the lunar landscape. A reported landing date is August 21.
Analyzing newly collected data from Luna-25, investigators at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) have obtained several results.
Micrometeorite impact
Luna-25’s ADRON-LR neutron and gamma spectrometer has recorded intense lines of chemical elements of the lunar soil.
For the first time lunar orbit, the spacecraft’s ARIES-L ion energy-mass analyzer was turned on, designed to study the near-surface ion exosphere in the subpolar region of the Moon. That data is aiding the optimal operating setting of the device. It can gauge the energy spectra of particles in the energy range from 10 electron volts (eV) to 3000 eV.
Image credit: NPO Lavochkin
The Moon probe’s PML device is designed to detect microparticles levitating near the surface of the Moon and to determine the parameters of the surrounding plasma. This instrument registered a micrometeorite impact (most likely belonging to the Perseid meteor shower) during its flight to the Moon, according to IKI.
Image credit: Background: NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LROC camera data. Photo: IKI RAS
Zeeman crater
By using Luna-25’s STS-L landing cameras on August 17, the processing of two frames of Moon imagery aided digital elevation model work by specialists from the IKI RAS and the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK). This hardware will allow future spacecraft to significantly improve the accuracy of their position in orbit.
The Moon’s Zeeman crater, imaged by two STS-L landing cameras, is a unique feature, one of the twenty deepest craters of the southern hemisphere of the Moon. The crater has an unusual size ratio: diameter is about 118 miles (190 kilometers) with a depth of roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers).
“Its formation is associated with a very strong impact, which is possible if the velocity of the impactor is very high or its substance is very dense,” explains an IKI communiqué.
Image credit:
U.S. Postal Service
The U.S. Postal Service is issuing a “Forever stamp” to commemorate NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and the samples of the asteroid Bennu, to be parachuted to Earth in September 2023.
This new 20-stamp pane shows the capsule containing the sample parachuting into the Utah Test and Training Range, a U.S. Department of Defense facility in the desert.
A depiction of Bennu’s surface appears at the bottom of the pane’s selvage with outer space above — deep blue and dappled with celestial bodies.
Near-Earth asteroid Bennu is 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide and contains hydrated minerals, according to scientists working on the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission.
Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
Sample pluck
NASA lofted OSIRIS-REx from Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 8, 2016. The spacecraft arrived at the asteroid in December 2018, photographing, mapping and assessing space rock Bennu’s surface to determine the best spot from which to pluck samples.
In October 2020, the spacecraft slowly descended toward the asteroid’s surface with an extended robotic arm.
A novel collection device at the hand-end of the arm released a puff of nitrogen gas that sent up a cloud of dust and rocks from Bennu’s surface.
Ready and waiting. Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx’s principal investigator from the University of Arizona holds a mock up of the asteroid collection device.
Image credit: Barbara David
It is believed that more than 2 ounces of these materials were captured in a special container in the collection device, which then closed and retracted into the spacecraft.
Forever stamp ceremony
On May 10, 2021, OSIRIS-REx began its flight back toward Earth.
Its container of asteroid dust and rocks, enclosed in a special capsule, will parachute to the Utah desert on Sept. 24, 2023.
Utah drop zone landscape.
Image credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
As for the commemorative stamp and pane, it sports an illustration of Alan Dingman, based on images supplied by NASA.
Antonio Alcalá, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp and pane.
The OSIRIS-REx stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp, which will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce rate.
A First Day of Issue Dedication Ceremony for the stamp is to be held September 22, with the public invited. This event is to be held at Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, Utah.
For more information, go to:
Image credit: ISRO
A major milestone has been reached in India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander/rover mission.
The Lander Module has successfully separated from the spacecraft’s Propulsion Module.
From the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Lander Module: “Thanks for the ride, mate!”
The Lander Module is set to descend to a slightly lower orbit around the Moon given a modest de-boosting nudge planned for August 18.
Pre-launch photo shows Lander Module atop Propulsion Module.
Image credit: ISRO
A planned landing attempt is slated for August 23.
SHAPE I’m in (thanks Robbie!)
Meanwhile, the Propulsion Module will continue its journey in its current Moon orbit for months/years, ISRO states.
Onboard that Moon-circling module is the Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE).
Image credit: ISRO
“Future discoveries of smaller planets in reflected light would allow us to probe into variety of exo-planets which would qualify for habitability (or for presence of life),” ISRO explains.
The SHAPE payload onboard would perform spectroscopic study of the Earth’s atmosphere and also measure the variations in polarization from the clouds on Earth.
This payload is “SHAPEd” by U R Rao Satellite Center/ISRO in Bengaluru, capital city of Karnataka state in southern India.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image acquired on Sol 3919, August 15, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3920 tasks.
“Curiosity is behaving much as you would as you climb a mountain. You pause occasionally to look around at what lies beneath your boots – the reward for your hard work up to that point,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland. “You also take time to enjoy the view and turn your gaze uphill to the path ahead – the unknown enticing you forward.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3919, August 15, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Workspace targets
The Curiosity rover has been appreciating the chemistry, mineralogy and texture of two targets in the workspace.
“Ntourntourvana” is on layered bedrock with a vein cutting through it, and “Agridi” is a spindly, almost flower-like, resistant feature poking out of the bedrock.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) RMI taken on Sol 3919, August 15, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
“One could say we are stopping to smell the flowers. The latter will be achieved by acquiring multiple mosaics of the terrain of Gediz Vallis Ridge swelling ahead of us and an appreciative look to the east toward “Kukenan” butte,” Minitti points out.
Steady climb
Kukenan once towered above Curiosity as it entered “Marker Band Valley,” but the robot’s steady climb has brought Mars researchers high enough to now look edge on at some of its layers.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3919, August 15, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A recently scripted drive will have the rover image the terrain ahead of it to plot the next steps forward.
“Both before and after the next leg upward, we will keep a constant eye on the weather, to ensure we stay safe and warm in the chilly Gale winter,” Minitti concludes. “Onward and upward!”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3919, August 15, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
