Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 6th, 2022
Dusty Zhurong rover.
Credit: CNSA
China’s Zhurong Mars rover is ready for the upcoming cold season on the Red Planet.
In the northern part on Mars, the Zhurong rover is entering winter, with the coldest period expected to come in July.
The highest temperature of the spot where Zhurong is located at noon has dropped to 20 degrees Celsius below zero, and the ambient temperature at night has dropped below 100 degrees Celsius below zero.
Dusty weather on Mars also brought impact on the power generation capacity of the solar wing batteries of the rover.
Lander and Zhurong Mars rover.
Credit: CNSA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Solar wing adjustment
The Zhurong engineering team has adjusted the angle of the solar wings on the rover and reduced mission and working hours of the device to balance the energy usage amid low temperature and dusty weather.
“At present, the main power acquisition, storage and supply of the rover have met the expectations of our original design. For the subsequent harsh winter, we’ve also made some corresponding plans and tailored schemes,” Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1, told China Central Television (CCTV).
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
To ensure safe operation amid cold and dusty weather on Mars, the design team has set automatic sleep mode on the rover, under which the rover will enter sleep mode when the energy is dropped to a given point and the rover will return to normal operation when the environment turns better.
Scientific data
The Tianwen-1 orbiter and Zhurong rover have obtained about 940GB of original scientific data.
During its orbit around Mars, all seven payloads carried by China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter have been carrying out remote sensing exploration of Mars.
Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter.
Credit: CNSA
According to CCTV, a medium-resolution camera captured an image of Mariner Valley on Mars on April 1 with a resolution of about 65 meters per pixel, and the high-resolution camera captured images of Triolet crater on Mars on April 17 at a resolution of about 0.8 meter per pixel.
As of Thursday, Tianwen-1 has been in orbit for 651 days; the Zhurong rover has been operating on the surface of Mars for 347 days, travelling over 6,300 feet (1,921 meters).
Go to this informative video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ah4UajyI0
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An artistic rendering of what a resilient microgrid for a lunar base camp might look like. Sandia engineers are working with NASA to design the system controller for the microgrid. Credit: Illustration by Eric Lundin
Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico are working with NASA and the Department of Energy to design a resilient microgrid electrical system for the Moon.
NASA’s plan for a conceptual Artemis lunar base consists of a habitation unit — complete with room for up to four astronauts — as well as the potential for separate mining and fuel processing facilities.
Early Artemis missions will include short stays at the base camp with the goal to enhance stay times of crews for two months.
Utilizing lunar resources, mining and processing facilities could churn out rocket fuel, water, oxygen and other materials needed for extended exploration of the Moon’s surface while decreasing supply needs from Earth.
Resiliency and robustness
These type facilities would be located far away from the base camp — so other science and technology activities conducted there won’t be disrupted — but the electrical grid for the two units will be connected during emergencies for resiliency and robustness.
There are some very important differences between something like an International Space Station-type microgrid to something that has the extent of a future lunar base, said Jack Flicker, a Sandia electrical engineer.
Credit: NASA
“One of those differences is the geographic size, which can be problematic, especially when running at low DC voltages,” Jack said in a Sandia press statement. “Another is that when you start to extend these systems, there will be a lot more power electronics as well as a lot more distributed energy resources that will exist throughout the base. Sandia has been looking at microgrids with a lot of distributed energy resources for quite a long time.”
Voltage level
Also in work is designing the software to regulate the electricity of the mining and processing center, underway since early summer 2021. That controller can be contrasted to cruise control in a standard automobile in that it maintains an even voltage level on the grid, despite changing external situations.
A Secure Scalable Microgrid Testbed is a unique Sandia research facility that researchers will use to fine-tune their control system. They will also use the testbed to study questions about power system controllers and the interactions between distributed energy resources, energy storage and power electronics on a DC microgrid that is a scaled and simplified representation of the eventual lunar microgrid. Most terrestrial microgrids, and terrestrial electrical grids in general, run on alternating-current power.
Sandia electrical engineers Rachid Darbali-Zamora, front, and Lee Raskin test an algorithm on a hardware-in-the-loop setup at the Distributed Energy Technologies Laboratory.
Credit: Rebecca Gustaf
Variety of situations
“With this DC power-hardware-in-the-loop setup that we’re building in the lab, we can test power converters, the impedance of electrical lines between lunar facilities, we could also test actual energy generation and storage devices,” said Rachid Darbali-Zamora. “Basically, we can use it to study a variety of situations so we can design a system that is self-sustaining and can continue operating even if a solar panel array goes down.”
While this work is for a microgrid on the Moon, the research is also relevant to creating resiliency for communities on Earth, Rachid said. Sandia has a history in designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services.
This project is funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity as part of a DOE-NASA partnership to combine the expertise, experience and research facilities of both federal agencies.
Credit: China Central Television (CCTV)/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)/China Manned Space Agency (CMSA)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China is slated to launch at the end of 2023 a space-based optical observatory flagship telescope.
The telescope, during its normal observations, will fly independently in the same orbit as China’s space station but will maintain a large distance apart, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
However, the telescope can dock with China’s space station for refueling and servicing as scheduled or as needed.
Bus-sized facility
Known as the Chinese Survey Space Telescope, it is also called the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) and Xuntian Space Telescope.
A bus-sized facility with a length equal to that of a three-story building, the space telescope has an aperture of two meters, a bit smaller than the Hubble Space Telescope, but its field of view is 350 times larger than Hubble in area, said Liu Jifeng, deputy director of National Astronomical Observatories Of China (NAOC), in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Credit: NAOC
The CSST will be outfitted with five instruments including a Survey Camera.
CSST is likely to be the largest space telescope for astronomy in the near-ultraviolet and visible in the decade before 2035, said Zhan Hu, project scientist of the CSST Optical Facility.
The CSST is expected to start scientific operations in 2024 and has a nominal mission lifetime of 10 years, which could be extended in principle.
Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/China Media Group(CMG)/China Central Television (CCTV)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Station construction steps
China intends to have their space station construction complete by the end of this year.
The China National Space Administration plans to complete the construction of the station by adding the Wentian Experiment Capsule-1 and the Mengtian Experiment Capsule-2 to the now orbiting Tianhe Core Module.
Two Tianzhou cargo spacecraft will provide supplies for the astronauts of the Shenzhou-14 and Shenzhou-15 crewed spacecraft.
The Wentian lab module will be launched in July and Mengtian in October, Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Agency, said recently at the press conference.
The Shenzhou-14 crew will witness the arrival of two lab modules during their stay in orbit.
The Shenzhou-15 crew will fly to the space station before the end of this year and join the Shenzhou-14 crew in space. At that time, the space station will consist of three modules, two manned spacecraft and one cargo spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly 100 tons.
Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/China Media Group(CMG)/China Central Television (CCTV)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Training and preparation
The two crews of the Shenzhou-14 and Shenzhou-15 have been selected and they are actively carrying out relevant training and preparation.
“The two crews of the Shenzhou-14 and Shenzhou-15 will stay in orbit for six months respectively, and they will carry out in-orbit rotation for the first time. The six astronauts will stay together in orbit for 5 to 10 days,” said Huang Weifen, chief designer of the astronaut system under China’s manned space program.
Credit: HeroX/NASA MarsXR Challenge
A crowdsourcing competition, NASA MarsXR Challenge, seeks contributions to a Virtual Reality (XR) testbed environment that replicates the experiences and situations astronauts may encounter on Mars.
HeroX, a leading platform and open marketplace for crowdsourced solutions, launched the challenge today.
To facilitate research, development, and testing using virtual reality, NASA, in collaboration with Buendea, is developing the Mars XR Operations Support System using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). Participants of the NASA MarsXR Challenge will gain first access to this virtual reality environment, which includes:
- Full Martian days, with the orange hues of day transitioning to blue at night.
- Changing weather conditions and Martian gravity.
- Over 400 km2 (~ 154 Miles2) of realistic, researched Mars terrain.
- Some existing assets, such as suits and rovers.
There are five (5) different categories to participate in, with particular scenarios to explore in each category:
Digging in…on Mars.
Credit: NASA Langley Advanced Concepts Lab/Analytical Mechanics Associates
Set Up Camp
Scientific Research
Maintenance
Exploration
Blow Our Minds
The Prize
Up to 20 participants who submit the top ideas will share a total prize purse of $70,000.
Challenge participants will be tasked with developing assets and scenarios within the virtual reality environment that model the types of tasks that may need to be performed during early human expeditions to Mars, which can then be used to expose researchers and test subjects to immersive and realistic spacewalk activities while on the Red Planet. Information gained from these simulations could help NASA prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Whether you’re a game designer, architect, hobbyist or rocket scientist, anyone can build with UE5, and we can’t wait to see the immersive simulations the community comes up with.”
Eligibility to Compete and Win Prize(s)
The prize is open to anyone aged 18 or older participating as an individual or as a team. Individual competitors and teams may originate from any country, as long as United States federal sanctions do not prohibit participation (some restrictions apply).
To accept the challenge, visit: https://www.herox.com/MarsXR
Russia’s Roskosmos and the Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) Energia have signed a contract for blueprinting a new orbital station.
According to TASS, the largest Russian news agency, the work will be performed in two phases:
- Analysis of scenarios for deployment and the station’s inclination, including the scenario for undocking the active modules of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, the cost of deploying the station and calculating transfer of spacecraft from the station’s orbit to lunar orbit.
- Development of a preliminary design and technical specifications for a variant of the orbital station based on the results of the first stage of design. The provision of the station with communications, training of cosmonauts, medical supplies, the possibility of functioning in crewed and unscrewed modes, and use of robotic systems will also be considered.
The first phase is to be completed by June of this year; according to the terms of reference, the second phase will last until March 2024.
As noted in the document, the work should be completed on March 31, 2024. The contract value is almost 2.69 billion rubles – roughly $40 million in U.S. dollars.
Credit: Roskosmos
Credit: Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) Energia
Credit: Ken Farley
NASA’s Perseverance rover that is exploring Jezero Crater may unload its first cache of collected samples, perhaps near year’s end.
That prospect was highlighted during this week’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) Meeting #39 being held in Denver, Colorado.
Ken Farley of Caltech and the Mars 2020 Project Scientist said the Jezero cache should contain roughly 12 of Perseverance’s 43 sample tubes, allowing roughly 31 to be available for a second cache/handoff later in the rover’s mission.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars sample return
“Putting the cache down on the Three Forks Landing Strip makes a lot of sense,” Farley told Inside Outer Space. “The combination of extremely benign terrain and the fact that Perseverance does not need a long divert to implement it make it desirable from both engineering and science perspectives.”
Credit: Ken Farley
When deployed, this first Jezero cache of samples will provide a target for the Mars Sample Return mission should Perseverance fail prematurely, Farley said.
The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission needs Perseverance to document landing and cache depot sites, thereby ensuring acceptability of the site. The robot’s survey will provide detailed data for sample pickup planning – a reconnoitering task that may require several months of the mission’s time, Farley said.
Credit: Ken Farley
The MSR project will make use of two individual landers – one each for a Fetch Rover and another for the Mars Ascent Vehicle that will be loaded with samples.
This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples in the 2030’s collected from the Mars surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
MSR is being orchestrated by NASA and the European Space Agency. The sets of geologic and atmospheric samples gathered by Perseverance are to be transported to Earth.
Intriguing ridgeline
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed a ridgeline near the ancient river delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater at request of the Perseverance rover’s science team.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Perseverance officially began the “Delta Front Campaign” on April 18th. Each campaign represents a sub-portion of the Mars 2020 mission and is dedicated to exploring a distinct region, drilling designated sets of cores for possible future return to Earth, and taking numerous in situ science observations with onboard instruments to study the environmental and geologic features that characterize that region.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed an intriguing ridgeline near the ancient river delta in Jezero Crater. Imagery of that feature was captured on April 23, during the helicopter’s 27th flight. The photos were taken at the request of the Perseverance Mars rover science team, which wanted a closer look at the sloping outcrop.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Left B Camera photo taken on Sol 3461, May 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We have left the pediment behind and are making our way back to an alternate “MSAR” or “Mount Sharp Ascent Route,” reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3461, May 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We are at the second (of three) observation stops for this area, chosen as they offer the best chance to acquire high resolution images of the structures in the buttes,” O’Connell-Cooper adds. “We have noticed some dark layers which are reminiscent of the lenses at ‘The Prow’ and may indicate changing grain sizes or depositional environments. In an ideal world, we geologists would just climb up the side of a given butte to thoroughly investigate the layer but sadly, we are not going to be able to walk… or drive the rover… up the side of these buttes, so Mastcam is taking a large (132 frame) mosaic of the ‘Maringma’ butte here at this vantage point.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3461, May 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Low on rocks
The rover’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) is also acquiring a long distance RMI (remote image) of “Tweedbank,” which is one of these dark layers.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3461, May 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Although the rover is surrounded by large buttes and rocky hills, the robot’s reachable workspace was recently pretty low on rocks.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3462, May 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Fortunately, there are small fragments peeking out from under the sand and dust cover,” O’Connell-Cooper notes, so Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) were able to get two targets close to each other.
“Castlecraig” is a tilted fragment, with a brighter appearance than surrounding rocks. These targets are often veins (of calcium sulphate) and scientists like to analyze these periodically, as veins can reveal hints about conditions at the time of deposition or later.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3462, May 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Changes in base bedrock
The second target “Cat Firth” is on more regular bedrock. “Unfortunately, this target is too small to brush off the sand and dirt. However, it appears to be relatively clean, so hopefully will provide good quality APXS measurements on bedrock, so that we can document changes in base bedrock composition too. Mastcam is also imaging some fine laminations in the target “Moorhowe” which is in the workspace but out of reach of the arm,” O’Connell-Cooper points out.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3462, May 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Continuing the drive
As always, there is ongoing monitoring of the atmospheric opacity and dust levels. On the first night of a recent plan, an APXS environmental measurement was on tap, to monitor argon levels in the atmosphere which change with the seasons.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3462, May 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Once all the contact science and imaging are done here, we continue with our drive which is planned to take us to the third observation point, which is actually in the next naming quad – so in this drive, we will say ‘Mar sin leat’ (goodbye in Scots Gaelic) to the Torridon quad and ‘Olá’ (hello in Portuguese) to the ‘Roriama’ quad,” O’Connell-Cooper concludes.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 3461, May 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3462, May 3, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Red Planet as seen by Europe’s Mars Express.
Credit: ESA/D. O’Donnell – CC BY-SA IGO
Those bits and pieces of Mars expected to be brought back to Earth, perhaps in the early 2030s, will land with a thud in Utah desert.
Those return samples are now being collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.
NASA Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL
To test the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Earth Entry System (EES), engineers have carried out a series of drop tests at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR).
A Manufacturing Demonstration Unit of one potential design for the EES aeroshell was outfitted with sensors and dropped from a helicopter.
Stable during descent
Mars Sample Return capsule testing.
Credit: NASA/Langley/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The drop test series was a follow up to tests conducted last year at UTTR with a .75-meter, less detailed, EES test article. In comparison, the MDU is a full-scale vehicle, 1.25 meters across, with a structure fabricated of materials similar to those that would be used for the EES in the actual Mars sample mission.
During the tests, the MDU was dropped from an altitude of 1,200 feet to provide time to reach the intended landing speed.
“The MDU was very stable during descent – it didn’t wobble around a lot, and it landed successfully, in the sense that there was no structural damage and it survived impact as expected,” said Jim Corliss, MSR EES chief engineer, in a NASA press statement.
Utah testing of Mars Sample Return capsule.
Credit: NASA/Langley/Inside Outer Space screengrab
It’s important for the aeroshell to land in a particular orientation, Corliss added, and the drop test indicated the full-scale MDU was stable during final descent, landing right on its nose as engineers intended.
This test, along with another series of tests planned for later this year, will help researchers verify predictions of the EES landing performance and complete the characterization of the potential landing area at UTTR.
Go to this striking video at:
Credit: NASA
Bringing home the goods from Mars – what’s your view?
NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to use robotic Mars orbiter and lander missions to collect samples now being gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover, busy at work on the Red Planet.
Perseverance rover deposits select rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on Mars’s surface for future missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for detailed study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
These samples, securely isolated inside an “Earth Entry System” using a layered “container within a container” approach, could be brought to Earth in the early 2030s.
The Earth Entry System would then be transported to a specialized MSR sample receiving facility.
NASA is requesting public comment on the scope of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the agency’s proposed Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign.
Comments will be accepted through the mail and online through Monday, May 16, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA is also hosting two virtual public meetings about the proposed program at 3 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 4, 2022, and 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 5, 2022, at:
https://jpl.webex.com/meet/msr
Utah landing site
The public meetings will include briefings about the status of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process for the proposed program, as well as its purpose and scientific goals.
Meetings will also cover why the Utah Test and Training Range operated by the U.S. Air Force is the proposed landing site for the samples, and what planners are doing to ensure safe and secure return of the samples – a topic known as backward planetary protection.
NASA will consider all comments received during the scoping process in the subsequent development of the MSR Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which is currently scheduled to be released for public comment later this year.
Additional information on the agency’s National Environmental Policy Act process and the proposed NASA-ESA MSR program is available online.
Go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nepa-mars-sample-return-campaign/
For those people who have any comments to post in the Federal Register — pro/con regarding returning Martian samples directly to Earth — the comment period ends shortly.
Just hit the blue ‘Comment” button on the following document link below: National Environmental Policy Act; Mars Sample Return Campaign, at:
Curiosity’s location as of Sol 3458. Distance driven on this sol: 17.16 miles/27.62 kilometers.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3459 duties.
While angular, pointy rocks have damaged the rover’s wheels since early in its mission, sometimes the wheels damage rocks as the rover drives over them, reports Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Sometimes Curiosity’s wheels damage rocks as the robot drives over them. As seen especially at the upper left side of this image, the bedrock was scraped and fractured by the rover during the Sol 3456 drive.
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera on Sol 3456, April 27, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Bedrock was scraped and fractured by the robot during a Sol 3456 drive.
“Unfortunately, that drive did not complete as planned, but the tactical team took advantage of the situation by targeting observations of the freshly-exposed rock surfaces.” Herkenhoff adds.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 3459, April 30, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scrape mark
A new plan calls for the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) to be placed on a scrape mark named “Cow Head” to measure its elemental chemistry, then the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) was slated to take a full suite of images of the same target.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3458, April 29, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“MAHLI will also take some images of a rock fragment ‘Orton Scar’ that was broken off a bedrock slab. Hopefully textural details will be more visible on these fresh faces than on the nearby undisturbed, dustier rocks,” Herkenhoff notes.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3458, April 29, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Outcrop close-ups
Researchers will also take advantage of Curiosity’s new location to take Mastcam images of Maringma Butte, as the rover is closer to that outcrop than expected.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3458, April 29, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Mastcam will also acquire multispectral sets of images of the Cow Head and Orton Scar contact science targets. Navcam will search for dust devils and characterize the dustiness of the atmosphere toward the north before the rover drives again,” Herkenhoff reports.
After the drive and the typical post-drive imaging, the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) was to again acquire a twilight image of the ground behind the left front wheel.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3458, April 29, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
