Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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August 6th, 2023
Image credit: ISRO
India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander/rover mission is in a lunar orbit of 102 miles (164 kilometers) by 11,230 miles (18,074 kilometers), as intended. The next maneuver by the Moon-orbiting spacecraft is scheduled for August 6, between 22:30 and 23:30 Indian Standard Time (IST).
According to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), as the mission progresses, a series of maneuvers are to gradually reduce Chandrayaan-3’s orbit and position it over the lunar poles. At the appointed time, Chandrayaan-3’s propulsion module will separate from the lander while in orbit.
Image credit: ISRO
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration until a 62 miles (100 kilometers) lunar orbit above the Moon’s terrain is achieved. The propulsion module has a Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from lunar orbit.
Complex braking maneuvers
A series of complex braking maneuvers will be executed to facilitate a soft landing in the south polar region of the Moon on August 23, 2023.
Image credit: ISRO
ISRO notes that, throughout the mission, the health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Mission Operations Complex at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network, the Indian Deep Space Network antenna at Byalalu, near Bengaluru, with the support from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep space antenna.
Screengrab image from India’s Chandrayaan 3 from lunar orbit.
Image credit: ISRO/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Posted in 
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA/JPL-Caltech
“On July 31, Perseverance spotted Ingenuity in a place far from its last known location but well short of where it was supposed to be based on the posted flight plan. Does this mean that Ingenuity had an emergency landing?”
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars Guy explores the altering of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter’s flight plan in this new video at:
Perseverance took this August 3 image of Ingenuity via its Left Mastcam-Z Camera. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Image credit: Visual Capitalist/Preyash Shah
Just how much human-made space garbage is currently circling the Earth? What countries are in the “space junk race” to clutter up the heavens?
The folks at Visual Capitalist have created the infographic: “Space Debris: The Earth’s Orbiting Threat,” an effort led by Preyash Shah, expert in technology, business and maps for the group.
Country culpability
Shah notes that, in July, an odd object washed up on a remote beach in Western Australia. This chunk of golden metal was later identified as a spent rocket stage.
most likely debris from an expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) – a medium-lift launcher operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Image credit: Australian Space Agency
Earth is encircled by thousands of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, metal shards from collisions, all orbiting our planet at breakneck speeds.
In this graphic, Preyash Shah uses tracking data from the Space-Track.org, maintained by the U.S. Space Force, to help visualize just how much debris is currently orbiting the Earth, while identifying the biggest contributors of this celestial clutter.
For further information, go to: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/space-debris-by-country/
Also, visit Visual Capitalist at: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is busy at work, on a roll to find evidence of past microbial life on the Red Planet. This older rover selfie captured Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The Ingenuity helicopter flew its 54th time, a pop-up flight with the device achieving hovering mode to altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), staying aloft for 24.62 seconds.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
These rotorcraft images were acquired on August 3, taken by its navigation camera mounted in the craft’s fuselage and pointed directly downward.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of Ingenuity and its surroundings using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of this huge feature on the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA, USGS, Viking Project
A just-issued report offers a new avenue for exploring Mars, one that would entail flying lower-costing missions to the Red Planet.
A Mars Concurrent Exploration Science Analysis Group has scoped out the highest priority science that should be conducted in parallel with the NASA/European Space Agency Mars Sample Return (MSR) program – the mega-billion dollar undertaking now being blueprinted.
Mars sample return to Earth – a major undertaking by NASA, the European Space Agency.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Interconnected network
Flinging less-costly missions to Mars in the next decade (2023-2032) is tagged the “Braided River” approach. The tactic is an interconnected network of low-cost missions working together to address major outstanding Mars questions, driven by the sheer dynamic nature of the planet itself.
Multiple small, low-cost missions, orbiters, soft and hard landers could work together to address larger outstanding Mars questions.
The Rakaia river, in Canterbury, New Zealand, illustrating the concept of a ‘Braided River’
with interconnecting, merging, and splitting tracks. Image by Andrew Cooper
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Cooper#/media/File:Rakaia_River_NZ_aeri
al_braided.jpg), licensed under CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Final five
The study group identified a “final five” Mars science objectives that can benefit by the Braided River approach: planetary evolution; early environmental change; recent climate evolution; dynamic modern environments and modern habitability – the search for currently or recently habitable environments and present-day life on Mars.
Although challenging, a lower-cost mission initiative as envisioned by the group offers the chance to augment or replace existing infrastructure, provide landing site evaluation, make on-the-spot resource utilization assessments, and perform weather monitoring, “all of which will be critical for both future robotic and human exploration,” the group’s study report notes.
Depiction shows Jezero Crater — the landing locale of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — as it might have appeared billions of years ago when it was perhaps a life-sustaining lake. An inlet and outlet are also visible on either side of the lake.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Search for life
As for the search for modern/extant life on Mars, the report explains that accessing the deeper subsurface where liquid water could be stable will be crucial to accessing habitable modern ecosystems where the harsh surface conditions are minimized, such as radiation.
A first key investigation to better understand the habitability and likelihood of extant life in the subsurface today would be to confirm or refute the hypothesis of a global deep aquifer on Mars.
A current illustration of SHIELD that would allow lower-cost missions to reach the Red Planet’s surface by safely crash landing, using a collapsible base to absorb the impact. Image credit: California Academy of Sciences
Spotlighted in the report is subsurface sounding via a lander.
Also, a single lander or network of landers might make rapid, accurate measurements of the abundance of potentially biogenic gases like methane at the surface of Mars. Taken at hourly to annual timescales, data collected could help resolve many outstanding questions. Such a mission would also benefit from wind measurements to help further pinpoint the source of emitted gases.
Landing forces
One concept for a hard lander system able to deliver payloads to Mars is called SHIELD, short for Small High-Impact Energy Landing Device being developed at JPL. The SHIELD design omits heatshields, parachutes, and thrusters. It uses a basic impact attenuation system to help squelch much higher landing forces as contrasted to past Mars soft landings.
An ultra-compact ground penetrating radar is also under development as a Mars science helicopter payload.
The Red Planet as seen by Europe’s Mars Express.
Image credit: ESA/D. O’Donnell – CC BY-SA IGO
Such a high-flying radar could map layers in rock to a depth of approximately 65 feet (20 meters) and in ice to greater depths. By flying over troughs in the north polar layered deposits on Mars, this technique could potentially map a few hundred meters of ice layers spanning hundreds of thousands of years of deposition.
Business model
Highlighted in the report is need for adoption of a well-developed business model, one that “balances optimism and practicality through sound business acumen” and incorporates viable involvement of the commercial space industry.
To that end, the report points to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program for the Moon as a possible model for low-cost Mars exploration.
“To date, however, no CLPS missions have flown, and so it remains to be seen the level of success attained by this program,” the report adds.
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
Clear, cohesive, inspiring
The Braided River approach to investigating Mars in a less-costly manner can fill major knowledge gaps within a clear, cohesive, and inspiring program.
However, the report concludes that, for such a program to be successful and paradigm changing, “it would need to be well supported by frequent solicitations, regular launches, and robust technology development programs.”
It is the opinion of study group members that this Braided River proposal would be highly complementary to the existing Mars Exploration Program mission portfolio “and inject the excitement and novelty of a decidedly new approach to exploring the Red Planet.”
To review the full report by the Mars Concurrent Exploration Science Analysis Group, chartered by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), go to:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/mepag/reports/reports/MCE_SAG_Final_Report.pdf
View of Giordano Bruno crater on the far side of the Moon.
Image credit: NASA
How can you transport materials across the Moon’s surface and keep annoying, debilitating dust out of lunar habitats?
Enter a Caltech team that is designing a Lunar Architecture for Tree Traversal in-service-of Cable Exploration, space speak boiled down to LATTICE.
The LATTICE team is looking into a self-deploying modular robotic system for transporting ice and other assets in and out of craters.
Image: Caltech LATTICE team.
The ski lift-like system would work like a zip line on the Moon, complete with driving stakes in the ground, cables are then attached to the stakes, and cargo would be transporting by the cables in robotic shuttles.
Prototype tested
LATTICE was among seven finalists in NASA’s 2022 Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.
Testing of hardware underway at Caltech.
Image credit: Caltech/LATTICE Team
Last November, the LATTICE team tested a small-scale prototype of its system in a desert in California’s Lucerne Valley.
The Caltech team has also blueprinted HOMES – shorthand for Habitat Orientable & Modular Electrodynamic Shield.
Check out this video at: https://youtu.be/i8O0wPSCtjg
Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space and a veteran of three shuttle missions, created the highly-informative Kathy Sullivan Explores podcast.
Since June 2021, the podcasts have focused on science, art, space, and the most memorable moments of Sullivan’s life so far.
Listen to her short “Farewell for Now” episode and also revisit the wellspring of past podcasts that embrace the spirit of curiosity, adventure, and discovery.
Go to: https://www.kathysullivanexplores.com/podcast/farewell-for-now
And while there, go to Sullivan’s “Seven Astronaut Tips for Improving your Life on Earth,” at
India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander.
Image credit: ISRO
India’s ambitious Moon exploration spacecraft, the Chandrayaan-3, is now en route to its lunar target. The lander is to unleash a rover, both stuffed with scientific instruments to inspect the lunar surface in the southern lunar hemisphere.
“Next stop: the Moon,” declared an Internet posting from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). All appears on track for the Chandrayaan-3 to swing into lunar orbit on August 5.
NASA-supplied laser retroreflector array is mounted atop India’s lunar lander. Device can help precisely pinpoint the whereabouts of a Moon lander.
Image credit ISRO/NASA
India’s lander will then head for a touchdown on August 23 within the southern region of the Moon’s near side, soft landing about 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of the Manzinus U crater rim.
Go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story – “India’s Moon Shot Adds to Country’s Growing Space Endeavors” – at:
https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/indias-moon-shot-countrys-growing-space-endeavors/
China’s Chang’e-7 lander launches hopper craft to search for lunar ice.
Image credit: CCTV/CNSA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Moon exploration plans call for deep diving into permanently shadowed areas of the lunar south pole. The country’s Chang’e-7 mission is slated to take place around 2026 and utilize a mini-flying probe to investigate the permanently-shadowed bottom of an impact crater.
The Chang’e-7 mission consists of an orbiter, lander, the hopper and a rover and is targeted for a touchdown in a southeastern area of Shackleton crater.
In this multi-temporal illumination map of the lunar south pole, Shackleton crater (19 km diameter) is in the center, the south pole is located approximately at 9 o’clock on its rim. The map was created from images from the camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credits: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
A drilling tool on the mobile probe will sample lunar soil water-ice before a mechanical arm moves that sample into a heating furnace for spectral analysis. A Lunar Water Molecular Analyzer (LWMA) on the mini-flyer will appraise lunar soil water-ice in the surface frost layer.
Different depths
According to Yingzhuo Jia of the National Space Science Center in Beijing, the LWMA has the ability to “analyze samples for many times and can take samples at different depths and locations for many times, so as to obtain the data of water-ice content varying with depth and region.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson discusses lunar landing sites as he testifies during an April House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing.
One photo – multiple nations headed for lunar territory.
Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Yingzhuo and colleagues note that results from the on-the-fly hopper “can also provide evidence of the composition and content of direct volatile matter, whether it contains H₂O, H₂S, NH3, SO₂, and other volatile matter, and whether more volatile matter is deposited in the permanent shadow areas compared with the existing results of Apollo samples or lunar meteorites.”
Artist’s view of International Lunar Research Station to be completed by 2035. Credit: CNSA
An overview of the Chang’e-7 mission objectives – “Research of Lunar Water-Ice and Exploration for China’s Future Lunar Water-Ice Exploration” has been published in the open access journal Space: Science & Technology at: https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/space.0026
In related Moon work, also published in the journal, go to – “Overview of the Lunar In Situ Resource Utilization Techniques for Future Lunar Missions” – at:
Wait a minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
The European Space Agency performed an assisted/semi-controlled descent of its retired Aeolus, a wind profiling spacecraft lofted into Earth orbit in 2018.
Mission scientists and engineers took on the tricky task of targeting a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean for the plunge to Earth of Aeolus. A key aspect of assisted reentry is that for any spacecraft leftovers believed to survive the plunge, those bits and pieces would fall into a remote area.
Image credit: ESA
ESA confirmed that Aeolus reentered Earth’s atmosphere on July 28 above Antarctica, also verified by the U.S. Space Command.
The “adios to Aeolus” action underscores a novel approach for the safe return of active satellites that were never designed for controlled reentry.
Image credit: ESA
Windage
But “above Antarctica” versus the Atlantic Ocean caught my eye. Sounds like something didn’t go as planned?
“In an assisted re-entry you have to accept inaccuracies along the desired target coordinates and we required that it was maximum +\- half orbit centered in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” responded Tommaso Parrinello, ESA Aeolus mission manager, a target zone that was called a corridor.
Aeolus reentered over Antarctica on July 28. ESA’s Space Debris Office, based on U.S. Space Command tracking and ESA’s own data acquired during Aeolus’s last orbits, this map has been produced showing the assessed location of Aeolus’s disintegration in the atmosphere and where any surviving fragments may have fallen. Image credit: ESA
“We re-entered within less than a quarter of an orbit. Better than expected,” Parrinello told Inside Outer Space. It took almost a year to develop the assisted re-entry or semi-controlled concept, he said, designing the best corridor of re-entry, changing the satellite configuration, and designing the timeline, along with check and more checks via simulation.
Assisted living and reentry for Aeolus spacecraft. Image credit: ESA/J. Mai
As for the price tag of the Aeolus assisted re-entry, “the funds were within the foreseen operation costs…there is not a figure to give,” Parrinello said.
Minimize risk
“With the growing number of objects being launched into space, we certainly expect that many will re-enter over time, so I think ESA’s efforts to develop and test an assisted controlled re-entry is important to minimize the risk to human life on or near the surface,” said T.S. Kelso of CelesTrak, an analytical group that keeps a sharp eye on Earth-circling objects.
Similar in view is Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow for LeoLabs.
“This is significant for several reasons,” McKnight said. “First, it is critical for everyone to note that sometimes the act of reducing orbital collision risk comes at the cost of risk to aviation and ground impacts. The U.S. has a self-imposed threshold of 1/10,000 chance of ground casualty from a reentry but that is not accepted worldwide.”
Taking the fall. Space hardware dives into Earth’s atmosphere with some fragments making their way to the ground.
Image credit: ESA/D.Ducros
McKnight said that it is laudable to see others minimizing this re-entry risk. He added that this spacecraft was not designed to do these maneuvers yet performed them admirably.
Continual innovation
“Much of the positive space safety behavior over the last few years has been by systems not designed to perform that way. The continual innovation by many has been impressive,” McKnight told Inside Outer Space.
Lastly, McKnight said that “active debris removal is a complex, but greatly needed operation to improve the state of the debris environment in low Earth orbit and it requires several steps: identify, rendezvous, grapple, de-tumble, and de-orbit safely. This exercise builds confidence in the ability to do the last critical stage of safe de-orbiting of large spacecraft.”
Tech. Sgt. Ronald Dunn, 729th Airlift Squadron loadmaster, guides a Mongolian driver in August 2011. Dunn was part of a crew from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., who were assigned to a mission to retrieve space debris that fell to Earth. The parts were identified as expended rocket parts from an Air Force rocket launched into space nearly a decade prior. Image credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Linda Welz
Responsible behavior
Aeolus had a dry mass of 2,425 pounds (1,100 kilograms) and the most critical removal sequences, McKnight said, will be performed on objects over 1,000 kilograms.
“It should be noted that any spacecraft above 500 to 800 kilograms in mass is likely to have sufficient debris survive re-entry as to warrant controlled reentry to meet the 1/10,000 threshold for ground casualty,” said McKnight. There are currently nearly 800 rocket bodies and over 300 non-operational payloads in low Earth orbit with a mass over 1,000 kg, he pointed out.
“This demonstration showed how individual responsible behavior can contribute to the growing space safety expertise highlighting that space safety does not have to be debilitating for space operators,” McKnight concluded.
Detrimental effects
On the other hand, there remains the issue of rubbish from spacecraft falling out of orbit having harmful effects on global atmospheric chemistry.
The atmospheric layers from the ground up to the boundary with space, showing natural phenomena, human inputs and resultant impacts. These human inputs impact the troposphere (by enhancing climate change), the stratosphere (through ozone loss from multiple causes), the mesosphere (by influencing metal chemistry and accumulation and increasing noctilucent clouds), and the thermosphere (by likely causing contraction which will impact orbiting satellites).
Image credit: Jamie D. Shutler, et al.
Some experts are concerned that the growing scale and pace of space activities may lead to new unforeseen impacts on the environment and climate. Furthermore, what appears required is improved monitoring of the situation, as well as regulation to create an environmentally sustainable space industry.
These are observations from recent research on atmospheric impacts of the space industry led by Jamie Shutler, associate professor of Earth observation in the Center for Geography and Environmental Science, College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter, Cornwall.
Full impact, not known
As for the outcome from assisted re-entry, like that done with ESA’s Aeolus satellite, it’s a tough call, Shutler told Inside Outer Space.
“It’s good that agencies are now starting to consider the environmental aspects of these technologies and how previous standard approaches are not sustainable,” Shutler said, such as shifting satellites to a graveyard orbit or just leaving the satellite in its original orbit to slowly de-orbit.
“But equally, de-orbiting for burn-up in the atmosphere and with roughly 20 percent of the satellite landing in the ocean is not sustainable or environmentally good,” Shutler said. “The satellite components don’t just vanish, they instead get re-distributed throughout the atmosphere and the full impacts are not known.”
Ozone loss
For example, Shutler added, satellites are mainly made up of aluminum and we know that aluminum in the upper atmosphere can promote ozone loss. “Whilst being claimed to be ‘harmlessly falling in the ocean’, it’s still littering in the ocean on which we rely for food, and for regulating our weather and climate.”
Earth orbit is a junkyard of human-made space clutter.
Credit: Space Junk 3D, LLC. Melrae Pictures
Shutler said the ESA effort is a step in the right direction, “but only if this is the start of greater efforts by all agencies and private organizations to question and reduce the environmental impact of space activities.”
Sustainable space?
In Shutler’s view, greater efforts need to be made, for example, in controlling the overall quantity of satellites in orbit, like sharing resources efficiently, rather than large scale duplication, as we see now with commercial activities. Also needed is reducing the quantity of aluminum within those satellites, “and showing greater consideration for the atmosphere, the ocean and whole of Earth’s environment, instead of just protecting the land, whilst simultaneously considering everywhere else as being acceptable for littering.”
Shutler’s bottom line: “Overall I would hope that the approach of simply de-orbiting all satellites is not the future. Much more needs to be done to address the problem, and recognizing this wider issue, as it seems is being done by ESA…a good first step. But despite the social media tagging, we have a long way to go before we have anything close to ‘sustainable space.’”
A main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle landed near Georgetown, Texas in January 1997.
Image credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office
Re-entry regime
Also noting the Aeolus outcome is Aaron Boley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
“It is positive to see the ESA using available spacecraft capabilities to reduce the risks of lethal re-entry debris, instead of leaving the re-entry outcome entirely to chance,” said
For large satellites in orbit that were never designed to conduct controlled re-entries, assisted/semi-controlled re-entries are a step in the right direction, Boley told Inside Outer Space.
“It should nonetheless be recognized, while things went well in this case, that such maneuvers are not a controlled re-entry and still carry substantial re-entry time uncertainties. Not all large spacecraft in orbit will be capable of such a semi-controlled re-entry, either,” Boley pointed out.
Image credit: Johan Swanepoel/Adobe Stock via RAND
Moving forward, Boley said that states and operators need to work together to develop a controlled re-entry regime for new satellites and launch vehicles in an effort to limit the risks of re-entry debris to people on the ground, at sea, and in airplanes in flight.
“Such a regime would include requirements for controlled re-entries, and in circumstances where a controlled re-entry is not feasible, the requirements would include risk reduction measures as part of the satellite design,” said Boley.
