Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category

China’s Shenzhou-12 crew appears headed for return to Earth this Friday, September 17, departing the Tianhe space station core module.

A navigation warning issued indicates that the Taikonaut trio will land around 5:30 UTC, according to the Zarya website, maintained by Robert Christy.

The crew — Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo – are targeted for landing at the Dongfeng landing site in the desert of North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Utilized for the first time for returning space adventurers, that landing zone received the unpiloted return capsule of China’s trial version of a new-generation crewed spacecraft back in May 2020, following a flight of two days and 19 hours.

Prior to the Shenzhou-12 spaceship return, it was earlier reported that it will also conduct circumnavigation and radial rendezvous tests with the core module, all preparatory work for the Shenzhou-13 mission.

 

Next liftoffs

To continue the build-up of China’s Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space station, an uncrewed Tianzhou-3 resupply spaceship is now being primed for liftoff, perhaps departing next Monday from the southern island of Hainan.

A piloted Shenzhou-13 spaceship is reportedly ready for a takeoff in September-October from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

This new fresh trio — likely including a woman – will stay in orbit for six months.

Given the launch today of the SpaceX Falcon booster, placing the four-person Inspiration4 into Earth orbit, there will be 14 humans circling the planet: The Shenzhou-12 threesome; Seven people on the International Space Station, and the Inspiration4 space travelers.

 

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater has just begun performing Sol 3238 duties.

“Curiosity is working her way through a busy drill campaign at the Maria Gordon location and keeping her eyes on the beautiful cliffs nearby,” reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.

“Unfortunately the weekend plan didn’t uplink to the rover due to a DSN [Deep Space Network] issue,” Edgar adds, so that means that a recent two-sol plan (3238-3239) was devoted to recovering those activities.

Drill sample analysis

The robot’s Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) got to analyze the drill sample last week, so now it’s the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite turn.

The plan calls for the drop-off to SAM and Evolved Gas Analysis.

CheMin will also dump the sample to clear out the cell for future use.

Delicious target

“The science team planned a lot of targeted remote sensing observations, including a ChemCam observation down the drill hole, multiple Mastcam mosaics to investigate nearby stratigraphy and nodule-rich areas, another ChemCam observation of a delicious target named “Chocolate Bloc” and a lot of environmental monitoring activities to monitor dust and clouds and search for dust devils,” Edgar concludes. “Can’t wait to find out what SAM thinks of the Maria Gordon sample!”

 

 

The Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 3236 tasks.

Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland reports that the robot’s primary goal this weekend is for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite to study the material from the newly created Maria Gordon drill hole – #33 that the rover has done.

 

 

 

“SAM will heat the material to very high temperatures to determine what it’s made of and how water may have interacted with the rock in the distant past,” Guzewich adds.

Also on tap is for Curiosity to perform a variety of imaging with Mastcam and take a Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) long-distance image of Rafael Navarro mountain.

 

 

Newly released images from flight 13 of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. The aerial device acquired these images using its high-resolution color camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degree below the horizon. These photos were acquired on September 5, 2021, Sol 193 of the Perseverance rover mission.

For flight 13, the rotorcraft flew at an altitude of 26 feet (8 meters). Ingenuity traveled at 7.3 mph (3.3 m/s) taking images pointing southwest of the South Seítah region. This aerial scouting continues to aid in planning future moves of NASA’s Perseverance rover.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

 

The Allen Telescope Array, an ensemble of 42 antennas used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), is threatened by the Dixie Fire, which is now roughly 12 miles south of the Array.

In a statement from the SETI Institute, Alex Pollak, the Array’s Science and Engineering Operations Manager, said the fire’s slow northward march has provoked the need for evacuation.

Anticipating the possibility that it might reach the antennas, the observatory staff contacted the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Department to prepare the site against eventual damage. Two teams from the Forest Service, about a dozen people in total, removed brush from near the antennas. Trees in the area were pruned of any branches lower than ten feet above the ground.

This is not the first time the Array has been threatened. In the summer of 2014, the so-called Eiler fire reached State Highway 89, approximately two miles from the antennas.

Unique facility

The Allen Telescope Array is a unique facility. It is the only radio telescope constructed with SETI as a principal activity. Its 42 telescopes are currently being refurbished with more sensitive receivers and follow-on electronics that will greatly speed the search for signals that would prove the presence of technological societies in other star systems. This upgrade is funded by Franklin Antonio, a co-founder of the California semiconductor company, Qualcomm.

As of this writing, there are more than 4,000 firefighters battling the Dixie Fire, and the hope is that it will not reach the Observatory.

The SETI Institute quest is to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world. Research at the SETI Institute encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages expertise in data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies.

The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia and government agencies, including NASA and NSF.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now conducting Sol 3234 duties.

Curiosity has collected its 33rd drilled sample from the “Maria Gordon” drill location.

Delivery and analysis of drilled material from Maria Gordon is headed for the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument – or CheMin for short. That device performs chemical analysis of powdered rock samples to identify the types and amounts of different minerals that are present.

The robot recently sent back these images of its surrounding landscape:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To view an informative video regarding Curiosity’s exploration of a mountain on Mars, hosted by Curiosity’s Deputy Project Scientist, Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov/system/video_items/6041_JPL-20210816-MSLf-0001-360cc.m4v

 

 

 

Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys features Blood Falls.

Researchers first thought the red color came from algae. Later work unveiled that the glacier is a natural time capsule, containing an ancient community of microbes.

 

 

The existence of the Blood Falls ecosystem shows that life can exist in the highly extreme conditions here on Earth – but perhaps elsewhere in the form of extraterrestrial life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go to this intriguing story in Atlas Obscrua: “Blood Falls Antarctica -Natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem” at:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blood-falls

Also, go to this  paper “MICROBIAL LIFE IN BLOOD FALLS: AN ANCIENT ANTARCTIC ECOSYSTEM” at:

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/earlymars2004/pdf/8023.pdf

As well as this Arizona State University press release “Unlikely life thriving at Antarctica’s Blood Falls” at: 

https://news.asu.edu/content/unlikely-life-thriving-antarctica%E2%80%99s-blood-falls

A lunar resources ecosystem having a $32 billion economic impact after 20 years is plausible – but there are critical uncertainties and several variables.

New research delves into a rosy “Moonopolis” scenario and a low-resources, “Apollo 2.0” future.

Appearing in the journal, Acta Astronautica, the research paper is titled: “The cis-lunar ecosystem – A systems model and scenarios of the resource industry and its impact,” authored by Marc-Andre Chavy-Macdonald, Kazuya Oizumi, Jean-Paul Kneib, and Kazuhiro Aoyama.

Complex trade-off

“Lunar resources is one of the many new putative business models that may transform space logistics. Yet it competes with Earth-based resources, in a complex trade-off involving both tech development & socioeconomic dynamics,” the paper states.

The study models the size versus time of a future resource ecosystem focused on water for exploration and satellite refueling – in cis-lunar space.

Top critical uncertainties include the accessibility of resource finds on the Moon, and government investment in lunar resources. Three variables are crucial, the research team notes: government support to production development, production firms’ re-investment, and growth of the Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting (GEO) telecom satellite industry.

Well-placed near Earth

The Moon and cis-lunar space, the paper explains, is a far more accessible target than Mars colonization, and has drawn the attention of diverse public and private players in a nearer time horizon: space agencies, large firms, start-ups etc.

“Indeed the Moon is well-placed near Earth, and its much shorter transit time is crucial for human operations. It has a relatively favorable geography for resources: a large, diverse geological body at an energetically advantageous location for space transport.”

In summary, the research has combined societal and technical variables and captured knowledge from dozens of experts to create a holistic model of a future, complex ecosystem around lunar resources.

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan (GSDM program), and by the Swiss Space Office (Research Initiative on Sustainable Space Logistics).

To access “The cis-lunar ecosystem – A systems model and scenarios of the resource industry and its impact” go to:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521003143?via%3Dihub

 

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3231 tasks

Newly relayed imagery shows the robot’s #33 hole, drilling at “Maria Gordon” on sol 3229.

 

 

In the next few days, Australia is set to enter the global space services market.

The Hapith I rocket is to depart the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex, located on the tip of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia

The Launch Complex covers approximately 1200 Ha (2965 acres) of open land with over 6 km (3.72 miles) of ocean frontage.

Space company — Southern Launch — is carrying out the maiden flight of a two-stage suborbital rocket using Taiwan Innovative Space (tiSPACE) hybrid propulsion technology. The launch window is September 9–23.

Southern Launch is providing the infrastructure and logistics support for orbital and suborbital launches from the organization’s two sites in South Australia: Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex and the Koonibba Test Range.

Commercially attractive

On March 25 the Australian government announced the first ever license for a space launch facility, legally permitting rockets to fly into space from Australian territory.

The license was granted to wholly Australian-owned company Southern Launch for its Koonibba Test Range in the South Australian outback. The Koonibba Test Range is located 25 miles (40 kilometers) north-west of Ceduna on the West Coast of the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia

The significance of the Koonibba Test Range is that Australia can now host private satellite operators and rocket manufacturers from around the world to come and test their space technologies in a safe and commercially attractive manner from Australia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information, go to:

https://www.southernlaunch.space/

http://www.tispace.com/

Video at: https://youtu.be/y26ZIdxVI3E