Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 17th, 2021
Credit: GlobalLink/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The world eagerly awaits the first images from China’s Tianwen-1 lander/rover now planted on Mars.
The Tianwen-1 lander/rover touched down at a pre-selected landing area in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars, at 07:18 (Beijing Time) on Saturday.
The lander is expected to deploy a ramp for the rover Zhurong in the coming days before the device rolls out onto Mars and starts its exploring. This six-wheeled robot is built to reconnoiter the Red Planet for at least 90 Martian days.
Artwork depicts lander/rover at landing site.
Credit: CAST
Patience required
Meanwhile, the Tianwen-1 orbiter is set to relay data and images from the rover. Patience is required, suggested Zhang Yuhua, deputy chief commander of the Tianwen-1 Mars mission, noting an upcoming orbit correction needed and the process of receiving and sending data from Utopia Planitia back to Earth.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The orbiter is equipped with a directional antenna used to communicate with the Earth. Now free of the lander and the rover, the orbiter serves as a relay satellite to forward byte-by-byte communications between the landing vehicle and Earth.
Scientific orbit
After the Zhurong rover collects and transmits back information about the Martian surface over the next 90 Martian days, the orbiter will enter a “scientific exploration orbit” to carry out short-distance planet observation for one Martian year (about 687 days on Earth).
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The orbiter can collect data from the planet at different orbital heights in different phases to piece together a better understanding of the space environment at the Red Planet.
Go to this informative video from China Central Television (CCTV) that details the relaying of data from the surface of Mars back to Earth.
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Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
A Chinese cargo craft has been rolled out to its launch pad, headed for linkup with the country’s Tianhe space station module now in Earth orbit.
The Tianzhou-2 cargo vessel sits atop a Long March-7 Y3 booster, one of the 11 missions planed by China to fully outfit the country’s space station by the end of 2022.
Launch of the cargo spacecraft is from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, Hainan Province, China, on May 20, according to one report.
Credit: CGTN
The 3-person Shenzhou-12 will be launched in June, followed by the Tianzhou-3 cargo vessel and Shenzhou-13 crewed spaceship in September and October respectively.
China lofted the Tianhe core module into Earth orbit on April 29, kick-starting a series of missions over the next two years, including two lab capsules of the space station, four cargo vessel flights and four crewed missions.
To view the rollout of the Long March-7 Y3 booster, go to this China Central Television (CCTV) video at:
Credit: CGTN
The lander of China’s first Mars probe, the Tianwen-1, successfully touched down on the Red Planet Saturday morning, Beijing time, within a landing site region in Utopia Planitia.
The craft’s plummet through the Martian atmosphere lasted about nine minutes due to the specially designed aerodynamic shape of the entry capsule.
“Each step had only one chance, and the actions were closely linked. If there had been any flaw, the landing would have failed,” said Geng Yan, an official at the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
Credit: CCTV/CNSA
Credit: CCTV/CNSA
When the velocity of the spacecraft was lowered from 4.8 km per second to about 460 meters per second, a huge parachute covering an area of about 200 square meters was unfurled to continue reducing the velocity to less than 100 meters per second.
The parachute and the outer shield of the spacecraft were jettisoned, exposing the lander and rover. A retrorocket on the lander was fired to further slow the speed of the craft to nearly zero.
Buffer legs
At about 100 meters above the Martian surface, the craft hovered to identify obstacles and measure the slopes of the surface. The craft then selected a relatively flat area and descended slowly, touching down safely on its four buffer legs.
It took ground controllers more than an hour to establish the success of the pre-programmed landing. Reportedly, the rover autonomously unfolded its solar panels and antenna to transmit signals after landing. There is a time delay of more than 17 minutes due to the distance between Earth and Mars.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“The Mars exploration mission has been a total success,” declared Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, announced at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
Roll off of the Zhurong rover from the lander onto Mars is not scheduled to occur for several days, according to reports.
Relay orbit
Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. Due to the huge distance between Mars and Earth, the Zhurong rover can’t transmit data back to Earth directly, but does so through the orbiter.
In order to transmit data accurately and timely, the Mars-circling orbiter will conduct a braking maneuver in a few days and enter a relay orbit to better complete the relay communication task.
Credit: Weibo wlr2678
“We’re going to conduct the fourth braking near Mars on May 17 and change the orbital period from the current roughly 48 hours to eight hours, which means the orbiter will orbit three times a day. All images captured by the rover on the Mars surface will be sent back to Earth through the orbiter,” said Zhang Yuhua, deputy chief commander of the Tianwen-1 Mars mission.
Rover lifetime
According to the schedule, the rover will transmit data with the orbiter for about an hour a day during its mission on the surface of Mars. The data will be sent back to Earth after the transmission.
Artwork depicts lander/rover at landing site.
Credit: CAST
The rover is designed to work on the planet for at least 90 Martian days.
Tianwen-1 was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of southern Chinese island province of Hainan on July 23, 2020.
The name Tianwen — meaning Questions to Heaven — comes from a poem written by the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC).
China’s Zhurong rover is named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology, which echoes with the Chinese name of the red planet: Huoxing (the planet of fire).
Video/Graphic resources
A number of videos and a China Global Television Network (CGTN) graphic detail the Tianwen-1 Mars mission.
Go to:
https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/tianwen1-to-mars/index.html
Credit: Weibo wlr2678
China is ready to take the Mars plunge. The country’s Tianwen-1 orbiter is set to dispatch the Zhurong rover for a fiery entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet – a deployment window that opens May 15 and stretches to May 19, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The targeted touchdown area is a large plain on Mars known as Utopia Planitia.
Plowing through the thin Martian atmosphere, the lander will enter a hovering stage several hundred feet above the surface as onboard sensors, including a camera system, search for a safe touchdown zone.
Credit: China Aerospace Technology Corporation
Ancient fire god
Once down on Mars, the landing craft is to send out the nearly 530 pound (240 kilograms) Zhurong rover. It is named after an ancient fire god of Chinese mythology, built to wheel across the planet for at least 3 Martian months, roughly 92 days on Earth.
The Tianwen-1 mission is China’s first attempt at soft landing on Mars, aimed at achieving “orbiting, landing and roving” all in one mission. If successful, China’s lander/rover would join currently operating NASA Mars machinery, the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.
Credit: CCTV/Screengrab Inside Outer Space
Landing site
Tianwen-1 was launched on July 23, 2020 and entered Mars orbit on February 10, 2021. The landing window at Utopia Planitia opens from early morning May 15 until May 19, Beijing time.
The Tianwen-1 landing site region, in Utopia Planitia, is in an “extremely interesting area” and complements previous exploration of the margins of the northern lowlands at the NASA Viking-1 and NASA Pathfinder sites, explains James Head, of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
“It lies within the area thought to be part of potential ancient northern lowland oceans that may have existed in the Noachian and Late Hesperian, and lies topographically below the proposed ‘shorelines’ for both of these candidate oceans,” Head told Inside Outer Space.
This rocky panoramic scene is the second picture of the Martian surface that was taken by Viking Lander 2 shortly after touchdown on Sept. 3, 1976.
Credit: NASA/JPL
Astrobiological interest
The global-scale unit within which Tianwen-1 is targeted is the Vastitas Borealis Formation, Head added, a Late Hesperian-aged unit that is interpreted to be the sedimentary remnant of the ocean proposed to occupy the northern lowlands at that time.
“Thus it not only has extremely high geological interest — do the surface units look sedimentary, is there evidence of wave and water activity, is there any remaining water frozen as ice, etc. — but is also of very obvious astrobiological interest given possible fossils or evidence of biological activity,” Head explained.
China’s Mars rover. Credit: Zou Yongliao, et al.
In September 1976, NASA’s Viking-2 landed in the Utopia basin, in the northern part of the basin, near Mie Crater. At that location, Head noted that the U.S. Mars stationary lander found a wide diversity of features and rocks, including ice contraction crack polygons, frosts and drifts of snow.
“These results bode very well for the high scientific interest of the potential types of terrains that the Tianwen-1 mission will explore,” Head said. Most importantly, China will be able to go “over the horizon,” a very frustrating limitation of the stationary Viking-2 mission, he said.
https://youtu.be/viGy-KnG0mU
Artist’s view of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in space, up and operating tackling a full agenda of space science conquests.
Credit: Northrop Grumman
The U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) issued today a new report:
“James Webb Space Telescope: Project Nearing Completion, but Work to Resolve Challenges Continues”
The GAO report notes that the cost of the telescope has nearly doubled—to $9.7 billion—since 2009. Its launch, now planned for October 2021, has been delayed over 7 years – and may be delayed again due to less than fully nominal separation of the fairing on two recent Ariane 5 launches, SpaceNews reports. Europe’s Ariane 5 is the booster that will hurl the telescope into space.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the clean room at Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, California.
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Schedule reserves
“NASA is working to complete the telescope. Activities like strengthening the telescope’s sunshield took longer than expected, cutting into the project’s schedule reserves, i.e., the extra time NASA set aside to account for unforeseen problems. As a result, NASA has less reserve than planned to complete remaining activities,” the GAO report explains.
Credit: GAO/NASA
The James Web Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, deployable telescope – one of NASA’s most complex projects and top priorities. It is the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and is intended to help scientists better understand how galaxies and the universe have evolved and study planets in other solar systems.
Problems discovered during integration and testing caused multiple delays, the GAO report explains, that led NASA to replan the project in June 2018.
To read the newly issued GAO report, go to:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-406.pdf
A “highlights” fact sheet can be found here at:
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3116, March 12, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 3117 tasks.
Kristen Bennett, a planetary geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, reports that the robot is finishing up at a stop designed to investigate “diagenetic” features. Those are features that formed after the sediment first was deposited—such as veins and color variations within the bedrock.
A newly scripted plan has the rover full of remote science and contact science before the Mars machinery drives away to continue traveling towards the sulfate unit.
Diagenetic features are visible in this image taken by the Curiosity’s Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) on Sol 3115.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LAN
White vein
“Veins are abundant in this workspace,” Bennett explains, and the rover’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) was set to target a bright white vein near the rover that is called “Busserolles.”
The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument has a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) target on “Quinsac,” which APXS and MAHLI investigated earlier this week.
“ChemCam will also target the feature ‘Razac de Saussignac’ as a passive observation, Bennett adds. “Razac de Saussignac is a fresh rock face with interesting color variations that was broken by the wheel when Curiosity drove over it on the previous drive.”
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image acquired on Sol 3116, March 12, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Stability of rocks
The plan now in action also includes a Mastcam mosaic of “Belves” to investigate the stability of the rocks in the Mt. Mercou cliff face and a ChemCam long distance Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) to target potential bedding within the sulfate unit.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3116, March 12, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
After the drive, the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI), Bennett concludes, will take a twilight image and there will be several atmospheric observations including a dust devil survey and a cloud observation.
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.
Credit: Roscosmos
Russian space technicians are wrapping up testing of the long-delayed Nauka (Science) research module for the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
According to Roscosmos, ground pre-launch processing of Nauka is taking place at the assembly and testing facility of Site 254 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
This testing will be followed by the installation of the radiator panels and filling of the thermal control system circuits, as well as the final installation of the European robotic arm (ERA).
Credit: Roscosmos
Also slated is installation of solar array panels, stowage of deliverable cargos and weight check of the module, assembly of the ascent unit, loading the module tanks with propellant components, and final assembly of the integrated launch vehicle.
Cherry-picker crane
The European robotic arm will work with the new Russian airlock, to transfer small payloads directly from inside to outside the International Space Station. This will reduce the set-up time for astronauts on a spacewalk and allow ERA to work alongside astronauts.
Artist’s impression of Europe’s robotic arm, ERA.
Credit: ESA/D.Ducros
Another task for ERA is to transport astronauts like a cherry-picker crane to a position where they can work on the exterior of the ISS, or from one external location to another. This again saves time and effort during spacewalks.
The hardware is to be launched to ISS this summer,
Go to this Roscosmos Media video of Nauka testing at:
Pioneering astronaut, Michael Collins, Apollo 11 command module pilot.
Credits: NASA
Nearly 13,500 people have signed a petition to NASA to name the space agency’s Lunar Gateway the Collins Lunar Gateway – a legacy tribute to the late Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins.
Posted on Change.org, the petition explains:
“The Lunar Gateway will be a space station in orbit around the Moon that will provide staging for all future lunar astronauts in the Artemis Program. Before they descend to the surface of the Moon, they will all pass through the Gateway.”
NASA’s Lunar Gateway.
Credit: NASA/JSC
While Apollo 11’s Michael Collins did not descend to the surface, the petition adds, he remained alone in lunar orbit for nearly 21 and a half hours while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin visited the Moon’s surface. “He watched as his fellow astronauts descended onto the surface, just as many astronauts will do from the Gateway in the future,” notes the petition.
Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974
Carry the fire
The Collins legacy should be honored by NASA and the space community. “Those who seek to follow his path will be able to honor the legacy he left by living and passing through the Collins Lunar Gateway on the way to blaze their own trails and carry the fire,” the petition concludes.
To view the petition created on April 29, go to:
https://www.change.org/p/nasa-change-the-lunar-gateway-name-to-the-collins-lunar-gateway
Credit: Nicholas Pilch/U.S. Air Force
Here on Earth, the air, land, and sea are zones of conflict, clashes and combat. There is a growing perception that next up is the ocean of space, transformed into an arena for warfare.
There is ongoing chatter regarding military use of space by various nations. The freshly established U.S. Space Force, for instance, is busily shaping how best to protect U.S. and allied interests in the domain of space, a sector that is increasingly becoming congested, contested and competitive.
Credit: India Defense Research & Development Organization
What conditions could lead to clashes in space? Is such a situation a given – or can they be short-circuited ahead of time? Could nations “slip into” off-planet muscle-flexing, quarreling and actual war-fighting in space that might ignite a fuse that sparks confrontation here on terra firma?
Space.com contacted several leading military space and security experts, asking for their opinions on the current status of the militarization of space.
Go to my new Space.com article here:
“Is war in space inevitable?” at:
https://www.space.com/is-space-war-inevitable-anti-satellite-technoloy
Credit: ISS/NASA
The Springer publishing group is offering an informative free video seminar on the lunar economy.
Stella Tkatchova – a project manager in the European space industry — presents the fundamentals of an emerging lunar economy, including the opportunities and challenges of in-situ resources utilization (ISRU).
Credit: Springer
The author looks into the near future of 2035 and discusses topics like habitation and research on board the Lunar Orbital Platform- Gateway station and in the Moon Village, the collaboration of space agencies with private companies setting the basis for the creation of an emerging lunar economy.
Tkatchova covers the involvement of NewSpace companies in the search for lunar resources, energy supply for habitats and rockets, a robotic space cargo infrastructure, a lunar construction industry and space tourism.
Credit: Moon Village Association/XTEND Design
NewSpace companies
The author argues that NewSpace companies will need to discover, identify and develop emerging lunar space markets and attract Customers, while space agencies will have to define the direct and indirect economic benefits from Lunar exploration to secure political, strategic and financial support. She further argues that ISRU/Lunar exploitation, lunar telecommunications and in-orbit satellite servicing are markets worth exploring and concludes that NewSpace companies will need to discover, identify and develop emerging lunar space markets and attract Customers.
This multi-part video seminar is targeted at space engineers, space economists, planers and politicians working at the vision of an emerging lunar economy.
Go to this Springer link at:
