Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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March 24th, 2021
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image showing recent drill hole taken on Sol 3067, March 23, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 3068 tasks.
“Curiosity is still parked in front of the magnificent ‘Mont Mercou’ cliff face as we continue to work through analyses of the ‘Nontron’ drill site,” reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo acquired on Sol 3066, March 22, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Last weekend, the robot dropped off more sample to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite, followed by a planned SAM evolved gas analysis (EGA) in addition to other remote sensing activities.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo acquired on Sol 3066, March 22, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Rim shot
A recent one sol plan starts with several environmental monitoring activities, including a Navcam line of sight observation and Mastcam image of the crater rim to characterize the dust content in the atmosphere.
Then the rover’s Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) was on tap for several instrument calibration activities, followed by Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) mosaics of “Jayac” and “Journiac” to assess variations in laminae and diagenetic features exposed in the Mont Mercou cliff face, Edgar explains.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo acquired on Sol 3067, March 23, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Spectacular stratification
Curiosity’s Mastcam was also scripted to take a super resolution mosaic “with the intent to increase the level of detail that we can see in an image by using slightly offset camera pointings,” Edgar adds.
Curiosity image of Mont Mercou cliff face taken by Right Navigation Camera, Sol 3065, March 21, 2021
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We hope these observations will help us interpret the spectacular stratification seen” [in the Mont Mercou cliff face.] “Feeling inspired and humbled as Curiosity explores this beautiful outcrop!
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Chang’e-4 farside lander and Yutu-2 rover.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP
China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander and rover have been on the farside of the Moon for more than 800 Earth days. The mission landed on the Moon on January 3, 2019.
According to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), both have been switched to dormant (sleep) mode after working stably for a 28th lunar day. A lunar day and the super-cold night each equals about 14 days on Earth.
The lander was switched to dormant mode at 2 a.m. Sunday (Beijing Time), and the rover, Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2), at 5:09 p.m. Saturday, said the center.
Chang’e-4 landing site.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP
The rover has traveled over 2,237.5 feet (682.77 meters) since its deployment on the lunar surface, within a crater called Von Kármán.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP
Landing site study
According to a Xinhua news story, researchers have made a series of scientific discoveries, including the mineral composition, topographic and geological evolution history of the landing site.
“Researchers from the Aerospace Information Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the spectral characteristics of the rocks in the rover’s inspection area and inferred that the rocks probably originated from the Finsen impact crater,” Xinhua added.
Finsen is a lunar impact crater. Image taken by LROC imaging system aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU
Finsen is a relatively young lunar impact crater on the Moon’s farside. Ejecta from Finsen covers the southeastern part of Leibnitz’s interior floor. To the southwest of Finsen is another walled plain, Von Kármán, partly overlain by Leibnitz.
Starlink satellites.
Credit: SpaceX
The gaggle of SpaceX Starlink satellites circling the Earth stirs up the idea of installing planetary megastructures around our planet and the detection of that constellation of spacecraft by extraterrestrials as a “technosignature.”
A technosignature is a marker indicating that a particular technology is/was used by a particular society.
“Such a huge number of satellites, distributed over almost the whole surface of the Earth might be considered as the first prototype of a possible megastructure around the Earth, which in principal might be visible from the cosmos.”
That’s the view behind a new paper written by Zaza Osmanov of the Free University of Tbilisi in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Credit: Bill Schoening, Vanessa Harvey/REU program/NOAO/AURA/NSF
Alien lookout
One has to note that the SpaceX Starlink satellites use radio communication, Osmanov notes in the research paper. Similarly, perhaps this Earth-circling network underscores the ability to look for technosignatures of alien civilizations.
A reasonable question to ask is whether it’s possible to detect ET radio signals by means of China’s now-operating Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in southwest China’s Guizhou Province?
Faraway construction, Osmanov adds, would be visible in the infrared spectrum, which might be detectable by Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) instruments up to the distance of 260 light years, with roughly 103 Solar-type stars.
Osmanov concludes that extrapolating the idea that SpaceX’s Starlink constellation as a planetary megastructure is viable. “It has been found that for reasonable parameters FAST can detect such radio sources from relatively large distances.”
To read the paper — “From the SpaceX Starlink megaconstellation to the search for Type-I civilizations” – go to:
War and Peace in Outer Space Law, Policy, and Ethics, Edited by Cassandra Steer and Matthew Hersch; Oxford University Press; 334 Pages; January 2021; Hardcover: $99.00.
This impressive and highly readable book pulls together essays from a cavalcade of creative thinkers to take on not only space security and military prowess, but also the ethical, legal and illegal issues regarding the weaponization of outer space.
The co-editors are Cassandra Steer, a lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) College of Law, specializing in space law and space security and Matthew Hersch, an associate professor of the History of Science at Harvard University specializing in the history of aerospace technology.
Hersch and Steer divide this volume into four parts: The Law of War and Peace in Space; The Ethics of Space Security; Current and Future Threats to Space Security; and (last but not least) Toward Stability. This book is part of the Oxford Series in Ethics, National Security, and the Rule of Law.
The essays are written by informed specialists, including independent legal and policy experts, a senior scientist, researchers and writers, professors – and a philosopher for good measure! All in all, this is a well-crafted book on military uses of outer that taps space interdisciplinary expertise, not only from the United States, but Canada and Europe.
“The reader should find plenty of content to stimulate inquiry, gain understanding, challenge personal preconceptions, test the ideas of others, and sharpen their own thinking on the subject matter,” explains now U.S. Space Force General, David Thompson in the book’s foreword. Indeed, the reader will find this statement solidly delivered via the various essays.
As Steer and Hersch note/warn in the introduction, yet another “critical moment” has arrived, due to a “discernible shift” in international rhetoric toward a more offensive approach to defense in space.
“A central theme in all of the chapters is that the best way to avoid capricious use of the space environment in wartime is to create an explicit set of norms in peacetime, recognizing that shared use, rather than dominance, is the preferred outcome for all spacefaring nations,” Hersch and Steer explain.
That said…this book also serves as a moving yardstick of where humankind now finds itself in the evolving use of outer space for military purposes. How we gauge actions of today with the reality of where spacefaring nations will find themselves a decade from now is a troublesome TBD.
For more information on this book, go to:
Also, go to this virtual book launch event staged by the Secure World Foundation, a “War and Peace in Outer Space” roundtable on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 6pm eastern time. Register for this free virtual meeting at:
https://swfound.org/events/2021/roundtable-on-war-and-peace-in-outer-space
“Spaceships are dangerous things. There are no intentions implied to suggest otherwise,” writes Brian Binnie in his engrossing book, The Magic and Menace of SpaceShipOne.
On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne was released from its White Knight mothership, and with Binnie at the controls, he made the second suborbital flight in one week’s time to snag the $10 million Ansari X Prize flight purse. That pioneering passage of space and time marked a new era of commercial space flight.
SpaceShipOne, with Brian Binnie at the controls, flew the second suborbital flight in one week’s time in 2004 to capture the $10 million Ansari X Prize flight purse.
Courtesy Brian Binnie/Mike Mills
I recently talked with Binnie about his forty years of what he tags as “wrestling with recalcitrant machinery” – flying vehicles that are doing their best to be lethal, but proving to be useful training.
Go to my new Space.com story at:
“Test pilot Brian Binnie recounts his historic flight on SpaceShipOne and the future of private space travel in new book” via Space.com:
https://www.space.com/spaceshipone-test-pilot-brian-binnie-book-interview
GIMBAL/“Tic Tac”
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Those Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAPs) are “difficult to explain” says former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, discussing the matter on a Fox News interview late last week.
“Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public. Some of those have been declassified,” Ratcliffe said. “When we talk about sightings, we’re talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.”
Keep an eye on the prospect that a government-assembled task force on UAPs is to issue their report perhaps in early June.
Meanwhile, go to my earlier story at:
“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Experts Weigh in on New Government Task Force”
Also, go to this Newsweek story, “More ‘Difficult to Explain’ UFO Sightings to Be Declassified, Says Former Trump Intel Chief” at:
https://www.newsweek.com/former-dni-more-ufo-sightings-declassified-unexplained-1577595
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B photo taken on Sol 3063, March 19, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 3063 tasks.
Reports Melissa Rice, a planetary geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, it’s all about getting the right lighting for accentuating the small-scale textures of “Mont Mercou.”
The Curiosity team is planning to photograph the cliff face right before sunset on sol 3063, Rice notes, when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky. “We hope this new Mastcam mosaic will bring out even more detail.”
Inspection of cliff structure. Mast Camera image taken on Sol 3061, March 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Rice explains that geology photographers want to see all of the bumps, lines, divots and wrinkles, as those features tell the story of how a rock was formed and altered.
The evening photoshoot using the robot’s Mastcan is one part of a two-sol plan (Sols 3062-3063).
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo acquired on Sol 3062, March 18, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Mini-Mercou
The main event is the second analysis of the ‘Nontron’ drill sample by Curiosity’s Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin), “to refine what we’re learning about the mineralogy of the rocks at the base of Mont Mercou,” Rice adds. “We’ll look some more at Mont Mercou and other regions earlier in the day with Mastcam, and will watch for clouds in the sky at twilight.”
Planning also called for using the robot’s Chemistry and Camera’s (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI), Rice points out, to image a butte called “mini-Mercou” to the east, which is a re-shoot of some previous images that were slightly out of focus.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right images taken on Sol 3062 March 18, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Nontron drill hole taken by Curiosity Mast Camera Right on Sol 3056, March 12, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Nontron drill sample
What happens next weekend and beyond depends on what the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite data reveal about the Nontron drill sample, “and whether the team decides to perform more analyses with SAM before getting ready to drive onwards and upwards into the sulfate-bearing units of Mt. Sharp,” Rice reports.
In an earlier report, Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at The Open University, wondered whether there is nontronite in the Nontron drill hole?
Nontronite is the iron (III) rich member of the smectite group of clay minerals.
“If there is, there will be water released from the sample in characteristic patterns – and with that I mean at specific temperatures while the sample is being heated gradually from its ambient temperature to about 900°C,” Schwenzer stated.
Credit: CASC
The orbiter of China’s Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission has been maneuvered into a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point 1 (L1). It has become China’s first spacecraft in that orbit with an orbital cycle taking about six months.
Chang’e-5’s orbiter/returner craft, following delivery to Earth of return sample capsule, is on extended mission.
Credit: CNSA
Guided into place by the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), the L1 point lies between the Sun and Earth. At this point, the force of gravity is roughly equal in all directions, so it’s easier for spacecraft to maintain a relatively stable operating state with less fuel required, explains China Central Television (CCTV).
The Chang’e-5 orbiter separated from the lunar sample returner craft on December 17, 2020. It then entered a long-term management stage on December 21.
It carried out two orbital maneuvers and two midway corrections under BACC control before reaching the L1 point.
SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch vehicle.
Credit: SpaceX
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released a “Scoping Summary Report” focused on an environmental assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch vehicle.
SpaceX proposes to conduct Starship/Super Heavy launch operations from the Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas. SpaceX is currently developing the new rocket, with the goal of traveling to Mars.
Mars settlement.
Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX must apply for and obtain an experimental permit(s) and/or a vehicle operator license from the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation to operate the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle. The FAA’s evaluation of a permit or license application includes a review of 1) public safety issues (such as overflight of populated areas and payload contents); 2) national security or foreign policy concerns; 3) insurance requirements for the launch operator; and 4) potential environmental impact.
Starship test flight.
Credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
SpaceX currently holds a license for testing Starship prototypes at the launch site. This involves static fire engine tests and a series of suborbital launches (“hops”) from just a few inches to up to 18 miles off the ground.
To read the report, go to:
https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/
Credit: NASA
The answer: nowhere. According to new research from Caltech and JPL, a significant portion of Mars’s water—between 30 and 99 percent—is trapped within minerals in the planet’s crust. The research challenges the current theory that the Red Planet’s water escaped into space.
