Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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April 13th, 2020
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just started Sol 2733 operations.
Following a drive away from the Edinburgh drill site last Wednesday, Curiosity has a brand-new parking spot for this weekend’s science activities, reports Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sand ripples
“The drive put us right in front of a nice patch of sand ripples,” Kronyak notes. “We’ll devote several of our weekend activities to investigating targets around this little patch of sand.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The robot had s a “soliday” this past weekend, which occurs every few weeks to allow the Earth and Mars schedules to sync back up. “That means our weekend plan is only two sols instead of the three,” Kronyak adds.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Science block
On the first sol of that weekend plan, Sol 2731, there was a hefty 2-hour science block during which Curiosity was slated to perform a suite of Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam), Mastcam, and Navcam observations.
The plan called for use of the ChemCam laser to probe targets “The Borders,” “Dryhope,” and “Chalifornia.”
“The Borders and Chalifornia are bedrock targets, and, as the name suggests, Dryhope is a soil target,” Kronyak explains. The plan called for using the Mastcam to take documentation images of the ChemCam targets as well as an additional large mosaic to document the stratigraphy of the Greenheugh pediment as the rover continues to drive down the pediment.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
To finish out the science block, Navcam and Mastcam were to search for dust devils and monitor the atmosphere. In the afternoon and overnight, the robot was scheduled to perform contact science (including the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instruments) on the “Auld Reekie” soil target.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2732, April 13, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Inspecting rover wheels
On the second sol, Sol 2732, the plan entailed Curiosity to wake up first thing in the morning to perform some additional atmospheric observations, including Mastcam tau and crater rim extinction images as well as a Navcam line-of-sight image and cloud-monitoring movies.
After those observations, a series of MAHLI images of Curiosity’s wheels were called for, before getting back on the road to continue the drive down off the Greenheugh pediment. Following that drive, the plan had the rover taking standard post-drive images, Kronyak reports.
HUGE Mastcam100 panoramic taken on Sol 2700.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Damia Bouic
Posted in 
Illustration of the capsule waverider in glide orientation. Courtesy: P. Rodi/Rice University
A new capsule/waverider concept could be useful in delivering cargo to Mars.
This new waverider concept is part space capsule, part hypersonic glider that’s capable of surviving a fiery return from outer space before gliding like a surfer on its own shock wave.
While the Red Planet’s atmosphere is thin, spacecraft need heat shields to survive entry. This heating, the planet’s rock-strewn surface and the communications lag between Earth and Mars combine to make landings on Mars tricky.
Mars needs cargo!
Credit: NASA
“That’s a real problem for NASA,” explains Patrick Rodi of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering. “This concept would allow you to come in as a capsule, flip over to a waverider, glide around, look things over, find your landing spot and then either drop off equipment with parachutes, glide in and skid across the Martian surface, or pitch up and land on the vehicle’s tail. It gives you a lot of options,” he explained in a university statement.
Boost-glide
During his 23-year career at Lockheed Martin, Rodi worked on advanced programs at the famed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, and on the Orion space capsule program in Houston.
“This is my sixth new class of waverider vehicles, and it’s what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which is a big deal in hypersonics these days,” Rodi points out.
In its boost orientation, the capsule waverider has the blunt shape reminiscent of a traditional space capsule heat shields. Courtesy: P. Rodi/Rice University
“Other vehicles have shock waves,” Rodi says. “But the shock waves are separated from the vehicle, and high-pressure leaks around that little gap between the shock wave and the body itself.” The waverider design stops the high-pressure air from leaking away.
“You’re expending energy to compress the air, and now you’re using that high-pressure air as efficiently as possible,” Rodi adds. “You’re not losing that lift. You’re capturing it by shaping the geometry, riding the wave. And it’s very efficient. That’s the big thing about waveriders. The lift-to-drag ratio is really high, which correlates linearly with gliding distance, or range, the metric you’re looking for.”
Balancing demands
“When it first enters the atmosphere, it punches pretty deep, and it gets really, really hot,” Rodi notes.
“There’s high-pressure loading, high heating. For re-entry you want something that can survive that high heating. Basically, you want a vehicle that kind of looks like a traditional space capsule. As a glider, you want something that’s very efficient, with a high lift-to-drag ratio.”
Rodi says that his capsule waverider class balances those demands. On one side, it has the rounded, blunt shape reminiscent of a traditional space capsule heat shield. On the opposite side, it is a wing-shaped waverider glider.
The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey by Matthew Shindell, The University of Chicago Press; December 2019; Hardback; 248 pages, $27.50.
This impressive biography is a well-researched and enjoyable read – a wonderful account of Harold Urey’s pioneering work, including his contributions in cosmochemistry and lunar science.
The author offers an intriguing look at Urey’s scientific contributions, but also insight into the scientist’s struggles with faith and tangles with political forces in America.
Within the book’s seven chapters, the author explores Urey’s maturation from farm boy to wartime chemist, followed by his Nobel Laureate status to a “Manhattan Project burnout.”
For all you space-based readers, you’ll find a marvelous account of Urey’s cosmic encounter coming to grips with the formation and evolution of the solar system. The chapter — “To Hell with the Moon!” – is a thoroughly absorbing story of the scientist’s move into planetary science and his early modeling of the Moon and solar system development.
The scientist was not a fan of NASA when it was established in 1958. Nor was he interested in planting human footprints on the Moon. “Urey’s lack of enthusiasm may have stemmed at least partially from the fact that the majority of the scientists and administrators who made up the new NASA were either atmospheric scientists, military personnel, or engineers,” Shindell writes. Still, Urey later became an important and early voice in putting forward a scientific agenda for lunar exploration.
Harold C. Urey
Credit: Energy.gov
Why the relationship with NASA turned sour, I’m not going to elaborate here, but the author offers impeccable detail and quotes a telling passage from Urey, written in 1976 that the Moon was quite a disappointment and explaining that the Moon seems to be an “incidental object of some kind with no theory for its origin that is generally accepted.”
The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey is a thumbs-up tome. The epilogue wraps up the Nobel Prize winner’s life in science, followed by a great set of notes, list of archives, oral history interviews, and bibliography.
Urey died in early January 1981.
On a personal note, decades ago, I bumped into Harold Urey while digging into a substantial cache of Ranger and Surveyor lunar documents held in the library stacks at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, California. He was a professor at large at UCSD and I treasure that moment of conversation with that grand man.
For more information on The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey, go to:
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo43987910.html
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2729 tasks.
“Many of us on Earth are being especially diligent lately about washing our hands for at least 20 seconds after touching a new surface,” reports Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“On Mars, Curiosity is used to doing something a little bit similar, but for a very different reason: to prevent cross-contamination between samples taken at different locations,” Guzewich explains.
Of course, the lack of water and soap prevents the rover from “washing,” but scientists, still have to make sure the rover’s instruments stay as clean as possible after touching a new surface.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Arm retraction
During last Monday’s plan, the rover’s arm was placed over the drill tailings from the Edinburgh drill hole to study them with the robot’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).
In a recent plan, the call is to retract the arm from that position and stow it so Curiosity can drive away.
“During that process, we swing the turret back-and-forth to shake off and remove any bits of sand or dust that may have been clinging to APXS so when we next use it, APXS only measures materials at the new location and nothing that came with us from Edinburgh,” Guzewich adds.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI photo taken on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Inside wall
After the robot’s arm is stowed, the plan calls for the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) to target the inside wall of the drill hole as well as take a long-distance mosaic of Gediz Vallis and the Greenheugh Pediment.
“Then we’ll conduct a short drive to a nearby patch of soil that we hope to study over the weekend,” Guzewich explains.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI photo taken on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
On the second sol of the plan, a ChemCam Autonomous Exploration for Gathering of Increased Science (AEGIS) software activity is slated (where ChemCam picks its own targets!), as is a search for dust devils and monitoring the dust levels in the atmosphere.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image taken on Sol 2728, April 9, 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Upcoming is the equinox on Mars and spring begins for the southern hemisphere, Guzewich notes. “This is also when the dust storm season (generally the second half of the martian year) begins. Last Mars year (2018), we had a global dust storm and will be carefully watching to see if another develops this year!”
Credit: NIAC
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has unleashed a new volley of creative concepts, selecting study efforts that receive Phase I, Phase II and Phase III funding.
A number of the just announced NIAC-funded initiatives focus on Moon exploration objectives.
NIAC’s role is to nurture visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs — radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts — while engaging America’s innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey.
NIAC is under the wing of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, or STMD for short.
Courtesy: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay/JPL
Lunar radio telescope
An ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope on the farside of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes, suggests Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Courtesy: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay/JPL
The proposal is to deploy a one kilometer diameter wire-mesh antenna in a three to five kilometer diameter farside lunar crater. To do so, wall climbing DuAxel robots would deploy the antenna.
Called the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), the radio telescope would be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System! “LCRT could enable tremendous scientific discoveries in the field of cosmology” Bandyopadhyay explains, in frequencies that have not previously been explored by humans.
Courtesy: Matthew Kuhns/Masten Space Systems
Instant landing pads
A technique to create instant landing pads for future NASA Artemis lunar missions was selected by NIAC, a proposal from Matthew Kuhns of Masten Space Systems.
The engine plume or multi-engine plumes from large lunar landers may pose a range of risks, from high-velocity ejecta abrasion damaging the lander to ejecta damaging other lunar landers or orbital assets, or even creating a crater under the lander as deep as the columnated engine plume, Kuhns explains.
Courtesy: Matthew Kuhns/Masten Space Systems
“The Masten in-Flight Alumina Spray Technique (FAST) Landing Pad changes the approach to landing on planetary bodies by mitigating the landing plume effects by creating a landing pad under the lander as it descends onto a surface,” Kuhns adds. “This approach uses engineered particles injected into the rocket plume to build up a coating over the regolith at the landing location.”
The FAST concept enhances overall lunar access and access to other planetary surfaces, including Mars, Kuhns explains in his proposal, where loose regolith characteristics pose critical mission risks.
Courtesy: Philip Metzger/University of Central Florida
Lunar water extraction
A new method to extract lunar water is tagged as Aqua Factorem. This ultra-low-energy lunar water extraction idea is proposed by Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida.
This proposal takes advantage of the processing that the unique lunar geology has already performed, Metzger says.
“Micrometeoroid bombardment has already broken most solid material in the upper part of the regolith into fine grains. This includes solid material of all compositions, including the ice, which is as hard as granite at PSR [permanently shadowed region] temperatures and is therefore essentially another type of rock,” Metzger reports. “These ice grains are intermixed with all the other minerals, so a simple, ultra-low-energy grain-sorting process can extract the ice without phase change.”
The ice can then be hauled to a chemical processing unit in solid phase and converted into rocket propellant.
The Aqua Factorem idea is eyeing the mining of propellants commercially for space tugs that boost commercial communication satellites from Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) to Geostationary Orbit (GEO) then return to the lunar surface for refueling.
“The study will also test the innovative Aqua Factorem process through laboratory experiments, and this will produce basic insights into the handling of lunar resources,” Metzger says.
Harrison (Jack) Schmitt collecting a sample at Station 5 (Camelot
Crater) during the second extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the
Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.
Credit: NASA
Weight off the back
Another NIAC-supported, lunar assisting idea is the offloading of astronauts for more effective exploration making use of a “BioBot.” This is an autonomous robotic system to handle life support umbilicals on planetary surfaces in the vicinity of obstacles and snag hazards.
The BioBot system concept from David Akin, University of Maryland, College Park, consists of a robotic rover which is capable of traversing the same terrain as a spacesuited human. It carries the primary life support system for the astronaut, including consumables, atmosphere revitalization systems (e.g., carbon dioxide scrubbing, humidity and temperature management, ventilation fan), power system (e.g., battery, power management and distribution), and thermal control system (e.g., water sublimator, cooling water pump), along with umbilical lines to connect to the supported astronaut via the autonomous umbilical handling system.
Courtesy: David Akin, University of Maryland, College Park
“No parameter in the design of spacesuits for planetary exploration is more important than ‘weight on the back’- the weight of the suit system which must be supported by the wearer under the gravity of the Moon or Mars,” Akin explains. “The added weight of the spacesuit garment and portable life support system (PLSS) drives the required exertion level of the wearer, and ultimately sets limitations on EVA duration, distance traveled on foot, and productivity of the exploration mission,” he says in advocating the BioBot system.
Courtesy: Joel Sercel, Trans Astronautica Corporation
Sun flowers, dynamic mining
A Lunar Polar Mining Outpost (LPMO) architecture has been detailed by Joel Sercel of Trans Astronautica Corporation. LPMO promises to greatly reduce the cost of human exploration and industrialization of the Moon.
“LPMO is based on two patent pending inventions that together solve the problem of affordable lunar polar ice mining for propellant production,” Sercel points out.
Sun Flower is a deployable, lightweight reflecting tower that provides nearly continuous solar power into areas where likely ice-rich regolith resides in perpetual darkness. The second enabling innovation is Radiant Gas Dynamic mining to solve the problem of economically and reliably prospecting and extracting large quantities (1,000s of tons per year) of volatile materials from lunar regolith using landed packages of just a few tons each.
Sercel also notes that a large lander — such as the Blue Moon vehicle proposed by Blue Origin — can sit on mineable ice at ground level in perpetual sunlight provided by lightweight reflectors. A single Blue Origin New Glenn launch can deliver a Sun Flower with over one megawatt of solar arrays, tower, and reflector in an integrated package.
Overall, Sercel says his NIAC-funded work “promises to vastly reduce the cost of establishing and maintaining a sizable lunar polar outpost that can serve first as a field station for NASA astronauts exploring the Moon, and then as the beachhead for American lunar industrialization, starting with fulfilling commercial plans for a lunar hotel for tourists.”
For more information on the entire suite of NIAC 2020 awards, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_I_Phase_II/
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2727, April 8, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2728 tasks.
Reports Kristen Bennett, a planetary geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona: In the last weekend plan the remainder of the “Edinburgh” drill sample was dumped, “which means that we are almost finished with activities in this drill location.”
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2727, April 8, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A recent two-sol plan was filled with activities to characterize the dump pile and drill hole as well as remote sensing observations.
Dump pile imagery
The rover’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) attempted to document the new dump pile in the weekend plan, “but that observation was offset from the intended target because we did not know exactly where the dump pile would be,” Bennett notes.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2727, April 8, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Now that we have images of the dump pile, we know its specific location and APXS will redo that measurement,” Bennett says. “Additionally, APXS will observe the drill hole tailings.”
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2727, April 8, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The robot’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) will be used to document the dump pile and the drill hole tailings. In this plan MAHLI will also take nighttime images of the drill hole walls and of the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) inlet to make sure all the sample made it through the inlet.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI photo taken on Sol 2726, April 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Spectacular view
For remote sensing, ChemCam will take a Remote Micro Imager (RMI) telescope observation looking towards Gediz Vallis.
“From our current location on the “Greenheugh” pediment we have a spectacular view looking up towards Mount Sharp and “Gediz Vallis,” so this observation is part of a series of ChemCam RMIs documenting areas that will be obscured once we descend off the pediment. ChemCam will also target the Edinburgh drill hole and tailings in this plan,” Bennett adds.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI photo taken on Sol 2726, April 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Hilltop mosaic
Curiosity’s Mastcam will be retaking a portion of the “Hilltop” mosaic, Bennett explains. “The instrument’s arm ended up “waving at us” in the original mosaic…which is fun (Hi, Curiosity!), but we decided to retake those frames so we can see the bedrock that the arm obscured.”
“We will also be finishing up a Navcam/Mastcam photometry experiment in this plan. The goal of this experiment is to model how light scatters off the surface,” Bennett continues. “While Curiosity has been sitting here at the Edinburgh drill site, Navcam and Mastcam have been taking images of the same locations at multiple times of day to learn how light scatters from the surface at different sun angles. The final Navcam images were taken in this plan.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 2727, April 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Changes in ripples
Finally, there will be several change detection observations to constrain the amount of wind activity in this area.
The first observation is with Mastcam of a nearby ripple field to search for any changes in the ripples,” Bennett reports. The second is with the rover’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) “because this instrument has been staring at the same patch of ground underneath the rover so if anything moved because of the wind or drill activities, MARDI is ready to observe the evidence.”
In completing activities at the Edinburgh drill site, Mars scientists soon expect to drive away from the rover’s current location.
The Andromeda Strain – the 1971 movie, but how real for a 21st century return to Earth of Mars samples?
Credit: Universal Pictures
Shipment back to Earth by robotic means of bits and pieces from Mars remains an expensive and daunting task. Having our planet on the receiving end of Mars collectibles is deemed a “low risk” affair in terms of ecological and public safety – but that risk is not zero.
Rocketing Martian flotsam could well mean dealing with biological “hot property,” not to mention sparking heated oratory and public anxiety about creepy-crawlies from Mars chomping away at Earth’s biosphere.
High-magnification and replication. Creepy-crawler snagged in outer space and brought back to Earth in movie, Andromeda Strain.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Sci-fi, real-time?
In many ways, hauling back the goods from the Red Planet resonates in some quarters as a replay of novelist Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, transformed into a 1971 sci-fi film that dramatized the idea of alien organisms infecting the Earth.
Overview of the NASA/European Space Agency Mars Sample Return mission as now foreseen.
Credit: ESA/K. Oldenburg
Does the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hold some clues for how to handle samples brought back to Earth from Mars, a place that could potentially host extraterrestrial microbes?
For more information, go to my new Space.com story:
Could Mars samples brought to Earth pose a threat to our planet? What the coronavirus (and ‘Andromeda Strain’) can teach us – The coronavirus pandemic reinforces that it’s best to be prepared.
https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-threat-earth-coronavirus-andromeda-strain.html
Unabashed plug: My National Geographic book – Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet – details ethical exploration of the Red Planet, including sample return and terraforming that world.
It can be found here:
https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Our-Future-Red-Planet/dp/1426217587
The proposed Protected Antipode Circle, a circular piece of lunar landscape to be reserved for scientific purposes on the farside of the Moon.
Credit: Claudio Maccone
There is pressing need to protect the Moon’s farside, to keep pristine this unique real estate for scientific activities.
FARSIDE project is a proposed low radio frequency interferometric array on the farside of the Moon that could work in concert with NASA’s Gateway initiative.
Courtesy: Jack Burns, University of Colorado, Boulder
Nonetheless, the quickening pace of lunar exploration by multiple nations and the up swell of entrepreneurial space groups eager to seek lunar lucre could well interfere and overtake this viewpoint.
An International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Symposium on Moon Farside Negotiations was held via teleconference on March 25.
Spearheading the meeting was Claudio Maccone of the IAA and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy.
For more information, go to my new article at Scientific American:
Astronomers Battle Space Explorers for Access to Moon’s Far Side
Without protection from radio interference, a giant observatory on the moon’s hidden hemisphere could prove unworkable
Go to:
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2724, April 5, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just begun Sol 2727 operations.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2725, April 6, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo acquired on Sol 2724, April 5, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Curiosity is still at the Edinburgh drill site as part of a mini campaign to sample the Greenheugh pediment,” reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
“We’re finishing drill-related analyses and activities, and the three-sol weekend plan is focused on dumping sample from the drill bit assembly and documenting the dump pile and drill tailings,” Edgar explains.
Extra data points
There was a “busy but fun day” of remote operations. The plan includes Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) observation of the Edinburgh drill hole to get some extra data points to characterize the drill site, as well as the “Calders Sandstone” bedrock target, and Mastcam documentation.
Curiosity image of Mars moon Phobos, part of a Mastcam Phobos video. Mast Camera photo taken on Sol 2723, April 4, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Edgar adds that Curiosity is to dump the sample and document the pile with Mastcam and the robot’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), followed by the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS).
Curiosity Mast Camera image taken on Sol 2725, April 6, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Twilight viewing
Also within the planning, Edgar points out, is having the rover pause to take in the view at twilight – including a Navcam image of the horizon in which Earth and Venus should be visible! That’s followed by an overnight APXS integration on the dump pile.
ChemCam is on tap to take long distance a Remote Micro Imager (RMI) telescope mosaic of the pediment capping unit to assess the stratigraphy and sedimentary structures exposed on the flank of Gediz Vallis.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera image taken on Sol 2726, April 7, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI Sol 2725 April 6, 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI Sol 2725 April 6, 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera RMI Sol 2725 April 6, 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Curiosity Mast Camera image taken on Sol 2725, April 6, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Additional ChemCam RMI mosaics are also tap, followed by a Mastcam multispectral observation of the dump pile, and Mastcam documentation of some interesting dark layers in the mound stratigraphy.
Atmospheric activity
“Throughout the plan there are also a number of the Mastcam and Navcam observations to complete a photometry experiment. The rover will also continue to monitor atmospheric activity with a Navcam line of sight observation, dust devil survey, and Mastcam tau observation, and a whole suite of activities early on the morning of Sol 2727,” Edgar adds.
“While everyone is staying safe at home,” Edgar concludes, “it’s especially nice to hear so many voices from our team members and to look forward to exciting new data from Mars!”
Credit: NASA
U.S. President Donald J. Trump is encouraging international support for the recovery and use of space resources, signing an Executive Order that directs the Secretary of State to lead a U.S. Government effort to develop joint statements, bilateral agreements, and multilateral instruments with like-minded foreign states to “enable safe and sustainable operations for the commercial recovery and use of space resources, and to object to any attempt to treat the 1979 Moon Agreement as expressing customary international law.”
Moon base design.
Credit: ESA/P. Carril
Nevertheless, in seeking international support, the United States may draw on legal precedents and examples from other domains to promote the recovery and use of space resources.
According to a White House fact sheet, “American industry and the industries of like-minded countries will benefit from the establishment of stable international practices by which private citizens, companies and the economy will benefit from expanding the economic sphere of human activity beyond the Earth.”
Credit: NASA
Moon agreement
The April 6 Executive Order spotlights the “The Moon Agreement”:
“The United States is not a party to the Moon Agreement. Further, the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies,” the Executive Order notes.
“Accordingly, the Secretary of State shall object to any attempt by any other state or international organization to treat the Moon Agreement as reflecting or otherwise expressing customary international law.”
For more information, go to:
and
Warning: Shameless Plug
For a detailed discussion regarding the 1972 Moon Treaty, pros and cons, please read my latest book – Moon Rush – The New Space Race, published last year by National Geographic.
For copies, go to:
https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Rush-New-Space-Race/dp/1426220057
