Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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March 28th, 2019
Credit: GAO
SPACE ACQUISITIONS: DOD Faces Significant Challenges as it Seeks to Accelerate Space Programs and Address Threat.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) many major Department of Defense (DOD) space programs exceed their budgets and are late. For instance, the cost of a satellite communications system has grown 117% and its first launch was delayed more than 3.5 years.
Today, as DOD is simultaneously undertaking major acquisitions to replenish missile warning, communications, navigation, and weather satellites, it faces:
Growing threats to satellites including cyber attacks and space debris
- Major proposed space leadership changes
- Funding and acquisition workforce challenges
For a look at this new GAO report, go to:
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The platform destined to land on the Red Planet as part of the next ExoMars mission being shipped to Europe for final assembly and testing.
Credit: Roscosmos
Europe’s ExoMars 2020 hardware is moving forward.
ExoMars is a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s Roscosmos, with landing on the Red Planet set for 2021.
Essential to the undertaking is the “Kazachok” landing platform of the ExoMars 2020 mission, manufactured and assembled at Russia’s NPO Lavochkin.
Kazachok means “little Cossack.”
Testing of the hardware is taking place at TASinI, an Italian company. TASinI will carry out work on the final assembly and testing of the landing module.
Unpacking the platform that is destined to land on the Red Planet as part of the next ExoMars mission in Turin, Italy.
Credit: Thales Alenia Space
Lightning discharges?
While the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover explores its surroundings at the landing site, Oxia Planum, a Czech-made electromagnetic wave analyzer on the Kazachok platform will scan for electromagnetic frequencies that are typical of lightning discharges.
A magnetometer named MAIGRET, developed by Russia will incorporate the Czech Republic’s Wave Analyzer Module (WAM).
ExoMars electromagnetic sensor (structural model). Credit: Institute of Scientific Instruments CAS, Brno, Czechia–I. Vlcek
Researchers want to investigate the existence of lightning discharges on Mars by measuring fluctuations in the electromagnetic field within the range of audible frequencies. Other observations have shown that lightning exists on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, but Mars is still unknown.
Artist’s impression of the ExoMars 2020 rover and Russia’s stationary surface platform in background.
Credit:
ESA/ATG medialab
Platform duties
In addition to listening for lightning, the platform will also study the climate, atmosphere, radiation, and the possible presence of subsurface water ice in the landing site and surrounding areas.
The ExoMars 2020 mission is the second stage of the largest joint project of the Roscosmos State Corporation and ESA for the study of the surface and the subsurface layer of Mars in close proximity to the landing site, conducting geological research and searching for traces of the possible existence of life on the planet.
Vice President Pence at the Fifth Meeting of the National Space Council, held March 26th in Huntsville, Alabama.
Screengrab: Inside Outer Space
“Just as the United States was the first nation to reach the Moon in the 20th Century, so too will be — we’d be the first nation to return astronauts to the Moon in the 21st century,” explained Vice President Pence at the Fifth Meeting of the National Space Council, held March 26th in Huntsville, Alabama.
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/USGS
Watchword: Urgency
“Urgency must be our watchword. Failure to achieve our goal to return an American astronaut to the Moon in the next five years is not an option,” Pence said.
Vice President Pence asked NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine to accelerate the agency’s lunar exploration plans during the National Space Council meeting.
Credit: NASA
In addition to targeting a human landing on the Moon in 2024, the council also discussed creating a new Moon to Mars Mission Directorate.
Resources
Go to these documents released by the White House:
President Donald J. Trump Is Boldly Putting Americans Back on the Moon
Issued on: March 26, 2019
Remarks by Vice President Pence at the Fifth Meeting of the National Space Council, Huntsville, Alabama
Issued on: March 26, 2019
Also, go to these National Space Council videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkoFuNWXg8&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxvFsqevSdw&feature=youtu.be
To read NASA Administrator Statement on Return to Moon in Next Five Years, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-return-to-moon-in-next-five-years
Curiosity Front Hazcam Left B image taken on Sol 2358, March 25, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just started performing Sol 2359 duties.
“At the start of Sol 2359, Curiosity found herself parked in front of some layered bedrock outcrops, a rarity in the rubbly landscapes that we’ve explored so far in the clay-bearing unit,” reports Vivian Sun, a planetary geologist at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“We were constrained by power in today’s plan, but managed to make use of every available minute for science,” Sun adds.
Curiosity Navcam Left B image acquired on Sol 2357, March 24, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Detailed texture
As part of routine documentation of the chemical and textural variations in this region, the rover’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) will be making observations of “Rutherglen” to measure composition and detailed texture.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 2357, March 24, 2019. MAHLI is located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) will also measure the composition of “Woodland Bay,” another bedrock exposure in the workspace.
Outcrop layering and structure
“We will also take a couple of Mastcam mosaics – one of the entire workspace to get a better look at the outcrop layering and structure, and to bring color to the tonal variations in the Navcam images,” Sun explains. Another Mastcam mosaic will be of “Goosander,” an aeolian bedform that also shows tonal variations.
Sun notes that discussions are underway where Curiosity will next drive.
Float rock – a meteroite? Curiosity Mastcam Left photo taken on Sol 2357, March 24, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Driving options
“One tempting option was to drive to a lone float rock,” Sun says. “We wondered what could this be – a meteorite, or a remnant of a higher, eroded unit?”
Float rock – lonely meteorite in the distance? Navcam Left B Sol 2357 March 24, 2019
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Another option was to drive to a nearby area that seems to contain subtle ridges.
“Given the prevalence of ridges and similar features in the clay-bearing unit, we decided that it was important to drive to the ridges and set ourselves up for contact science on these features,” Sun points out.
Curiosity Navcam Right B image acquired on Sol 2358, March 25, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Phobos transit
“From our future location, we will also have the opportunity to image that float rock as well as a nearby butte. To facilitate these future observations, we added a post-drive Mastcam workspace mosaic so that we will have color imagery to assist in targeting in the next plan,” Sun reports.
Finally, after a drive of approximately 98 feet (30 meters) to the small ridges, Curiosity will make observations of a Phobos transit and a Mastcam tau, followed by ChemCam Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS.
AEGIS observations are designed to autonomously shoot ChemCam targets after driving to a new location, Sun concludes.
Curiosity Mastcam Left photo taken on Sol 2357, March 24, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Devon Island offers training ground for future Mars expeditionary crews.
Credit: NASA/HMP
A new partnership has been struck between Google and the NASA Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) on Devon Island, in the High Arctic.
The HMP is a leading international Mars analog field research project centered on the Haughton meteorite impact crater site and surrounding terrain on Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada.
This new partnership “will allow us to share with the world some of the Mars-like wonders of the site and the fieldwork that we do” says Pascal Lee, planetary scientist with the Mars Institute and the SETI Institute, and director of the NASA HMP at NASA Ames Research Center.
Street-wise views!
In August 2018, a team from Google participated in the HMP’s 2018 summer field campaign as a new Education and Public Outreach partner on the project. The main objective for Google at HMP-2018 was to collect Street View imagery to allow Google Earth and Google Maps users to visit Devon Island virtually, and to create a Google Earth guided tour illustrating, via factual narrative, how Devon Island is so similar to Mars.
The Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) Research Station is home for field campaigns of international teams of scientists.
Credit: NASA HMP
Also, a 10-minute documentary titled “Mars On Earth: A Visit to Devon Island” was produced. The video, shot entirely in HD using Google’s latest Pixel 3 smartphone, shows a sampling of the research activities carried out at the HMP over a 10-day period.
Today’s announcement of the new partnership came via The Mars Institute and the SETI Institute. The NASA Haughton-Mars Project is supported by NASA under a Cooperative Agreement with the SETI Institute.
Resources
The Google documentary — Mars On Earth: A Visit to Devon Island – can be viewed at:
For a Google Earth Guided Tour, Mars on Earth, go to:
https://g.co/earth/devonisland
For Google Street View highlights, go to:
Link 1: Astronaut Canyon
Link 2: Haughton Crater at View Hill
Link 3: Haughton-Mars Project Base Camp
Link 4: Von Braun Planitia: An Ancient Lake Bed
Link 5: Haughton Crater at Breccia Cliffs
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO) camera system has pieced together this impressive farside photo projection.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
There’s a growing call to protect the Moon’s farside, to guard this unique real estate.
Future space planners “need to think ahead and preserve the precious space resources that still remain unpolluted by humankind,” explains Claudio Maccone of the International Academy of Astronautics and Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy.
“For this reason, we want to protect the lunar farside,” Maccone adds, “which is ideal for a future radio telescope or phased array detectors, from any human-made radio pollution.”
Protected Antipode Circle, is the circular piece of land proposed to be reserved for scientific purposes only on the farside of the Moon.
Credit: Claudio Maccone
Radio-noise-free environment
This week, an International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) symposium is being held in Paris on “Lunar Farside 2019.” Spearheaded by Maccone, he will outline twenty years of IAA studies to protect the Moon farside radio-noise-free environment.
The lunar farside is where radio transmissions and noises produced by humanity on Earth may not reach since the spherical body of the Moon blocks them, acting like a shield.
“Unfortunately, the undeclared but quite real ‘current, new race to the Moon’ complicates matters terribly,” Maccone says.
“All the spacefaring nations now keep their eyes on the Moon, and only the United Nations might have a sufficient authority to protect the farside and keep safe its unique ‘radio-noise-free’ environment,” Maccone says. “But time is money, and the ‘Moon Settlers’ may well reach the Moon before the United Nations come to agree about any official decision concerning the farside protection.”
Vision of the Moon’s farside with the Daedalus Crater base for RFI-free radio astronomy, Astrobiology and SETI science. Future International Space Stations might be located at both the L4 and L5 Earth-Moon Points in the decades to come. Only Point L2 will have to be kept free at all times.
Credit: Claudio Maccone
Real estate protection
Earlier this year, Maccone’s concerns and views were expressed in a paper — Moon Farside Protection, Moon Village and PAC (Protected Antipode Circle) – published in the January 2019 issues of the journal, Acta Astronautica.
The paper defines a Protected Antipode Circle (PAC), a circular piece of real estate on the Moon’s farside that measures roughly 1,130 miles (1,820 kilometers) in diameter. Also proposed is that the projected “Moon Village” espoused by the European Space Agency’s Director General, Jan Wörner, be located outside the PAC.
A PAC prevents interfering with detection of radiation coming from space. Also south of the PAC is “close” to the lunar South Pole and access to frozen water there. “It thus appears that the best venue for the ‘Moon Village’ would be on or around the 180 meridian and possibly quite close to the South Pole,” Maccone asserts.
This cone is the portion of space above the Farside of the Moon that will never be reached by these electromagnetic waves. Thus, it is appropriately called quiet cone, where “quiet” means “radio silent”.
Commercial wars
The paper proposes location of the first Radio Frequency Interference-free site in the crater Daedalus, the most shielded crater of all on the Moon’s farside from Earth-made radio pollution.
From that RFI-free site, astronomy, astrobiology and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) science can be carried out, Maccone explains.
Maccone also claims that the time will come when “commercial wars” among the big industrial trusts running the telecommunications business by satellites will lead them to grab more and more space around the Earth, pushing their satellites into orbits with apogee much higher than the geostationary one. Therefore a “safe” crater must be selected on the Farside along the Moon equator, he contends.
Proposal: to establish the first RFI-free base on the Moon just inside crater Daedalus, the most shielded crater of all on the Moon’s farside from Earth-made radio pollution.
Credit: NASA/Apollo 11 photo
Blinder and blinder
The mission of Maccone is to make individuals sensitive to the importance of protecting the central farside of the Moon “from any future wild, anti-scientific exploitation,” he says.
“The Farside of the Moon is a unique place for us in the whole universe: it is close to the Earth, but protected from the radio emissions that we ourselves are creating in an ever increasing amount and that is making our radio telescopes blinder and blinder.”
To view the paper — Moon Farside Protection, Moon Village and PAC (Protected Antipode Circle) – go to:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576517316478
Proposed cis-lunar Gateway.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Work is progressing on fleshing out designs and capabilities of a new habitable structure near the Moon, known as the Gateway.
International partners for the proposed cis-lunar Gateway.
Credit: ESA
Late last year, the European Space Agency (ESA) commissioned two consortia – one led by Airbus and the other by Thales Alenia Space – to undertake parallel studies into the design of a scientific airlock.
Similar to the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo on the International Space Station, this airlock will allow scientific experiments to be transferred from the Gateway to and from outer space.
A possible design for a scientific airlock that could form part of Europe’s ESPRIT module on the Gateway is lowered into a test pool by members of an Airbus-led consortium in Marseilles, France.
Credit: ESA
Underwater mockup
The scientific airlock forms one part of a European module called ESPRIT – a module that will also enable refuelling and provide telecommunications with the Moon and Earth.
Underwater testing of a concept for the scientific airlock which will form part of Europe’s ESPRIT module for the Gateway – a new habitable outpost near the Moon.
Credit: Arnauld Probst
Designed and constructed by French company Comex for Airbus, the mockup of ESPRIT’s interior was recently tested underwater to simulate the weightlessness of space. The underwater appraisal was meant to confirm a preliminary inner design and identify the best place to put handrails to ensure optimal stability of the crew as they carry out payload handling and airlock operations.
At this stage both companies will be asked to present their concepts and costings for consideration ahead of ESA’s next Ministerial Council in November.
The Lockheed Martin Habitat Ground Test Article (HGTA) Lunar habitat prototype is designed to accommodate a variety of missions around the Moon.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Prototype cislunar habitat
Meanwhile, under a public-private partnership as a part of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Phase II study contract, Lockheed Martin has completed the initial ground prototype for a cislunar habitat.
The full-scale prototype, or Habitat Ground Test Article, is built inside of a repurposed shuttle-era cargo container, called a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, at Kennedy Space Center.
Lockheed Martin will soon transition the prototype to the NASA NextSTEP team for assessment.
Inside look at prototype cis-lunar Gateway.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Astronaut feedback
During the upcoming week of March 25, a team of NASA astronauts will live and work inside the prototype, evaluating the layout and providing feedback. The NASA test team will also validate the overall design and will be able to evaluate the standards and common interfaces, like the International Docking System Standard, and how to apply those systems for long-term missions based at the Lunar Gateway.
Once NASA testing has completed, Lockheed Martin will continue to optimize and study the prototype to prepare for other lunar efforts, according to a company press statement.
Curiosity Front Hazcam Right B image acquired on Sol 2355, March 22, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2356 science tasks.
Meanwhile, a new Curiosity traverse map has been issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, showing the robot’s mobility through Sol 2354 (March 22).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Numbering of the dots along the line indicate the sol number of each drive. North is up. The scale bar is 1 kilometer (~0.62 mile).
From Sol 2352 to Sol 2354, Curiosity had driven a straight line distance of about 78.32 feet (23.87 meters), bringing the rover’s total odometry for the mission to 12.62 miles (20.32 kilometers).
The rover landed on Mars in August 2012.
The base image from the map is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera (HiRISE) in NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Curiosity Navcam Right B image taken on Sol 2355, March 22, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity Navcam Right B image taken on Sol 2355, March 22, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity Navcam Left B image acquired on Sol 2355, March 22, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image shows exceptionally bright meteor that exploded over the Bering Sea on Dec. 18, 2018. The shadow of the meteor’s trail through Earth’s atmosphere can be seen, imaged by an instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL-Caltech, MISR Team
A December 2018 fireball that zipped through the Earth’s atmosphere exploded about 16 miles (26 kilometers) high above the Bering Sea, unleashing an estimated 173 kilotons of energy. That’s a significant happening.
This incoming object was captured by a NASA satellite. Two NASA instruments aboard the multi-national Terra scientific research satellite spotted the fireball fly-in a few minutes after the event.
Cloud top trail
Images show the shadow of the meteor’s trail through Earth’s atmosphere, cast on the cloud tops and elongated by the low sun angle to the northwest. The orange-tinted cloud that the fireball left behind stems from super-heating the air as the meteor passed through.
According to NASA experts, the December 18 fireball was the most powerful meteor to be observed since 2013; however, given its altitude and the remote area over which it occurred, the object posed no threat to anyone on the ground.
Wake-up call: The 2013 incoming space rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Credit: Alex Alishevskikh
City destruction
“Although the fireball was the second largest impact on Earth recorded in the last century, it still was too small to cause any significant damage, fortunately,” said Andrew Cheng of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
The Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 that detonated over Russia was not much larger (about 20 meters) but damaged thousands of buildings and injured over 1,000 people.
“But an impactor only 100 meters across, if an asteroid that large were to hit a populated area, would be a disaster. Such an impact could destroy an entire city and its surrounding area,” Cheng told Inside Outer Space.
Artist concept of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. DART, which is moving to preliminary design phase, would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL
Kinetic impact
Cheng is working on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), and offers some planetary defense counsel.
“So these fireball events are wake-up calls, and NASA has responded. NASA has approved its first planetary defense mission, which is DART. This mission will demonstrate the kinetic impact technique for deflecting an asteroid, by hitting it with a spacecraft to change its orbit,” Cheng explains.
DART will perform the kinetic impact demonstration at the 525-feet (160-meters) moon of the binary asteroid Didymos in late September-early October, 2022.
NASA is imminently going to announce the launch vehicle selection for DART.
For more information on this event, go to my new Scientific American story at:
Huge Meteor Explosion a Wake-Up Call for Planetary Defense – Detonating over the Bering Sea
Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover. Images of each other taken by the respective machinery.
Credit: CNAS/CLEP
The super-camera system on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) continues to monitor the whereabouts and wanderings of China’s Yutu-2 rover on the Moon’s farside.
The Chang’e 4 rover, Yutu-2, moved between February 1, 2019 and February 28, 2019. The upper left panel shows the landing site before Chang’e-4 set down and the image in upper right panel has the best resolution of the lander and rover taken so far. The lower left image was taken six hours later with a slew angle of 40°. The most recent view in the lower right shows that Yutu-2 traversed 150 feet (46 meters) to the west during the month of February.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Over the next few months, the Sun will rise higher and higher over the landing site when LRO is overhead, providing the opportunity to obtain images with no shadows, according to Mark Robinson, principal investigator of LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system — three cameras mounted on the LRO that capture high resolution photos of the lunar surface.
Blast zone
Those upcoming images will be particularly useful for mapping differences in brightness (albedo), Robinson notes, and researchers should get the first real look at the “blast zone”- the region that was brightened around the Chang’e-4 lander as rocket exhaust interacted with the regolith, as seen around all other landing sites.
The tracks of the rover should also be visible in the coming months, allowing researchers to follow Yutu-2’s exact path along the floor of Von Kármán crater during its exploration of the lunar farside, Robinson explains.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Credit: NASA/Goddard Science Visualization Studio (SVS)
China’s Chang’e-4 mission landed in Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin on January 3, 2019.
Westward progress
LRO passes over any given place on the Moon at least once every month (in the daylight), allowing the westward progress of the Yutu-2 rover to be seen.
Image of Mons Tai, a hill near “Statio Tianhe”, the landing site of China’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe.
Credit: CNSA
Robinson explains that, at the end of February, Yutu-2 was 226 feet (69 meters) from its home base, the Chang’e-4 lander; LROC images show Yutu-2 made 150 feet (46 meters) of westward progress during the month of February.
Each month when LRO images the landing site, now called Statio Tianhe, the lighting changes, providing a different view of the surface.
During times near dawn or dusk, Robinson says, long shadows enhance topography and closer to noon differences in surface brightness are more apparent. In the latest image from February 28, the Sun is near the horizon and the lander and rover each cast long shadows.
