Spaceflight – Page 19 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Space Sunday: Hawaii on Mars and deluge systems

Posted on July 30, 2023 by Inara Pey

Olympus Mons is one of the many reasons I have an abiding fascination with Mars. Located to the northwest of the Tharsis Montes (Tharsis Mountains), a chain of super volcanoes marching across the planet’s northern hemisphere, Olympus Mons is the largest of all the volcanoes so far discovered in the solar system and boasts some incredible statistics.

For example, it rises a huge 26 km above the surrounding plains, or 21.9 km above datum for the planet, marking it as being around twice the height on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea as it rises from the sea bed. It is over 600km, covering an area almost the size of Poland. The volcano’s peak comprises a series of nested caldera craters which all speak to a violent volcanic past, and which at their widest measure some 60 km x 80 km and are up to 3.2 km deep.

So broad is the volcano that its slopes would not be at all mountain-like, but rather a continuous incline rising for the most part at an angle of just 5% from the horizontal; outside of the base escarpment that is. The latter, running around the volcano forms a near-continuous set of cliffs rising up to 8 km from the plains on which it sits.

Precisely how Olympus Mons formed has been open to some debate. While it and the three volcanoes of the Tharsis Montes – Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons (all of which are as impressive as Olympus Mons, if each somewhat smaller) – formed in the same period of Mars’ early history some 3.7 to 3 billion years ago, Olympus Mons is potentially the eldest. Now a team led by Anthony Hildenbrand of Université Paris-Saclay in France believe they can show that a major contributing factor in the formation of Olympus Mons was water.

Using data from a range of missions in orbit around Mars, the team has carried out an extensive comparative study between Olympus Mons and volcanic island chains such as the Azores, the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian islands. In doing so, they have found evidence which strongly supports the idea of the escarpment around Olympus Mons were laid over thousands of years through the interaction of lava from the volcano and a surround ocean.

That an ocean once existing in the northern lowland of Mars – called the Vastitas Borealis – has long been known. However, given the elevation at which Olympus Mons sits, it had long been assumed it was above this ancient ocean. However, in their work, Hildenbrand’s team suggest Olympus Mons actually grew out of the ocean, rising through successive eruptions in much the same way as, say, Mauna Kea, until it broke the surface of the sea, and the interaction of the hot lava and cold water giving rise to the escarpment as the volcano contained to rise.

In support of this, the team found evidence that the flanks of Alba Mons, another huge, but much flatter – a mere 6.8 km in elevation – volcano further north along the edge of Vastitas Borealis and much older than Olympus Mons, suffered a series of violent tsunamis. These were likely the result of the violence of the eruptions which raised Olympus Mons.

If Hildenbrand’s team are correct in piecing their evidence together, it could help explain one of the many mysterious of Mars. The edge of Vastitas Borealis has two shorelines differing substantially in elevation. Until this study, it had been widely accepted that the two shorelines were the result of two different oceans having once occupied the lowlands. The first, much higher (and older) shoreline marked a time very early on in Mars’ history when Vastitas Borealis was home to a broad, deep ocean which, due to climatic changes was almost completely lost.

Then, as volcanism again took hold, warming the planet again a few hundred million years later, a new, much shallower sea formed within Vastitas Borealis, evening rise to the younger shoreline at the lower elevation. However, this idea has always had its problems; in particular, it seems unlikely a vast, globe-circling ocean would form, and then almost complete recede, only to return again, even during Mars’ somewhat cyclical warm, wet period of history.

*Olympus Mons: a flash colour image intended to present it as volcanic island in the middle of a vanished Martian ocean. Credit: A.Hildenbrand / Geops / CNRS*

Instead, Hildenbrand’s work suggests that both shorelines belonged to the same ocean, one which was continuously present on Mars for perhaps close to a billion years. What changes was that in that period, the massive volcanic activity that gave rise to first Alba Mons and then to Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Montes and Tharsis Bulge, pushed up the overall elevation of the northwest quadrant of the planet to a far greater extent than thought.

Again, if this theory is correct, and Mars likely had a single, continuous northern ocean directly interacting with the volcanic activity in the region, it would have had a significant impact on the development of the planet’s climate and environment, including the development of any life which may have also developed.

The volcanic shorelines proposed in our paper may be an unambiguous witness for past sea level, where research for traces of early life (organic matter) could be targeted. More generally speaking, knowing where and when past Martian oceans may have been has significant implications for climatic models, because this would give decisive constraints on the initial amount of stable liquid water, the physical conditions for the persistence of a stable atmosphere, until when magmatic degassing associated with major planet activity may have occurred.

– Anthony Hildenbrand

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Space Sunday: a 20-year Mars Express

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Inara Pey

*A farewell to Earth: an image of our Earth and her Moon, captured by ESA’s Mars Express mission as it heads towards Mars, June 2003. Credit: ESA*

When discussing the robotic exploration of Mars, the focus tends to be on the current NASA missions: the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity and the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance and its flight-capable companion, Ingenuity. This is because of all the active Mars missions, these are the most visually exciting. But it does mean the other missions still operating around Mars – a total of 8, including China’s Tainwen-1 orbiter and Zhurong rover and UAE’s Hope mission – tend to get overlooked.

One of those that tends to get overlooked is actually the second longest running of the current batch, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, the orbital component of a 2-part mission using the same name. This recently celebrated the 20^th anniversary of its launch (June 2^nd, 2003) and will reach the 20^th anniversary of its arrival in its operational orbit around Mars on December 25^th, 2023.

The mission’s title – “Mars Express” – was selected for a two-fold reason. The first was the sheer speed with which the mission was designed and brought together as a successor to the orbital component of the failed Russian Mars 96 mission, for which a number of European Space Agency member nations had supplied science instruments, using an ESA-designed satellite unit (based on the Rosetta mission vehicle).

An artist’s impression of Mars Express passing over Mars in its extended elliptical orbit. The two long booms extending fore-and0aft from the vehicle are part of the MARSIS sounding radar designed to locate frozen bodies of water beneath the planet’s surface. Credit: ESA

The second was the fact that 2003 marked a particularly “close” approach of Earth and Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, allowing the journey time from one to the other to be at the shorter end of a scale which sees optimal Earth-Mars transit times vary between (approx.) 180-270 days. In fact, Earth and Mars were at the time the “closest” they have been in 60,000 years, hence why NASA also chose that year to launch the twin Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission featuring the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

Taken as a whole, the Mars Express mission is perhaps more noted for its one aspect that “failed”: the British-built Beagle 2 lander (named for the ship that carried Charles Darwin on his famous voyage). This was a late addition to the mission, and the brainchild of the late Professor Colin Pillinger (whom I had the esteemed honour to know ); given it was effectively a “bolt on” to an established ESA mission, it was subject to extremely tight mass constraints (which tended to change as the Mars Express orbiter evolved). These constraints led to a remarkable vehicle, just a metre across and 12 cm high when folded and massing just 33 kg, yet carrying a considerable science package capable of searching for evidence of past or present microbial life on Mars.

Sadly, following its separation from Mars Express on December 19^th, 2003, ahead of both vehicles entering orbit around the planet and a successful passage through the upper reaches of Mars’ atmosphere, Beagle 2 never made contact following its planned arrival on the planet’s surface. For two months following the landing, repeated attempts to make contact with it were made before it was finally officially declared lost. While multiple theories were put forward as to what had happened, it wasn’t until 12 years later, in 2016 – and a year after Collin Pillinger had sadly passed away – that evidence was obtained for what appeared to have happened.

The late Professor Colin Pillinger pictured with a full-scale model of the Beagle 2 lander in its deployed mode, showing the four solar array “petals” unfolded from the vehicles “cover” to expose the communications antenna, the the power and science instruments – including the little’s landers robot arm and “PAW” – the Payload Adjustable Workbench – designed to study the rocks around the lander and obtain samples of rock and soil for on-board analysis. Credit: Getty Images

Using a technique called super-resolution restoration (SRR) on images obtained by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015 and which appeared to show the lander intact on the surface of Mars, experts were able to enhance them to a point where they appeared to show it had in fact managed to land safely on Mars and had partially deployed its solar arrays.

The significance here is that due to its mass and size constraints, Beagle 2 was of a unique design, resembling an oversized pocket-watch and its cover. The “watch” contained the science and battery power systems, and the “cover” the communications system and flat antenna, with four round solar arrays stacked on top of it.

Following landing, Beagle 2 was supposed to fold back its “lid”, and then deploy the four arrays like petals around a flower. This would allow the arrays to recharge the lander’s batteries so it could operate for at least a Martian year, and expose the communications antenna. However, after enhancement using SRR, the NASA images appeared to show only two of the solar array petals had actually deployed; the other two remaining in their “stowed” position, blocking the lander’s communications antenna and denying it with a sufficient means to recharge its batteries.

Left: the MRO image of the Beagle 2 landing site captured in 2015 showing the lander, what appears to be its parachute and its backshield. Centre: an enlargement of the orbiter using traditional processing enhancements, including the use of false colour to try to increase the available detail. Right: the SRR work, appearing to show the lander with 2 (of 4) solar arrays deployed. Credit: NASA / ESA

However, there is one further element of intrigue: because it was known initial communications with Earth might be delayed – Beagle 2 was reliant on either Mars Express itself to be above the horizon post-deployment, or failing that NASA’s venerable Mars Odyssey orbiter – the lander was programmed to go into an automated science-gathering mode following landing. As the science instruments were quite possibly able to function, some of them might actually have deployed, allowing data to be recorded Solid State Mass Memory (SSMM) – data which might still be available for collection were the lander to ever be recovered by a human mission to Mars.

The mystery over the lack of contact with Beagle 2, coupled with the arrival of NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity on Mars at the start of 2004 combined to mean that Mars Express received very little attention following its arrival in its science orbit on December 25^th, 2003 – and apart from occasional reporting on its findings, this has continued to be the case for the last 20 years.

The 82 km wide Korolev crater located in the northern lowlands of Mars, home to a body of water ice 1.8 km deep and up to 60 km across. This image was created from a series captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on Mars Express, and has a resolution of roughly 21 metres per pixel. Credit: ESA / DLR

Which is a shame, because in the time, Mars Express has carried out a remarkable amount of work and has been responsible for some of the most remarkable images of Mars seen from orbit. 0For example, and just as a very abbreviated list intended to outlines the diversity of the orbiter’s work, within two months of its arrival around Mars, it was able to confirm the South Polar icecap is 15% water ice (the rest being frozen CO2).

In April and June 0f 2003, the vehicle confirmed both methane and ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere; two important finds, as both break down rapidly in Mars’ atmosphere, as so required either a geological or biological source of renewal.

Pareidolia at work: the Cydonia mesa said to be carved into a “human face” following the Viking missions of the 1970s, as seen by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2007 – left) and Mars Global Surveyor (2001- right), compared to the Viking image which gave birth to the myth of the “face”. Credit for all images: NASA

In 2006, the orbiter put another nail in the coffin of the “ancient Martians” theories which abounded following the the Viking missions in the 1970s. In one set of images of the Cydonia region of Mars taken by the orbiter vehicles, there was a was a mesa which, thanks to the fall of sunlight, and the angle at which the image was taken, appeared to give it the appearance of a “face”. This quickly spiralled into ideas the 2 km long mesa had been intentionally carved as a “message” to us, together with claims of pyramids and the ruins of a city close by.

All of this was the result of pareidolia rather than any work by ancient Martians – as evidenced by much higher resolutions of the mesa taken by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter in 2001, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007 (above). Mars Express further demonstrated the effects of pareidolia in an image of Cydonia captured in 2006, which showed both the “face” mesa, and – around 50 km to the west – another which looks like a skull. While the latter mesa is also visible in some of the Viking era images, it is no way resembles a skull; the resemblance on the Mars Express image again being the result of natural influences – the fall of light, etc., – coupled with the human brain’s propensity to impose recognisable form and meaning to shapes where none actually exists.

*A 2006 image of the Cydonia region, captured by Mars Express, demonstrating the* pareidolia effect associated with the so-called “face”. Arrowed in blue is the mesa supposedly carved into the form of a “face” in a similar manner to how it was “seen” by Viking in 1976, together with a “skull” mesa close by (some 50 km away), which looked nothing like at skull when reviewed in the Viking images. Credit: ESA

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Space Sunday: the Moon, money and the universe

Posted on July 16, 2023August 6, 2023 by Inara Pey

*A GSLV variant of India’s LVM-3 expendable medium-lift launch vehicle carrying the Chandrayaan-3 mission lifts off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on July 14th, 2023. Credit: ISRO/You Tube*

India has finally launched its third lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-3, after a series of delays pushed it back from a November 2020 target to August 2022 (thanks largely to the COVID pandemic), and then back to July 2023. Part of an ambitious programme initiated by the Indian Space Research Organisation to join in international efforts to explore the Moon (under the umbrella name of Chandrayaan – “Moon Craft” – initiated in 2003), the mission is also the result of an earlier failure within the Chandrayaan programme.

The first mission – Chandrayaan-1 – delivered a small orbiter to the Moon in 2008. It scored an immediate success for ISRO, when a lunar penetrator fired into the Moon’s surface by the orbiter confirmed the existence of water molecules trapped within the lunar sub-surface, whilst the orbiter did much to profile the nature of the Moon’s almost non-existent atmosphere.

In 2019, ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2, comprising an orbiter, a lander (Vikram, named after cosmic ray scientist Vikram Sarabhai, regarded as the founder of India’s space programme), and a small rover called Pragyan (“Wisdom”).

*An artist’s impression of the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter studying the lunar surface. Credit: ISRO*

The orbiter is currently approaching the end of its fourth year of continuous lunar operations out of a planned 7.5-year primary mission. However, following a successful separation from the orbiter in September 2019, the Vikram lander deviated from its intended trajectory starting at 2.1 km altitude, eventually crashing onto the Moon’s surface, destroying itself and the rover, apparently the result of a software glitch.

Originally, that mission was to have been followed in 2025 by Chandrayaan-3, part of a joint mission with Japan and referred to as the Lunar Polar Exploration Mission. However, following the loss of the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover – both of which were also testbeds for technologies to be used in 2025 -, ISRO decided to re-designate that project internally as Chandrayaan-4, and announce a new Chandrayaan-3 mission to replicate the lander / rover element of Chandrayaan-2 mission.

*The Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander mounted on its propulsion module during acoustic testing by ISRO. Credit: ISRO*

The revised Chandrayaan-3 mission lifted-off Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 09:05 UTC on July 14^th, entering an elliptical orbit around Earth with a perigee of 173km and apogee of 41,762km. Over the next couple of weeks, the mission’s power and propulsion module will use 5 close approaches to Earth to further extend its orbit’s apogee further and further from Earth until it can slip into a trans-lunar injection flight and move to an initial extended orbit around the Moon around August 5th.

After this, the orbit will be reduced and circularised to just 100km above the Moon’s surface at this point, around August 23^rd or 24^th, 2023, the lander – also called Vikram, this time meaning “valour” – will separate from the propulsion module and attempt a soft landing within the Moon’s south polar region.

*From Earth to the Moon: the three-phase flight of Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon. Credit: ISRO*

If successful, rover and lander will then commence a 15-day mission – the length of time sunlight will be available to power them before the onset of a month-long lunar night. The lander will conduct its work using three science instruments, and the 6-wheeled rover using two science payloads. These will be used to probe the composition of the lunar surface and attempt to detect the presence of water ice in the lunar soil and also examine the evolution of the Moon’s atmosphere. Communications with Earth will be maintained by both the orbiting propulsion module and the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. If, for any reason, a landing on August 23^rd or 24^th cannot be achieved, the lander and rover will remain mated to the propulsion module through until mid-September, when the Sun will again deliver light (and power) to the landing area, allowing the landing attempt to be made.

How Old is the Universe?

It’s long been assumed that the universe is around 14 billion years old – or 13.7, according to a 2021 study using the Lambda-CDM concordance model. However, such estimates fail to account the likes of HD 140283, the so-called “Methuselah star”, which also estimated to be between 13.7 and 12 billion years old – as old as the universe itself, which in theory it should be a good deal younger.

This oddity has been further compounded by the James Webb Space Telescope locating numerous galaxies which appear to have reached full maturity – in cosmic terms – within 300 million years of the birth of the universe, rather than taking the billions evidenced by the vast majority of the galaxies we can see – including our own.

In an attempt to try to reconcile these oddities with our understanding of the age of the universe, a team led by Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa, has sought to develop an alternate model for the age of the universe – and appear to have revealed it could be twice its believed age.

They did this by combining a long-standing (and in-and-out of favour) theory called “tired light” with tweaked versions of certain long-established constants. “Tired light” suggests light spontaneously loses energy over time, and as it travels across the cosmos over billion years, it naturally red-shifts and so gives a false suggestion of cosmic expansion. It’s an idea which fell out of favour when other evidence confirmed cosmic expansion, but has regained so popularity since JWST started its observations; however, it doesn’t work on its own, so the researchers turned to various constants deemed to by immutable in terms of the state of the universe – the speed of light, the charge of an electron, and the gravitational constant.

By tweaking these, in a manner that is possible given our understanding of the universe, Gupta and his team found that it is possible to model a universe that appears younger than it actually is – in their estimation, 26.7 billion years of age. However, there is a problem with the idea: when you start tweaking known constants which cannot be proven to have changed, and it is potentially possible to come up with any model to fit an assumption. Ergo, the research cannot be seen as in any way definitive.

To counter this, Gupta points out there are a couple of hypothetical constants we use to account for the universe appearing and acting as it does – dark matter and dark energy. As I’ve noted previously, the latter is believed to be in part responsible for the expansion for the universe, and thus its age. However, its influence is currently hypothetical, and thus also subject to potential revision as such, the study suggests that if in influence of dark energy is found to be different to what is generally believed, it might yet indicate that the universe is a good deal older than is generally accepted.

Time will tell on this, but with ESA’s recently-launched Euclid mission is attempting to seek and characterise and potentially quantify both dark matter and dark energy, an answer might be coming sooner rather than later.

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Space Sunday: saying adieu to Ariane 5 and recalling Hermes

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Inara Pey

*V-261: the final launch of Ariane 5, July 5th, 2023, as it lifts two communications satellites to orbit from Europe’s Spaceport, Kourou in French Guiana. Credit: Arianespace.*

It is perhaps the unsung hero of space launch capabilities. Whilst the media focuses on its darling Falcon 9 – a vehicle which, to be sure, is innovative, successful and highly flexible -, or reflects on Russia’s veritable (if sometimes troublesome) Soyuz family, Europe’s Ariane 5 has quietly gone about the business of lifting payloads to various orbits and a deep space missions for 28 years, barely coming to prominence in the news, unless in exceptional circumstances. Such as on the occasion of its final flight, as has been the case this past week. This is a shame, because the Ariane 5 project has been remarkably successful.

First flown in 1996 as the latest iteration of the Ariane family, the rocket’s history goes back to the 1970s, when an Anglo-French-German project was established to develop a new commercial launch vehicle for Western Europe. Christened “Ariane” – the French spelling of the mythological character Ariadne – the project became largely French-driven but within the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA). The latter charged Airbus Defence and Space with the development of all Ariane vehicles and all related testing facilities, whilst CNES, the French national space agency, spun-up a commercial operation called Arianespace – in which they retain around a 32.5% stake – to handle production, operations, marketing and launches of the Ariane family, the latter being made out of Europe’s Spaceport, aka the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in French Guiana.

Arianespace was the world’s first commercial launch provider, initially offering customer launches atop the evolving family of Ariane vehicles, commencing with Ariane 1 in 1979. Then, from 2003 through 2019, then partnership with Russia to provide medium-lift launch capabilities utilising the Soyuz-ST payload carrier under the Arianespace Soyuz programme, becoming the only facility to operate Soyuz vehicles outside of Russia (until the latter’s invasion of Ukraine brought the partnership to an end). In 2012, Arianespace further supplement its range of capabilities by adding the Italian-led Vega small payloads vehicle to their launch vehicle catalogue.

*The Ariane launch vehicle family – an infographic released be Arianespace to mark the final launch of an Ariane 5. Credit: Arianespace*

Ariane 5 was first launched in June 1996 in what was called the G(eneric) variant, capable of lifting 16 tonnes to low Earth orbit (LEO) or up to 6.95 tonnes to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). Over the coming years, it iterated through four evolutions – G+, GS, ECA, and ES – each bringing about a range of performance and other improvements which raised the vehicle’s maximum lift capabilities to 21 tonnes of payload to LEO and 10.86 tonnes to GTO whilst also allowing Arianespace to lower launch fees to customers. In addition – and while it was never used in such a capacity – Ariane 5 is the only member of the Ariane family to be designed for crewed launches, in part being designed to carry the Hermes space plane to orbit (of which more below).

In all, Ariane 5 flew a total of 117 launches from 1996 onwards, suffering three partial and two complete failures to deliver payloads as intended, with an maximum launch cadence of 7 per year. Notable among these launches are:

December 10^th, 1999: the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton). Itself an oft-overlooked mission when compared to NASA’s Great Observatories programme, XMM-Newton was one of the four “cornerstone” missions of the Horizon 2000 chapter of ESA’s science missions.

Named for English physicist and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton, the spacecraft comprises 3 X-ray telescopes feeding a range of science instruments and imaging systems. Its primary mission is the study of interstellar X-ray sources in both narrow- and broad-range spectroscopy, and performing the first simultaneous imaging of objects in both X-ray and optical (visible + ultraviolet) wavelengths. The programme was initially funded for two years, but its most recent mission extension will see it funded through until the end of 2026 – with the potential (vehicle conditions allowing) – for it to be extended up to the launch of its “replacement” mission, the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), due to commence operations in 2035/6. As of May 2018, XMM had generated more than 5,600 research papers.

March 2^nd 2004: Rosetta. Another Horizon 2000 “cornerstone” mission, Rosetta spent 10 years using the inner solar system to allow it to rendezvous with the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko – the first space vehicle to enter orbit around a comet following its arrival on August 6^th, 2014.

For two years, the vehicle revealed an enormous amount about the comet, although it was perhaps overshadowed in the public consciousness by the adventures of the little Philae lander Rosetta dispatched to the surface of the comet, and which captured hearts and minds with its struggles.

November 12th, 2009, ESA’s Rosetta, launched via Ariane 5, approaches Earth for a final flyby before heading out into deep space for its rendezvous with comet. P67//Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA

May 14^th, 2009: Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Observatory. These two ground-breaking missions were delivered to the Erath-Sun Lagrange L₂ position (yes, the one also used by the James Webb Space Telescope – JWST -, and the one the Euclid mission will utilise where it arrives in an extended halo orbit around it in August 2023). Whilst separate missions, both spacecraft were launched on the same Ariane 5 booster and each utilised a service module built to a common design.

Initially planned for a 15-month primary mission, Planck – named for German physicist Max Planck – ran for just under 4.5 years, concluding in 2013 after on-board supplies of liquid helium were exhausted, and the primary instruments could longer be cooled to their required operating temperatures. As fuel remained for the craft’s manoeuvring thrusters, Planck was ordered to move away from the L₂position and into a heliocentric orbit, where its systems were decommissioned and the vehicle shut down.

The Herschel Space Observatory, meanwhile, operated for just over 4 years, and was the largest infrared telescope ever launched until the James Webb Space Telescope. It was yet another “cornerstone” mission for Horizon 2000, and was named for Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of the infrared spectrum. Its primary objectives comprised investigating clues for the formation of galaxies in the early universe, the nature of molecular chemistry across the universe, the interaction of star formation with the interstellar medium and, closer to home, the chemical composition of atmospheres and surfaces of planets, moons and comets within our solar system. In this regard, the observatory amassed more the 25,000 hours of science data used by 600 different science programmes.

October 20^th, 2018: BepiColumbo. Undertaken by ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), BepiColumbo is the overall mission title given to two vehicles and their transfer bus, all launched as a “stack” via Ariane 5, in a mission to carry out a comprehensive study Mercury, the innermost planet of the solar system. It is named after Italian scientist and mathematician Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo.

Despite its orbit being relative close to Earth (when compared to the outer planets of the solar system that is), Mercury’s is one of the most technically complex to reach. “Bepi” Columbo calculated a vehicle could use a solar orbit and multiple fly-bys of the inner planets to reach Mercury in an energy-efficient manner – and it is this style of approach the mission is using to reach its destination. It has already completed five gravity assist manoeuvres (1 around Earth in 2020, two around Venus in 2020 and 2021 and 2 around Mercury in 2021 and 2022). A further fiver fly-bys of Mercury will occur in 2024/25 to bring the mission to its primary science orbit around the planet at the end of 2025.

An image captured by BepiColumbo on June 23rd, 2022 as the spacecraft flew past Mercury at a distance of 1,406km on its second major flyby of the mission. Between early 2024 and late 2025, the vehicle will use several more flybys to bounce itself int an extended orbit around Mercury and then into its primary science orbit. Credit: ESA / JAXA

At that time the vehicles will separate, the transfer bus, called the Mercury Transfer Module being discarded to allow the 1.1 tonne ESA-built Mercury Planetary Orbited (MPO) to commence what is expected to be at least one terrestrial year of operations studying the planet. During the initial phase of this mission, MPO will in turn deploy the Japanese-built Mio vehicle into its own orbit around Mercury, where it is also expected to operate for at least a terrestrial year.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: saying adieu to Ariane 5 and recalling Hermes” →

Space Sunday: launches and landings

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Inara Pey

*Shenzhou 16 lifts-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, May 30th, 2023. Credit: CGTN*

Rotating crews to / from a space station is so routine here in the west that the comings and going of crews at the International Space Station (ISS) rarely gain much of a mention unless something extraordinary happens, or they happen to be entirely privately-funded, as with the Axiom Space Ax-2 mission (of which more below).

Not so for the Chinese, however, who are still adjusting to life with an orbital outpost that is meant to remain under permanent occupation and also provide a stepping stone towards the Moon. What’s more, they are gradually become more public about things as they continue to rake up successes.

Following the completion of “construction” of the major elements of the Tiangong space station with the docking of the second science module in November 2022, the Shenzhou 15 crew, comprising taikonauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu have been at work commissioning the module and carrying out further work in preparing the station for full-time operations, building on the work of the Shenzhou 14 crew, as well as performing a full science programme.

Chinese astronauts Gui Haichao (left), Zhu Yangzhu (center) and Jing Haipeng of the Shenzhou 16 space mission attend a see-off ceremony at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on May 30, 2023 in Jiuquan, Gansu Province of China. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

On May 30^th, they were joined by the crew of Shenzhou 16, who performed a “fast burn” flight to rendezvous and dock with Tiangong just seven hours after their launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert. This crew has garnered a lot of attention both nationally and internationally, as it includes China’s first non-military tiakonaut to fly in space: professor Gui Haichao, an aerospace researcher who has studied and taught in China and Canada.

The entire launch was covered live on Chinese national television, as was the rendezvous and docking, summarised for new broadcasts and viewing in the west in videos like the one below.

Gui is joined on the mission by commander Major General Jing Haipeng of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), and rookie taikonaut Colonel Zhu Yangzhu of the People’s Liberation Army. Scheduled for a duration of 180 days, the mission will see Jing become China’s most experienced taikonaut, with four missions under his belt and clocking up over 225 days (cumulative) in orbit.

Following docking, the Shenzhou 16 crew remained with the three men of Shenzhou 15 Through until the weekend, when the Shenzhou 15 crew departed the space station late on Saturday, June 3^rd (Beijing time), to commence a 9-hour return to Earth, where they touched down at the Dongfeng landing site within North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region at 06:33 on Sunday, June 4^th (Beijing time – (22:33 UTC on June 3rd).

The landing was also covered in detail by the Chinese media, and as with the Russian approach to crew returning from long duration orbital flights, the three men were not allowed to spend time standing or moving under their own power; instead they were helped out of their craft and into waiting chairs, where they were interviewed by a China Central Television (CCTV) crew in a live broadcast. This focused on Senior Colonel Deng Qingming, quite possibly one of the longest-serving astronauts-in-waiting in the world prior to lifting-off on this mission, having been in the PLA taikonaut corps for 26 years! He is actually the last of China’s “first generation” intake of astronauts to fly into space, and his perseverance has made him an icon on the PLA space corps.

In between Shenzhou 16 lifting-off for Tiangong and Shenzhoou 15 returning, the crew of Axiom AX-2 also wrapped up their stay at the International Space Station and returned to Earth.

As the name indicates, this was that second Axiom Space crewed mission to the ISS, carried out as part of the company’s progress towards running its own space station, and delivered a crew of four astronauts to the ISS for a period of eight days. Aboard were former astronaut Peggy Whiston as mission commander, John Shoffner, an aviator and entrepreneur, Ali AlQarni, a captain in the Royal Saudi Air Force and Rayyanah Barnawi, and Saudi biomedial researcher and the first Saudi woman to fly in space.

*The Axiom AX-2 crew (l-to-right): Peggy Whitson, John Shoffner, Ali AlQarni, and Rayyanah Barnawi*

The mission lifted-off from Kennedy Space Centre atop a Falcon 9 rocket on May 21^st, 2023, and the Crew Dragon Freedom docked with the Harmony module of the ISS a day later. During their time on the station, the crew performed public outreach activities along with scientific research, including studies into the effects of microgravity on stem cells and other biological experiments which had been agreed with the Saudi Space Commission as part of the deal to fly the two Saudi nationals on the mission.

For Whitson, it was a fourth opportunity to fly in space and add to an already impressive record: in her first mission, she spent an extended mission on the ISS, in her second she became the first woman to command the ISS (and later became the first women to complete two tours on the ISS as mission commander), she has completed the most EVAs (spacewalks) thus far for a woman, having spent a total of 60 hours and 21 minutes outside of the ISS performing various tasks; she has spent a total of 675 days in space during her career and remains the oldest woman to orbit the Earth. She was also the first woman to become NASA’s Chief Astronaut, the most senior position in the NASA Astronaut Corps.

For the rest of the crew, it was the opportunity to experience space for the first time, and for Axiom Space, a further opportunity to study managing orbital operations and research endeavours of the kind they hope to both manage and host on their own space station. The latter is due to start life as modules attached to the ISS (and referred to as the Axiom Orbital Segment) in the late 2020s, before becoming an independent orbital facility when the ISS is decommissioned at the start of the 2030s.

On May 30^th, 2023, the crew re-boarded Freedom and departed the ISS, splashing down successfully in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida in the early hours of May 31^st, local time, where it was recovered by the SpaceX recovery ship Megan.

Spaceport Company Performs At-Sea Launches

Landing returning crewed spacecraft on the world’s seas – as with the AX-2 mission – has long been a thing for the United States. However, it has also been the dream of some to use the oceans as a means of launching vehicles into orbit – perhaps most famously (thanks to it being referenced in the Apple TV series For All Mankind), the simply gargantuan Sea Dragon. Planned in the 1960s but never built, this behemoth was designed to lift 550 tonnes of cargo to orbit – and to start its journey by floating in open waters off the US coast.

Obviously, Sea Dragon never came to be, but in 1999, a multi-national corporation – Sea Launch – commenced payload launches from the deck of a modified oil rig – the Odyssey, operating in the Pacific Ocean close to the equator – using a specialised version of the Russian Zenit-3SL. The company carried out a total of 36 such launches from 1999 through 2014, when Russia’s first military incursion into Ukraine (which ultimately brought an end to the company), suffering only four failures.

A sounding rocket is launched from a proof-of-concept “liftboat” developed by the Spaceport Company as part of their efforts to develop a US offshore launch platform capability. Credit: The Spaceport Company

Now a US company – the appropriately-named The Spaceport Company – has hosted four sounding rocket launches with the support of Evolution Space, from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The launches were the latest step of a proof-of-concept study the company is carrying out into the feasibility of conducting payload-to-orbit flights from mobile platforms operating off the US coast.

In particular, the company stated the operation – performed on May 22^nd – was intended to exercise the procedures -including getting approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Coast Guard, clearing airspace and waters to allow for a safe launch – before any actual rocket launch from the platform.

The company plans to plans to use the platforms – called liftboats – which can sail / be towed to a designated location before temporarily anchoring itself to the sea bed by means of four legs which can be extended down into the water to a depth of up to 50 metres, and also left the platform clear of the water. A second platform then acts as the launch control centre, freeing launches from the need of any land-based infrastructure, outside of a docking and servicing facility with the means to accept launch vehicles and move them onto the launch platform safely.

These platforms will be capable of being deployed almost anywhere of the US coast, although the company particularly hopes to leverage the increasing demand for launches out of both the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Centre. presenting companies operating smaller rocket systems with a viable off-shore alternative.

Both The Spaceport company and Evolution Space (who providing the rocket systems for the May 22^nd launches) kept quiet about the event itself, only releasing a post-launch briefing on the launches 24 hours after they had taken place. Further test flights on the platform are expected over the course of the nest two years, and the company is targeting 2025 for its first full-scale, fully commercial payload launch.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: launches and landings” →

Space Sunday: aiding three space telescopes

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Inara Pey

*The Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Credits: NASA*

They are the grande dames, so to speak, of space-based astronomy, observatories launched into orbit around Earth and the Sun to provide us with unparalleled insight into the cosmos around us, born of ideas dating back to the early decades of the space age. They form three of the four elements of NASA’s Great Observatories programme, and all operated, or continue to operate well beyond their planned life spans; they are, of course, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST – launched in 1990), the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO and formerly the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility or AXAF – launched in 1999), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility or SIRTF – launched in 2003).

Today, only Hubble and Chandra remain operational. The fourth of the observatories (and 2^nd to enter space after Hubble), the 16.3-tonne Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO), had its mission curtailed in June 2000, after just over 9 years, when it suffered an unrecoverable gyroscope failure. With fears raised that the failure of a second unit could leave the observatory unable to control its orientation, the decision was made to shut it down and de-orbit it in a controlled manner so it would break-up on entering the atmosphere and any surviving parts fall into the Pacific Ocean, rather than risk an uncontrolled re-entry which could shower major pieces of the observatory over populated areas.

Whilst the “youngest” of the surviving three observatories, Spitzer was placed into a “safe” mode in January 2020, ending 16.5 years of service. By then, the nature of the observatory’s orbit – it occupies a heliocentric orbit, effectively following Earth around the Sun – were such that it was having to perform extreme rolls back and forth in order to carry out observations and then communicate with Earth, and these were affecting the ability of the solar arrays to gather enough energy to charge the on-board batteries. The “safe” mode meant that Spitzer could continue to recharge its batteries and maintain electrical current to its working instruments, potentially allowing it to be recovered in the future. However, while it is true that Hubble and Chandra continue to work, neither is without problems.

Hubble orbits close enough to Earth that even at over 500km, it is affected by atmospheric drag, causing it to very slowly but inexorably lose altitude. This used to be countered through the semi-regular servicing missions, when a space shuttle would rendezvous with HST to allow astronauts to carry out work, and then gently boost the telescope altitude using its thrusters. But the shuttle is no more, and the last such boost was in 2009 to 540 km; currently Hubble is at around 527 km, and at the present rate of decent, it will start to burn-up in another 10-15 years. However, a boost now could see Hubble – barring instrument / system failures – continue to operate through the 2050s.

Chandra, meanwhile, faces a different challenge. It lies in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth, varying between 14,508 km at its closest and 134,527 km at its most distant. It has therefore been operating untended for its entire operational life, and is starting to show signs of wear and tear. In 2018, it suffered a glitch with one of the gyroscopes designed to keep it steady during observations (and orient it to look at stellar objects). Whilst the gyroscope was recovered, it was put into a reserve mode lest it fail again. This led to fears that should a second gyro fail, either orientation control might be lost if the 2018 gyro fail to come back on-line correctly to take over the work. Also, and while the main science instructions are in good order, they are aging and presenting concerns as to how well they are actually doing.

Ideas for both boosting Hubble’s orbit and carrying out a robotic servicing of Chandra have been floated for the last few years – but there are now signs both might actually get potentially life-extending missions.

In December 2022, NASA issued an RFI on how Hubble’s orbit could be boosted, and have received eight responses, one of which has also been publicly announced and would seem to offer potential. It involves two companies: Astroscale Holdings and Momentus Space, a US-based company. The former is in the business of clearing space junk from Earth’s orbit, and has already flown prototype vehicles capable of doing this in orbit. This includes the ability to carry tools to mate or grapple junk and then move them. Momentus, meanwhile, are in the satellite servicing business and recently demonstrated a small “space tug” in orbit that was largely successful in meeting its mission goals (7 out of nine small satellites deployed into individual orbits).

In their proposal, the two companies indicate Momentus would provide a variant of their tug, and Astroscale a dedicated capture tool designed to use the grapple holds on Hubble. Following launch, the Momentus craft would self-guide itself to Hubble’s orbit and rendezvous with it using the Astroscale mating tool. Once attached, the Momentus vehicle would use its thrusters to gently raise Hubble’s orbit by 50 km, then detach. The vehicle could then be used to remove orbital debris in orbits approaching Hubble, thus protecting it from the risk of collision.

NASA has yet to comment on any of the proposals received under the RFI, but the Momentus / Astroscale option, using equipment already being flight-tested and refined and which is of relatively low-cost, would appear to be a real option.

A similar, but more expensive and complex idea has been proposed by Northrop Grumman – the company effectively responsible for building Chandra – to help keep the X-Ray observatory going. This would involve the construction and deployment of a “mission extension vehicle”, a “space tug” capable of departing Earth and gradually extending and modifying its orbit to rendezvous with Chandra and link-up with it, taking over the operations related to orienting and steadying the platform using gyros, potentially extending the mission by decades.

This is important because Chandra has already proven invaluable in supporting the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which operates in the infra-red. The ability to observe targets in both X-ray and infra-red can reveal a lot more about them.

A set of X-ray images of regions of space – including supernova remnants and merging galaxies – captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, released by NASA in 2009 to celebrate the telescope’s 20th anniversary. Credit: CXC/NASA, SAO

NASA has given no word on whether it would finance such a mission, although Northrop Grumman has apparently forwarded the results of its own study on the idea to the US agency. However, given the most recent U.S. decadal survey in astrophysics, released in 2021, included mention of a new X-ray telescope to replace Chandra, a servicing mission – even one this complex – capable of extending Chandra’s operations for decades at a fraction of the cost of a new telescope, which itself would take years if not decades to develop, could be highly attractive.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: aiding three space telescopes” →

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