Tag: Spaceflight

Space Sunday: distant stars, sounds on Mars, a return and a rocket

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Artemis 1 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket stands on its mobile launch platform at Kennedy Space Centre’s Pad 39B, where it is undergoing a full wet dress rehearsal ahead of its launch later this year – see later in this article for more. Credit: NASA

The Furthest Star

My previous Space Sunday update ended with a note that NASA would be making an announcement at the end of March 2022 concerning a new discovery by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that could have repercussions for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), once it commences its scientific mission. Announced on March 30th, that discovery was revealed to be the imaging of the most distant individual star from Earth yet discovered. So distant, in fact, that it has taken the light from it 12.9 billion years to reach us. By contrast, the next oldest individual star we have detected using Hubble was born when the universe was already some 4 billion years old, taking 9 billion years to reach us.

Christened  Eärendel, the Old English term for “morning star” (and, as Tolkien fans like me will know, was the name initially given to the half-human, half-elven navigator, prior to Tolkien changing the name of that character to Earendil), the star was discovered as a part of a HST programme called RELICS -the REionisation LensIng Cluster Survey, intended to capture to light from really far distant objects born not long after the Big Bang.

To do this, RELICS employs the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, whereby the mass of a huge object such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies bend and focuses the light coming from objects far beyond them, allowing us to see them as magnified, arc-like objects. In this case, a cluster of galaxies called WHL0137-08 was found to be lensing the light of a galaxy far beyond them, drawing the collected light of that galaxy out into a slender crescent Hubble could see and which astronomers nicknamed the Sunrise Arc.

The red arc of the Sunrise Arc galaxy, and within it, the single point of light of Eärendel. Credit: NASA, ESA, Brian Welch (JHU), Dan Coe (STScI)

For the most part, the Sunrise Arc is blurred and instinct, like sunlight diffracted by the ripples on the surface of a swimming pool cast blurred clouds of light on the bottom of the pool. However, by coincidence, at the time the images of the Arc were recorded, Eärendel appeared directly on, or extremely close to, a curve in space-time that provided maximum brightening, allowing its light to stand out as an individual point within the blurriness of the Sunrise Arc – just like some rays of light can strike the surface of a swimming pool at precisely the right moment to avoid diffraction by the surface ripples and form pinpoints of light on the bottom of the pool rather than being blurred.

Initially it was thought that the star might in fact be a cluster, rather than a lone star, but careful analysis of Eärendel ‘s red shift has swayed astronomers towards believing it is most likely just the one star (although the potential for it to be a binary system hasn’t been entirely ruled out) of enormous size at least 50 times the mass of the Sun and correspondingly enormous luminosity.

Such is Eärendel age, that it at the time its light departed it, the star was likely only made up of primordial hydrogen and helium following the Big Bang. This makes it a prime target for study by JWST – which thanks to is infra-red capability can pick out more information about a target object than HST -, as doing so could reveal more about the state of the early universe and early stellar development.

However, such is the nature of things that – whilst referring to the star in the present tense, it’s important to note that it is very likely that while the most distant individual star observed by HST, Eärendel is not the oldest star yet found; in fact, it probably no longer exists. This is because such supermassive stars tend to burn through their available fuel stocks in mere millions of years, rather than billions. It’s therefore very likely that at some point when the light captured by Hubble was still making its way towards us, Eärendel either violently exploded into a supernova, or collapsed into a black hole – something we’ll only know for sure a few million years into our future.

The Nature of Sound on Mars

We’re all familiar with the concept of the speed of sound. Here on Earth and at sea level, with the temperature at 20ºC, sound travels at 343 metres per second (m/s). However, that is not an absolute; it varies according to the relative atmospheric temperature and density. At altitudes up to 20 km, the speed of sound slowly declines due to the thinning of the atmosphere; however, above 20 km, whilst the atmosphere continues to thin, its temperature actually increases, making it more excitable, and so the speed of sound increases once more.

Much the same was thought to be true on Mars, where the relatively thin atmospheric density close to the surface of the planet was thought to limit sound waves to around an average of 240 m/s (again, allowing for variations in temperature).  However, what no-one expected was that the speed of sound would vary according to frequency – but that is what the Mars 2020 mission has revealed.

An international team of scientists reached this conclusion after analysing recordings made by one of two microphones mounted on the Perseverance rover. The SuperCam microphone mounted at the top of the rover’s mast is somewhat directional in nature in that turning / tilting the SuperCam unit allows the microphone to be pointed directly at sound sources, allowing it to record them with a good level of fidelity.

The Mars 2020 rover’s SuperCam system with the “directional” microphone highlighted. Credit: NASA/JPL

This is been done a number of time during the rover’s mission. For example, the camera has been pointed towards the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, allowing it to directly record the low-frequency beating of the helicopter’s rotors. It is also naturally pointing at rockets targeted for “zapping” by SuperCam’s laser. It has also been able to listen to tools and equipment operating at the end of the rover’s robot arm. All of these sounds have now been collectively analysed, and scientist have been surprised to find that while lower frequency sounds – such as the beating of Ingenuity’s rotors – travel at the expected Martian average of 240 m/s, sounds at frequencies greater then 240 Hertz, such as the higher-pitched click-click-clicking of the SuperCam laser actually travel around 10 m/s faster – the first time this has ever been observed.

The cause for this unusual difference is thought to be the result of the Martian atmosphere being largely carbon-dioxide. In studying the tenuous Martian atmosphere, scientists have discovered during the day, the heat of the Sun, deflected as it is by the surface of the planet, generates an unusual turbulence in the first 10 km of atmosphere above the planet. This turbulence has an unusual impact on the carbon dioxide that isn’t seen in Earth’s denser atmosphere: it allows higher frequency sounds to excite the carbon dioxide molecules a lot more than low-frequency sounds, allowing such higher frequencies to be more rapidly transmitted through the atmospheric medium.

Because this effect happens almost smack in the middle of the bandwidth of sounds audible to the human ear, it means that if we were able to stand out in the open on Mars and listen to something like a symphony being played a few 10 of metres away, rather than hearing all the notes collectively as we would on Earth, we’d hear the higher notes a second or so ahead of the lower notes, resulting in a discordant mess. However, a more practical outcome of this discovery is that engineers believe that by listening to the different frequencies within the sounds made by various pieces of audible equipment on the rover, they could potentially identify if that part of the rover is experiencing issues, and thus be forewarned that action might be required well before a potential failure occurs.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: distant stars, sounds on Mars, a return and a rocket” →

Space Sunday: Starship, ExoMars and sundry news

Posted on by Inara Pey
What it might look like: an animation of the first Starship orbital flight. Credit: C-Bass Production / Neopork

Such is the pace of development, the first orbital flight of the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy combination will now not take place as originally planned.

It had been thought that the flight, which has been repeatedly delayed for a number of factors, including slippages in the Federal Aviation Administration being able to publish the final version of its study into the impact of SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica on the surrounding environment, would be made by Starship No. 20 (“Ship 20”), and Super Heavy booster No 4 (Booster 4), both of which have been going through a wide range of cryogenic and static fire tests since mid-2021, the most recent of the cryogenic tests occurring just over a week and a half ago, with both vehicles stacked together on the launch platform.

However, on Saturday, March 22nd, Starship 20 was “destacked” from Booster 4 and removed from the orbital launch facilities, and 24 hours later, Booster 4 was also removed, with Elon Musk Tweeting that neither would now play a role in the first orbital flight attempt. The reason for this is simple: work on developing and enhancing the design of both the Starship vehicle and the Super Heavy booster now means that Booster 4 and Ship 20 are essentially obsolete.

March 22nd, 2022: Mechazilla on the orbital support tower lowers Starship 20 following its disconnect from Booster 4. Credit: NASA Spaceflight

The major cause for this is that – despite a scary e-mail from Musk at the end of 2021 stating SpaceX could go bankrupt if issues with the powerful Raptor 2 engine were not quickly sorted out and production ramped – the company is now solely focused on boosters and ships built to mount the much more compact Raptor 2 motors, the sea level versions of which (primarily used to power Super Heavy, but three are also used in each Starship) are considerably smaller and less complicated than their Raptor 1 cousins, and generate far more thrust (from 230 to 250 tonnes per Raptor 2 compared to a maximum 185 tonnes for a Raptor 1).

Left: a sea-level Raptor 2 engine compared to its much larger Raptor 1 equivalent. Credit: Nic Ansuni / NASA Spaceflight

The more compact size of the Raptor 2 makes it possible for SpaceX to increase the total compliment of engines on a Super Heavy from 29 to the planned 33. The reduction in their complexity also makes all of the plumbing required  to feed them propellants and the electronics needed to control them  a lot easier to manage. For starship vehicles, the smaller Raptor 2 motors should make it easier to increase the number of engines from 6 to the planned 9 (3 sea-level and 6 vacuum engines with their much large exhaust bells).

Booster 7 and Ship 24 are also the first of each design to incorporate other critical design changes. Some of these are to easy the fabrication and assembly process, others are to help improve performance or meet the demands of having more engines, and still other to improve aerodynamics.

In the case of the Super Heavy booster, one of the cleverest – and most visible – changes is in the number and positioning of the Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPVs).

COPV are tanks of hydrogen used in the ignition process for the outer ring of Raptor motors on a Super Heavy. With Booster 4, four pairs of COPVs were placed equidistantly around the base of the booster, covered by steel aeroshells.

However, with the increased number of Raptor engines, Booster 7 and those that follow it require 10 COPVs each. Were the extra two COPV to be paired at the base of the rocket, they would work with the other four pairs to disrupt airflow over the tail of the booster during ascent, generating both drag and potential buffeting / vibration.

To prevent this, Booster 7 is the first Super Heavy to have the COPV stacked vertically along its sides in two sets of five. Not only does this remove the risk of additional drag / buffeting during ascent, it also simplifies the overall plumbing to supply hydrogen to the Raptors, as each set of 5 can use common feedlines down the the engines. However, what is particularly clever is that offsetting each stack of COPVs slightly from the rocket’s centreline, their aerodynamic covers can actually help generate a degree of lift around the base of the rocket during its descent back through the atmosphere, helping to both slow it and provide a greater degree of control during the descent.

The COPV changes: left, as they were on Booster 4, and as they are on Booster 7. Credit: Brendan Lewis / ChameleonCir

As it is the closest to completion, Starship 24 would appear to be the primary candidate for joining booster 7 on the orbital flight attempt (work on ships 21 through 23 having been abandoned / bypassed) – but this far from certain. Recent work on the vehicle has seen it installed with a small prototype payload bay door, suggesting it has been earmarked for a payload bay test flight, something yet to be scheduled. As such, it is possible that Ship 25, also being assembled at Boca Chica, might be selected for the first orbital attempt.

Although the switch to using more recent versions of Super Heavy and Starship means that the first orbital flight attempt is now unlikely to occur before late May 2022, when it does happen, it will allow SpaceX to gather more relevant data on vehicle performance, which should help benefit the programme overall. It also means that by the time the booster / ship combination is ready to go, the FAA’s report on its environmental review of the Boca Chica site should have been published (the release date was recently pushed back again from the end of March to the end of April), and SpaceX should be in a position to know whether or not they are to be granted a licence for their orbital launches from the site.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: Starship, ExoMars and sundry news” →

Space Sunday: a big rocket, a telescope & yellow and blue

Posted on by Inara Pey
Artemis 1: the SLS rolls slowly out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and out to pad 39B at Kennedy Space Centre. Credit: NASA / Artemis- 

NASA has rolled out the first of what is intended to be both the first of its new “super rocket”, the Space Launch System, and the vehicle to start the United States and its international partners on the road back to the Moon.

At 21:47 UTC on March 17th, the huge rocket, mounted on its mobile launch platform, slowly crept out of one of the high bays of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the iconic cube sitting within NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre which was used as an integral part of Project Apollo and which is now fulfilling a similar role for Project Artemis, on the back of a massive crawler-transporter at the start of a 6.72 km journey to Kennedy Space Centre’s Lunch Complex pad 39B.

It was not a swift journey, taking some 11 hours to complete  – albeit with stops along the way for checks to be carried out – the crawler-transporter finally reaching the top of the incline of the launch pad 04:15 UTC on Friday, March 18th.

The move of the rocket from VAB to pad was not in readiness for the launch of Artemis 1 – the mission this SLS vehicle will carry to orbit – but rather for the final series of tests to be carried out on the fully integrated rocket and its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) payload to ensure both are ready for that launch, which is currently set for a provisional window in mid-May 2022.

Another view of Artemis 1 SLS emerging on its mobile launch platform from the VAB at Kennedy Space Centre. Credit: NASA / Artemis 1

As I noted in my last Space Sunday update, the focus of these tests will be a full wet dress rehearsal, due to take place in April. This will see the rocket fully fuelled and go through a full launch countdown that will stop just nine seconds prior to an actual launch. The intention is to make sure everything with the rocket, the payload and the launch systems are all ready for a launch attempt, and will be followed by a further 8-9 days of additional pad tests. After this, the rocket will be returned to the VAB and assessed ready for final flight clearance.

When it does take flight, SLS will become the most powerful launch system built by NASA. The Block 1 vehicle being capable of delivering up to 95 tonnes to low Earth orbit, and the upcoming Block 1B up to 105 tonnes, and the future Block 2 vehicle up to 130 tonnes – putting it in the same lifting class as SpaceX’s Starship / Super Heavy launch system, but potentially far more flexible in turns of specialised launches, SLS being capable of launching smaller payloads (e.g. 23-45 tonnes, depending on the launcher variant) directly to the Moon, or other payloads out into the solar system without any need for on-orbit refuelling.

However, as I’ve noted before, there are some significant cost issues for SLS that may impact its use, the most notable being that of ongoing costs. Development work on the SLS system has thus far eaten US $23.01 billion, and while NASA would claim a lot of that (US $14 billion) has gone directly into work creation, it nevertheless means that as a non-reusable system, SLS is terribly expensive: NASA’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) estimates each launch will cost some US $4 billion, twice NASA’s launch cost estimate, and will never fall below US $1 billion as the agency has suggested.

This cost factor has already seen NASA turn to other launch systems for missions originally earmarked for SLS. The Europa Clipper mission, for example, has been move to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launcher on the ground of launch costs (and the fact that SLS generates so much vibration at launch, it is unsuitable to fly certain sensitive instruments into space).

As it is, five SLS missions in support for Artemis have thus far been confirm, with vehicles for three more after Artemis 1 already under construction:

  • Artemis 1: uncrewed mission to cislunar space to test the Orion MPCV; duration: some 25.5 days – mid 2022.
  • Artemis 2: crewed mission to lunar orbit; duration: 10 days – 2024.
  • Artemis 3: crewed lunar obit / lunar landing mission; duration:30 days – 2025/26:
  • Artemis 4: crewed mission to a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) in support of the Lunar Gateway station and the core I-HAB deployment – 2026/27
  • Artemis 5: crewed mission to a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit(NRHO) in support of the Lunar Gateway station and the European System Providing Refuelling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT) module, together with a lunar surface mission – 2027-28.

Starship HLS: NASA Updates

A further key component for Project Artemis is the Human Landing System (HLS), the vehicle that will be used to transfer crews between lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon and (initially) provide them with living space whilst on the Moon. Currently, only one contract has been issued for HLS, and as I’ve noted before, it is to SpaceX for the use of a lunar variant of their Starship vehicle, although the agency has more recently been order to acquire HLS vehicles from other sources.

As a part of their Artemis HLS update, NASA provides images of astronauts working with prototype elements that will be used within the vehicle, which SpaceX are due to build. Credit: NASA

Coinciding with the SLS roll-out at Kennedy Space Centre, NASA issued an update on the SpaceX HLS programme, including the work going into some key elements, such as the elevator that will carry the 2-person crew of Artemis 3 the 30-40 metres down the side of the vehicle to the Moon’s surface and back after landing, together with the airlock through which they’ll leave / enter HLS during surface operations and some of the living / working facilities inside the vehicle.

The update also confirms that HLS will require some six starship / super heavy launches:

  • The launch of a special “tanker” Starship that will be parked in Earth orbit and used for a wide range of Starship propellant transfer operations.
  • Four further launches of re-usable Starship vehicles equipped with additional fuel tanks that will carry propellants to be transferred to the orbital “tanker”.
  • The HLS starship itself and the cargo needed for Artemis 3. This will dock with the “tanker” and take fuel from it that can be used to boost the HLS vehicle to lunar orbit and to both land it on the Moon and then get it back to lunar orbit.
Artemis 3 / HLS operations concept graphic. Credit: NASA

Once the HLS is in lunar orbit, the 4-person Artemis 3 crew will then launch to the Moon aboard an Orion MPCV lifted by SLS, and rendezvous with HLS so two can transfer to it and then travel to / from the lunar south pole. After transferring back to Orion, the crew will return to Earth, leaving the HLS starship in lunar orbit, potentially with either fuel to be used by the crew of Artemis 5, the second lunar landing mission.

However, whilst SpaceX HLS is earmarked for this mission (and will likely be the only HLS craft capable of supporting Artemis 5 in 2027/28), some in Congress are pushing NASA to use an alternative HLS design for the second lunar landing (which is which Artemis 4 was switched from a join lunar gateway / lunar landing mission to being solely a lunar gateway mission.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: a big rocket, a telescope & yellow and blue” →

Space Sunday: space stations, politics and Artemis 1

Posted on by Inara Pey
The International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The war in Ukraine continues to have repercussions in international space activities. some of them somewhat bizarre in nature.

In particular, the head of Roscosmos and noted Putin hardliner, Dmitry Rogozin has been putting out a series of tweets that have been increasingly threatening – in my previous Space Sunday update, I noted that Rogozin had threatened to allow the International Space Station ISS to slip into an uncontrolled de-orbit and potentially crash into a Western city (since the shuttle’s retirement, Russian Progress re-supply vehicles have been used to routinely boost the station’s orbit as drag with the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere), despite the fact the multiple means by which the United States can boost the station’s orbit. In fact, NASA is planning a test using the current Cygnus NG-17.resupply vessel that docked with the ISS on February 21st to do just this, the test being scheduled for early April 2022.

Since then, there have been threats to “abandon” US astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the station at the end of his tour. Vande Hei flew to the ISS in 2021 aboard Soyuz MS-18 in April 2021. He is due to return to Earth at the end of March aboard Soyuz MS-19, but Rogozin has publicly tweeted that Russia will deny him his seat on the flight unless US and International attitudes towards Russia are reversed.

Whilst denying Vande Hei a seat on a Soyuz would mean his return to earth would be delayed, it is hardly “abandoning” him. NASA has at least two options for returning him directly to the United States using the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which can carry up to seven people – although flights thus far have not exceeded four -, whilst Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, once operational and as a longer-term option, might also be used.

Most bizarrely, and in connection with Vande Hei, on March 5th Russian state media company RIA Novosti posted a video apparently put together by Roscosmos that showed Russian cosmonauts packing up and detaching the Russian segment from the ISS utilising edited footage of actual activities on the ISS, together with studio-developed CGI images,  it is unclear if the video is intended to be a threat or not, although it does end with the words “This is based on unreal events”, but it appeared to be a further part of the Roscosmos / Rogozin belligerency, the latter issuing a statement at more-or-less the same time, also through Russian media:

The blame for the collapse of cooperation in space lies on the shoulders of the United States, Britain, France and Germany. These countries destroyed what was created by mankind with such difficulty, what was created by the blood and sweat of those people who mastered space.

– Dmitry Rogozin, Roscosmos director

But could / would Russia take such an act? The Russian elements of the station sit as an individual group of modules connected to the rest of the station at a single point. So technically, they could be detached. However, doing so would require more than a simple packing up of bags, closing a couple of hatches and pushing off; there are a lot of interdependencies to be considered – and the flow of power, etc., is not one-way as Rogozin has attempted to paint. As such, numerous activities would have to be completed ahead of time so as to avoid risk to the Russian crew. As such, seeing the video as an outright threat, per the NASAWatch tweet above, this seems unlikely.

More to the point, Roscomos has already announced plans for a new dedicated space station – the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) – they intend to start assembling in 2025. This will use at least one module (SPS-1/NEM-1) originally intended to join the ISS in 2024, but which Roscosmos has stated will be repurposed for the new station. This will be added to using a second “former ISS” module and the Nauka module that arrived at the ISS in July 2021, both in around 2028. As such, detaching modules such as Zarya and Zvezda, already practically at the end of their operational life, from the ISS and which would serve no real purpose would seem unlikely. But then, international space cooperation is one of the more significant areas in which Russia could express itself without necessarily escalating tension on Earth in an irreversible manner.

Given their plans to fly ROSS – the Russian Orbital Service Station, it would seem unlikely Roscosmos would unduly threaten ISS operations. Credit: Roscosmos

Currently, NASA is stressing that from their perspective, and despite Rogozin’s rhetoric, it is cooperation as usual with the ISS, although some voices are urgent the agency to put together a tiger team to explore options should Russia opt to do something unexpected with the ISS. However, ISS missions aren’t the only target.

As I noted last time around the worsening situation in Western-Russian relations means that a number of ESA launches have potentially been impacted, and the fate of the joint ExoMars lander / rover mission, due for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in September – a date a lot closer than the other threatened missions.

More directly impacted has been British satellite internet company OneWeb. They had contracted Roscosmos to launch 36 of their internet communications satellite network – part of an initial network of 220 such satellites (eventually rising to 600), However, OneWeb was rescued from bankruptcy by the UK, which now holds a 51% stake, and Roscosmos initially refused to go through with the launch until the UK government sold its stake in OneWeb – a demand that was refused. As a result of the action by Roscosmos, OneWeb has cancelled all further launches using Russian vehicle, and has joined a growing number of businesses no longer utilising the Russian launch vehicle fleet, and taking their business elsewhere.

Spektr-RG telescope. Credit: DLR

But it is not all one-way. The German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or DLR), one of the largest space agencies in Europe announced it has cancelled its partnership with Roscosmos across all space research and development, with no intention of resuming cooperative ventures with Russia in the future.

In response, Dmitry Rogozin immediately ordered the shut down of the  German-built eROSITA x-ray instrument on the on the Spektr-RG  high-energy astrophysics space observatory, launched in 2019. Occupying the Earth-Sun L2 position 1.5 million km from Earth, Spektr-RG was a flagship mission for both DLR and Roscosmos. However, shutting eROSITA down is something of a pyrrhic response on Rogozin’s part, as it is the primary instrument aboard the satellite, and its loss impacts Russian space science as much as German.

China Offers Station for Commercial and International  Cooperation

China is planning to open its space station to commercial research and activities, according to a senior human spaceflight program official. It is first indication that the national space agency will allow Chinese commercial enterprises to participate in the programme, and is being seen as a similar step to NASA’s “public/private” partnerships for crew and cargo vehicles for the ISS.

When our space station is completed and running, we will actively encourage the private sector to engage in space through various ways. There are many possibilities. We hope there will be competitive, cost-efficient commercial space players to participate in areas including space applications and space resource development. The prospects are good.

– Zhou Jianping, director of China’s human spaceflight programme

Construction of the Tiangong station is due to be completed this year with the addition of the Wentian and Mengtian modules (May / June 2022 and August / September 2022 respectively), two cargo spacecraft and two crewed missions – Shenzhou 14 and 15 – are also due to visit the station, marking the start of a 10-year operational lifecycle for Tiangong.

An artist’s impression of the Tiangong space station. Credit: CNSA

As well as national interests, China is also seeking international involvement with the station, calling directly to scientists and universities around the world to provide experiments and engage with China to research and station activities. China has also extended an invitation to United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), following in the footsteps of America’s Sierra Space in offering the opportunity to those countries that do not have easy access to space with the ability to fly experiments to Tiangong (Sierra Space is due to fly the first UNOOSA mission aboard its Dream Chaser Cargo space plane in 2024).

Nor is this passing unnoticed. Nanoracks, a company that specialising in flying experiments to the International Space Station in behalf of clients, has admitted China has already lured one of the significant customers to start flying to Tiangong in preference to the ISS.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: space stations, politics and Artemis 1” →

Space Sunday: minerals on Mars, space politics and more Dream Chaser

Posted on by Inara Pey

As I looked at the Mars 2020 mission in my previous Space Sunday piece (see: Space Sunday: A year on Mars and the Polaris Programme), I thought it time to catch up on some of the most recent news about NASA’s other “big rover” working on Mars, Perseverance’s “older sister”, Curiosity, the rover of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, which will mark its tenth anniversary on Mars later in 2022.

Curiosity’s mission to Gale Crater, almost half a world away from Perseverance continued onwards despite the dearth of regular updates posted to the official blog (but them, updates on Perseverance have been far less voluminous than see during the first year of MSL operations on Mars, largely thanks to NASA opting to make greater use of social media tools like Twitter to hand out bite-size nibbles of updates.

However, one recent discovery that got some hearts all a-flutter recently was that of a curious formation Curiosity imaged on flank of “Mount Sharp”, the huge mound rising from the middle of the crater – and officially called Aeolis Mons. At first glance, it appears to show a petrified flower sprouting from the surface of the planet – and while it is most certainly not any such thing or even the first of these formation Curiosity had encountered – the raw images captured by Curiosity were released sans any indication of scale, getting some website and individuals a little over-excited.

The “raw” image of the “flower-like” object captured by the Curiosity rover on February 25th, 2022 (mission Sol 3397 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument mounted on the rover’s robot arm. Credit: NASA/JPL

The object is in fact a mineral structure called a diagenetic crystal cluster. Essentially they are a collection of crystals formed by mineral precipitating from water, undergoing diagenetic recombination in the process, creating this beautiful, but tiny three-dimensional structures.

In fact, the rover first encountered structures like this since around Sol 870 of the mission, as it explored the Pahrump Hills at the base of “Mount Sharp”. However, this particular structure is somewhat different, as the structures found at Pahrump were formed by sulphate (salt) crystals, leached out of receding waters as the lakes that once repeatedly filled Gale Crater finally vanished. This structure formed from salts and other minerals, and most likely formed inside a small rock over which water coming off the slopes of “Mount Sharp” once flowed, before it was left to the mercy of the Martian wind, which slowly eroded it over the aeons until only this delicate-looking but tough structure remained.

The same image of the structure, this to overlaid with a to-scale US Lincoln penny (one of which also adorns Curiosity’s bodywork), provided by mission scientist Abigail Fraeman to give an impression of the object’s actual size. Credit: NASA/JPL / A. Faeman

The other interesting point with the image is the manner in which it was created. For most its mission, Curiosity has captured images of objects and structures, stored them, and then transmitted them to Earth for post-processing. Here, however, MAHLI took around eight images of the object all from very slightly different angles. The images were then processed by the rover itself, using a software package referred to as the onboard focusing process, which allowed them to be combined and adjusted to produce a single frame of great depth and detail that could then be transmitted to Earth.

In fact, so detailed is the  structure – dubbed Blackthorn Salt – in the image, and such is the depth afforded by the picture Simeon Schmauss was able to produce a 3D model of it using Sketchfab, allowing us to see it really up close and from almost any angle – click the image below and see for yourself. However, when doing so, please note that the blurred and “draped” grey elements seen “hanging” from the structure’s arm / branches when looking at it from the side are not a part of the structure, but are artefacts of the Sketchfab rendering process, as the image from MAHLI doesn’t show what is directly below the arms / branches.

Curiosity itself continues to explore and climb “Mount Sharp”, attempting to make its way to higher slopes. Most recently, it has been making its way along a shallow and short “valley” that will hopefully provide access to the “Greenheugh Pediment” – a comparatively gentle slope, formed by water erosion and lying at the base of the mound’s steeper slopes. It is hoped that by crossing the Pediment will lead to a long valley (Gediz Vallis), which is hoped will provide a route further up “Mount Sharp”.

Since arriving on Mars in august 2012, the rover has travelled 27.3 kilometres and has gathered and analysed 34 rock samples and six soil samples, all of which indicate Gale Crater was once a warm, wet environment that may well once have harboured all the fundamentals for life to form.

Curiosity’s route up “Mount Sharp” from Pahrump Hills to its currently location, where it is making its way towards “Greenheugh Pediment”, which offers a way to Gediz Vallis (below the bottom edge of this image), a route upwards to the upper reaches of the mound, and which appears to be a confluence of numerous channels, possibly formed by water, running downslope from the high ground. Credit: NASA/JPL

Russia Stops Soyuz Launches out of Europe’s Spaceport, French Guiana

Following the sanctions imposed on Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine, Roscosmos has announced it is halting all cooperation with Europe with regards to Soyuz launches out of Europe’s Spaceport, French Guiana and withdrawing its 87 support personnel from the launch site.

The announcement will immediately impact the launch of two Galileo navigation satellites that had been scheduled for April aboard Soyuz, and potentially a follow-up launch of another pair of Galileo satellites due later in the year.

Also potentially impacted are Two ESA missions: the EarthCARE Earth science mission (developed in partnership with JAXA (Japanese space agency) and scheduled for February 2023, and the Euclid infrared space telescope (March 2023), together with the French government’s military CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite.

The Soyuz launch platform at Europe’s Spaceport, Kourou,

Soyuz is offered as a launch vehicle through French launch service provider Arianespace alongside of Ariane and Vega launch vehicles, with Arianespace, through its shareholding in Starsem, can also broker payload launches on Soyuz out of the Baikonaur spaceport, Kazakhstan. However, the future of Soyuz launches out of French Guiana has been the subject to debate for some time, given that Arainespace has been keen to move customers to their new Ariane 6 and Vega-C launchers, both of which are set to enter service from 2022.

No comment has been made by either the European Space Agency or Arianespace on the matter – but both are due to meet to discuss matters on Monday, February 28th. In terms of space cooperation, suspending Soyuz launches out of French Guiana is pretty much the only lever on space matters Russia can pull without adversely impacting their own operations; something that is in stark contrast to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

At that time, the United States was reliant on Russia for both crewed launches to the ISS, and the supply of RD-180 motors used by the Atlas 5 vehicle. However, the US now has the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle for ISS missions, which should, in 2023, be joined by Boeing’s Starliner, while United Launch Alliance will be retiring the Atlas 5 (there are only 25 more launches on the books, and has sufficient RD-180 motors for many of those flights).

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos also suggested that sanctions could impact Russian co-operation with the ISS, warning that without Russian support, the space station could fall into “uncontrolled descent from orbit and then falling onto the territory of the United States or Europe”.

Progress resupply craft (green, in the background of this image) have generally used to periodically boost the altitude of the ISS – a job previously performed by the US space shuttle. However, there is no reason why the Orbital Science’s Cygnus resupply vehicle could not perform the same role. Credit: NASA

The threat is based on the fact that Russian Progress resupply vehicles are periodically used to raise the space station’s orbit as drag with the tenuous atmosphere causes it to lower. However, the US and Japan both have the potential means to boost the orbit, whilst away from Rogozin’s tweets, NASA and Roscosmos alike have stated ISS operations continue to pretty much be “business as usual”.

Notably excluded from any threats – for the time being – is the European ExoMars mission, due to see the Rosalind Franklin rover and a Roscosmos-made lander launched to Mars from Baikonur in September atop a Proton-M rocket. This is a particularly critical launch, as the available window only lasts 12 days and if missed will mean another 26-month delay to the mission, which had initially been set to launch 2020.

Space Image of the Week¹

I am virtually sure it’s the most detailed ISS lunar transit to date 😊
I had to ride 250 km from home and find a remote place in the countryside between the blankets of fog, for this 1/2 second transit at 27000 km/h.

– Thierry Legault

The above comments refer to the image below, showing the International Space Station crossing between Earth and the Moon, captured by French amateur astronomer and astro-photographer Thierry Lagault, who travelled from Paris to Bourges in January 2022 in the hope that the winter weather would allow him to capture the space’s passage across the full Moon.

ISS lunar transit by Thierry Legault, Note the image is oriented so south is at the top of the image. The bright crater above and to the right of the ISS in Tycho. Credit: Thierry Legault.
The image is being credited at one of the most detailed pictures of a ISS lunar transit every captured. It is so detailed, is it possible to see details of the primary solar arrays at either end of the station’s main truss structure, as can the structure of the station’s pressurised modules.

An enlarged version of the image, rotated through 90º so that south is to the right, reveals even more detail – the Russian modules of the ISS pointing towards the top of the image, and the US / international modules pointing down.

ISS lunar transit by Thierry Legault (enlarged and rotated). Credit: Thierry Legault.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: minerals on Mars, space politics and more Dream Chaser” →

Space Sunday: A year on Mars and the Polaris Programme

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mars 2020 rover Perseverance. Credit: NASA/JPL

On February 18th, 2021, NASA’s Mars 2020 mission arrived in Jezero Crater, Mars to commence operations.

In the year since then, the 1 tonne Perseverance rover and its tiny companion, the 1.8 Kg helicopter drone Ingenuity, have achieved a tremendous amount, with Ingenuity far exceeding expectations and the rover really still in the earliest phase of its mission (it’s “sister” rover, Curiosity has now been exploring Gale Crater on Mars for over nine years).

Currently, Perseverance is close to wrapping up its first science campaign, studying the basin of the 45 km wide Jezero Crater, a place believed to have once been the home of a lake billions of years ago, and which features some of the oldest rocks scientists have been able to study up close via a rover.

Nor is the rover studying those rocks purely in situ. As I’ve reported in these pages, the rover has been gathering samples in seal containers which – much later in the mission – be deposited in at least one cache on the surface of Mars to await collection by a hoped-for future sample return mission.

So far, six samples have been gathered, and while Martian pebbles got caught in a part of the sample transfer mechanism in January (see: Space Sunday: pebbles, ALH84001 and a supernova) suspending further coring operations, these were finally cleared at the end of the month, leaving the way clear for the rover to collect two more samples in the next couple of weeks.

A raw (unprocessed for Earth lighting conditions) image taken via the forward Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) on NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance as it uses its robot arms to examine an area of exposed rock dubbed “Rimplas” during the rover’s return trip to its landing point. This image was captured on February 8th, 2022 (Sol 345 for the mission). Credit: NASA/JPL

These will come from a type of dark, rubbly rocks seen across much of the crater floor and which have been dubbed Ch’ał (the Navajo term for “frog”). It is hoped that if returned to Earth, samples of these rocks could provide an age range for Jezero’s formation and the lake that once resided there.

The samples Perseverance has been collecting will provide a key chronology for the formation of Jezero Crater. Each one is carefully considered for its scientific value.

– Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

As well as gathering and assessing samples, Perseverance has used the MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment) to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere – such capabilities will be vital for future Mars missions, not only for producing oxygen, but also methane fuel.   

The rover also recently broke the record for the most distance driven by a Mars rover in a single day, travelling 320 metres on February 14th, 2022. This was achieved using the AutoNav software that allows Perseverance to find its own path around rocks and other obstacles.

Having spent the first year of operations studying the crater floor, Perseverance recently started heading towards one of the major features within the crater, a large river delta that once helped feed water into the crater.

On Earth, river deltas are great at preserving carbon-containing organic compounds – the building blocks of life as we know it. As such, much of the rover’s second year on Mars will be spent exploring and study the Jerero river delta.

We are incredibly excited to finally get to the delta [it is] the reason we chose the landing site, and we hope to get to it later this spring. Once we’re there, we’ll be able to look at the bottom of the ancient lake that once filled Jezero to search for signs of ancient microbial life, and we plan to spend the whole next year travelling through the ancient lake deposits and ancient river deposits that are within the delta.

– Briony Horgan, associate professor of planetary science at Purdue University

In order to reach the delta, Perseverance has been backtracking from a rugged part of the crater floor called “South Séítah”, which it has been exploring for the last several months, and will return to its landing site – now called Octavia E. Butler Landing – in the next two week or so. From there, it will drive west to reach the delta region.

While this might sound a long-winded way of doing things, the fact is that the route back from “South Séítah” is known and therefore “safe”, and the landing site provides direct access to the river delta. Whereas going “cross country” from “South Séítah” to the delta would take the rover across a dune field, with the risk of it becoming stuck.

Exactly where the rover will start its studies in the delta has still to be determined, as there are several points of interest that have already been spotted by the science team. One of these is a hilly feature dubbed “Kodiak Hill”, which the rover imaged from the landing point just after it arrived on Mars, and which could provide a good vantage point from which to properly survey the delta as a whole.

It’s likely a final determination of where to go to first with the delta  may be made with the assistance of Ingenuity.

Having completed its regime of five test flights early in the mission, during which Perseverance was relegated to the role of passive observer, the little drone has completed a total of 19 flights and doesn’t show any sign of stopping. While there had been some concern that a recent dust storm might impact its ability to obtain sufficient sunlight to keep its batteries charged, Ingenuity came through in good condition and, once its batteries had been fully charged, proved itself to be able to take to the air once more.

Ingenuity manages to catch Preservice in one of the images it captured which manoeuvring during a test flight in April 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL

For the majority of its flights, Ingenuity had acted as an aerial scout for Perseverance, imaging its surroundings in order to help mission planners determine potential route the rover could follow and / or identify potential points of interest the rover could be directed to study. As such, it has proven itself an invaluable part of the overall mission and more than proven the benefit of having UAVs operating in support of surface missions.

I’ll continue to report on the mission’s progress – and that of Curiosity, as and when NASA provides updates.

Isaacman’s Polaris Programme

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who paid for and commanded the first non-professional astronaut flight into space, Inspiration4 in September 2021 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle (see: Space Sunday: Inspiration4 and Chinese Flights), is now planning a series of similar space flights  – potentially culminating in the first crewed flight of the Starship vehicle.

On February 14th, 2022 Isaacman announced the establishment of the Polaris Programme, which will run in cooperation with SpaceX.

Polaris is a series of pioneering Dragon space missions that will aim to rapidly advance capabilities for human exploration. This programme has been purposefully designed to advance long-duration human spaceflight capabilities and guiding us toward the ultimate goal of facilitating Mars exploration.

– Jared Isaacman, February 14th

Thus far, only the first mission in the programme has any specifics associated with it – and these are sketchy in places, at least for the moment. Called Polaris Dawn, it appears to be jointly funded by Isaacman and SpaceX. It will take place no sooner than the last quarter of 2022 and will comprise Isaacman as commander, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired Air Force pilot who was one of the ground directors for the Inspiration Inspiration4, as pilot and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both SpaceX employees – Menon is married to Anil Menon, a former SpaceX flight surgeon who left the company to join NASA at the end of 2021 as part of its latest astronaut intake.

The other details revealed for the mission are:

  • It will aim to break the record for the highest Earth-orbiting crewed space flight That record was set in 1966, when Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr and Richard F. Gordon Jr piloted Gemini 11, the ninth crewed flight of that series in an extended elliptical orbit with a perigee of just 268 km and an apogee of 1,368 km.
  • This high altitude will allow the crew to study the radiation environment at the edge of interplanetary space – which is vastly different to that experienced by the majority of people who have flown into space – human missions rarely exceed 450 km above the Earth.

 

The Polaris Dawn crew (from L to R): Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis. Credit: Polaris Programme/John Kraus
  • The programme will aim to “raise funds and awareness” for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (the Inspiration4 mission raised a total of US $240 million for the hospital) as a part of “a global health initiative” that will involve SpaceX, their Starlink satellite broadband network. But again, precise details as to what this will mean / entail were no elaborated.
  • The flight will include the first EVA (extravehicular activity) spacewalk by a commercial crewed mission.

This last aspect has drawn the most attention, as it will entail the entire crew utilising a modified version of the suits currently worn by crews using Dragon to fly to / from the International Space Station. It will also be a further hark-back to the Gemini (and Apollo) missions. Like the vehicles used in those programmes, Crew Dragon does not carry an airlock, so the entire vehicle will have to be depressurised the the EVA – something that shouldn’t be a problem, as the vehicle has from the start been designed to be able to vent down to vacuum. However, the exact purpose of the EVA – together with the overall science objectives for the mission – has yet to be detailed.

How many Polaris missions will take place after Dawn is unclear; in terms of Crew Dragon, Isaacman appears to suggest the number of missions will be dependent on how quickly Starship moves from development through operational status as a cargo vehicle to being capable for flying with crews.

This is not something that we can expect in the next few years; SpaceX have a lot to do just to prove Starship and Super Heavy form a viable cargo launch vehicle, after which the vehicle will have to go through an assessment and rating to clear it for flying crews and passengers. This is itself not a simple process – for example, it is expected that crewed launch vehicle have so form of abort / escape system, something  Elon Musk has thus far only “supposed” this could be possible for Starship.

However, for all the gaps in what has thus far been presented, the Polaris Project would appear to be an interesting new venture – one the goals that again reach beyond mere space tourism.