Tag: spaceflight

September 8, 2022 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of string Jay:

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Russia confirms Luna-25 delayed till next year

8:42 am

The landing area for Luna-25
The landing zone for Luna-25 at Boguslawsky Crater

The head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, confirmed yesterday that the launch of Russia’s first lunar science probe since the 1970s has been delayed until 2023.

The Doppler speed and distance sensor made by the Vega Concern owned by the Rostech State Corporation, that could guarantee a soft landing, underperformed in terms of measurement precision, a source in the space industry told TASS in July. The launch will likely be postponed until 2023, the source added.

Russian sources had indicated in July that this delay was likely. Yesterday’s announcement merely made it certain.

This project has been under development for almost a quarter of century, which appears to be the average development time for government-run projects, whether in Russia or in the U.S. Just long enough to provide an almost entire career for bureaucrats.

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Arianespace’s Ariane-5 rocket launches communications satellite

5:29 pm

Arianespace today used its Ariane-5 rocket, launching from French Guiana, to successfully place a Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit.

This was the fourth successful launch this year for Arianespace, so Europe still does not make the leader board. The company had predicted it would launch eleven times in 2022. At this moment it appears very questionable it will be able to match that prediction.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 55 to 55.

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Axiom chosen by NASA to build first Artemis moonsuits

5:22 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA today awarded Axiom the contract to build the moonsuits the astronauts will use on the first lunar landing of its Artemis program, dubbed Artemis-3.

After reviewing proposals from its two eligible spacesuit vendors, NASA selected Axiom Space for the task order, which has a base value of $228.5 million. A future task order will be competed for recurring spacesuit services to support subsequent Artemis missions.

The contract award continues NASA shift from its failed spacesuit effort — taking fourteen years and a billion dollars to produce nothing — to hiring the private sector to do it.

Previously NASA had awarded contracts to both Axiom and Collins Aerospace to build spacesuits, either for spacewalks or on the Moon. Today’s award is specifically for moonsuits for that first lunar mission.

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Ingenuity completes 31st flight

3:06 pm

Perseverance's location on September 2, 2022
Click for interactive map

Though no details have yet been released, the engineering team for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has posted the numbers for the helicopter’s 31st flight, which took place yesterday.

Ingenuity flew 318 feet to a height of 33 feet for 56 seconds. The maximum ground speed was 10.6 mph. The white dot on the map to the right indicates the approximate landing spot. The blue dot Perseverance’s location as of September 3rd.

The flight plan had been to fly 319 feet, so Ingenuity landed one foot short of that plan.

That difference does not indicate any problems. However, one of the present goals of the engineering team is to improve their landing accuracy in order to provide data for the future sample return helicopter that is now in development to come and get Perseverance’s sample cores. That future helicopter will need to be able to land very precisely, and they are using Ingenuity to refine the Martian flight software.

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An example of the youngest big lava flow on Mars

1:34 pm

An example of the youngest big lava flow on Mars
Click for full image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The photo above, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 13, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows two dramatic ancient flows of flood lava. The arrows indicate what I think is the direction of flow for each, though the direction of the flow to the north appears more certain. In a wider context camera image the bulk of the evidence suggests the southern flow is heading west (as indicated by the arrow), but there are scalloped mesas within it that suggest the opposite.

The overview map above marks the location of this picture by the white cross inside the Athabasca Valles flood lava, thought by some scientists [pdf] to be Mars’ youngest major lava event that erupted about 600 million years ago and in just a matter of a few weeks poured out enough lava to cover an area about the size of Great Britain.

The general trend of the Athabasca flow was to the south, splitting into a big western and southeastern flows. This picture captures the southern edge of that southeastern flow, which might help explain why the flow directions in the picture seem so different from the main Athabasca flow. On a large scale, the flow was to the southeast. On a small scale at the edges the flow could go in many directions as the lava looks to find its level.

The Medusa Fossae Formation is the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars, and is thought to be the source of most of the red planet’s dust. Though the origin of the ash is not yet known, it likely came from the eruptions that formed the planet’s giant volcanoes to the east and west.

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Research: Flies on ISS benefited greatly from simulated gravity

10:52 am

Scientists have found that providing fruitflies 1g of artificial gravity on ISS using a centrifuge acted to reduce the medical changes that weightlessness produces.

In this study, scientists sent flies to the space station on a month-long mission in a newly developed piece of hardware called the Multi-use Variable-gravity Platform (MVP), capable of housing flies at different gravity levels. The flies in this hardware had access to fresh food as they lived and reproduced. By using distinct compartments, the MVP allowed for different generations of flies to be separated. On the space station, one group of fruit flies experienced microgravity similar to their human counterparts. Another group was exposed to artificial gravity by simulating Earth’s gravity on the space station using a centrifuge – an instrument that spins to simulate gravity. While on the space station, cameras in the hardware recorded behavior of these “flyonauts”. At different points in time, some of the flies were frozen and returned to Earth to study their gene expression.

…More in-depth analysis on the ground immediately post-flight revealed neurological changes in flies exposed to microgravity. As the flies acclimated to being back on Earth after their journey, the flies that experienced artificial gravity in space aged differently. They faced similar but less severe challenges to the flies that were in microgravity.

You can read the paper here.

To some extent, this study tells us nothing. We already know from a half century of research that zero gravity causes negative physical changes in both fruit flies and humans. What we really need to know is the lowest level of artificial gravity that would be beneficial. It is much easier to engine a spacecraft to produce 0.1g of artificial gravity than 1g. Even 0.5g would ease the engineering problem. The problem is that we do not yet know the right number.

It is a shame the scientists didn’t subject some flies to 0.5g, just to find out if that level of artificial gravity worked to provide benefits.

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Rocket Lab gets contract with military to study point-to-point cargo transport

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday revealed that the U.S. military has given it a contract to study whether its rockets could eventually be used for point-to-point cargo transport.

This study contract is similar to the one the military gave SpaceX for its Starship/Superheavy rocket. Both are intended not to actual fly missions, but to look at the engineering of the rockets to see if it will be practical to use them for point-to-point cargo transport on Earth.

The deal suggests the military has been impressed with Rocket Lab’s efforts to make its smallsat Electron rocket resusable, as well as its development program for its newer and larger Neutron resusable rocket.

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Computer model: Glaciers move slower in Mars’ gravity

10:00 am

Using a computer model that compared glacier flows on Earth and Mars, scientists have concluded that past glaciers on Mars flowed more slowly than on Earth, and produced different types of erosion features that might explain the red planet’s many riverlike geological features.

The new study modeled how Mars’ low gravity would affect the feedback between how fast an ice sheet slides and how water drains below the ice, finding under-ice channels would be likely to form and persist. Fast water drainage would increase friction at the interface of rock and ice. This means ice sheets on Mars likely moved, and eroded the ground under them, at exceedingly slow rates, even when water accumulated under the ice, the authors said.

From the paper [pdf]:

We show quantitatively that the lower surface gravity on Mars should alter the behavior of wet-based ice masses by modifying the subglacial drainage system, making efficient, channelized drainage beneath Martian ice both more likely to form and more resilient to closure. Using as an example the case of the ancient southern circumpolar ice sheet, we demonstrate that the expected finger-print of wet-based Martian ice sheets is networks of subglacial channels and eskers, consistent with the occur-rence of valley networks and inverted ridges found on the Martian highlands.

This paper confirms the sense I have gotten from the planetary community about glaciers on Mars, that it could be the flow of glaciers that formed its many meandering canyons, not liquid water. The case however is not yet proven, as this is only a computer model.

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China’s Long March 2D launches two military satellites

9:40 am

China yesterday successfully launched two military satellites using its Long March 2D rocket.

Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s first stage crashed somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 54.

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September 6, 2022 Quick space links

5:16 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.

  • Sierra Space: Mission: Tenacity Part 1

    • This video is just an empty-of-content commercial for Sierra Space, filled with feel-good “woke” blather but little real information about the actual status of this long overdue spacecraft. It is worth watching however because it reveals this emptiness. Reminds me of the many similar videos from Blue Origin and NASA over the years, filled with big promises but little actual achievement.

  • How does Starlink Satellite Internet Work?

    • This video, almost 30 minutes long, is definitely worth watching if you have any interest in signing up for Starlink, or just have an interest in the coming low orbit satellite constellation boom.

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South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully makes course correction

10:20 am

On September 2nd engineers for South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully completed a major course correction, firing its engines to adjust its path towards the Moon.

The science ministry announced Sept. 4 that the maneuver was so successful that the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), which controls the spacecraft called Danuri, has decided to skip an additional correction maneuver planned for Sept. 16.

It will reach lunar orbit on December 16th, then make five more orbital adjustments before reaching its science orbit in January. While the spacecraft has instruments from both South Korea and the U.S. for studying the lunar surface, its main goal is to teach South Korea engineers and scientists how to do this.

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