NASA's Perseverance rover to begin building Martian sample depot
Friday, 16 December 2022 18:48
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In the coming days, NASA's Perseverance rover is expected to begin building the first sample depot on another world. This will mark a crucial milestone in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign, which aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study.
The depot-building process starts when the rover drops one of its titanium sample tubes carrying a chalk-size core of rock from its belly 2.9 feet (88.8 centimeters) onto the ground at an area within Jezero Crater nicknamed "Three Forks.
Where are the best places to land humans on Mars?
Friday, 16 December 2022 16:53 Write a comment
Want to go to Mars? Great, now all you need to do is plan a mission. Figure out where to land, what to bring, and how you're going to live there in the months (or years) between favorable return windows. All this will be determined by the availability of crucial resources you'll need to survive.
This is going to sound like a travel brochure, but the red planet offers so much to check out for a first human mission. There are canyons, plains, craters, volcanoes, and polar regions. So, where do you start first? It'll depend on what sort of mission you want to accomplish. A simple "plant boots and the flag" trip won't require a lot of infrastructure.
A more complex mission is going to need more infrastructure for habitats and science stations. Essentially, you'll land, build a habitat, explore the near neighborhood, establish a science outpost, and survive the radiation and environmental challenges of Mars.
Inflating a habitat to destruction to test its limits before going to orbit
Friday, 16 December 2022 16:51 Write a comment
Normally, it would be a very bad day if your space station habitat module blew up. But it was all smiles and high-fives in mission control when Sierra Space's LIFE habitat was intentionally over-inflated until it popped spectacularly in an Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test. The video below shows the moment of boom from several different viewpoints.
The test was performed on November 15, and due to the test's potentially explosive nature, the team placed a subscale test version of the inflatable module in the flame trench of the Saturn 1/1B test stand at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where NASA tested rockets for the Apollo program.
This is the second burst test this year for the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat.
Rubble pile asteroids might be the best places to build space habitats
Friday, 16 December 2022 16:49 Write a comment
The stars call to us, as Carl Sagan once said. Given the human drive to explore our world and expand our reach, it is likely only a matter of time before we begin to build our homes in the solar system. The moon and Mars could be acceptable destinations, but nearby asteroids could also become homes, as a recent study shows.
The cold, weightless, radiation-filled dark of space poses a number of challenges to human habitation. We must be shielded from cosmic radiation and solar wind, and microgravity poses significant health hazards to the human body. This will force us to live under a layer of regolith or soil on the moon and Mars. Given the low gravity of these worlds, we might be better off living deep within small asteroids that we can spin up to create a healthy artificial weight.
Scientists testing future technology to extend solar energy measurements
Friday, 16 December 2022 16:24 Write a comment
Since July 2022, a miniature satellite about the size of a shoebox has been orbiting Earth and monitoring how much solar energy reaches the atmosphere. Now, scientists are finalizing their analysis of the first five months of measurements it gathered while in orbit.
The sun is by far the largest source of energy to Earth, dwarfing the energy generated by Earth's core, and it plays a major role in global climate. Precise and accurate measurement of how much solar energy is absorbed by Earth—Total Solar Irradiance (TSI)—is crucial to our understanding of Earth's climate system.
The CubeSat, called the Compact Total Irradiance Monitor-Flight Demonstration, or CTIM-FD, is on a one-year mission to develop and test new technologies for measuring TSI.
CTIM-FD was designed and built by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
A key part of this mission is to directly compare the measurements of CTIM against its larger counterparts to demonstrate that it can perform measurements just as precisely and accurately.
Christmas comes early for Aeolus with improved laser performance
Friday, 16 December 2022 16:19 Write a comment
ESA's wind mission continues to shine as engineers have worked their Christmas magic. With a switch back to its original laser, Aeolus is now shining more than twice as brightly with its best ever performance—just in time for the holidays.
It's another remarkable success for ESA's fifth Earth Explorer. Launched in 2018 after many technical challenges, Aeolus pioneered what none had pioneered before—directly measuring global wind profiles from space using a laser.
ESA Highlights 2022
Friday, 16 December 2022 14:00 Write a comment
Video:
00:07:33
2022 was a year of many ‘firsts’ for space in Europe, seeing the first European female ISS commander, the launch of the first Vega-C rocket, Solar Orbiter’s first close encounter with our home star, the launch of the first Artemis mission working to bring humans back to the Moon, and first images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Let’s take a look at the highlights and accomplishments of the European Space Agency during 2022.
Week in images: 12-16 December 2022
Friday, 16 December 2022 13:50 Write a comment
Week in images: 12-16 December 2022
Discover our week through the lens
Temperature rising on Soyuz, crew not in danger
Friday, 16 December 2022 13:47 Write a comment
On Thursday, Russia's space agency Roscosmos and the US space agency NASA said a coolant leak had been detected on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. The leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday.
Roscosmos said that a number of tests had been conducted on Soyuz on Friday, and the temperature in the capsule increased to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).
"This is a slight change in temperature," the space agency said in a statement.
The development was for now "not critical" for the operation of the equipment and the comfort of the crew, Roscosmos said.
The coolant leak could potentially affect a return flight to Earth by three crew members.
Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight programme for Roscosmos, said the leak may have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz.
Space has been a rare avenue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Moscow's intervention in Ukraine in February and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia that shredded ties between the two countries.
Snowy Lapland and the white balloon
Friday, 16 December 2022 12:12 Write a comment
At this time of the year, the mention of Lapland conjures up visions of Santa getting his gift-laden sleigh and nine reindeer ready to take to the skies for the most important deliveries of all. However, the skies of Lapland have witnessed something rather different recently – a big white balloon, which may not provide the immediate gratification of a much-wanted Christmas present, but nonetheless plays a role in helping to safeguard our children’s future.
Maxar Technologies acquired by private equity firm in $6.4 billion deal
Friday, 16 December 2022 11:51 Write a comment
Maxar Technologies, a space company that gained global attention with its high-resolution satellite images of the Ukraine war, is being acquired by the private equity firm Advent International for $6.4 billion.
The post Maxar Technologies acquired by private equity firm in $6.4 billion deal appeared first on SpaceNews.
Falcon 9 launches ocean science mission for NASA and CNES
Friday, 16 December 2022 11:50 Write a comment
A Falcon 9 successfully launched an Earth science mission jointly developed by the United States and France to monitor water levels and the effects of climate change.
The post Falcon 9 launches ocean science mission for NASA and CNES appeared first on SpaceNews.
Tiny meteorite may have caused leak from Soyuz capsule
Friday, 16 December 2022 11:32 Write a comment
Russian and NASA engineers were assessing a coolant leak on Thursday from a Soyuz crew capsule docked with the International Space Station (ISS) that may have been caused by a micrometeorite strike.
Dramatic NASA TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of the vessel for hours.
The coolant leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by Juno exploring Jovian moons during extended mission
Friday, 16 December 2022 11:32 Write a comment
NASA's Juno mission is scheduled to obtain images of the Jovian moon Io on Dec. 15 as part of its continuing exploration of Jupiter's inner moons. Now in the second year of its extended mission to investigate the interior of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft performed a close flyby of Ganymede in 2021 and of Europa earlier this year.
"The team is really excited to have Juno's extended Planet makes its geospatial data available through Amazon SageMaker
Friday, 16 December 2022 11:32 Write a comment
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, has announced it is making geospatial data available through Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed machine learning (ML) service from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now, Planet data can be directly embedded into Amazon SageMaker, allowing data scientists and ML engineers to acquire and analyze global, daily satellite