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Archive for the Space Exploration category

January 31, 2024

Remember Fallen Heroes

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They will always be remembered…

Apollo 1 (January 27, 1967)

Virgil “Gus” Grissom – Commander, Edward White – Command Pilot, Roger Chaffee – Pilot

STS-51 L (January 28, 1986)

Francis R. Scobee – Commander, Michael J. Smith – Pilot, Judith A. Resnik – Mission Specialist 1, Ellison Onizuka – Mission Specialist 2, Ronald E. McNair – Mission Specialist 3, Gregory B. Jarvis – Payload Specialist 1, Sharon Christa McAuliffe – Payload Specialist 2

STS-107 (February 1, 2003)

Rick D. Husband – Commander, William C. McCool – Pilot, Michael P. Anderson – Payload Commander, David M. Brown – Mission Specialist 1, Kalpana Chawla – Mission Specialist 2, Laurel Clark – Mission Specialist 3, Ilan Ramon – Payload Specialist 1

Video credit: NASA

 

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October 25, 2023

Mars Ascent Vehicle Model Test

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NASA dicit:

A scale model of the Mars Ascent Vehicle is tested for in the trisonic wind tunnel at Marshall. The tunnel’s test sections are only 14 inches in height and width but can achieve wind speeds of up to Mach 5.

The Mars Ascent Vehicle team recently completed testing at NASA facility that has been a critical part of missions going all the way back to the Apollo program. The same facility is now helping the agency prepare to launch the first rocket from Mars.

The MAV is an important part of the joint plan between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) to bring scientifically selected Martian samples to Earth in the early 2030s.

Video credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

 

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October 24, 2023

Lucy to Finally Meet Dinkinesh

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Wikipedia dicit:

Lucy is a NASA space probe on a twelve-year journey to eight different asteroids, visiting two main belt asteroids as well as six Jupiter trojans, asteroids which share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet. All target encounters will be flyby encounters. The Lucy spacecraft is the centerpiece of a US$981 million mission.

On 4 January 2017, Lucy was chosen, along with the Psyche mission, as NASA’s Discovery Program missions 13 and 14 respectively.

The mission is named after the Lucy hominid fossils, because study of the trojans could reveal the “fossils of planet formation”: materials that clumped together in the early history of the Solar System to form planets and other bodies. The hominid was named after the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. The spacecraft carries a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for its L’TES instrument.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

 

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October 23, 2023

Psyche Launch

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Wikipedia dicit:

Psyche is a NASA space mission launched on October 13, 2023 to explore the origin of planetary cores by orbiting and studying the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche beginning in 2029. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the project.

16 Psyche is the heaviest known M-type asteroid, and may be an exposed iron core of a protoplanet, the remnant of a violent collision with another object that stripped off its mantle and crust. On January 4, 2017, the Psyche mission was selected for NASA’s Discovery #14 mission. It was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

16 Psyche is the heaviest known M-type asteroid, and may be an exposed iron core of a protoplanet, the remnant of a violent collision with another object that stripped off its mantle and crust.

Recent studies show that it is “a mixed metal and silicate world”. Another study considers it to be either a metal core of a protoplanet or “a differentiated world with a regolith composition … peppered with localized regions of high metal concentrations”. Radar observations of the asteroid from Earth indicate an iron–nickel composition.

The Psyche spacecraft is designed with solar electric propulsion, and the scientific payload includes a multispectral imager, a magnetometer, and a gamma-ray spectrometer.

The mission is designed to perform 21 months of science. The spacecraft was built by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with SSL (formerly Space Systems/Loral) and Arizona State University.

It was proposed that the rocket launch might be shared with a separate mission named Athena, that would perform a single flyby of asteroid 2 Pallas, the third-largest asteroid in the Solar System.

In May 2020, it was announced that the Falcon Heavy carrying Psyche would include two smallsat secondary payloads to study the Martian atmosphere and binary asteroids, named EscaPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) and Janus respectively, but in September 2020, the EscaPADE Mars atmosphere probe was removed from the plan.

Janus was later removed from the Psyche mission as well on November 18, 2022, after an assessment determined that it would not be on the required trajectory to meet its science requirements as a result of Psyche’s new launch period.

Video credit: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

 

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September 28, 2023

Asteroid Samples Delivered to Earth

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Wikipedia dicit:

OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission’s primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least 60 g (2.1 oz) from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, and return the sample to Earth for a detailed analysis. The material returned is expected to enable scientists to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System, its initial stages of planet formation, and the source of organic compounds that led to the formation of life on Earth.

OSIRIS-REx was launched on 8 September 2016, flew past Earth on 22 September 2017, and rendezvoused with Bennu on 3 December 2018. It spent the next several months analyzing the surface to find a suitable site from which to extract a sample. On 20 October 2020, OSIRIS-REx touched down on Bennu and successfully collected a sample. Though some of the sample escaped when the flap that should have closed the sampler head was jammed open by larger rocks, NASA is confident that they were able to retain between 400 g and over 1 kg of sample material, well in excess of the 60 g (2.1 oz) minimum target mass. OSIRIS-REx is expected to return with its sample to Earth on 24 September 2023 and subsequently start its new mission to study 99942 Apophis as OSIRIS-APEX (‘APophis EXplorer’), arriving at that asteroid in 2029.

Bennu was chosen as the target of study because it is a “time capsule” from the birth of the Solar System. Bennu has a very dark surface and is classified as a B-type asteroid, a sub-type of the carbonaceous C-type asteroids. Such asteroids are considered primitive, having undergone little geological change from their time of formation. In particular, Bennu was selected because of the availability of pristine carbonaceous material, a key element in organic molecules necessary for life as well as representative of matter from before the formation of Earth. Organic molecules, such as amino acids, have previously been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating that some ingredients necessary for life can be naturally synthesized in outer space.

The cost of the mission is approximately US$800 million, not including the Atlas V launch vehicle, which is about US$183.5 million. It is the third planetary science mission selected in the New Frontiers program, after Juno and New Horizons. The principal investigator is Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona. If successful, OSIRIS-REx will be the first United States spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid. The Japanese probe Hayabusa returned samples from 25143 Itokawa in 2010, and Hayabusa2 returned from 162173 Ryugu in December 2020. On 10 May 2021, OSIRIS-REx successfully completed its departure from Bennu and began its two-year return to Earth.

Video credit: Lockheed Martin

 

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July 28, 2023

OSIRIS-REx

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Wikipedia dicit:

OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission’s primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least 60 g (2.1 oz) from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, and return the sample to Earth for a detailed analysis. The material returned is expected to enable scientists to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System, its initial stages of planet formation, and the source of organic compounds that led to the formation of life on Earth.

OSIRIS-REx was launched on 8 September 2016, flew past Earth on 22 September 2017, and rendezvoused with Bennu on 3 December 2018. It spent the next several months analyzing the surface to find a suitable site from which to extract a sample. On 20 October 2020, OSIRIS-REx touched down on Bennu and successfully collected a sample. Though some of the sample escaped when the flap that should have closed the sampler head was jammed open by larger rocks, NASA is confident that they were able to retain between 400 g and over 1 kg of sample material, well in excess of the 60 g (2.1 oz) minimum target mass. OSIRIS-REx is expected to return with its sample to Earth on 24 September 2023 and subsequently start its new mission to study 99942 Apophis as OSIRIS-APEX (‘APophis EXplorer’), arriving at that asteroid in 2029.

Bennu was chosen as the target of study because it is a “time capsule” from the birth of the Solar System. Bennu has a very dark surface and is classified as a B-type asteroid, a sub-type of the carbonaceous C-type asteroids. Such asteroids are considered primitive, having undergone little geological change from their time of formation. In particular, Bennu was selected because of the availability of pristine carbonaceous material, a key element in organic molecules necessary for life as well as representative of matter from before the formation of Earth. Organic molecules, such as amino acids, have previously been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating that some ingredients necessary for life can be naturally synthesized in outer space.

The cost of the mission is approximately US$800 million, not including the Atlas V launch vehicle, which is about US$183.5 million. It is the third planetary science mission selected in the New Frontiers program, after Juno and New Horizons. The principal investigator is Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona. If successful, OSIRIS-REx will be the first United States spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid. The Japanese probe Hayabusa returned samples from 25143 Itokawa in 2010, and Hayabusa2 returned from 162173 Ryugu in December 2020. On 10 May 2021, OSIRIS-REx successfully completed its departure from Bennu and began its two-year return to Earth.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

 

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