OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

This view was captured by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover within Gediz Vallis channel, which was likely formed by ancient floodwaters and landslides. After Curiosity drove over a bright stone and cracked it open, scientists discovered it was filled with pure sulfur — something that’s never been seen on Mars before. The rover has discovered lots of sulfur-based minerals in the past, but not pure sulfur. In the video, a separate image of the sulfur crystals appears embedded roughly where the rock was found; the camera’s view of the rock was blocked by the rover at the time this panorama was taken.

You’ll also see Curiosity’s robotic arm, which is raised after drilling its 41st hole at a location nicknamed “Mammoth Lakes.” The sample collected by Curiosity was dropped into instruments in its belly, and will help scientists understand how this area formed.

The rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to take this panorama on June 19, 2024, the 4,220th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. It’s made up of 336 individual images that were stitched together. The color has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Wikipedia dicit:

Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is an autonomous NASA helicopter that operated on Mars from 2021 to 2024 as part of the Mars 2020 mission. Ingenuity made its first flight on April 19, 2021, demonstrating that flight is possible in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and becoming the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight. It was designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center with some components supplied by Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero.

Ingenuity was delivered to Mars on February 18, 2021, attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which landed at Octavia E. Butler Landing near the western rim of the 45 km-wide (28 mi) Jezero crater. Because radio signals take between five and 20 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars, depending on the planets’ positions, it could not be controlled directly in real time but flew autonomously to execute flight plans designed and sent to it by JPL.

Originally intended to make only five flights, Ingenuity completed 72 flights in nearly three years. The five planned flights were part of a 30-sol technology demonstration intended to prove its airworthiness with flights of up to 90 seconds at altitudes ranging from 3–5 m (10–16 ft). Following this demonstration, JPL designed a series of operational flights to explore how aerial scouts could help explore Mars and other worlds. In this operational role, Ingenuity scouted areas of interest for the Perseverance rover, improved navigational techniques, and explored the limits of its flight envelope. Ingenuity’s performance and resilience in the harsh Martian environment greatly exceeded expectations, allowing it to perform far more flights than were initially planned. On January 18, 2024, Ingenuity’s rotor blades were damaged while landing on its 72nd flight, permanently grounding the helicopter. NASA announced the end of its mission one week later. Ingenuity had flown for a total of two hours, eight minutes and 48 seconds over 1,004 days, covering more than 17 kilometres (11 mi).

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Wikipedia dicit:

Starship is an American two-stage super heavy lift launch vehicle under development by the aerospace company SpaceX. It is currently the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship is intended to be fully reusable, which means both stages will be recovered after a mission and reused.

The Starship launch vehicle is designed to supplant SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, expand SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, and launch crews to both low Earth orbit and Mars. The vehicle is fundamental to SpaceX’s ambition of colonizing Mars. SpaceX plans to use Starship vehicles as tankers, refueling other Starships to allow missions to geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars. A planned lunar lander variant of Starship was contracted by NASA to land astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis program by 2025, later delayed to September 2026.

Starship consists of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft, which are both powered by Raptor engines, which burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Both stages are constructed primarily of stainless steel, instead of the carbon composite used in a series of prior designs. The booster is designed to use its engines to slow itself down, before being caught by a pair of mechanical arms attached to the launch tower. The Starship spacecraft is designed to be protected during atmospheric reentry by its thermal protection system, using a ‘belly flop’ maneuver where the spacecraft turns from a horizontal to a vertical position from which it lands using its engines.

SpaceX has stated that a long-term goal for the Starship system is to achieve frequent space launches at low cost. Development follows an iterative and incremental approach involving test flights of prototype vehicles which are often destructive. The first flight test of the full Starship system took place on 20 April 2023, lifting-off with three engines out and ending four minutes after launch due to a loss of control, resulting in the destruction of the launch vehicle. The second flight test of the vehicle took place on 18 November 2023, achieving stage separation with the Super Heavy booster exploding roughly 30 seconds later following multiple engine failures during its boostback burn. The upper stage was lost nearly eight minutes after launch prior to reaching orbit.

Video credit: SpaceX

Wikipedia dicit:

Features on Mars that resemble dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that form in the presence of water indicate that Mars once had a dense enough atmosphere and was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface. However, that thick atmosphere was somehow lost to space. Scientists suspect that over millions of years, Mars lost 99% of its atmosphere as the planet’s core cooled and its magnetic field decayed, allowing the solar wind to sweep away most of the water and volatile compounds that the atmosphere once contained.

The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space, providing answers about Martian climate evolution. By measuring the rate with which the atmosphere is currently escaping to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes, scientists will be able to infer how the planet’s atmosphere evolved over time.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

Wikipedia dicit:

Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is a small autonomous helicopter presently operating on the planet Mars. It is part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. The helicopter arrived on the Martian surface attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which landed on February 18, 2021. The helicopter was deployed to the surface on April 3, 2021. Both the rover and the helicopter began their missions on Mars at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site near the western rim of the 28 mi (45 km) wide Jezero crater.

On April 19 it made the first powered, controlled extraterrestrial flight by any aircraft. During its first flight Ingenuity took off vertically, hovered, and then landed. It flew for a total of 39.1 seconds during that attempt. As of its 66th flight on November 3, 2023 (UTC), Ingenuity had flown a total of 1 hour, 58 minutes and 48 seconds over 928 days.

The flights have demonstrated the helicopter’s ability to fly in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, just 0.6% as thick as the air on Earth. It proved that flight was possible on other planets without the direct human control that the finite speed of light makes impractical (depending on the positions of the two planets, radio signals take between 5 and 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars). As a result of this delay Ingenuity must autonomously perform the maneuvers planned, scripted and transmitted to it by its operators.

The helicopter was intended to perform a 30-sol technology demonstration, making five flights at altitudes ranging from 3–5 m (10–16 ft) for up to 90 seconds each. Before Ingenuity’s first flight, Perseverance drove approximately 100 m (330 ft) away to create a safety buffer between itself and the helicopter. The success of Ingenuity’s first flight was confirmed three hours after its completion by JPL, which livestreamed a view of mission control receiving the data. On April 30, 2021, during its fourth flight, Perseverance recorded the sound of Ingenuity during operation, making it the first interplanetary spacecraft whose sound was recorded in situ by another interplanetary spacecraft.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Wikipedia dicit:

Starship is a super heavy-lift space vehicle under development by SpaceX. At 120 metres (394 feet) in height and with a liftoff mass of 5,000 metric tons (11,023,000 pounds), Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown, surpassing the Saturn V rocket of the 1960s Apollo Program.

The space vehicle consists of the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the second-stage spacecraft also named Starship. Both stages are powered by Raptor rocket engines, which burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants in a full-flow staged combustion power cycle. Both are designed to be fully reusable, performing controlled landings on the launch tower and reflown within hours. Starship is designed to have a payload capacity of 150 tonnes (330,000 lb) to low Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration and 250 t (550,000 lb) when expended. Starship vehicles in low Earth orbit are planned to be refilled with propellant launched in tanker Starships to enable transit to higher energy destinations such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

Plans for a heavy-lift vehicle at SpaceX date to 2005, with the earliest concept resembling the modern vehicle announced in 2016. SpaceX’s Starship development follows an iterative and incremental approach involving frequent, and often destructive, test flights of prototype vehicles. The first orbital test flight was attempted on 20 April 2023, when an anomaly caused the vehicle to tumble out of control four minutes after launch. SpaceX activated the flight termination system, which fired the explosive charges but did not destroy the vehicle. Approximately 40 seconds later both stages were destroyed due to increased aerodynamic forces. After the test, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the launch program pending results of a standard “mishap investigation.”

SpaceX intends Starship to become its primary space vehicle, superseding the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles as well as the Dragon spacecraft currently used as part of NASA’s commercial crew program to the International Space Station. Starship is often coupled with the company’s Mars ambitions. Planned Starship flights include the development of SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation, crewed flights under the Polaris and dearMoon programs, and a crewed lunar landing with a modified Starship spacecraft under the Artemis program.

Video credit: SpaceX