The Artemis program is an ongoing crewed spaceflight program carried out predominately by NASA, U.S. commercial spaceflight companies, and international partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) with the goal of landing “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region by 2024. NASA sees Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 configuration rocket launched the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on its journey to study the sun for the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA on February 9, 2020.
The spacecraft will make looping orbits around the sun and use 10 instruments to observe solar physics in unprecedented detail. At closest approach, Solar Orbiter will be about approximately 26 million miles (42 million km) from the sun.
Solar Orbiter is an international cooperative mission between ESA and NASA. ESA’s Engineering & Test Center (ESTEC) in The Netherlands is managing the development effort. Airbus developed the spacecraft. The European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Germany will operate Solar Orbiter after launch.
The Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a planned Sun-observing satellite, under development by the European Space Agency (ESA). SolO is intended to perform detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and nascent solar wind, and perform close observations of the polar regions of the Sun, which is difficult to do from Earth, both serving to answer the question “How does the Sun create and control the heliosphere?”
SolO will make observations of the Sun from an eccentric orbit moving as close as ~60 solar radii (RS), or 0.284 astronomical units (au), placing it inside Mercury’s perihelion of 0.3075 au. During the planned 7-year mission the orbital inclination will be raised to about 25°.
The spacecraft will make a close approach to the Sun every five months. The closest approach will be positioned to allow a repeated study of the same region of the solar atmosphere. Solar Orbiter will be able to observe the magnetic activity building up in the atmosphere that can lead to powerful solar flares or eruptions.
Researchers will also have the chance to coordinate observations with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission (2018-2025) which is performing measurements of the Sun’s extended corona.
The objective of the mission is to perform close-up, high-resolution studies of the Sun and its inner heliosphere. The new understanding will help answer these questions:
How and where do the solar wind plasma and magnetic field originate in the corona?
How do solar transients drive heliospheric variability?
How do solar eruptions produce energetic particle radiation that fills the heliosphere?
How does the solar dynamo work and drive connections between the Sun and the heliosphere?
In 2014, Copenhagen Suborbitals settled on the basic design for their first crewed rocket and space capsule. The rocket will be named Spica, and will stand 12–14 m tall with a diameter of 950 mm. It will be powered by the BPM-100 engine class, using liquid oxygen as oxidizer and ethanol as fuel, producing 100 kilonewtons of thrust. It’s likely to feature pressure-blow-down tanks, optimised by a dynamic pressure regulation (DPR) system, but turbo pumps are also a possibility, although they are difficult to build. Flight control will be thrust vectoring via a gimbal engine. The rocket will be fully guided by home-built electronics and software. Most of the systems and technology will initially be tested on the smaller Nexø class rockets. The space capsule will be of a tubular design as its predecessor Tycho Brahe, but its greater diameter will allow the astronaut to assume a sitting position during launch and re-entry, in order to withstand the G-forces.
The Boeing Starliner (CST-100 – Crew Space Transportation-100) is a crew capsule manufactured by Boeing as its participation in NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. It is planned to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS) and to private space stations such as the proposed Bigelow Aerospace Commercial Space Station.
The capsule has a diameter of 4.56 meters (15.0 ft), which is slightly larger than the Apollo command module and smaller than the Orion capsule. The Boeing Starliner holds a crew of up to seven people and is being designed to be able to remain in-orbit for up to seven months with reusability of up to ten missions. It is designed to be compatible with four launch vehicles: Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, and Vulcan.
In the first phase of its CCDev program NASA awarded Boeing US$18 million in 2010 for preliminary development of the spacecraft. In the second phase Boeing was awarded a $93 million contract in 2011 for further spacecraft development. On 3 August 2012, NASA announced the award of $460 million to Boeing to continue work on the CST-100 under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Program. On 16 September 2014, NASA selected the Boeing CST-100, along with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program, with an award of $4.2 billion. On 30 July 2019, NASA had no specific dates for Commercial Crew launches, stating that this was under review pending a leadership change.
The Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed test flight) launched with the Atlas V N22, on 20 December 2019 from SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. During the test, the Starliner experienced a timing anomaly that precluded a docking with the International Space Station. Two days after launch, on 22 December 2019 at 07:58 EST (12:58 UTC), with the successful landing at White Sands, New Mexico, the Boeing Starliner Calypso became the first-ever crew-capable space capsule to make a land-based touchdown in the United States.
Dragon 2 is a class of reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by U.S. aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, intended as the successor to the Dragon cargo spacecraft. The spacecraft launches atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and returns via ocean splashdown. When compared to Dragon, Crew Dragon has larger windows, new flight computers and avionics, redesigned solar arrays, and a modified outer mold line.
The spacecraft has two planned variants – Crew Dragon, a human-rated capsule capable of carrying up to seven astronauts, and Cargo Dragon, an updated replacement for the original Dragon. Crew Dragon is equipped with an integrated launch escape system in a set of four side-mounted thruster pods with two SuperDraco engines each. Crew Dragon has been contracted to supply the International Space Station (ISS) with crew under the Commercial Crew Program, with the initial award occurring in October 2014 alongside Boeing CST-100 Starliner. Crew Dragon’s first non-piloted test flight to the ISS launched in March 2019.
SpaceX conducted an in-flight abort test from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A in Florida on 19 January 2020 at 15:30 UTC. The Crew Dragon test capsule was launched in an atmospheric flight to conduct a separation and abort scenario in the troposphere at transonic velocities, at max Q, where the vehicle experiences maximum aerodynamic pressure. The test objective was to demonstrate the ability to safely move away from the ascending rocket under the most challenging atmospheric conditions of the flight trajectory, imposing the worst structural stress of a real flight on the rocket and spacecraft. The abort test was performed using a regular Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket.
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