U.S. Resupply Ship Poised for Launch as Crew Studies Life Science

ISS - Expedition 59 Mission patch.

April 16, 2019

The U.S. Cygnus resupply ship from Northrop Grumman is encapsulated atop the Antares rocket and standing at its launch pad in Virginia. The Expedition 59 crew is training for its capture at the end of the week in the midst of ongoing life science aboard the International Space Station.

Cygnus will blast off Wednesday at 4:46 p.m. EDT from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. It will deliver about 7,600 pounds of science, supplies and hardware to the orbital residents. Flight Engineer Anne McClain, with astronaut David Saint-Jacques backing her up, will command the Canadarm2 robotic arm to reach out and capture Cygnus Friday about 5:30 a.m.

Image above: The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus resupply spacecraft is seen during sunrise on Pad-0A, Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Image Credit: Northrop Grumman.

The duo continued sharpening their robotics skills today as they practiced Friday’s Cygnus capture maneuvers and techniques on a computer. NASA TV will broadcast the space freighter’s launch and capture activities live.

McClain started the day setting up a mouse habitat that will house rodents to gain insight into the immune system’s response to long-term spaceflight. Saint-Jacques set up the 360° camera in Tranquility module for more virtual reality filming of crew life on the station.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

Flight Engineer Christina Koch started Tuesday collecting and spinning her blood samples in a centrifuge for the Myotones muscle study. She then joined NASA astronaut Nick Hague for body measurements and ultrasound scans to research how microgravity impacts the biochemical properties of muscles.

Related links:

Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html

Northrop Grumman: https://www.nasa.gov/northropgrumman

Canadarm2 robotic arm: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/mobile-servicing-system.html

NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Rodents: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7868

Tranquility module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/tranquility/

Virtual reality filming: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7877

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA ‘Nose’ Importance of Humans, Robots Exploring Together

ISS - International Space Station logo.

April 16, 2019

NASA is sending humans forward to the Moon, this time to stay. Upcoming expeditions to the Moon will require making every moment of astronaut time outside the safety of the Gateway in orbit and lunar lander system on the surface count. Robotics will enable lunar crews to do more while minimizing their risk.

NASA’s Satellite Servicing Projects Division is teaming up with the International Space Station to develop the technologies for this kind of astronaut-robotic collaboration, and tomorrow is launching a Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL) aboard Cygnus on Northrop Grumman’s 11th Commercial Resupply Services mission.

Spacecraft and habitats rely on extensive cooling systems. Just as coolant in a car is used to cool its engine, ammonia is circulated through a huge system of pumps, reservoirs and radiators on station to cool its complex life support systems, spacecraft equipment and science experiments. RELL is a “sniffer,” or a robotic, remote-controlled tool that helps mission operators detect the location of external ammonia leaks on space station and rapidly confirm a successful repair.

Image above: The Robotic External Leak Locator flight unit before launch. Image Credit: NASA.

“RELL capabilities help mitigate the risk of the potentially severe impacts to the space station presented by an external ammonia leak,” said Christopher Craw, ISS Senior Systems Integration Lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

When it arrives at ISS, this will be the second RELL on board and will serve as a spare. The first flight RELL is already on board station where it successfully located a leak in one of these systems, significantly reducing astronaut time required outside of station to inspect and repair the leak.

“The decision to build and fly another flight unit seemed like the obvious choice to ensure this capability was going to be available to the ISS Program through the rest of spacecraft’s life,” said Adam Naids, ISS Hardware Development Engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Image above: Astronaut Shane Kimbrough with RELL aboard the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA.

After Cygnus delivers the second RELL to station, the plan is to store the unit until an ammonia leak is detected. Then, a game of “hot and cold” would begin. Affixed to the Canadian Space Agency’s Dextre robot arm, RELL would be moved around the outside of station using its mass spectrometer “sniffer” to locate ammonia leaks. When RELL is directed toward a leak, it returns a higher signal. The higher the signal, the closer the leak. This process allows RELL to pinpoint the source of any given ammonia leak, giving space station managers the information they need to understand and correct the problem.

Before RELL, astronauts manually searched for leaks on spacewalks, which always carry an element of risk. The Leak Locator that is currently stationed in-orbit has proven its worth, paving the way for the second unit.

Image above: The Robotic External Leak Locator on the end of the Dextre robot in February 2017. Image Credit: NASA.

Both RELL units will eventually be stored in the Robotics Tool Stowage, or RiTS, which is still in development. Once installed to the outside of station, RiTS will store the instruments so they are available when needed to track down a leak.

The RELL design includes two sensors: a mass spectrometer and a total pressure gauge.

The mass spectrometer measures the number of molecules present in any molecular mass to create a “mass spectrum” reading. Based on this data, analysts determine the composition of present gases. The mass spectrometer can distinguish between trace orbital gasses, which occur naturally, and chemicals potentially originating on station, such as ammonia. This tool can tell the difference from a football field length away.

The total pressure gauge measures the total pressure in space. After the general vicinity of a leak is known, the pressure gauge is able to pinpoint it within a few inches in real time.

The benefits of leak detection have already been proven on station, and this ability could be similarly helpful for long-term human habitation on the lunar Gateway, a lunar habitat, and perhaps one day a crewed voyage to Mars. At its core, RELL is a robotics-controlled characterizer of the local environment. This same ability could be used to determine the composition of nearby environments for exploration on the lunar surface, and for scientific and resource utilization purposes.

Astronauts on the Moon in 2024. Image Credit: NASA

Image above: The president’s direction from Space Policy Directive-1 galvanizes NASA’s return to the Moon and builds on progress on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, collaborations with U.S industry and international partners, and knowledge gained from current robotic assets at the Moon and Mars.

Whether reducing the risk to astronauts on station or one day “sniffing out” the environment of an extraterrestrial world, the human-robotics collaboration demonstrated by RELL will be a vital part of NASA’s exploration future.

Related links:

Satellite Servicing Projects Division: https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL): https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rell.html

Space Policy Directive-1: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-space-policy-directive-calls-for-human-expansion-across-solar-system

Space Tech: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rob Garner/Goddard Space Flight Center, by Kathryn Cawdrey.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NEOWISE Celebrates Five Years of Asteroid Data

NASA - NEOWISE Mission logo.

April 16, 2019

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission released its fifth year of survey data on April 11, 2019. The five years of NEOWISE data have significantly advanced scientists' knowledge of asteroids and comets in the solar system, as well as the stars and galaxies beyond.

The data from all five years of the survey are available at: http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/.

Animation above: Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto as imaged in multiple exposures of infrared light by the NEOWISE space telescope. The infrared images were taken on Feb. 25, 2019, when the comet was about 56 million miles, or 90 million kilometers, from Earth. C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto is a long-period comet originally from the Oort Cloud and coming in near the Sun for the first time in over 1,000 years. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

"NEOWISE recently surpassed 95 billion recorded measurements of asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies - a remarkable accomplishment for a recycled spacecraft," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer and head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This asteroid hunter has measured the sizes of more than 1,000 near-Earth asteroids and is still producing great data, making it a unique asset in our portfolio of asteroid-hunting telescopes and an important prototype for an upcoming space-based NEO survey mission."

In addition to providing critical data on asteroids and comets in our own solar system, NEOWISE has provided data that have enabled the worldwide scientific community to track bursting stars, characterize distant quasars from the first billion years of the universe's history, conduct a census of millions of merging galaxies and take multi-wavelength measurements of hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies.

"The data from NEOWISE effectively give us a movie of the universe as it changes over time at infrared wavelengths, which is now being used in over 1,000 different astronomical publications," said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

From WISE to NEOWISE

Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the spacecraft was launched in December 2009 to study galaxies, stars and solar system bodies by imaging the the infrared light in the entire sky. It was placed in hibernation in 2011 after completing its primary astrophysics mission. In September 2013, the spacecraft was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission: to assist NASA's efforts to identify and characterize the population of near-Earth objects. NEOWISE is also characterizing more distant populations of asteroids and comets to provide information about their sizes and compositions.

NEOWISE asteroids hunter. Image Credits: NASA/JPL

The NEOWISE survey will end when its changing orbit eventually prevents it from obtaining high-quality data. But until that time, NEOWISE will continue to contribute valuable data both to humanity's record of the universe around us and to the search for asteroids that pose a hazard to Earth.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science data processing takes place at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about NEOWISE, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/neowise and http://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/

For more information about asteroids and near-Earth objects, visit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JoAnna Wendel/JPL/DC Agle.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Cassini Reveals Surprises with Titan's Lakes

NASA & ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn & Titan patch.

April 16, 2019

On its final flyby of Saturn's largest moon in 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane.

The new findings, published April 15 in Nature Astronomy, are the first confirmation of just how deep some of Titan's lakes are (more than 300 feet, or 100 meters) and of their composition. They provide new information about the way liquid methane rains on, evaporates from and seeps into Titan - the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface.

Image above: This near-infrared, color view from Cassini shows the sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Arizona/Univ. Idaho.

Scientists have known that Titan's hydrologic cycle works similarly to Earth's - with one major difference. Instead of water evaporating from seas, forming clouds and rain, Titan does it all with methane and ethane. We tend to think of these hydrocarbons as a gas on Earth, unless they're pressurized in a tank. But Titan is so cold that they behave as liquids, like gasoline at room temperature on our planet.

Scientists have known that the much larger northern seas are filled with methane, but finding the smaller northern lakes filled mostly with methane was a surprise. Previously, Cassini data measured Ontario Lacus, the only major lake in Titan's southern hemisphere. There they found a roughly equal mix of methane and ethane. Ethane is slightly heavier than methane, with more carbon and hydrogen atoms in its makeup.

"Every time we make discoveries on Titan, Titan becomes more and more mysterious," said lead author Marco Mastrogiuseppe, Cassini radar scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "But these new measurements help give an answer to a few key questions. We can actually now better understand the hydrology of Titan."

Adding to the oddities of Titan, with its Earth-like features carved by exotic materials, is the fact that the hydrology on one side of the northern hemisphere is completely different than the that of other side, said Cassini scientist and co-author Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

"It is as if you looked down on the Earth's North Pole and could see that North America had completely different geologic setting for bodies of liquid than Asia does," Lunine said.

On the eastern side of Titan, there are big seas with low elevation, canyons and islands. On the western side: small lakes. And the new measurements show the lakes perched atop big hills and plateaus. The new radar measurements confirm earlier findings that the lakes are far above sea level, but they conjure a new image of landforms - like mesas or buttes - sticking hundreds of feet above the surrounding landscape, with deep liquid lakes on top.

Image above: Artist's conception of Cassini winging by Saturn's moon Titan (right) with the planet in the background. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The fact that these western lakes are small - just tens of miles across - but very deep also tells scientists something new about their geology: It's the best evidence yet that they likely formed when the surrounding bedrock of ice and solid organics chemically dissolved and collapsed. On Earth, similar water lakes are known as karstic lakes. Occurring in in areas like Germany, Croatia and the United States, they form when water dissolves limestone bedrock.

Alongside the investigation of deep lakes, a second paper in Nature Astronomy helps unravel more of the mystery of Titan's hydrologic cycle. Researchers used Cassini data to reveal what they call transient lakes. Different sets of observations - from radar and infrared data - seem to show liquid levels significantly changed.

The best explanation is that there was some seasonally driven change in the surface liquids, said lead author Shannon MacKenzie, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. "One possibility is that these transient features could have been shallower bodies of liquid that over the course of the season evaporated and infiltrated into the subsurface," she said.

These results and the findings from the Nature Astronomy paper on Titan's deep lakes support the idea that hydrocarbon rain feeds the lakes, which then can evaporate back into the atmosphere or drain into the subsurface, leaving reservoirs of liquid stored below.

Cassini, which arrived in the Saturn system in 2004 and ended its mission in 2017 by deliberately plunging into Saturn's atmosphere, mapped more than 620,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) of liquid lakes and seas on Titan's surface. It did the work with the radar instrument, which sent out radio waves and collected a return signal (or echo) that provided information about the terrain and the liquid bodies' depth and composition, along with two imaging systems that could penetrate the moon's thick atmospheric haze.

The crucial data for the new research were gathered on Cassini's final close flyby of Titan, on April 22, 2017. It was the mission's last look at the moon's smaller lakes, and the team made the most of it. Collecting echoes from the surfaces of small lakes while Cassini zipped by Titan was a unique challenge.

"This was Cassini's last hurrah at Titan, and it really was a feat," Lunine said

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries.

More information about Cassini can be found here: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/cassini

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JoAnna Wendel/JPL/Gretchen McCartney.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Space Station Science Highlights: Week of April 8, 2019

ISS - Expedition 59 Mission patch.

April 15, 2019

Astronauts on the International Space Station completed the third spacewalk since March 22 and continued preparations for resupply ships from both SpaceX and Northrop Grumman carrying important science experiments as part of their cargo.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

Here are details on some of the scientific investigations the Expedition 59 crew members conducted in the orbiting lab the week of April 8:

Mission 66 for student photos from space

Image above: An image of the coast of Belize taken in April by the Sally Ride EarthKam aboard the International Space Station. Image Credits: Sally Ride EarthKam Gallery.

The crew performed hardware setup and activation For the Sally Ride Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle Schools (EarthKAM) mission 66. This program allows students to control the special camera aboard the space station to photograph coastlines, mountain ranges and other geographic features on Earth from the unique vantage of space. The EarthKAM team posts these photographs on its website for viewing by the public and participating classrooms around the world.  As of last week, sign-up to request images totaled 218 schools representing 24,065 students from 30 countries and submitted image requests numbered 12,668 with 1,968 images downlinked.

Harvest day on the space station

Image above: Pak Choi plants growing in the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) for Veg-03H, a NASA-sponsored experiment exploring how crew members can grow their own food to sustain long-term space missions. Image Credit: NASA.

Crew members harvested Wasabi Mustard Green and Extra Dwarf Pak Choi plants, which began growing on the space station on March 9 for the Veg-03H investigation. The Wasabi grew faster than the Pak Choi and the crew times this harvest to occur before the Wasabi plants flowered, which can change the flavor of the plants. Even though the Pak Choi did not grow as well, investigators can use the data to refine future experiments on plant growth. Organisms from single-celled bacteria to plants and humans all grow differently in space. Crews need to grow their own food on future long-duration space missions and understanding plant response to microgravity is an important step toward that goal.

Keeping astronauts healthier with probiotics

Image above: Sampling sequence for the JAXA Probiotics investigation, which includes 28 days of taking beneficial bacteria or probiotics. Image Credit: JAXA.

The JAXA Probiotics investigation studies the effect of continuous consumption of beneficial bacteria or probiotics on the immune function and intestinal microbiota of astronauts in microgravity. Some species of harmful bacteria grow stronger and more virulent in space, while the human immune system becomes weaker, leading to increased health risks. A crew member collected saliva samples and completed a questionnaire for the investigation last week.

Solid leads on better crystals

The SUBSA investigation crystallizes melts in microgravity to improve understanding of solidification phenomena and crystal production. The crew processed samples of Indium Iodide (InI), which is ideal for these experiments because it is non-toxic, has a relatively low melting point, and does not react with or stick to the silica crucible. This investigation advances the process of fabricating high-quality InI and other crystals on Earth for use as better and less expensive detectors of nuclear radiation.

Image above: NASA astronaut Nick Hague conducting Space Integrated Global Inertial Navigation System (SIGI) 2 GPS Remove and Replace to recover sensors. Image Credit: NASA.

Other investigations on which the crew performed work:

- The Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) includes an optics bench, combustion chamber, fuel and oxidizer control, and five different cameras for performing combustion investigations in microgravity: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=317

- The ISS Experience, a virtual reality film, documents daily life aboard the space station to educate a variety of audiences about life aboard the orbiting lab and science conducted there: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7877

- Airway Monitoring analyzes exhaled air to study airway inflammation in crew members and help maintain crew well-being on future missions: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1067

- Lighting Effects studies the effects that replacing fluorescent light bulbs on the space station with solid-state light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has on crew member circadian rhythms, sleep, and cognitive performance: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=2013

- Food Acceptability examines changes in the appeal of food aboard the space station during long-duration missions: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7562

- The Team Task Switching investigation examines whether crew members have difficulty switching tasks and determines the effects of these switches in order to both reduce any negative consequences and improve individual and team motivation and effectiveness: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7538

- Cerebral Autoregulation uses non-invasive tests to measure blood flow in the brain before, during, and after a long-duration spaceflight to provide new insights into how the brain safeguards its blood supply in a challenging environment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1938

Space to Ground: Extended Duration: 04/12/2019

Related links:

Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html

EarthKAM: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=87

Veg-03H: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1159

Probiotics: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=2047

SUBSA: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=308

Spot the Station: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Video (NASA), Text, Credits: NASA/Michael Johnson/Jorge Sotomayor, Lead Increment Scientist Expeditions 59/60.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Skylab and Space Shuttle Astronaut Owen Garriott Dies at 88

Rest In Peace.

April 16, 2019

Former astronaut and long-duration spaceflight pioneer Owen Garriott, 88, died today, April 15, at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. Garriott flew aboard the Skylab space station during the Skylab 3 mission and on the Space Shuttle Columbia for the STS-9/Spacelab-1 mission. He spent a total of 70 days in space.

Image above: Scientist-Astronaut Owen K. Garriott, science pilot of the Skylab 3 mission, is stationed at the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) console in the Multiple Docking Adapter of the Skylab space station in Earth orbit. From this console the astronauts actively control the ATM solar physics telescope. (sl3-108-1288). Image Credit: NASA.

“The astronauts, scientists and engineers at Johnson Space Center are saddened by the loss of Owen Garriott,” said Chief Astronaut Pat Forrester. “We remember the history he made during the Skylab and space shuttle programs that helped shape the space program we have today. Not only was he a bright scientist and astronaut, he and his crewmates set the stage for international cooperation in human spaceflight. He also was the first to participate in amateur radio from space, a hobby many of our astronauts still enjoy today.”

Garriott was born in Enid, Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Garriott served as an electronics officer while on active duty with the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1956, and was stationed aboard several U.S. destroyers at sea. He then taught electronics, electromagnetic theory and ionospheric physics as an associate professor at Stanford. He performed research in ionospheric physics and has authored or co-authored more than 40 scientific papers and one book on this subject.

Image above: Hall of Fame astronaut Owen Garriott thanks the audience for their applause at the 2011 U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame induction ceremony at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Image Credits: NASA/Jim Grossmann.

He was selected as a scientist-astronaut by NASA in June 1965, and then completed a 53-week course in flight training at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona. He logged more than 5,000 hours flying time -- including more than 2,900 hours in jet and light aircraft, spacecraft and helicopters. In addition to NASA ratings, he held FAA commercial pilot and flight instructor certification for instrument and multi-engine aircraft.

Garriott was the science-pilot for Skylab 3, the second crewed Skylab mission, and was in orbit from July 28 to Sept. 25, 1973. His crewmates were Commander Alan Bean and Pilot Jack Lousma. The crew accomplished 150% of mission goals while completing 858 revolutions of the Earth and traveling some 24.5 million miles. The crew installed replacement rate gyros used for attitude control of the spacecraft and a twin pole sunshade used for thermal control, and repaired nine major experiment or operational equipment items. They devoted 305 hours to extensive solar observations and completed 333 medical experiment performances to obtain valuable data on the effects of extended weightlessness on humans. The crew of Skylab 3 logged 1,427 hours and 9 minutes each in space, setting a world record for a single mission, and Garriott spent 13 hours and 43 minutes in three separate spacewalks outside the orbital workshop.

Image above: Scientist-astronaut Owen K. Garriott, Skylab 3 science pilot, participates in the Aug. 6, 1973 extravehicular activity during which he and astronaut Jack Lousma, Skylab 3 pilot, deployed the twin pole solar shield to help shade the Orbital Workshop. Image Credit: NASA.

On his second and final flight, Garriott flew as a mission specialist on the ninth space shuttle mission and the first six-person flight. He launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia for STS-9/Spacelab-1 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Nov. 28, 1983. His crewmates were Commander John Young, Pilot Brewster Shaw, Jr., fellow mission specialist Robert Parker, and Payload Specialists Byron Lichtenberg and Ulf Merbold of (ESA) European Space Agency. This six-person crew was the largest yet to fly aboard a single spacecraft, the first international shuttle crew and the first to carry payload specialists. During STS-9, the first human amateur radio operations in space were conducted using Garriott's station call, W5LFL. After 10 days of Spacelab hardware verification and around-the-clock scientific operations, Columbia and its laboratory cargo landed on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on Dec. 8, 1983.

Garriott held other positions at Johnson Space Center such as deputy and later director of Science and Applications, and as the assistant director for Space and Life Science.

For Garriott’s official NASA biography, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/garriott_owen.pdf

Related link:

Skylab: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/skylab/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Jason Townsend.

R.I.P., Orbiter.ch

Sending American Astronauts to Moon in 2024: NASA Accepts Challenge

NASA logo.

April 15, 2019

The president directed NASA to land American astronauts on the Moon by 2024, and the agency is working to accelerate humanity’s return to the lunar surface by all means necessary.

“We’ve been given an ambitious and exciting goal. History has proven when we’re given a task by the president, along with the resources and the tools, we can deliver,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “We are committed to making this happen. We have the people to achieve it. Now, we just need bipartisan support and the resources to get this done.”

Bridenstine confirmed at the 35th Space Symposium on April 9, 2019, that the agency’s proposed human lunar landing system architecture remains the plan to return crew to the surface as quickly as possible. The human lunar lander will be a public-private partnership working directly with American companies to expedite the return of Astronauts to the Moon’s surface by 2024. The South Pole continues to be the target of our exploration.

American Astronauts (comeback's) on the Moon. Image Credit: NASA

In order to best accomplish our goals in the next five years, NASA is now going forward to the Moon in two phases.

“First, we are focused on speed to land the next man, and first woman, on the Moon by 2024. Second, we will establish sustainable missions by 2028. To do that, we need our powerful Space Launch System to put the mass of reusable systems into deep space,” he said.

Gateway to Lunar Surface

Both phases rely on the Gateway, which will serve as a reusable command and service module in lunar orbit. Initial development for the lunar outpost calls for a power and propulsion element plus a habitation capability to support access to the surface.

“The Gateway can be positioned in a variety of orbits around the Moon, allows for access to entire lunar surface, and supports development of a reusable human lander system,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Resiliency and reusability are key for sustainable human lunar exploration, and that’s what the Gateway gives us. Furthermore, there’s broad interest from the international community for supporting as well.”

This is how the human lunar lander system would operate from the Gateway:

- A transfer element drives the combined ascent and descent elements with crew inside the ascent element from the Gateway to low-lunar orbit.

- From that orbit, crew will use the descent element to land on the surface.

- When astronauts complete their expedition, they take the ascent element back up to the Gateway.

During lunar expeditions, a team of crew members will remain aboard the Gateway for scientific investigations while a separate team will explore the surface. All crew members ultimately board the Orion spacecraft for a return to Earth.

NASA is already working with U.S. industry to study a transfer element, descent element and refueling systems for use with the lunar Gateway, and begin early development work. A similar request for the ascent element was accelerated to meet the new direction, and a synopsis was issued April 8 to industry. A formal request for proposals will be released in the near future.

New Lunar Science, Technology

NASA will soon begin sending science and technology investigations to the lunar surface through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). By the time NASA sends crew to the Moon, many CLPS deliveries will be complete, with the first one happening by the end of this year if a commercial lander is ready.

“Using new landers, robots and eventually humans, we will conduct science and technology demonstrations across the entire lunar surface of the Moon to learn more about resources on the Moon and how we can use them for future exploration,” said Bridenstine. “We will move forward to the Moon, this time to stay. And then we’ll take what we learn on the Moon, and go to Mars.”

The president’s direction from Space Policy Directive-1 galvanizes NASA’s return to the Moon and builds on progress on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, collaborations with U.S industry and international partners, and knowledge gained from current robotic assets at the Moon and Mars.

Related articles:

Moon’s South Pole in NASA’s Landing Sites
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/04/moons-south-pole-in-nasas-landing-sites.html

Gateway to the Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/03/gateway-to-moon.html

Goddard Technologists and Scientists Prepare for a New Era of Human Exploration
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/03/goddard-technologists-and-scientists.html
  
NASA Seeks US Partners to Develop Reusable Systems to Land Astronauts on Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2018/12/nasa-seeks-us-partners-to-develop.html

Related links:

Human lunar landing system architecture: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-seeks-us-partners-to-develop-reusable-systems-to-land-astronauts-on-moon

Space Launch System (SLS): http://www.nasa.gov/sls

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS): https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-services

Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/lunar-outpost

Space Policy Directive-1: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-space-policy-directive-calls-for-human-expansion-across-solar-system

For more information about NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration plans, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/moontomars

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Erin Mahoney.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Meteoroid Strikes Eject Precious Water From Moon

NASA - LADEE Mission patch.

April 15, 2019

Researchers from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, report that streams of meteoroids striking the Moon infuse the thin lunar atmosphere with a short-lived water vapor.

The findings will help scientists understand the history of lunar water — a potential resource for sustaining long term operations on the Moon and human exploration of deep space. Models had predicted that meteoroid impacts could release water from the Moon as a vapor, but scientists hadn’t yet observed the phenomenon.

Now, the team has found dozens of these events in data collected by NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. LADEE was a robotic mission that orbited the Moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, and determine whether dust is lofted into the lunar sky.

Water Released from Moon During Meteor Showers

Video above: Scientists have discovered that water is being released from the moon during meteor showers. When a speck of comet debris strikes the moon it vaporizes on impact, creating a shock wave in the lunar soil. For a sufficiently large impactor, this shock wave can breach the soil's dry upper layer and release water molecules from the hydrated layer below. The LADEE spacecraft detects these water molecules as they enter the tenuous lunar atmosphere. This discovery provides a potential resource for future exploration, and it improves our understanding the moon's geologic past and its continued evolution. Video Credits: NASA/Goddard/Dan Gallagher.

“We traced most of these events to known meteoroid streams, but the really surprising part is that we also found evidence of four meteoroid streams that were previously undiscovered,” said Mehdi Benna of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Benna is the lead author of the study, published in Nature Geosciences.

The newly identified meteoroid streams, observed by LADEE, occurred on Jan. 9, April 2, April 5 and April 9, 2014.

Image above: Artist’s concept of the LADEE spacecraft (left) detecting water vapor from meteoroid impacts on the Moon (right). Image Credits: NASA/Goddard/Conceptual Image Lab.

There’s evidence that the Moon has water (H₂O) and hydroxyl (OH), a more reactive relative of H2O. But debates continue about the origins of the water, whether it is widely distributed and how much might be present.

“The Moon doesn’t have significant amounts of H₂O or OH in its atmosphere most of the time,” said Richard Elphic, the LADEE project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “But when the Moon passed through one of these meteoroid streams, enough vapor was ejected for us to detect it. And then, when the event was over, the H₂O or OH went away.”

Lunar scientists often use the term “water” to refer to both H₂O and OH. Figuring out how much H₂O and how much OH are present is something future Moon missions might address.

LADEE, which was built and managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, detected the vapor using its Neutral Mass Spectrometer, an instrument built by Goddard. The mission orbited the Moon from October 2013 to April 2014 and gathered detailed information about the structure and composition of the lunar atmosphere, or more correctly, the “exosphere” – a faint envelope of gases around the Moon.

To release water, the meteoroids had to penetrate at least 3 inches (8 centimeters) below the surface. Underneath this bone-dry top layer lies a thin transition layer, then a hydrated layer, where water molecules likely stick to bits of soil and rock, called regolith.

From the measurements of water in the exosphere, the researchers calculated that the hydrated layer has a water concentration of about 200 to 500 parts per million, or about 0.02 to 0.05 percent by weight. This concentration is much drier than the driest terrestrial soil, and is consistent with earlier studies. It is so dry that one would need to process more than a metric ton of regolith in order to collect 16 ounces of water.

Because the material on the lunar surface is fluffy, even a meteoroid that’s a fraction of an inch (5 millimeters) across can penetrate far enough to release a puff of vapor. With each impact, a small shock wave fans out and ejects water from the surrounding area.

When a stream of meteoroids rains down on the lunar surface, the liberated water will enter the exosphere and spread through it. About two-thirds of that vapor escapes into space, but about one-third lands back on the surface of the Moon.

Image above: This infographic shows the lunar water cycle based on the new observations from the Neutral Mass Spectrometer on board the LADEE spacecraft. At the lunar surface, a dry layer overlays a hydrated layer. Water is liberated by shock waves from meteoroid impacts. The liberated water either escapes to space or is redeposited elsewhere on the Moon. Some water is created by chemical reactions between the solar wind and the surface or delivered to the Moon by the meteoroids themselves. However, in order to sustain the water loss from meteoroid impacts, the hydrated layer requires replenishment from a deeper ancient water reservoir. Image Credits: NASA Goddard/Mehdi Benna/Jay Friedlander.

These findings could help explain the deposits of ice in cold traps in the dark reaches of craters near the poles. Most of the known water on the Moon is located in cold traps, where temperatures are so low that water vapor and other volatiles that encounter the surface will remain stable for a very long time, perhaps up to several billion years. Meteoroid strikes can transport water both into and out of cold traps.

The team ruled out the possibility that all of the water detected came from the meteoroids themselves.

“We know that some of the water must be coming from the Moon, because the mass of water being released is greater than the water mass within the meteoroids coming in,” said the second author of the paper, Dana Hurley of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The analysis indicates that meteoroid impacts release water faster than it can be produced from reactions that occur when the solar wind hits the lunar surface.

“The water being lost is likely ancient, either dating back to the formation of the Moon or deposited early in its history,” said Benna.

NASA is leading a sustainable return to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.

Related links:

Nature Geosciences: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0345-3

NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. LADEE: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/ladee/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA//Ames Research Center/Alison Hawkes/Goddard Space FlightCenter/Bill Steigerwald/Nancy Jones/Elizabeth Zubritsky.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Moon’s South Pole in NASA’s Landing Sites

NASA - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) patch.

April 15, 2019

NASA is working right now to send American astronauts to the surface of the Moon in five years, and the agency has its sights set on a place no humans have ever gone before: the lunar South Pole.

Water is a critical resource for long-term exploration, and that’s one of the main reasons NASA will send astronauts to the Moon’s South Pole by 2024. Water is a necessity for furthering human exploration because it could potentially be used for drinking, cooling equipment, breathing and making rocket fuel for missions farther into the solar system. The experience NASA gains on the Moon, including using lunar natural resources, will be used to help prepare the agency to send astronauts to Mars.

The Moon. Image Credit: NASA

“We know the South Pole region contains ice and may be rich in other resources based on our observations from orbit, but, otherwise, it’s a completely unexplored world,” said Steven Clarke, deputy associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The South Pole is far from the Apollo landing sites clustered around the equator, so it will offer us a new challenge and a new environment to explore as we build our capabilities to travel farther into space.”

The South Pole is also a good target for a future human landing because robotically, it’s the most thoroughly investigated region on the Moon.

The elliptical, polar orbit of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is closest to the Moon during its pass over the South Pole region. Through its thousands of orbits in the last decade, LRO has collected the most precise information about the South Pole region than any other, offering scientists precise details about its topography, temperature and locations of likely frozen water.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Animation Credit: NASA

“We’ve mapped every square meter, even areas of permanent shadow,” said Noah Petro, an LRO project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

There’s still so much to learn about Earth’s nearest neighbor. Ahead of a human return, NASA is planning many to send new science instruments and technology demonstration payloads to the Moon using commercial landers through Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). These robotic precursors will further investigate regions of interest to human explorers, including the South Pole, and will provide information to the engineers designing modern lunar surface systems.

Water on the Moon

Image above: In this multi-temporal illumination map of the lunar south pole, Shackleton crater (19 km diameter) is in the center, the south pole is located approximately at 9 o'clock on its rim. The map was created from images from the camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credits: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

The floors of polar craters reach frigid temperatures because they’re permanently in shadow as a result of the low angle at which sunlight strikes the Moon’s surface in the polar regions (and also because the Moon has no atmosphere to help warm up its surface). This angle is based on the 1.54-degree tilt of the Moon’s axis (Earth’s is 23.5 degrees). If an astronaut was standing near the South Pole, the Sun would always appear on the horizon, illuminating the surface sideways, and, thus, skimming primarily the rims of deep craters, and leaving their deep interiors in shadow.

These permanently shadowed craters feature some of the lowest temperatures in the solar system — down to -414 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 Celsius). Water ice is stable at these temperatures and it is believed that some of these craters harbor significant ice deposits.

Permanent Shadows on the Moon

Video above: This sample composite combines all the animation elements listed below to visually tell the story of permanent shadows on the Moon. The aquamarine areas highlight the permanently shadowed regions. Video Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Digital Elevation Map (DEM) data of the lunar south pole provided by the JAXA/Selene.

The South Pole’s frozen water may date back billions of years and has been untainted by the Sun’s radiation or the geological processes that otherwise constantly churn and renew planetary surfaces (think of wind and erosion on Earth), offering us a window into the early solar system.

Tilted View: Permanent Shadows on the Moon

Video above: Tilted View: In this animation, the camera is parked, looking down at Shackleton Crater at an angle while the shadows cycle through a full 360 degree rotation. Video Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Digital Elevation Map (DEM) data of the lunar south pole provided by the JAXA/Selene.

“That record of water collection is a record that can help us understand how water and other volatiles have been moving around the solar system, so we’re very interested in getting to these locations and sampling the material there,” said John W. Keller, a lunar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Studying samples of ice from polar regions of Earth, for example, has revealed how our planet's climate and atmosphere have evolved over thousands of years.

Constant Light and Power

Other extremes at the Moon’s South Pole are not so dark and cold ­— there are also areas, near Shackleton crater for instance, that are bathed in sunlight for extended periods of time, over 200 Earth days of constant illumination. This happens also because of the Moon’s tilt and is a phenomenon that we experience at our own polar regions on Earth. Unrelenting sunlight is a boon to Moon missions, allowing explorers to harvest sunlight in order to light up a lunar base and power its equipment.

The president’s direction from Space Policy Directive-1 galvanizes NASA’s return to the Moon and builds on progress on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, collaborations with U.S industry and international partners, and knowledge gained from current robotic assets at the Moon and Mars.

Related links:

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html

Moon and Mars: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/moon2mars/

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS): http://www.nasa.gov/clps

Space Policy Directive-1: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-space-policy-directive-calls-for-human-expansion-across-solar-system

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Brian Dunbar.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

First successful flight for the world's largest aircraft

Stratolaunch logo.

April 14, 2019

Stratolaunch first flight

The Stratolaunch made its first flight this weekend over the Mojave Desert in the United States.

The American company Stratolaunch announced Saturday that it had carried over a California desert the first test flight of the largest aircraft in the world, whose wingspan is almost half that of an Airbus A380.

The strange aircraft, built by the legendary aeronautical engineering company Scaled Composites in the Mojave Desert, has two fuselages and is powered by six Boeing 747 engines.

Stratolaunch First Flight

It must theoretically be used to carry and drop at altitude a small rocket that will then light its engine, and will propel to space to place satellites in orbit. This is a more flexible method of accessing the space than vertical rocket takeoffs, as a large take-off runway would suffice.

"What a fantastic first flight"

The Stratolaunch aircraft took off from the airport and "spaceport" in Mojave, California at 06:58 local time (13:58 GMT), and remained in the air for two and a half hours, the company said in a statement Sunday. . Until now, the aircraft had only ground taxi tests. The maximum speed during the flight was 304 km / h (189 miles per hour, according to Stratolaunch), and the aircraft climbed to 17,000 feet, or 5182 meters.

Stratolaunch first flight

"What a fantastic first flight," said Stratolaunch general manager Jean Floyd. "Today's flight advances our mission to provide a flexible alternative solution to ground launch systems." The size of the craft, 117 meters, is larger than a football field. An Airbus A380 is 79.75 meters wide.

Image above: An illustration of the "family" of launch vehicles Stratolaunch had planned to offer. The company is ending work on its own launch systems, leaving it with the existing Pegasus XL from Northrop Grumman. Image Credit: Stratolaunch.

Stratolaunch was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to become a new player in the small satellite launch market. But the death of Mr. Allen in October 2018 makes the future of the Stratolaunch uncertain.

For more information about Stratolaunch, visit: https://www.stratolaunch.com/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: AFP/Stratolaunch/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Peers at Cosmic Blue Bauble

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

April 12, 2019

Globular clusters are inherently beautiful objects, but the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Messier 3, is commonly acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful of them all.

Containing an incredible half-million stars, this 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered. However, what makes Messier 3 extra special is its unusually large population of variable stars — stars that fluctuate in brightness over time. New variable stars continue to be discovered in this sparkling stellar nest to this day, but so far we know of 274, the highest number found in any globular cluster by far. At least 170 of these are of a special variety called RR Lyrae variables, which pulse with a period directly related to their intrinsic brightness. If astronomers know how bright a star truly is based on its mass and classification, and they know how bright it appears to be from our viewpoint here on Earth, they can thus work out its distance from us. For this reason, RR Lyrae stars are known as standard candles — objects of known luminosity whose distance and position can be used to help us understand more about vast celestial distances and the scale of the cosmos.

Messier 3 also contains a relatively high number of so-called blue stragglers, which are shown quite clearly in this Hubble image. These are blue main sequence stars that appear to be young because they are bluer and more luminous than other stars in the cluster. As all stars in globular clusters are believed to have formed together and thus to be roughly the same age, only a difference in mass can give these stars a different color. A red, old star can appear bluer when it acquires more mass, for instance by stripping it from a nearby star. The extra mass changes it into a bluer star, which makes us think it is younger than it really is.

Messier 3 is featured in Hubble’s Messier catalog, which includes some of the most fascinating objects that can be observed from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. See the NASA-processed image and other Messier objects at: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Text Credits: ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA/Rob Garner/Image, Animation, Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Rocket break-up provides rare chance to test debris formation

ESA - Clean Space logo.

12 April 2019

The discarded ‘upper stage’ from a rocket launched almost ten years ago has recently crumbled to pieces.

“Leaving a trail of debris in its wake, this fragmentation event provides space debris experts with a rare opportunity to test their understanding of such hugely important processes”, explains Tim Flohrer, ESA's Senior Space Debris Monitoring Expert.

Rocket body fragments

Fragmentation events like this one – either break ups or collisions – are the primary source of debris objects in space in the range of a few millimetres to tens of centimetres in size. Travelling at vast speeds, these bits of technological trash pose a threat to crucial space infrastructure, such as satellites providing weather and navigation services, and even astronauts on the ISS.

A remarkable video captured by the Deimos Sky Survey in Spain shows the stream of newly-made debris objects as they rush across the sky.

In the clip, a number of small point-like fragments can be seen spread horizontally across frame. As the observatory moves with the debris objects, the background stars are seen as white streaks.

The remnant piece is clearly visible as the largest and brightest point at the centre of about 40-60 smaller pieces, many larger than 30 cm in size, and has been traced back to the upper stage of a rocket launched in September 2009.

Example of the Atlas V Centaur upper stage

Originally an Atlas V Centaur upper stage, this rather large nearly cylindrical object would have measured about 12.5 metres in length and three metres in diameter, with a mass of more than two tonnes.

Given the international code 2009-047B, this rocket remnant had been flying in an eccentric orbit around our planet for just under a decade – flung as far as 34 700 km from Earth at the most distant point in its orbit and just 6675 km at the closest.

For an as-yet-unknown reason, the rocket body fragmented some time between 23 to 25 March.

An international effort

During a meeting of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) on 26 March, ESA’s space debris team met their counterparts from Russia, who informed the international community of fragments detected orbiting in the sky.

Just hours later, the Zimmerwald Observatory in Switzerland scheduled immediate observations of the cloud of fragments, and by 26 March had acquired the first views.

Zimmerwald Observatory gets the first look

The animation to the left shows the first series of exposures taken by the 0.8 metre telescope, ZimMAIN, which followed the debris cloud. It reveals several small dots, each a fragment larger than a few tens of centimetres, with background stars again appearing as long streaks.

Not long after, the Deimos Sky Survey followed up with observations of the event from 26-28 March (lead animation in this article), using the ‘Antsy’ optical sensor in Spain, which is adapted for tracking objects in low-Earth orbit.

While Zimmerwald continues to observe the cloud in close collaboration with Russian and ESA experts, ESA’s own 1-metre telescope at the Optical Ground Station at Tenerife, Spain, has joined the observation campaign, detecting a large number of fragments down to 10-20 cm in size.

Modeling the mess

ESA keeps an eye on events like this and continually updates the international community through its public database, enabling researchers to find patterns and come up with mitigation strategies for spacecraft in all variety of shapes, sizes and orbits. The database also allows operators of satellites and spacecraft to determine the changing risk to their missions from specific fragmentation events.

Once detected and observed, events like these are put into ‘space debris environment models’, allowing teams to compare the fragmentation of real-life debris with predictions – a rare but crucial opportunity to validate or improve models as necessary.

Developing models of the space debris environment allows ESA to design spacecraft that can withstand impacts from small objects, and design systems to avoid collisions. These models are the baseline for predicting not just the present, but our future space debris environment, which is essential to developing efficient space debris mitigation guidelines.

Our human-made space environment (debris not to scale)

International collaboration is essential to exchanging data and models, which takes place via a technical body called the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, which comprises all major European and international space agencies.

“As this example shows, international collaboration is essential if we want to respond quickly to debris creating events”, concludes Holger Krag, Head of ESA's Space Safety Office.

“Incidents like this are rare, so to have such rich observations and data from across the globe is a unique opportunity to better understand the human-made environment around Earth, in which our satellites live out their lives”.

Space Safety & Security at ESA

To find out more about ESA's space safety and security activities, including the work being done by the Planetary Defence and Space Weather Offices, click here: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Safety_Security/Space_Safety_Security

Related links:

Deimos Sky Survey: http://www.elecnor-deimos.com/portfolio/deimos-sky-survey/

‘Space debris environment models’: https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/

ESA public database: https://fragmentation.esoc.esa.int/

Zimmerwald Observatory: http://www.aiub.unibe.ch/research/zimmerwald_observatory/index_eng.html

ESA’s space debris team: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Safety_Security/Space_Debris

International Academy of Astronautics (IAA): https://www.iaaweb.org/

ESA reentry predictions: https://reentry.esoc.esa.int/

ESA Space Environment Report 2018 (PDF): https://www.sdo.esoc.esa.int/environment_report/Space_Environment_Report_latest.pdf

Collision warning: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Safety_Security/Rocket_break-up_provides_rare_chance_to_test_debris_formation

Space debris: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Safety_Security/Rocket_break-up_provides_rare_chance_to_test_debris_formation

Clean space: http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Clean_Space

Space Safety & Security: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Safety_Security

Image, Animations, Text, Credits: ESA/Deimos Sky Survey/NASA/Roy Allison/Zimmerwald Observatory, AIUB/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Curiosity Tastes First Sample in 'Clay-Bearing Unit'

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) logo.

April 12, 2019

Scientists working with NASA's Curiosity Mars rover have been excited to explore a region called "the clay-bearing unit" since before the spacecraft launched. Now, the rover has finally tasted its first sample from this part of Mount Sharp. Curiosity drilled a piece of bedrock nicknamed "Aberlady" on Saturday, April 6 (the 2,370th Martian day, or sol, of the mission), and delivered the sample to its internal mineralogy lab on Wednesday, April 10 (Sol 2374).

Curiosity's First Clay Unit Drill Hole

Animation above: The Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this set of images before and after it drilled a rock nicknamed "Aberlady," on Saturday, April 6 (the 2,370th Martian day, or sol, of the mission). The rock and others nearby appear to have moved when the drill was retracted. This was the first time Curiosity has drilled in the long-awaited "clay-bearing unit." Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

The rover's drill chewed easily through the rock, unlike some of the tougher targets it faced nearby on Vera Rubin Ridge. It was so soft, in fact, that the drill didn't need to use its percussive technique, which is helpful for snagging samples from harder rock. This was the mission's first sample obtained using only rotation of the drill bit.

Curiosity Surveys the Clay-Bearing Unit

Image above: The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this mosaic as it explored the clay-bearing unit on February 3, 2019 (Sol 2309). This landscape includes the rocky landmark nicknamed "Knockfarril Hill" (center right) and the edge of Vera Rubin Ridge, which runs along the top of the scene. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

"Curiosity has been on the road for nearly seven years," said Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Finally drilling at the clay-bearing unit is a major milestone in our journey up Mount Sharp."

Scientists are eager to analyze the sample for traces of clay minerals because they usually form in water. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spied a strong clay "signal" here long before Curiosity landed in 2012. Pinpointing the source of that signal could help the science team understand if a wetter Martian era shaped this layer of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain Curiosity has been climbing.

Curiosity has discovered clay minerals in mudstones all along its journey. These mudstones formed as river sediment settled within ancient lakes nearly 3.5 billion years ago. As with water elsewhere on Mars, the lakes eventually dried up.

Curiosity Sees Waves in the Clay Unit (Click on the image for enlarge)

Image above: The hills and troughs in this little valley, carved between a ridge and cliffs higher up Mount Sharp, almost look like undulating waves. The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this mosaic as it explored the clay-bearing unit on Jan. 23, 2019 (Sol 2299). Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

The clay beacon seen from space brought the rover here, but the region clearly has several other stories to tell. Now that Curiosity is searching this area, scientists can peer around as geological tourists, finding a landscape both ancient and new. There are several kinds of bedrock and sand, including active sand ripples that have shifted in the past year. Pebbles are scattered everywhere - are they eroding from the local bedrock? Several eye-catching landmarks, such as "Knockfarril Hill," stick out as well.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) or Curiosity rover. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"Each layer of this mountain is a puzzle piece," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "They each hold clues to a different era in Martian history. We're excited to see what this first sample tells us about the ancient environment, especially about water."

The Aberlady sample will give the team a starting point for thinking about the clay-bearing unit. They plan to drill several more times over the course of the next year. That will help them understand what makes this region different from the ridge behind it and an area with a sulfate signal up higher on the mountain.

More information about Curiosity is at: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/

More information about Mars is at: https://mars.nasa.gov/

Animation (mentioned), Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch