Orbiter.ch Space News: 2022-11-20

samedi 26 novembre 2022

Station Power Channel Handover Completed, No Impact to Operations

ISS - Expedition 68 Mission patch.

Nov. 26, 2022

On Nov. 23, the team in Mission Control Houston performed a change in electrical power routing to remove one of the eight International Space Station power channels from use. This procedure was performed in response to unexpected readings and intermittent tripping of the 1B power channel in the overnight hours.

Image above: The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab that took place on Nov. 8, 2021. Image Credit: NASA.

When the power channel tripped, the batteries were no longer charged at expected levels so flight operators moved the 1B powered equipment from 1B to 1A. Space station systems are in a stable configuration, and the team is evaluating the event and discussing forward plans. Upcoming space station operations including Saturday’s launch of NASA and SpaceX’s 26th commercial resupply mission, as well as spacewalks are not impacted.

Related links:

Expedition 68: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition68/index.html

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

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

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Moon Microscope, Solar Arrays Launch on NASA’s SpaceX Cargo Ship

SpaceX - Dragon CRS-26 Mission patch.

Nov 26, 2022

SpaceX’s 26th commercial resupply mission for NASA is on its way to the International Space Station.

Carrying more than 7,700 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on the Falcon 9 rocket at 2:20 p.m. EST Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Image above: The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon cargo spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 26, 2022, on the company’s 26th commercial resupply services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 2:20 p.m. EST. Dragon will deliver more than 7,700 pounds of cargo, including a variety of NASA investigations, supplies, and equipment to the crew aboard the space station, including the next pair of ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). The spacecraft is expected to spend about a month attached to the orbiting outpost before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida. Image Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett.

The cargo spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously dock at the space station around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 27, and remain at the station for about 45 days. Coverage of arrival will begin at 6 a.m. on NASA Television, the agency’s website, and the NASA app.

SpaceX CRS-26 launch and Falcon 9 first stage landing

Among the science experiments Dragon is delivering to the space station are:

Picture of Health

Moon Microscope tests a kit for in-flight medical diagnosis that includes a portable hand-held microscope and a small self-contained blood sample staining device. An astronaut collects and stains a blood sample, obtains images with the microscope, and transmits images to the ground, where flight surgeons use them to diagnose illness and prescribe treatment.

Image above: A preflight image of the miniature microscope developed for the Moon Microscope investigation. Image courtesy of NASA’s Johnson Space Center Immunology/Virology Laboratory.

The kit could provide diagnostic capabilities for crew members in space or on the surface of the Moon or Mars, as well as the ability to test water, food, and surfaces for contamination. The hardware also may enable improved medical monitoring on upcoming Artemis missions.

Adding Solar Power

Two International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or iROSAs, launched aboard SpaceX’s 22nd commercial resupply mission for the agency and were installed in 2021. These solar panels, which roll out using stored kinetic energy, expand the energy-production capabilities of the space station. The second set launching in the Dragon’s trunk, once installed, will be a part of the plan to provide a 20% to 30% increase in power for space station research and operations.

ISS with solar arrays expanded. Image Credit: NASA

These arrays, the second of three packages, will complete the upgrade of half the station’s power channels. iROSA technology was first tested on the space station in 2017. Roll-out solar array technology was used on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission and is planned for use on Gateway, a future lunar space station and vital component of NASA’s Artemis program. The iROSA upgrades use the space station as a proving ground for the technology and research needed to explore farther into space.

Big Hopes for Small Tomatoes

Image above: NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough growing lettuce in Veggie on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA.

A continuous source of nutritious food is essential for long-duration exploration missions, and the typical pre-packaged astronaut diet may need to be supplemented by fresh foods produced in space. Researchers have been testing a plant growth unit on station known as Veggie and have successfully grown a variety of leafy greens. Veg-05, the next step in that work, focuses on growing dwarf tomatoes.

Building Bigger Structures

On Earth, gravity deforms large objects such as the beams used in large-scale construction. Microgravity enables fabrication of longer and thinner structures without this deformation. Extrusion demonstrates a technology using liquid resin to create shapes and forms that cannot be created on Earth. Photocurable resin, which uses light to harden the material into its final form, is injected into pre-made flexible forms and a camera captures footage of the process. The capability for using these forms could enable in-space construction of structures such as space stations, solar arrays, and equipment.

Image above: An inside view of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative Extrusion payload, shown in preparation for flight prior to sample loading. This technology demonstration tests new methods for rapid extrusion and UV curing of liquid resin shapes in microgravity. Image courtesy of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.

The Space Exploration Initiative supports a range of microgravity and lunar research across science, engineering, art, and design. The experiment is packed inside a Nanoracks Black Box with several other experiments from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and is sponsored by the ISS National Lab.

On-Demand Nutrients

Supplying adequate nutrition is a major challenge to maintaining crew health on future long-duration space missions. Many vitamins, nutrients, and pharmaceuticals have limited shelf-life, and the ability to make such compounds on-demand could help maintain crew health and well-being. BioNutrients-2 tests a system for producing key nutrients from yogurt, a fermented milk product known as kefir, and a yeast-based beverage.

Image above: For the BioNutrients experiment, the specially engineered yeast and its powdered food source are held in the container at the left. Its lid holds a membrane that allows carbon dioxide from the yeast to escape. The clear tube at right protects another filter system leading into the compartment with the microorganisms. To activate the yeast and begin the experiment, astronauts on board the space station will inject water through the filter, making it sterile. The water will dissolve the nutrient powder and the yeast will grow and multiply in this liquid environment, producing an important nutrient for human health. Image Credits: NASA's Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart.

The investigation kicks off phase two of the five-year BioNutrients program, headed by NASA’s Ames Research Center and managed by Game Changing Development in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program began with the launch of BioNutrients-1 in 2019. BioNutrients-2 employs a smaller system with a heated incubator that promotes growth of beneficial organisms.

The researchers also are working to find efficient ways to use local resources to make bulk products such as plastics, construction binders, and feedstock chemicals. Such technologies are designed to reduce launch costs and increase self-sufficiency, extending the horizons of human exploration.

Easing Gravity Transitions

Travelers to space all face the transition from one gravity field to another. On future exploration missions, astronauts may encounter three different gravity fields: weightlessness while traveling in space, the gravity of another planet, and Earth’s gravity when they return. These transitions can affect spatial orientation, head-eye and hand-eye coordination, balance, and locomotion, and cause some crew members to experience space motion sickness.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Artemis I – Flight Day 11: Orion Surpasses Apollo 13 Record Distance from Earth

NASA /ESA - Orion Crew Vehicle patch.

Nov 26, 2022

On day 11 of the Artemis I mission, Orion continues its journey beyond the Moon after entering a distant retrograde orbit Friday, Nov. 25, at 3:52 p.m. CST. Orion will remain in this orbit for six days before exiting lunar orbit to put the spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth and f a Sunday, Dec. 11, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth, at 7:42 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 26. The record was set during the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 miles from our home planet. At its maximum distance from the Moon, Orion will be more than 270,000 miles from Earth Monday, Nov. 28.

Image above: On flight day 11, NASA’S Orion spacecraft captured imagery looking back at the Earth from a camera mounted on one of its solar arrays. The spacecraft is currently in a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon.

Engineers also completed the first orbital maintenance burn by firing auxiliary thrusters on Orion’s service module at 3:52 p.m. for less than a second to propel the spacecraft at .47 feet per second. The planned orbital maintenance burns will fine-tune Orion’s trajectory as it continues its orbit around the Moon.

Flying aboard Orion on the Artemis I mission is a suited manikin named after a key player in bringing Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Arturo Campos was an electrical engineer who developed a plan to provide the command module with enough electrical power to navigate home safely after an oxygen tank aboard the service module of the Apollo spacecraft ruptured. Commander Moonikin Campos is outfitted with sensors to provide data on what crew members may experience in flight, continuing Campos’ legacy of enabling human exploration in deep space.

Artemis builds on the experience of Apollo. With Artemis, humans will return to the lunar surface, and this time to stay. NASA will use innovate technologies to explore the Moon’s South Pole and more of the lunar surface than ever before using the Gateway space station in lunar orbit along with advanced spacesuits and rovers. NASA will lead the way in collaboration with international and commercial partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.

Apollo to Artemis: NASA Returns to the Moon

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

ISRO - PSLV-XL launches EOS-06

ISRO - PSLV-C54 / EOS-06 Mission poster.

Nov 26, 2022

PSLV-XL carrying EOS-06 liftoff

For ISRO’s PSLV-C54 mission, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in the “XL” configuration (PSLV-XL) launched EOS-06 (Earth Observation Satellite - 06) and eight nano-satellites, from the First Launch Pad (FLP) of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, India, on 26 November 2022, at 06:26 UTC (11:56 IST).

PSLV-XL launches EOS-06

EOS-6 is the third-generation satellite in the Oceansat series. This is to provide continuity services of Oceansat-2 spacecraft with enhanced payload specifications as well as application areas.

EOS-06 satellite

Payloads:

- Ocean Color Monitor (OCM-3)
- Sea Surface Temperature Monitor (SSTM)
- Ku-Band Scatterometer (SCAT-3)
- ARGOS

Mission Objectives:

- To ensure the data continuity of Ocean colour and wind vector data to sustain the operational applications.

- To improve the applications, some additional datasets such as Sea Surface Temperature and more number of bands in Optical region for florescence and in Infrared region for atmospheric corrections are accommodated.

- To develop / improve related algorithms and data products to serve in well- established application areas and to enhance the mission utility.

SATELLITES IN PSLV-C54

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO): https://www.isro.gov.in/

Credits: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)/SciNews/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

vendredi 25 novembre 2022

Flight Day 10: Orion Enters Distant Retrograde Orbit

NASA / ESA - Orion Crew Vehicle patch.

Nov. 25, 2022

Flight Controllers in the White Flight Control Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston successfully performed a burn to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit by firing the orbital maneuvering system engine for 1 minutes and 28 seconds at 4:52 p.m. CST, propelling the spacecraft at 363 feet per second. Shortly before conducting the burn, Orion was traveling more than 57,00 miles above the lunar surface, marking the farthest distance it will reach from the Moon during the mission. While in lunar orbit, flight controllers will monitor key systems and perform checkouts while in the environment of deep space.

Orion spacecraft enters Distant Retrograde Orbit

The orbit is distant in that Orion will fly about 40,000 miles above the Moon. Due to the distance of the orbit, it will take Orion nearly a week to complete half an orbit around the Moon, where it will exit the orbit for the return journey home. About four days later, the spacecraft will harness the Moon’s gravitational force once again, combined with a precisely timed lunar flyby burn to slingshot Orion onto its return course to Earth ahead of splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Dec. 11.

On Saturday, Nov. 26, Orion spacecraft will break the record for farthest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans to space and safely return them to Earth. This distance is currently held by the Apollo 13 spacecraft at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth. Orion was specifically designed for missions to carry humans farther into space than ever before.

On Artemis I, engineers are testing several aspects of the Orion spacecraft needed for deep space missions with crew, including its highly capable propulsion system to maintain its course with precision and ensure its crew can get home, communication and navigation systems to maintain contact with the ground and orient the spacecraft, systems and features to handle radiation events, as well as a heat shield that can handle a high-speed reentry from the Moon. Both distance and duration demand that spacecraft must have systems that can reliably operate far from home, be capable of keeping astronauts alive in case of emergencies and still be light enough that a rocket can launch it.

Orion spacecraft (illustration). Image Credits: NASA/ESA

Artemis II will test the systems required for astronauts to live and breathe in deep space. Long duration missions far from Earth drive engineers to design compact systems not only to maximize available space for crew comfort, but also to accommodate the volume needed to carry consumables like enough food and water for the entirety of a mission lasting days or weeks.

Related articles:

Artemis I – Flight Day Nine: Orion One Day Away from Distant Retrograde Insertion
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-flight-day-nine-orion-one-day.html

Latest Updates from Artemis I
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/latest-updates-from-artemis-i.html

Artemis I – Flight Day Six: Orion Performs Lunar Flyby, Closest Outbound Approach
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-flight-day-six-orion-performs.html

Artemis powering past the Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-powering-past-moon.html

Orion Successfully Completes Lunar Flyby, Re-acquires Signal with Earth
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/orion-successfully-completes-lunar.html

Artemis I – Flight Day Four: Testing WiFi Signals, Radiator System, GO for Outbound Powered Flyby
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-flight-day-four-testing-wifi.html

NASA’s Artemis I Cameras to Offer New Views of Orion, Earth, Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/nasas-artemis-i-cameras-to-offer-new.html

Artemis I Liftoff! 50 years after Apollo 17, Orion on Its Way to the Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-liftoff-50-years-after-apollo.html

Artemis I return for launch
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-return-for-launch.html

Related links:

Track Orion: https://www.nasa.gov/trackartemis

Artemis I: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1

Orion spacecraft (ESA): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Orion

Orion Spacecraft (NASA): https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Sandra Jones/NASA TV/SciNews.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

'Listen' to the Light Echoes From a Black Hole

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Nov 23, 2022

One of the surprising features of black holes is that although light (such as radio, visible, and X-rays) cannot escape from them, surrounding material can produce intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. As they travel outward, these blasts of light can bounce off clouds of gas and dust in space, similar to how light beams from a car’s headlight will scatter off fog.

Quick Look: 'Listen' to the Light Echoes From a Black Hole

Video above: A new sonification turns X-ray “light echoes” from a black hole into sound. Rings of X-rays seen by NASA’s Chandra and Swift observatories show the echoes. Material around a black hole can generate bursts of X-rays. The X-rays reflect off clouds of gas and dust like beams from headlights can in fog. Video Credits: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart.

A new sonification turns these “light echoes” from the black hole called V404 Cygni into sound. Located about 7,800 light-years from Earth, V404 Cygni is a system that contains a black hole, with a mass between five and 10 times the Sun’s, that is pulling material from a companion star in orbit around it. The material is funneled into a disk that encircles the stellar-mass black hole.

This material periodically generates bursts of radiation, including X-rays. As the X-rays travel outward they encounter clouds of gas and dust in between V404 Cygni and Earth and are scattered at various angles. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have imaged the X-ray light echoes around V404 Cygni. Because astronomers know exactly how fast light travels and have determined an accurate distance to this system, they can calculate when these eruptions occurred. This data, plus other information, helps astronomers learn more about the dust clouds, including their composition and distances.

Illustration showing how the rings seen by Chandra were produced

The sonification of V404 Cygni translates the X-ray data from both Chandra and Swift into sound. During the sonification, the cursor moves outward from the center of the image in a circle. As it passes through the light echoes detected in X-rays (seen as concentric rings in blue by Chandra and red by Swift in the image), there are tick-like sounds and changes in volume to denote the detection of X-rays and the variations in brightness. To differentiate between the data from the two telescopes, Chandra data is represented by higher-frequency tones while the Swift data is lower. In addition to the X-rays, the image includes optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey that shows background stars. Each star in optical light triggers a musical note. The volume and pitch of the note are determined by the brightness of the star.

More sonifications of astronomical data, as well as additional information on the process, can be found at the "A Universe of Sound" website: https://chandra.si.edu/sound/

These sonifications were led by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) and included as part of NASA's Universe of Learning (UoL) program. The collaboration was driven by visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand (CXC), astrophysicist Matt Russo, and musician Andrew Santaguida (both of the SYSTEM Sounds project). NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. NASA's Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Read more from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2022/sonify6/

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Image, Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon/Marshall Space Flight Center/Molly Porter/Chandra X-ray Center/Megan Watzke.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Mechanical Problem Postpones Russian Spacewalk

ISS - Expedition 68 Mission patch.

Nov 25, 2022

Image above: Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin are pictured conducting a six-hour and 25-minute spacewalk in their Orlan spacesuits on Nov. 17, 2022. Image Credit: NASA TV.

Today’s spacewalk with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin was postponed due to an issue with the water coolant system pump on Prokopyev’s Orlan spacesuit. The team is in the process of returning onboard systems to a nominal configuration. The duo, with assistance from European robotic arm operator Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, were slated to relocate a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka science module on the International Space Station.

Today’s spacewalk would have continued the duo’s previous spacewalk on Nov. 17 where they prepared the radiator for its relocation. A back-up date for today’s spacewalk is to be determined.

Related links:

Expedition 68: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition68/index.html

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

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Heidi Lavelle.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Hunts an Unusual Galaxy

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

Nov 25, 2022

The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side.

Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to capture this scene – the instrument is optimized to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the ancient universe. Hubble’s ACS has been contributing to scientific discovery for 20 years, and throughout its lifetime it has been involved in everything from mapping the distribution of dark matter to studying the evolution of galaxy clusters.

This image comes from a selection of Hubble observations designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other ground-based telescopes. Astronomers chose a list of previously unobserved galaxies for Hubble to inspect between other scheduled observations. Over time, this lets astronomers build up a menagerie of interesting galaxies while using Hubble’s limited observing time as efficiently as possible.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

https://esahubble.org/

Text Credits: European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA/Andrea Gianopoulos/Image, Animation Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Europe’s first Mars rover mission saved by major investment

ESA - ExoMars Mission logo.

Nov. 25, 2022

The ExoMars programme was imperilled after the European Space Agency cut ties with its former partner Russia.

Image above: The European Rosalind Franklin rover will have a 2-metre drill to probe the Martian surface. Image Credits: ESA/ATG medialab.

Europe’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, part of the beleaguered €1.3-billion (US$1.3-billion) ExoMars programme, is now set to launch in 2028, after securing a reported €360 million investment from European countries.

The money will allow the European Space Agency (ESA) to start designing a new landing platform intended to lower its first Martian rover onto the planet’s surface. The work is necessary after ESA severed ties with its former partner on the mission, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, in March, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was in charge of designing and building landing gear for the rover, as well as launching the mission from its site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

“I am very relieved and incredibly happy that this great mission was not taken away from us and that I can continue to hope to steer a rover on Mars one day,” says Daniela Tirsch, a planetary geologist at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. Only the United States and China have had placed working rovers on Mars.

The latest delay to 2028 is the third in the mission’s history. The ExoMars rover was originally intended to launch in 2018, but technical issues scuppered that plan. The COVID-19 pandemic then delayed a scheduled 2020 flight to 2022, before relations with Russia deteriorated. The cost of the delay from 2020 to 2022 was on the order of €100 million, an ESA spokesperson told Nature.

Deep drilling

Despite its delays and burgeoning costs, scientists remain excited about the ExoMars mission, which is the second part of a programme that includes an orbiter that arrived at the red planet in 2016 and has been hunting for biological or geological origins of methane and other gases.

The Franklin rover carries a 2-metre drill that will burrow deep beneath the Martian surface to search for preserved evidence of ancient life. “We will search for evidence of past life in the subsurface for the very first time,” says Jorge Vago, ESA project scientist for the mission, based at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

“ExoMars is a really incredible mission that will be unique in method and scientific approach, even if launched in 2028,” says Francesca Esposito, a planetary scientist at the INAF Astronomical Observatory of Capdiomonte in Naples, Italy, and member of the mission.

“It’s the first mission which can probe the very early history of terrestrial planets,” adds Tirsch, noting that ExoMars’s landing site, a vast plain called Oxia Planum, records “unique information on ancient, water-rich Mars environments, prebiotic chemistry, and, perhaps, life”.

ESA expects that NASA will help by contributing the mission’s launcher, its braking engine, for use during landing, and its radioisotope heating units, said ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher, speaking at the press briefing after the conference. The latter is necessary for Rosalind Franklin to survive the harsh Martian nights. But European technology will replace the rest of Russia’s lost contribution, he said.

Member states promised the cash for the mission at the ESA ministerial conference held in Paris on 22–23 November, where they committed a total budget of €16.9 billion for projects over five years. This includes €2.7 billion for human and robotic space exploration, an increase of 16% over the last agreement in 2019, and €3.2 billion for the agency’s scientific programme, a rise of 19%.

As part of this, ministers agreed to fund the Solaris project, a programme to scope out the viability of developing, from 2025, a space-based solar power system that would bring energy to Earth. Nations worldwide are exploring the technology, which would seek to beam down energy from a kilometres-sized solar array in orbit and which has become more viable given the plummeting costs of space launches.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04122-4

Rosalind Franklin Mars rover: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/ExoMars/ExoMars_rover

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA/Nature/Elizabeth Gibney.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

jeudi 24 novembre 2022

Artemis I – Flight Day Nine: Orion One Day Away from Distant Retrograde Insertion

NASA / ESA - Orion Crew Vehicle patch.

Nov. 24, 2022

Orion is now about one day away from entering into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. The orbit is “distant” in the sense that it’s at a high altitude approximately 50,000 miles from the surface of the Moon. Due to the distance, the orbit is so large that it will take the spacecraft six days to complete half of a revolution around the Moon before exiting the orbit for the return journey back to Earth.

During the last day in the transit to distant retrograde orbit, flight controllers performed a third in a series of planned star tracker development flight tests relative to the Sun, with a fourth planned for tomorrow. Star trackers are a navigation tool that measure the positions of stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. In the first three flight days, engineers evaluated initial data to understand star tracker readings correlated to thruster firings.

Image above: On Flight Day 8, NASA’s Orion spacecraft remains two days away from reaching its distant retrograde orbit. The Moon is in view as Orion snaps a selfie using a camera mounted on one of its solar array at 10:57 p.m. EST. Image Credit: NASA.

The spacecraft completed its sixth outbound trajectory correction burn at 3:52 p.m. CST, firing the European Service Module’s auxiliary engines for 17 seconds to propel the spacecraft at 8.9 feet per second. This is the final trajectory correction before entering distant retrograde orbit. When in lunar orbit, Orion will perform three orbital maintenance burns to keep the spacecraft on course.

Overnight, engineers will begin a 24-hour test of the reaction control system engines to evaluate engine performance for standard and non-standard thruster configurations. This test will provide data to inform procedures and ensure that the reaction control thrusters can control Orion’s orientation in an alternate configuration if there is an issue with the primary configuration.

Just after 1:42 p.m. CST on Nov. 24, Orion was traveling 222,993 miles from Earth and 55,819 miles from the Moon, cruising at 2,610 miles per hour.

NASA Television coverage of the distant retrograde orbit insertion burn, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EST on Friday, Nov. 25. The burn is scheduled to take place at 4:52 p.m.

Related articles:

Latest Updates from Artemis I
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/latest-updates-from-artemis-i.html

Artemis I – Flight Day Six: Orion Performs Lunar Flyby, Closest Outbound Approach
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-flight-day-six-orion-performs.html

Artemis powering past the Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-powering-past-moon.html

Orion Successfully Completes Lunar Flyby, Re-acquires Signal with Earth
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/orion-successfully-completes-lunar.html

Artemis I – Flight Day Four: Testing WiFi Signals, Radiator System, GO for Outbound Powered Flyby
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-flight-day-four-testing-wifi.html

NASA’s Artemis I Cameras to Offer New Views of Orion, Earth, Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/nasas-artemis-i-cameras-to-offer-new.html

Artemis I Liftoff! 50 years after Apollo 17, Orion on Its Way to the Moon
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-liftoff-50-years-after-apollo.html

Artemis I return for launch
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/11/artemis-i-return-for-launch.html

Related links:

Track Orion: https://www.nasa.gov/trackartemis

Artemis I: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1

Orion spacecraft (ESA): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Orion

Orion Spacecraft (NASA): https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Cballart.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

CERN - First lead-ion collisions in the LHC at record energy

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Nov. 24, 2022

On Friday, 18 November, a test using collisions of lead ions was carried out in the LHC and provided an opportunity for the experiments to validate the new detectors and new data-processing systems ahead of next year’s lead-lead physics run.

Image above: Event displays of the first Pb-Pb collision of Run3 taken on 18 November 2022 (Image: CERN).

After the successful start of Run 3 in July this year, which featured proton-proton collisions at the record energy of 13.6 TeV, it was the turn of lead nuclei to circulate in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) again last Friday after a gap of four years. Lead nuclei comprise 208 nucleons (protons and neutrons) and are used at the LHC to study quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of matter in which the elementary constituents, quarks and gluons, are not confined within nucleons but can move and interact over a much larger volume.

In the test carried out last Friday, lead nuclei were accelerated and collided at a record energy of 5.36 TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision (1). This is an important milestone in preparation for the physics runs with lead-lead collisions that are planned for 2023 and the following years of Run 3 and Run 4.

Event display of a lead-argon collision in LHCb (Image: CERN)

The CERN ion injector complex has undergone a series of upgrades in preparation for a doubling of the total intensity of the lead-ion beams for the High-Luminosity LHC. Achieving this goal requires a technique called “momentum slip-stacking” to be used in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), where two batches of four lead-ion bunches separated by 100 nanoseconds “slip” to produce a single batch of 8 lead bunches separated by 50 nanoseconds. This will allow the total number of bunches injected into the LHC to increase from 648 in Run 2 to 1248 in Run 3 and onwards. After all the upgrades have been completed the LHC will provide a ten-fold higher number of heavy ion collisions with respect to the past Runs.

Image above: Event display of a heavy ion collision event recorded in ATLAS on 18 Nov 2022, when stable beams of lead ions colliding at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.36 TeV were delivered to ATLAS by the LHC. (Image: CERN).

The test was also a crucial milestone for ALICE, the LHC experiment that specialises in the study of lead-ion collisions. The ALICE apparatus was upgraded during the recent shutdown of the LHC and now features several completely new or greatly improved detectors, as well as new hardware and software for data processing. The new detectors provide a higher spatial resolution in the reconstruction of the trajectories and properties of the particles produced in the collisions. In addition, the upgraded apparatus and upgraded processing chain can record the full collision information at a rate two orders of magnitude higher.

Events as seen in the CMS detector from Pb-Pb collisions (Image: CERN)

Other experiments used the test run to commission their upgraded and newly installed subsystems in the new heavy-ion environment of higher energy and 50ns bunch spacing. ATLAS tested upgrades to its selection (trigger) software, which is designed to enhance heavy-ion-physics data taking in Run 3. In particular, physicists tested a new particle-track trigger designed to spot a wider range of “ultra-peripheral collisions”. CMS upgraded several components of its readout, data acquisition, trigger and reconstruction chains to be able to take full advantage of the high-energy lead-lead collisions. The lead-lead fills delivered by the LHC allowed CMS to commission the entire system with beam and spot the areas that could be further optimized for the 2023 heavy-ion runs. LHCb started commissioning its brand-new detector in the challenging conditions of lead-lead collisions characterised by a very large particle multiplicity. In addition to lead-lead collisions, LHCb collected lead-argon collisions in fixed-target mode using the new SMOG2 system, which is unique to the experiment and is designed to inject noble gases into the LHCb collision area.

Even if very short, the 2022 lead-lead programme can be considered a success for the LHC accelerator, the experiments and CERN's heavy-ion injector complex. The four big LHC detectors saw and recorded lead-lead collisions at a new record energy for the first time. Researchers are now looking forward to the heavy-ion physics campaign in 2023 and the following years.

(1) In lead-lead collisions, each of the 208 nucleons of one of the lead nuclei can interact with one or several nucleons of the other lead nucleus.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 23 Member States.

Related links:

Large Hadron Collider (LHC): https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider

Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS): https://home.cern/science/accelerators/super-proton-synchrotron

ALICE experiment: https://home.cern/science/experiments/alice

CMS Experiment: https://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/cms

LHCb Experiment: https://home.cern/science/experiments/lhcb

ATLAS experiment: https://home.cern/science/experiments/atlas

For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: https://home.cern/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/By ALICE collaboration.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s IXPE Helps Solve Black Hole Jet Mystery

NASA - Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) patch.

Nov 24, 2022

Some of the brightest objects in the sky are called blazars. They consist of a supermassive black hole feeding off material swirling around it in a disk, which can create two powerful jets perpendicular to the disk on each side. A blazar is especially bright because one of its powerful jets of high-speed particles points straight at Earth. For decades, scientists have wondered: How do particles in these jets get accelerated to such high energies?

NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, has helped astronomers get closer to an answer. In a new study in the journal Nature, authored by a large international collaboration, astronomers find that the best explanation for the particle acceleration is a shock wave within the jet.

“This is a 40-year-old mystery that we’ve solved,” said Yannis Liodakis, lead author of the study and astronomer at FINCA, the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO. “We finally had all of the pieces of the puzzle, and the picture they made was clear.”

Image above: This illustration shows NASA’s IXPE spacecraft, at right, observing blazar Markarian 501, at left. A blazar is a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and dust with a bright jet of high-energy particles pointed toward Earth. The inset illustration shows high-energy particles in the jet (blue). When the particles hit the shock wave, depicted as a white bar, the particles become energized and emit X-rays as they accelerate. Moving away from the shock, they emit lower-energy light: first visible, then infrared, and radio waves. Farther from the shock, the magnetic field lines are more chaotic, causing more turbulence in the particle stream. Image Credits: NASA/Pablo Garcia.

Launched Dec. 9, 2021, the Earth-orbiting IXPE satellite, a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, provides a special kind of data that has never been accessible from space before. This new data includes the measurement of X-ray light’s polarization, meaning IXPE detects the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves that make up X-rays. Information about the electric field orientation in X-ray light, and the extent of polarization, is not accessible to telescopes on Earth because the atmosphere absorbs X-rays from space.

“The first X-ray polarization measurements of this class of sources allowed, for the first time, a direct comparison with the models developed from observing other frequencies of light, from radio to very high-energy gamma rays,” said Immacolata Donnarumma, the project scientist for IXPE at the Italian Space Agency. “IXPE will continue to provide new evidence as the current data is analyzed and additional data is acquired in the future.”

The new study used IXPE to point at Markarian 501, a blazar in the constellation Hercules. This active black hole system sits at the center of a large elliptical galaxy.

IXPE watched Markarian 501 for three days in early March of 2022, and then again two weeks later. During these observations, astronomers used other telescopes in space and on the ground to gather information about the blazar in a wide range of wavelengths of light including radio, optical, and X-ray. While other studies have looked at the polarization of lower-energy light from blazars in the past, this was the first time scientists could get this perspective on a blazar’s X-rays, which are emitted closer to the source of particle acceleration.

“Adding X-ray polarization to our arsenal of radio, infrared, and optical polarization is a game changer,” said Alan Marscher, an astronomer at Boston University who leads the group studying giant black holes with IXPE.

Scientists found that X-ray light is more polarized than optical, which is more polarized than radio. But the direction of the polarized light was the same for all the wavelengths of light observed and was also aligned with the jet’s direction.

After comparing their information with theoretical models, the team of astronomers realized that the data most closely matched a scenario in which a shock wave accelerates the jet particles. A shock wave is generated when something moves faster than the speed of sound of the surrounding material, such as when a supersonic jet flies by in our Earth’s atmosphere.

The study was not designed to investigate the origins of shock waves, which are still mysterious. But scientists hypothesize that a disturbance in the flow of the jet causes a section of it to become supersonic. This could result from high-energy particle collisions within the jet, or from abrupt pressure changes at the jet boundary.

“As the shock wave crosses the region, the magnetic field gets stronger, and energy of particles gets higher,” Marscher said. “The energy comes from the motion energy of the material making the shock wave.”

As particles travel outward, they emit X-rays first because they are extremely energetic. Moving farther outward, through the turbulent region farther from the location of the shock, they start to lose energy, which causes them to emit less-energetic light like optical and then radio waves. This is analogous to how the flow of water becomes more turbulent after it encounters a waterfall – but here, magnetic fields create this turbulence.

Scientists will continue observing the Markarian 501 blazar to see if the polarization changes over time. IXPE will also investigate a broader collection of blazars during its two-year prime mission, exploring more longstanding mysteries about the universe. “It’s part of humanity’s progress toward understanding nature and all of its exoticness,” Marscher said.

Related links:

Nature: https://rdcu.be/c0gsH

NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE: https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Molly Porter/Written by Elizabeth Landau.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

mercredi 23 novembre 2022

Crew Goes into Thanksgiving with Spacewalk and Dragon Preps

ISS - Expedition 68 Mission patch.

Nov.23, 2022

Four Expedition 68 astronauts will relax on Thanksgiving day as three cosmonauts continue preparing for a spacewalk on Friday. The International Space Station residents are also expecting a space delivery this weekend bringing new roll-out solar arrays and science experiments.

Three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spent Wednesday performing numerous research, cargo, and maintenance tasks. The quartet will also be off-duty the next day observing the U.S. holiday before going into a busy weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving from the International Space Station

NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio turned on the Ultrasound 2 device on Wednesday and scanned the leg, neck, and shoulder veins of JAXA Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata to observe the effects of microgravity on humans. Earlier, Rubio had partnered with fellow NASA astronaut Josh Cassada and inspected spacewalking tethers before participating in a NanoRacks botany experiment. Wakata checked ethernet connections inside the Columbus laboratory module.

Cassada began his day filming a demonstration showing how to measure the mass of everyday objects in weightlessness. Afterward, he unpacked cargo from the Cygnus space freighter that arrived on Nov. 9. NASA Flight Engineer Nicole Mann spent most of Wednesday working on life support maintenance in the Harmony module. She wrapped up her day organizing cargo that will be packed inside the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft for return to Earth after it arrives in a few days.

Image above: The waxing gibbous Moon is pictured from the space station as it orbited above the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia’s island state of Tasmania. Image credit: NASA.

The Dragon resupply ship is attached to the top of the Falcon 9 rocket and is standing at the launch pad targeting a liftoff at 2:20 p.m. EST on Saturday from Kennedy Space Center. It will arrive on Sunday for an automated docking at 7:30 a.m. to the Harmony module’s space-facing port. Dragon will deliver a pair of new roll-out solar arrays, new space agriculture and biotechnology studies, and food, fuel, and crew supplies. NASA TV, on the agency’s app and website, begins its launch coverage at 2 p.m. on Saturday and docking coverage at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin are outfitting their Orlan spacesuits and checking them for leaks ahead of a spacewalk scheduled to begin at 6:15 a.m. on Friday. The duo will spend about seven hours on Friday relocating a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Cosmonaut Anna Kikina readied the European robotic arm and practiced the robotics maneuvers today she will use to help the spacewalkers move the radiator at the end of the week.

Related links:

Expedition 68: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition68/index.html

Ultrasound 2: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=736

Columbus laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/europe-columbus-laboratory

Harmony module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/harmony

Rassvet module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/rassvet

Nauka multipurpose laboratory module: https://www.roscosmos.ru/tag/nauka/

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

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

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/NASA TV/SciNews.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

BioSentinel Underway After Successful Lunar Flyby

NASA - NEA Scout mission patch.

Nov 23, 2022

NASA’s BioSentinel – a shoebox-sized CubeSat – is travelling far from Earth. But that also means it’s closer than ever to being the first long-duration biology experiment in deep space. BioSentinel’s mission operations team successfully acquired signal from the spacecraft shortly after launch on Nov. 16, 2022 and it is currently operating as expected.

NASA’s BioSentinel – a shoebox-sized CubeSat

BioSentinel, one of the 10 CubeSats that launched aboard Artemis I and subsequently deployed into deep space, will study the impacts of space radiation on yeast farther in deep space than ever before. Artemis missions at the Moon will prepare humans to travel on increasingly farther and longer-duration missions to destinations like Mars, and BioSentinel will carry microorganisms, in the form of yeast, to fill critical gaps in knowledge about the health risks in deep space posed by space radiation.

Upon initially receiving telemetry from the spacecraft at about 4 a.m. PST Nov. 16, health and status data indicated the spacecraft was tumbling, and the team worked with the Deep Space Network to send commands and resolve the anomaly.

"The team requested and received an emergency pass from the Deep Space Network to attempt a command to detumble the spacecraft," said Matt Napoli, BioSentinel project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, where the spacecraft was built and is managed. "The team then sent the spacecraft a command to perform a momentum management sequence, or detumble. A couple tense hours later, at 8:05 a.m. PST the team received telemetry showing the detumble was successful."

Since then, the spacecraft has remained stable and has continued to perform its mission milestones, as planned. This includes its successful lunar flyby on Nov. 22, 2022, when BioSentinel passed approximately 250 miles above the Moon's surface. And shortly after that, it successfully reemerged from 36 minutes of darkness, while the spacecraft was eclipsed by Moon. It is again pointing its solar panels at the Sun and recharging its batteries in preparation for the start of its experiment, which is expected to begin next month.

“We’re excited to see how the yeast are doing once the experiment begins and we receive the first data downlink from the spacecraft,” said Napoli.

Related links:

BioSentinel: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/biosentinel

Artemis I: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1

Artemis: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/Rachel Hoover.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch