Preparing to fly an Earth-observing genius

 

ESA - SEOSAT-Ingenio Mission logo.

Nov. 13, 2020

Teams at ESA's mission control centre are getting ready to ensure a new Earth observation mission safely begins its life in space. The SEOSAT-Ingenio mission will provide high-resolution images of Earth’s surface, providing crucial data to better understand our environment and for land, water and risk management and security.

SEOSAT-Ingenio

The flagship mission from the Spanish Earth Observation Program will launch on Tuesday, 17 November, at 02:52 CET from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana (22:52 on 16 November local time in Kourou).

Shortly after launch, the fledgling mission will establish communications with ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where teams will monitor and control the spacecraft during its intense first days in space, before handing over control of the mission to Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) for routine operations.

A Spanish genius

SEOSAT-Ingenio is short for Spanish Earth Observation Satellite, with ‘ingenio’ the Spanish word for ingenuity. The satellite will be joined on its journey into space on board a Vega rocket by its co-passenger, the Earth observation satellite Taranis of the French Space Agency CNES.

SEOSAT-Ingenio will be placed into an orbit at an altitude of roughly 670 km. From here, it will provide high-resolution images of Earth’s land cover that will have extensive uses across cartography, land use monitoring, urban development and water management.

SEOSAT-Ingenio being hoisted into the Vega launch tower

The Spanish satellite will be able to access and image any point on Earth’s surface within three days, making it especially helpful for mapping unpredictable natural disasters such as floods, wildfires and earthquakes, as well as helping to understand one of humankind’s greatest challenges: climate change.

During SEOSAT-Ingenio’s early days in space – the ‘Launch and Early Orbit Phase’ – teams at ESA mission control will conduct a series of manoeuvres that will help it reach its target orbit,  communicating with the spacecraft using ground stations including ESA’s own Kiruna station in Sweden.

Kiruna station

After safely guiding the satellite through this phase, ESOC will hand control of SEOSAT-Ingenio over to an INTA control facility in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, which will primarily communicate with the satellite using their own ground station in Torrejón.

While SEOSAT-Ingenio is a Spanish national mission, it is the result of an international collaborative effort. The mission is funded by Spain’s Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, but was developed and managed by ESA.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Launch and Early Orbit Phase of a mission is the most risky part of its life. Newly lofted into space by its rocket, and not yet fully ‘awake’, mission controllers must systematically turn on key instruments and test its core functions, all the while staying safe from the hazards of space.

To prepare for every eventuality, mission teams at ESA run through a series of simulated launch scenarios starting well before lift off. In some, the mission runs perfectly, ‘a nominal simulation’. In others, known as ‘contingency simulations’, problems are concocted and thrown in to help teams develop strategies to handle any number of issues that could occur during the real mission.

See mission control come to life in ESA’s new dramatisation, The Burn:

The Burn

SEOSAT-Ingenio will join a fleet of Earth-monitoring spacecraft in one of the busiest space highways, low-Earth orbit. This will put it at potential risk of collision with the churning veil of space debris caused by decades of humanity’s spaceflight activity.

ESA's Space Debris Office will calculate and monitor the risk of collision between SEOSAT-Ingenio and debris throughout the Launch and Early Orbit Phase. One common scenario for contingency simulations involves engineers from the Space Debris Office challenging the teams to quickly react to a potential collision and keep the spacecraft safe by manoeuvring it out of the path of oncoming debris.

Space Debris

For SEOSAT-Ingenio, the Space Debris Office will also continue to provide collision avoidance support after the spacecraft has been handed over to INTA.

A couple of days before launch, mission controllers will go through a ‘dress rehearsal’, in which they run through the launch sequence for the final time, but this time connected to the spacecraft in Kourou sitting on top of its Vega launcher, getting live data from the satellite.

Back-to-back launches in the midst of a pandemic

SEOSAT-Ingenio is scheduled to launch within just days of the most recent addition to the European Union’s Copernicus programme, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich.

The Launch and Early Orbit Phase of Sentinel-6’s mission will also be conducted from ESOC, so teams responsible for the two missions have been conducting overlapping sets of simulations and dress rehearsals, all in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is more coordination needed now than ever before,” says Isabel Rojo, Spacecraft Operations Manager for SEOSAT-Ingenio. “It’s always a challenge to have two launches so close together, but as a result of the pandemic, the mission teams for SEOSAT-Ingenio and Sentinel-6 and their use of the facilities at ESOC have to be strictly separated.”

“The teams and infrastructure at ESA’s mission control are well prepared for these challenges. We look forward to safely guiding SEOSAT-Ingenio through its critical early days in space and setting it up for its important Earth observation mission.”

Related links:

ESA's mission control centre: https://www.esa.int/About_Us/ESOC

SEOSAT-Ingenio: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/SEOSAT-Ingenio

Kiruna station: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_Ground_Stations/Kiruna_station

Copernicus programme: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus

European Space Agency (ESA): https://www.esa.int/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/P. Carril/S.Corvaja/ESOC/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Video du CSG–S. Martin/ID&Sense/ONiRiXEL, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Station Gets Ready to Welcome Commercial Crew

 

ISS - Expedition 64 Mission patch.

Nov. 12, 2020

The Expedition 64 crew is getting ready to welcome four new crew members to the International Space Station this weekend. The orbiting trio is also gearing up for a Russian spacewalk that will take place soon afterward.

Image above: The insignias of the Expedition 64 and SpaceX Crew-1 missions. Image Credits: NASA/SpaceX.

The SpaceX Crew-1 mission, with Commander Michael Hopkins, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi, is scheduled to launch to the station on Saturday at 7:49 p.m. EST. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, with the U.S. and Japanese quartet aboard, will dock to the Harmony module’s forward-facing international docking adapter on Sunday at 4:20 a.m.

The four Commercial Crew astronauts suited up today and practiced their countdown procedures inside the Crew Dragon at the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A.

Meanwhile, on the station, NASA Flight Engineer Kate Rubins configured a laptop computer for operations with the Crew Dragon vehicle after it arrives on Sunday. Rubins also cleaned up inside the Harmony module, stowing cargo to accommodate the new crew.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

The two cosmonauts aboard the station, Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, are getting ready for their first spacewalk scheduled for Nov. 18 at 9:30 a.m. The Roscosmos duo took turns exercising on a treadmill today for a cardiovascular assessment as part of their spacewalk preparations. Afterward, the pair installed lights, cameras, and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries on their Orlan spacesuits.

Related links:

Expedition 64: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition64/index.html

Commercial Crew: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html

Kennedy Space Center (KSC): https://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/index.html

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

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), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Catherine Williams.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

ISS orbit raised by 1.1 km

 

ROSCOSMOS - Russian Vehicles patch.

Nov. 12, 2020

In accordance with the flight program of the International Space Station, on November 12, 2020, specialists from the Mission Control Center of TsNIIMash (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) carried out a planned correction of its orbit. For this purpose, the engines of the Progress MS-14 transport cargo vehicle docked to the Zvezda module assembly compartment were automatically switched on at 22:50 Moscow time.

ISS reboost by Progress spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA

The orbit was corrected in full accordance with the calculated data. The engines of the cargo ship worked for 363.5 s, as a result of which the average altitude of the station's orbit increased by 1.1 km and amounted to approximately 419.35 km above the Earth's surface. According to the ballistic and navigation support service of the TsNIIMash MCC, at the moment the parameters of the ISS orbit are:

    Orbital period: 92.90 min;
    Orbital inclination: 51.66 degrees;
    Minimum height above the Earth's surface: 418.42 km;
    Maximum height above the Earth's surface: 437.95 km.

This maneuver is necessary for the initial formation of ballistic conditions before the launch and docking of the Soyuz MS-18 manned transport vehicle, scheduled for April next year. Currently, there are three crew members on board the International Space Station - Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov (commander of the long-term expedition ISS-64) and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov (flight engineer ISS-64), as well as NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins (flight engineer ISS-64).

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

The previous orbit correction of the International Space Station took place on October 7, 2020. Then the engines of the Progress MS-14 cargo vehicle operated for 412.9 s, and the average altitude of the ISS orbit decreased by 1.3 km and amounted to approximately 418.6 km above the Earth's surface. The spacecraft Progress MS-14 has been in near-earth orbit since April 25 this year. During this time, he carried out 7 corrections of the station's orbit, including an unplanned maneuver to avoid a possible collision with "space debris".

ROSCOSMOS Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/29556/

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Earth May Have Recaptured a 1960s-Era Rocket Booster

 

Asteroid Watch logo.

Nov. 12, 2020

In 1966, NASA launched Surveyor 2 to the Moon. Now its rocket booster has apparently returned to near-Earth space.

The Looping Orbits of 2020 SO

Video above: This animation shows the temporary orbit of 2020 SO around Earth from November to March 2020 that has been captured by Earth's gravity. The object is thought to be the Centaur upper-stage booster rocket from the Surveyor 2 mission that launched to the Moon in 1966. While the Surveyor 2 lander crashed into the lunar surface, the spent Centaur rocket drifted past the Moon and ended up in an unknown solar orbit. Over 50 years later, the Centaur rocket has apparently returned, entering Earth orbit on Nov.10 where it will remain until March 2021 before escaping back into a new solar orbit. This animation has been sped up a million times faster than real-time. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Earth has captured a tiny object from its orbit around the Sun and will keep it as a temporary satellite for a few months before it escapes back to a solar orbit. But the object is likely not an asteroid; it's probably the Centaur upper stage rocket booster that helped lift NASA's ill-fated Surveyor 2 spacecraft toward the Moon in 1966.

This story of celestial catch-and-release begins with the detection of an unknown object by the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope on Maui in September. Astronomers at Pan-STARRS noticed that this object followed a slight but distinctly curved path in the sky, which is a sign of its proximity to Earth. The apparent curvature is caused by the rotation of the observer around Earth's axis as our planet spins. Assumed to be an asteroid orbiting the Sun, the object was given a standard designation by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2020 SO. But scientists at the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California saw the object's orbit and suspected it was not a normal asteroid.

Most asteroids' orbits are more elongated and tilted relative to Earth's orbit. But the orbit of 2020 SO around the Sun was very similar to that of Earth: It was at about the same distance, nearly circular, and in an orbital plane that almost exactly matched that of our planet – highly unusual for a natural asteroid.

Image above: This photograph shows a model of the Surveyor lander. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

As astronomers at Pan-STARRS and around the world made additional observations of 2020 SO, the data also started to reveal the degree to which the Sun's radiation was changing 2020 SO's trajectory – an indication that it may not be an asteroid after all.

The pressure exerted by sunlight is small but continuous, and it has a greater effect on a hollow object than a solid one. A spent rocket is essentially an empty tube and therefore is a low-density object with a large surface area. So it will be pushed around by solar radiation pressure more than a solid, high-density clump of rock – much like an empty soda can will be pushed by the wind more than a small stone.

"Solar radiation pressure is a non-gravitational force that is caused by light photons emitted by the Sun hitting a natural or artificial object," said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at JPL, who analyzed 2020 SO's trajectory for CNEOS. "The resulting acceleration on the object depends on the so-called area-to-mass ratio, which is greater for small and light, low-density objects."

With the analysis of more than 170 detailed measurements of 2020 SO's position over the last three months, including observations made by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona and ESA's (European Space Agency's) Optical Ground Station in Tenerife, Spain, the impact of solar radiation pressure became evident and confirmed 2020 SO's low-density nature. The next step was to figure out where the suspected rocket booster could have come from.

Space Age Artifact

The Surveyor 2 lunar lander was launched toward the Moon on Sept. 20, 1966, on an Atlas-Centaur rocket. The mission was designed to reconnoiter the lunar surface ahead of the Apollo missions that led to the first crewed lunar landing in 1969. Shortly after lift-off, Surveyor 2 separated from its Centaur upper-stage booster as intended. But control of the spacecraft was lost a day later when one of its thrusters failed to ignite, throwing it into a spin. The spacecraft crashed into the Moon just southeast of Copernicus crater on Sept. 23, 1966. The spent Centaur upper-stage rocket, meanwhile, sailed past the Moon and disappeared into an unknown orbit about the Sun.

Suspicious that 2020 SO was a remnant of an old lunar mission, CNEOS Director Paul Chodas "turned back the clock" and ran the object's orbit backward to determine where it had been in the past. Chodas found that 2020 SO had come somewhat close to Earth a few times over the decades, but 2020 SO's approach in late 1966, according to his analysis, would have been close enough that it may have originated from Earth.

Image above: This 1964 photograph shows a Centaur upper-stage rocket before being mated to an Atlas booster. A similar Centaur was used during the launch of Surveyor 2 two years later. Image Credit: NASA.

"One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966," said Chodas. "It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of launch dates for lunar missions showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission."

Now, in 2020, the Centaur appears to have returned to Earth for a brief visit. On Nov. 8, 2020 SO slowly drifted into Earth's sphere of gravitational dominance, a region called the Hill sphere that extends roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. That's where 2020 SO will remain for about four months before it escapes back into a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021.

Before it leaves, 2020 SO will make two large loops around our planet, with its closest approach on Dec. 1. During this period, astronomers will get a closer look and study its composition using spectroscopy to confirm if 2020 SO is indeed an artifact from the early Space Age.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, hosts CNEOS for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program that is managed within NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. More information about CNEOS, asteroids, and near-Earth objects can be found at:

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

For asteroid and comet news and updates, follow @AsteroidWatch on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch

Related links:

Pan-STARRS1: https://panstarrs.stsci.edu/

Minor Planet Center: https://minorplanetcenter.net/

Catalina Sky Survey: https://catalina.lpl.arizona.edu/

ESA's Optical Ground Station: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Space_Optoelectronics/Optical_Ground_Station_OGS

Surveyor 2: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/surveyor-2/

Asteroids: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/Josh Handal/JPL/Ian J. O'Neill.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Curiosity Takes Selfie With 'Mary Anning' on the Red Planet

 

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

Nov. 12, 2020

The Mars rover has drilled three samples of rock in this clay-enriched region since arriving in July.

Image above: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning" after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe preserves an ancient habitable environment. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has a new selfie. This latest is from a location named "Mary Anning," after a 19th-century English paleontologist whose discovery of marine-reptile fossils were ignored for generations because of her gender and class. The rover has been at the site since this past July, taking and analyzing drill samples.  

Made up of 59 pictures stitched together by imaging specialists, the selfie was taken on Oct. 25, 2020 – the 2,922nd Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission.

Scientists on the Curiosity team thought it fitting to name the sampling site after Anning because of the area's potential to reveal details about the ancient environment. Curiosity used the rock drill on the end of its robotic arm to take samples from three drill holes called "Mary Anning," "Mary Anning 3," and "Groken," this last one named after cliffs in Scotland's Shetland Islands. The robotic scientist has conducted a set of advanced experiments with those samples to extend the search for organic (or carbon-based) molecules in the ancient rocks.

Since touching down in Gale Crater in 2012, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp to search for conditions that might once have supported life. This past year, the rover has explored a region of Mount Sharp called Glen Torridon, which likely held lakes and streams billions of years ago. Scientists suspect this is why a high concentration of clay minerals and organic molecules was discovered there.

Image above: This close-up shot shows the three drill holes created by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at the "Mary Anning" location. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

It will take months for the team to interpret the chemistry and minerals in the samples from the Mary Anning site. In the meantime, the scientists and engineers who have been commanding the rover from their homes as a safety precaution during the coronavirus pandemic have directed Curiosity to continue its climb of Mount Sharp. The rover's next target of exploration is a layer of sulfate-laden rock that lies higher up the mountain. The team hopes to reach it in early 2021.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the Curiosity mission. Curiosity took the selfie using a camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the end of its robotic arm. (Videos explaining how Curiosity's selfies are taken can be found here.) MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.

For more information about Curiosity, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/

https://nasa.gov/msl

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/Alana Johnson/Grey Hautaluoma/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

A Cosmic Amethyst in a Dying Star

 

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Nov. 12, 2020

On Earth, amethysts can form when gas bubbles in lava cool under the right conditions. In space, a dying star with a mass similar to the Sun is capable of producing a structure on par with the appeal of these beautiful gems.

As stars like the Sun run through their fuel, they cast off their outer layers and the core of the star shrinks. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found a bubble of ultra-hot gas at the center of one of these expiring stars, a planetary nebula in our galaxy called IC 4593. At a distance of about 7,800 light years from Earth, IC 4593 is the most distant planetary nebula yet detected with Chandra.

This new image of IC 4593 has X-rays from Chandra in purple, invoking similarities to amethysts found in geodes around the globe. The bubble detected by Chandra is from gas that has been heated to over a million degrees. These high temperatures were likely generated by material that blew away from the shrunken core of the star and crashed into gas that had previously been ejected by the star.

This composite image also contains visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope (pink and green). The pink regions in the Hubble image are the overlap of emission from cooler gas composed of a combination of nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, while the green emission is mainly from nitrogen.

IC 4593 is what astronomers call a “planetary nebula,” a deceptive-sounding name because this class of objects has nothing to do with planets. (The name was given about two centuries ago because they looked like the disk of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.) In fact, a planetary nebula is formed after the interior of a star with about the mass of the Sun contracts and its outer layers expand and cool. In the case of the Sun, its outer layers could extend as far as the orbit of Venus during its red giant phase several billion years in the future.

Chandra X-ray Observatory. Animation Credits: NASA/CXC

In addition to the hot gas, this study also finds evidence for point-like X-ray source at the center of IC 4593. This X-ray emission has higher energies than the bubble of hot gas. The point source could be from the star that discarded its outer layers to form the planetary nebula or it could be from a possible companion star in this system.

A paper describing these results appears in the April 2020 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online. The authors are Jesús A. Toalá (Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica (IRyA) in Michoacan, Mexico); M. A. Guerrero (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain); L. Bianchi (The Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland); Y.-H. Chu (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA) in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China); and O. De Marco (Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia).

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge and Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2020/ic4593/

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

Image, Animation, Text, Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/J. Toalá et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/Text: NASA/Lee Mohon.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Building an extra-terrestrial habitat – one microbe at a time

 

ISS - International Space Station logo.

Nov. 12, 2020

We are making good progress towards going to the Moon and Mars. We are building new spacecraft, bringing astronauts to the International Space Station for extended stays and sending robots to Mars. To build a sustainable presence on these planetary bodies however, we also need local resources. Resources that may or may not be readily available on the Moon and Mars.

BioRock

An important example of such resources are metals also referred to as rare Earth elements. These are often used in the production of electronics such as computer screens, metal alloys and magnet production – vital materials for building a lunar or Martian base.  

Taking these building blocks with us on a spacecraft is not an option. It would be too heavy, and too expensive to take these rare elements with us from the already much-depleted Earth.

As it turns out, precious metals are present on the Moon and Mars, but they are embedded within the rock and soil, making it difficult to use them. Bringing mining equipment would, again, be too heavy and expensive to bring from Earth, and the machinery would have to be completely redesigned for use in such an inhospitable environment.

ESA’s BioRock project has been working on a solution: biomining in space. Bringing the world’s tiniest miners to do the extraction for us.

International Space Station (ISS)

Biomining uses microbes to leach off the rocks and “eat” the rare Earth elements. The metals can then be extracted from the microbes, and used for further processing. This method has been used successfully on Earth for years. But could this work in space?

Promising research results

The BioRock experiment set out to find some answers. In an experiment performed on the International Space Station by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, three strains of biomining bacteria were flown to space to test how they would perform in different gravitational conditions.

The bacterial strains were left to grow inside Europe’s weightless laboratory Columbus on one of their favourite surfaces, basalt rock. This is a type of rock found on the Moon and on Mars, known to contain rare Earth elements. The samples were left to grow in three levels of gravity: microgravity, Moon gravity (0.38 g) and simulated Earth gravity in the Kubik centrifuge facility.

Luca installs BioRock

After 21 days, the cell populations were sent back to Earth for analysis. The BioRock team discovered that none of the three populations suffered any significant negative effects in any of the gravitational conditions. This showed they had grown just as well in simulated Earth gravity, Moon gravity and microgravity. The researchers then analysed if the amount of elements mined by the bacteria was influenced by the different gravity conditions. Two strains of bacteria ate as much as they would have on Earth yielding roughly the same amount of rare elements.

The fact that these three bacteria could survive, and even thrive, in gravity conditions such as in lower Earth orbit or on the Moon is “a really exciting result” according to Nicol Caplin, Exobiology Research Fellow at ESA and BioRock project coordinator. It shows that we don’t need to mitigate different gravity variations when using these biomining bacteria off the Earth and biomining could in fact prove to be a great way to extract rare Earth elements on the Moon and Mars.  

These positive results have now been published in Frontiers in Microbiology and in Nature. The BioRock team is not resting on their laurels, however. They are already working on the next research proposals. Bringing us closer to building a Moon and Mars habitat – one microbe at a time.

Related links:

Frontiers in Microbiology: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.579156/full

NATURE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19276-w

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/International_Space_Station

Human and Robotic Exploration: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration

Images, Animation, Text, Credits: ESA/UK Centre for Astrobiology/University of Edinburgh–Rosa Santomartino.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch