Hope Mars Mission Orbit Insertion

 

Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) patch.

Feb. 9, 2021

Hope arrival to Mars. Image Credit: UAE Space Agency

The UAE Space Agency’s Hope Mars Mission started the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) manoeuvre on 9 February 2021, at 15:30 UTC.

Hope’s Mars Orbit Insertion

The Hope Probe (مسبار الأمل) was developed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates and is designed to study the atmosphere of Mars.

Hope UAE mission walk-through. Image Credit: UAE Space Agency

Omran Ahmed Al Hammadi, scientist Hope Mars Mission, explains the next steps in Hope Probe’s journey around Mars, two years of science.

Related articles & link:

Mars: for the first time in history 3 different missions (and one Tesla car) reach the red planet in less than 10 days
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2021/02/mars-for-first-time-in-history-3.html

Hope Mars Mission on way to Mars
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/07/hope-mars-mission-on-way-to-mars.html

Emirates Mars Mission: https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: UAE Space Agency (UAESA)/Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre/SciNews/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Where Should Future Astronauts Land on Mars? Follow the Water

 

Planet Mars, the "red planet".

Feb 09, 2021

A new NASA paper provides the most detailed map to date of near-surface water ice on the Red Planet.

Image above: In this illustration, NASA astronauts drill into the Mars’ subsurface. The agency is creating new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts. Image Credit: NASA.

So you want to build a Mars base. Where to start? Like any human settlement, it would be best located near accessible water. Not only will water be crucial for life-support supplies, it will be used for everything from agriculture to producing the rocket propellant astronauts will need to return to Earth.

Schlepping all that water to Mars would be costly and risky. That’s why NASA has engaged scientists and engineers since 2015 to identify deposits of Martian water ice that could be within reach of astronauts on the planet’s surface. But, of course, water has huge scientific value, too: If present-day microbial life can be found on Mars, it would likely be nearby these water sources as well.

A new study appearing in Nature Astronomy includes a comprehensive map detailing where water ice is most and least likely to be found in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Combining 20 years of data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor, the paper is the work of a project called Subsurface Water Ice Mapping, or SWIM. The SWIM effort is led by the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“The next frontier for Mars is for human explorers to get below the surface and look for signs of microbial life,” said Richard Davis, who leads NASA’s efforts to find Martian resources in preparation for sending humans to the Red Planet. “We realize we need to make new maps of subsurface ice to improve our knowledge of where that ice is for both scientific discovery and having local resources astronauts can rely on.”

Image above: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows the trench, called 'Dodo-Goldilocks,' lacking lumps of ice seen previously. The ice had sublimated, a process similar to evaporation, over the course of four days. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University.

In the near future, NASA plans to hold a workshop for multidisciplinary experts to assess potential human-landing sites on Mars based on this research and other science and engineering criteria. This mapping project could also inform surveys by future orbiters NASA hopes to send to the Red Planet.

NASA recently announced that, along with three international space agencies, the signing of a statement of intent to explore a possible International Mars Ice Mapper mission concept. The statement brings the agencies together to establish a joint concept team to assess mission potential as well as partnership opportunities between NASA, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (the Italian Space Agency), the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Location, Location, Location

Ask Mars scientists and engineers where the most accessible subsurface ice is, and most will point to the area below Mars’ polar region in the northern hemisphere. On Earth, this region is where you find Canada and Europe; on Mars, it includes the plains of Arcadia Planitia and glacier-filled valleys in Deuteronilus Mensae.

Such regions represent a literal middle ground between where to find the most water ice (the poles) and where to find the most sunlight and warmth (the equator). The northern midlatitudes also offer favorable elevations for landing. The lower the elevation, the more opportunity a spacecraft has to slow down using friction from the Martian atmosphere during its descent to the surface. That’s especially important for heavy human-class landers, since Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s and thus provides less resistance for incoming spacecraft.

“Ultimately, NASA tasked the SWIM project with figuring out how close to the equator you can go to find subsurface ice,” said Sydney Do, the Mars Water Mapping Project lead at JPL. “Imagine we’ve drawn a squiggly line across Mars representing that ice boundary. This data allows us to draw that line with a finer pen instead of a thick marker and to focus on parts of that line that are closest to the equator.”

But knowing whether a surface is hiding ice isn’t easy. None of the instrument datasets used in the study were designed to measure ice directly, said the Planetary Science Institute’s Gareth Morgan, the SWIM-project co-lead and the paper’s lead author. Instead, each orbiter instrument detects different physical properties – high concentrations of hydrogen, high radar-wave speed, and the rate at which temperature changes in a surface – that can suggest the presence of ice.

Image above: The image is an excerpt from an observation from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing a meteorite impact that excavated this crater on Mars exposed bright ice that had been hidden just beneath the surface at this location. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

“Despite having 20 years of data and a fantastic range of instruments, it’s hard to combine these datasets, because they’re all so different,” Morgan said. “That’s why we assessed the consistency of an ice signal, showing areas where multiple datasets indicate ice is present. If all five datasets point to ice – bingo.”

If, say, only two of them did, the team would try to suss out how consistent the signals were and what other materials could be creating them. While the different datasets weren’t always a perfect fit, they often complemented one another. For example, current radars peer deep underground but don’t see the top 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) below the surface; a neutron spectrometer aboard one orbiter measured hydrogen in the uppermost soil layer but not below. High-resolution photos revealed ice tossed onto the surface after recent meteorite impacts, providing direct evidence to complement radar and other remote-sensing indicators of water ice.

Next Steps

While Mars experts pore over these new maps of subsurface ice, NASA is already thinking about what the next steps would be. For one, blind spots in currently available data can be resolved by sending a new radar mission to Mars that could home in on the areas of greatest interest to human-mission planners: water ice in the top layers of the subsurface.

A future radar-focused mission targeting the near surface could also tell scientists more about the mix of materials found in the layer of rock, dust, and other material found on top of ice. Different materials will require specialized tools and approaches for digging, drilling, and accessing water-ice deposits, particularly in the extreme Martian environment.

Mapping efforts in the 2020’s could help make human missions to Mars possible as early as the 2030’s. But before that, there’ll be a robust debate about the location of humanity’s first outpost on Mars: a place where astronauts will have the local water-ice resources needed to sustain them while also being able to make high-value discoveries about the evolution of rocky planets, habitability, and the potential for life on worlds beyond Earth.

Related links:

Nature Astronomy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01290-z

Mars Odyssey: https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/

Statement of intent International Mars Ice Mapper: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-international-partners-assess-mission-to-map-ice-on-mars-guide-science-priorities

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

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ESA’s Solar Orbiter ducks behind the Sun

 

ESA - Solar Orbiter Mission logo.

Feb. 9, 2021

What happens when the Solar System's No. 1 source of violent energy interferes with spacecraft communication?

Solar Orbiter

Name? Solar Orbiter, or ‘Solo’ as the mission control team fondly call it, is one of the European Space Agency’s pluckiest missions and is now cruising toward the Sun.

Age: One year old! We launched on 10 February 2020. Granted, it was first powered up on Earth at some point during construction, but launch is ‘when it came alive’.

What’s it doing out there? It’s imaging our star, observing the solar wind and unravelling mysteries of the solar cycle. It’s already returned some of the best images of ol’Sol ever, revealing omnipresent miniature solar flares, dubbed ‘campfires’, near the surface.

Solar Orbiter’s first view of the Sun

Anything else? Well, it uses prehistoric cave pigment as a coating to withstand temperatures up to 520°C. The Sun’s pretty darn hot, you know.

So, what’s happening now? The spacecraft’s orbit is taking it behind the Sun, and starting a few days ago the apparent angle, as seen from Earth, between Solar Orbiter and the Sun started falling below 5 degrees. It’s called ‘conjunction season’ and runs until mid-February.

Solar Orbiter ducks behind the Sun

Ohhh, will it melt? No. See the bit about cave pigment above. But the Sun’s energetic and unpredictable atmosphere, aka heliosphere, will start making it hard for radio dish antennas on Earth – which will also have to point to the Sun when pointing at Solar Orbiter – to reliably send or receive signals, or do so very fast, at any rate.

Sounds bad. It is – the Sun’s energy can disrupt communication in both directions. Mission controllers will only be able to receive data at about 255 bits per second, or send signals at about 7.8 bits per second. You’re likely too young to remember dial-up modems.

Not fast enough for Netflix, but it’s something, isn’t it? Perhaps, but even these piddly data rates aren’t reliable – the radio link might be lost entirely if the Sun so much as even sneezes.

If the bit rate is so low due to interference from the Sun, why not simply turn off the instruments and coast through the worst part of conjunction? That’s what happens with other, older missions using simpler technology, not to mention Mars Express. And not that there’s any friendly competition between mission control teams.

OK, what’s the good news? Our mission planners knew this would happen, so Solar Orbiter was designed to endure long periods of no contact with Earth. The spacecraft can even keep its scientific instruments running autonomously, and simply store all the collected data on board for download later, away from the Sun.

Cebreros station

I bet there was a rush to get ready for this. We’re spacecraft engineers; we never panic, but we are very good at dealing with contingencies. Which this is not. But, yes, many of us at ESA worked with a ‘sense of urgency’ to prepare and upload three week’s worth of onboard instructions, in case we had no contact at all during conjunction. All while dealing with the critical Venus flyby manoeuvre in December, while uploading a complete new operating system and all while working from our kitchen tables.

Now that your bird’s on autopilot, there’s not much to do? Au contraire. We’ve got ‘remote science checkout during solar close approach’ coming up, as well as a special ‘thermal characterisation’ campaign requiring ‘new telemetry modes’ followed by more testing of the radio communication link. Then there are the Venus and Earth flybys later this year, after which we have to get ready for the final science orbit at the end of cruise. Phew!

What’s most often heard in the team’s Skype chats? “Cruise was supposed to be quiet…” followed by “... please mute your mic – we hear the cat meowing under the kitchen table...!”

Related links:

Operations: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations

Solar Orbiter: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO/ATG medialab/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSS.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Tricky Terrain: Helping to Assure a Safe Rover Landing

 

 

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover logo.

Feb 09, 2021

How two new technologies will help Perseverance, NASA’s most sophisticated rover yet, touch down onto the surface of Mars this month.

Image above: Mars 2020’s Perseverance rover is equipped with a lander vision system based on terrain-relative navigation, an advanced method of autonomously comparing real-time images to preloaded maps that determine the rover’s position relative to hazards in the landing area. Divert guidance algorithms and software can then direct the rover around those obstacles if needed. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

After a nearly seven-month journey to Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is slated to land at the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater Feb. 18, 2021, a rugged expanse chosen for its scientific research and sample collection possibilities.

But the very features that make the site fascinating to scientists also make it a relatively dangerous place to land – a challenge that has motivated rigorous testing here on Earth for the lander vision system (LVS) that the rover will count on to safely touch down.

Animation above: Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN), the mission-critical technology at the heart of the LVS that captures photos of the Mars terrain in real time and compares them with onboard maps of the landing area, autonomously directing the rover to divert around known hazards and obstacles as needed. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

“Jezero is 28 miles wide, but within that expanse there are a lot of potential hazards the rover could encounter: hills, rock fields, dunes, the walls of the crater itself, to name just a few,” said Andrew Johnson, principal robotics systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “So, if you land on one of those hazards, it could be catastrophic to the whole mission.”

Enter Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN), the mission-critical technology at the heart of the LVS that captures photos of the Mars terrain in real time and compares them with onboard maps of the landing area, autonomously directing the rover to divert around known hazards and obstacles as needed.

Image above: Masten’s Xombie VTVL system sits on a launchpad in Mojave, California in December 2014, prepared for a flight test that would help prove lander vision system capabilities for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission. Image Credit: Masten Space Systems.

“For Mars 2020, LVS will use the position information to figure out where the rover is relative to safe spots between those hazards. And in one of those safe spots is where the rover will touch down,” explained Johnson.

If Johnson sounds confident that LVS will work to land Perseverance safely, that’s because it allows the rover to determine its position relative to the ground with an accuracy of about 200 feet or less. That low margin of error and high degree of assurance are by design, and the result of extensive testing both in the lab and in the field.

“We have what we call the trifecta of testing,” explained JPL’s Swati Mohan, guidance, navigation, and control operations lead for Mars 2020.

Landing NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover with Terrain Relative Navigation

Video above: 2014 flight tests on Masten’s Xombie VTVL system demonstrated the lander vision system’s terrain-relative navigation and fuel-optimal large divert guidance (G-FOLD) capabilities. The flights proved the system’s ability to autonomously change course to avoid hazards on descent and adopt a newly calculated path to a safe landing site. The successful field tests enabled the technology to be greenlighted for inclusion on NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Mohan said that the first two testing areas – hardware and simulation – were done in a lab.

“That’s where we test every condition and variable we can. Vacuum, vibration, temperature, electrical compatibility – we put the hardware through its paces,” said Mohan. “Then with simulation, we model various scenarios that the software algorithms may encounter on Mars – a too-sunny day, very dark day, windy day – and we make sure the system behaves as expected regardless of those conditions.”

But the third piece of the trifecta – the field tests – require actual flights to put the lab results through further rigor and provide a high level of technical readiness for NASA missions. For LVS’s early flight tests, Johnson and team mounted the LVS to a helicopter and used it to estimate the vehicle’s position automatically as it was flying.

“That got us to a certain level of technical readiness because the system could monitor a wide range of terrain, but it didn’t have the same kind of descent that Perseverance will have,” said Johnson. “There was also a need to demonstrate LVS on a rocket.”

That need was met by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which facilitated two 2014 flights in the Mojave Desert on Masten Space Systems’ Xombie – a vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) system that functions similarly to a lander. The flight tests demonstrated LVS’s ability to direct Xombie to autonomously change course and avoid hazards on descent by adopting a newly calculated path to a safe landing site. Earlier flights on Masten’s VTVL system also helped validate algorithms and software used to calculate fuel-optimal trajectories for planetary landings.

“Testing on the rocket laid pretty much all remaining doubts to rest and answered a critical question for the LVS operation affirmatively,” said JPL’s Nikolas Trawny, a payload and pointing control systems engineer who worked closely with Masten on the 2014 field tests. “It was then that we knew LVS would work during the high-speed vertical descent typical of Mars landings.”

Johnson added that the suborbital testing in fact increased the technology readiness level to get the final green light of acceptance into the Mars 2020 mission.

“The testing that Flight Opportunities is set up to provide was really unprecedented within NASA at the time,” said Johnson. “But it’s proven so valuable that it’s now becoming expected to do these types of flight tests. For LVS, those rocket flights were the capstone of our technology development effort.”

With the technology accepted for Mars 2020, the mission team began to build the final version of LVS that would fly on Perseverance. In 2019, a copy of that system flew on one more helicopter demonstration in Death Valley, California, facilitated by NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions program. The helicopter flight provided a final check on over six-years of multiple field tests.

But Mohan pointed out that even with these successful demonstrations, there will be more work to do to ensure a safe landing. She’ll be at Mission Control for the landing, monitoring the health of the system every step of the way.

“Real life can always throw you curve balls. So, we’ll be monitoring everything during the cruise phase, checking power to the camera, making sure the data is flowing as expected,” Mohan said. “And once we get that signal from the rover that says, ‘I’ve landed and I’m on stable ground,’ then we can celebrate.”

About Flight Opportunities

The Flight Opportunities program is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the solicitation and evaluation of technologies to be tested and demonstrated on commercial flight vehicles.

About Technology Demonstration Missions

Also under the umbrella of STMD, the program is based at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The program bridges the gap between scientific and engineering challenges and the technological innovations needed to overcome them, enabling robust new space missions.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis lunar exploration plans.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

Related links:

Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN): https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/entry-descent-landing/#Terrain-Relative-Navigation

For more about Perseverance: http://www.nasa.gov/perseverance

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Written By Nicole Quenelle/JPL/DC Agle.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Mars: for the first time in history 3 different missions (and one Tesla car) reach the red planet in less than 10 days

 

Planet Mars, the "red planet".

Feb. 8, 2021

Probes from the US, China and the United Arab Emirates will explore the red planet.

Planet Mars, the red planet. Image Credits: NASA/CNES

Traffic becomes more complicated around Mars: for the first time in the history of space exploration, three different missions led by the two powers will reach the red planet in less than 10 days. These are Perseverance (US-EU), Hope (United Arab Emirates) and Tianwen 1 (China)... And one Tesla car from SpaceX.

Thus, in the space of eight days, the three missions will reach the Martian orbit, although at the moment only one will land on its surface.

Hope: the Arab hope

Hope UAE mission walk-through. UAE Space Agency

The Hope is the first space mission headed by an Arab country. The United Arab Emirates has launched it to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of that state.

The probe was launched seven months ago from the Japanese island of Tanegashima, and since then it has traveled 180 million kilometers at a speed of 121,000 km / h in space. After slowing down to 18,000 km / h, the spacecraft is scheduled to enter Martian orbit this Tuesday at 4:57 p.m. Central European Time (CET).

Hope probe. Image Credit: EAU Space Agency

The Arab mission, which can be followed live, will not land on the surface. It is designed to orbit the planet for four years. It weighs 1,350 kilos and has been developed by engineers from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in collaboration with scientists from universities in Colorado, Arizona and Berkeley.

During those four years, the probe will try to collect information to determine "the causes that led to the disappearance of water and the opportunities for life on the red planet."

China reaches Mars

Illustration of Tianwen-1 on Mars. Image Credit: Wikipedia

The second mission will arrive this week. It is estimated that next Wednesday, Tianwen 1, launched on July 23, will begin deceleration maneuvers to enter orbit.

Tianwen-1’s first image of Mars

Video above: The Tianwen-1 mission captured its first image of Mars from a distance of 2.2 million km from the planet. Tianwen-1, China’s first Mars exploration mission with an orbiter, a lander and a rover, is expected to enter Mars orbit on 10 February 2021. The name Tianwen (天問, Questions to Heaven) comes from a poem written by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan. Video Credits: China Central Television (CCTV)/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/SciNews.

The Tianwen consists of two parts. On the one hand, an orbiter that will explore the Martian surface from space. It has a high resolution camera, a radar, a mineral spectrometer, a magnetometer and a particle analyzer.

The second part of the mission is a rover, which is expected to be deposited in May on the Utopia plain, in the northern hemisphere. "The landing site is at the crossroads of several ancient oceans," explains the Chinese space agency ANEC, so "scientists believe that this place has great scientific value and is likely to achieve unexpected results."

The Tianwen-1 Mars rover

Video Credits: China Central Television (CCTV)/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/SciNews.

The Asian country's space agency has at least three other missions in its queue, not counting Tianwen 1: asteroid exploration around 2024, another mission to Mars that returns with samples for 2030 and another that same year that will explore beyond Jupiter.

Perseverance: seven minutes of terror

Perseverance Arrives at Mars Feb. 18, 2021 - Mission Trailer

Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Finally, next week, on Thursday, February 18, the Perseverance mission of the United States will arrive on the planet in collaboration with the European space agency ESA.

The US mission aims to plant its fifth rover, Perseverance, on the planet, which will follow in the wake of Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity.

Image above: Illustration of the arrival of Perseverance to Mars. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Defined by NASA as "the largest, heaviest, cleanest and most sophisticated geological robot ever launched," the rover has six wheels and just over a ton in weight with instruments to study the Jezero crater, Scientists believe that this site, now dry and lonely, it was home to a delta teeming with life millions of years ago. The robot will be dedicated to taking samples in search of traces of microbial activity.

Perseverance grounding maneuvers will be done automatically. A sequence of seven minutes, which NASA calls "the seven minutes of terror", in which the instruments on board will have to program everything to go from 21,000 kilometers per hour to land the six wheels of the robot gently on the sands of Mars.

Image above: This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land on Mars safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The probe will brake with the help of the friction entering the atmosphere and, later, with a parachute. The artificial intelligence instruments on board will then start a suitable place to land, and about 20 meters above the ground the lander will begin to lower chains of about seven meters, at the end of which the rover will be hung.

The ship has to land the robot on Mars at a minimum speed, and after that it will move away from the site to crash later. These seven minutes are programmed, and from Earth nothing can be done to change the trajectory or the time of the mission.

SpaceX: The Tesla Roadster and Starman its driver

The Tesla Roadster flies close to Mars, the electric vehicle Tesla and its driver, the Starman mannequin were launched in 2018 in the inaugural mission of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, they did  his first close approach to the planet Mars... The Aerospace Company, owned by Elon Musk, published the news on his twitter account. "Starman was last seen leaving Earth and made his first close approach with Mars at 0.05 astronomical units (less than 7.5 million km) from the Red Planet," SpaceX reported... Starman and the Tesla Roadster orbits the Sun once every 557 Earth days, according to the tracking site... Since its launch, the car and its driver have traveled nearly 2.1 billion km in space.

The Tesla Roadster and STAR MAN its driver around Mars. Image Credit: SpaceX

Two years after its launch, Elon Musk's Tesla surpasses the orbit of Mars (60 times the Earth at a speed of 27,775 kilometers per hour), it is expected to fall on Earth, Venus or disintegrate in the Sun... Studies the car will approach the Earth every 30 years where it will receive a gravitational pull that will cause a change in the orbital percentage. Meanwhile Starman will continue to walk through space.

Related article:

NASA’s Perseverance Rover 22 Days From Mars Landing
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2021/01/nasas-perseverance-rover-22-days-from.html

Related links:

Emirates Mars Mission: https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/

China National Space Administration (CNSA): http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html

Mars Perseverance (NASA/ESA): https://nasa.gov/perseverance

SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/

Images (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credits: Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga/Text about SpaceX: Aida M. Crescente Tamaris.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Crew Gets Ready for Cargo Missions, Opens New Airlock

 

ISS - Expedition 64 Mission patch.

Feb 8, 2021

Two cargo rockets on opposite sides of the world are nearing their launch to resupply the Expedition 64 crew this month. A new science and cargo airlock installed late last year on the International Space Station is now open for business.

Russia’s Progress 76 (76P) cargo craft, packed with trash and discarded hardware, will depart the orbiting lab tonight completing a 201-day mission attached to the Pirs docking compartment. It will deorbit a few hours later for a fiery, but safe destruction over the South Pacific.

Progress undock Pirs docking compartment on ISS. Animation Credit: NASA

The 76P will be replaced after the Progress 77 (77P) cargo craft blasts off on Feb. 14 at 11:45 p.m. EST from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The 77P will dock to the vacant Pirs port a little more than two days later on Feb. 17 at 1:20 a.m. The launch and docking activities will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

The next cargo mission to resupply the station will be Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo ship lifting off atop an Antares rocket on Feb. 20 from Virginia. Cygnus will be delivering about 8,000 pounds of station hardware, science experiments, and crew supplies to replenish the orbiting lab on Feb. 22. It will be captured with the Canadarm2 robotic arm and installed to the Unity module‘s Earth-facing port.

Image above: Earth’s atmospheric glow and the aurora blanket the horizon as the space station orbited above the North Atlantic. Image Credit: NASA.

Aboard the space station today, NASA astronauts Kate Rubins and Victor Glover configured and opened the NanoRacks Bishop airlock. Bishop was attached to the station’s Tranquility module on Dec. 19 two weeks after it was delivered inside the SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft. Bishop will enable more commercial research, satellite deployments, and cargo operations outside in the vacuum of space.

Related links:

NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

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

Pirs docking compartment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/pirs-docking-compartment

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

Unity module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/unity

NanoRacks Bishop airlock: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/spinoff/New_Doorway_to_Space

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

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/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Rare Blast’s Remains Discovered in Milky Way Center

 

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Feb 8, 2021

X-ray & Radio Image of Sagittarius A East

Astronomers may have found our galaxy’s first example of an unusual kind of stellar explosion. This discovery, made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, adds to the understanding of how some stars shatter and seed the universe with elements critical for life on Earth.

This intriguing object, located near the center of the Milky Way, is a supernova remnant called Sagittarius A East, or Sgr A East for short. Based on Chandra data, astronomers previously classified the object as the remains of a massive star that exploded as a supernova, one of many kinds of exploded stars that scientists have catalogued.

Using longer Chandra observations, a team of astronomers has now instead concluded that the object is left over from a different type of supernova. It is the explosion of a white dwarf, a shrunken stellar ember from a fuel-depleted star like our Sun. When a white dwarf pulls too much material from a companion star or merges with another white dwarf, the white dwarf is destroyed, accompanied by a stunning flash of light.

Astronomers use these “Type Ia supernovae” because most of them mete out almost the same amount of light every time no matter where they are located. This allows scientists to use them to accurately measure distances across space and study the expansion of the universe.

Data from Chandra have revealed that Sgr A East, however, did not come from an ordinary Type Ia. Instead, it appears that it belongs to a special group of supernovae that produce different relative amounts of elements than traditional Type Ias do, and less powerful explosions. This subset is referred to as “Type Iax,” a potentially important member of the supernova family.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

“While we’ve found Type Iax supernovae in other galaxies, we haven’t identified evidence for one in the Milky Way until now,” said Ping Zhou of Nanjing University in China, who led the new study while at the University of Amsterdam. “This discovery is important for getting a handle of the myriad ways white dwarfs explode.”

The explosions of white dwarfs is one of the most important sources in the universe of elements like iron, nickel, and chromium. The only place that scientists know these elements can be created is inside the nuclear furnace of stars or when they explode.

“This result shows us the diversity of types and causes of white dwarf explosions, and the different ways that they make these essential elements," said co-author Shing-Chi Leung of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “If we’re right about the identity of this supernova’s remains, it would be the nearest known example to Earth.”

Astronomers are still debating the cause of Type Iax supernova explosions, but the leading theory is that they involve thermonuclear reactions that travel much more slowly through the star than in Type Ia supernovae. This relatively slow walk of the blast leads to weaker explosions and, hence, different amounts of elements produced in the explosion. It is also possible that part of the white dwarf is left behind.

Labeled X-ray & Radio Image of Sagittarius A East

Sgr A East is located very close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and likely intersects with the disk of material surrounding the black hole. The team was able to use Chandra observations targeting the supermassive black hole and the region around it for a total of about 35 days to study Sgr A East and find the unusual pattern of elements in the X-ray data. The Chandra results agree with computer models predicting a white dwarf that has undergone slow-moving nuclear reactions, making it a strong candidate for a Type Iax supernova remnant.

“This supernova remnant is in the background of many Chandra images of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole taken over the last 20 years,” said Zhiyuan Li, also of Nanjing University. “We finally may have worked out what this object is and how it came to be.”

In other galaxies, scientists observe that Type Iax supernovae occur at a rate that is about one third that of Type Ia supernovae. In the Milky Way, there have been three confirmed Type Ia supernova remnants and two candidates that are younger than 2,000 years, corresponding to an age when remnants are still relatively bright before fading later. If Sgr A East is younger than 2,000 years and resulted from a Type Iax supernova, this study suggests that our galaxy is in alignment with respect to the relative numbers of Type Iax supernovae seen in other galaxies.

Along with the suggestion that Sgr A East is the remnant from the collapse of a massive star, previous studies have also pointed out that a normal Type Ia supernova had not been ruled out. The latest study conducted with this deep Chandra data argue against both the massive star and the normal Type Ia interpretations.

These results have been published today in The Astrophysical Journal, and a preprint is available online. The other co-authors of the paper are Ken'ichi Nomoto of The University of Tokyo in Japan, Jacco Vink of the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, and Yang Chen, also of Nanjing University.

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.

Images Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Nanjing Univ./P. Zhou et al. Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA.

Read more from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2021/sgrae/

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

The Astrophysical Journal: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.15049

Animation, Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon.

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