Astronauts Study Skin Healing; Cosmonauts Ready for Robotic Arm Spacewalk

 

ISS - Expedition 67 Mission patch.

August 16, 2022

The Expedition 67 crew split up today with the astronauts studying wound healing techniques and the cosmonauts preparing for a spacewalk to prepare a new robotic arm for operations. A U.S. space freighter has also been given the “go” to return to Earth at the end of the week.

Researchers are exploring tissue regeneration in the International Space Station’s microgravity environment to develop new ways to heal wounds benefitting humans living in space and on Earth. The astronauts took turns throughout Tuesday investigating how spaceflight conditions, such as weightlessness and radiation, affect genetic expressions that occur during the healing process.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: ESA

NASA Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins began the day’s first set of experiment operations taking place in the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox. Astronauts Bob Hines of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) took over in the afternoon continuing the biology study that utilizes basic surgical techniques.

The skin healing experiment will wrap up on Wednesday when the astronauts load the research samples and other cargo inside the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship for analysis by scientists and engineers on Earth. Mission managers have approved Dragon’s departure for 11:05 a.m. EDT on Thursday when it will undock from the Harmony module’s forward port. The commercial cargo craft will parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida on Friday with over 4,000 pounds of cargo and research for retrieval.

Image above: The European robotic arm extends out from the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module during a mobility test. Image Credits: NASA/ROSCOSMOS.

Meanwhile, two cosmonauts are ready for their spacewalk to continue outfitting the European robotic arm (ERA) for payload operations on the orbiting lab’s Russian segment. Roscosmos spacewalkers Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev are finalizing their task list reviews and Orlan spacesuit checks today with assistance from Flight Engineer Sergey Korsakov.

Operation of the ERA manipulator on the Science module (Nauka)

Artemyev and Matveev are scheduled to exit the Poisk module’s airlock at 9:20 a.m. on Wednesday and spend about six-and-a-half hours servicing the ERA. The duo will install cameras on the ERA, move its external control panel, remove the robotic arm’s launch restraints, and test the arm’s grasping mechanism. Korsakov will monitor his cosmonaut crewmates during their excursion and help them in and out of their spacesuits. NASA TV, on the agency’s app and website, will begin its live spacewalk coverage at 9 a.m.

Related links:

Expedition 67: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition67/index.html

Tissue regeneration: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=8227

Kibo laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/japan-kibo-laboratory

Life Science Glovebox: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7676

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

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

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s Lucy Team Discovers Moon Around Asteroid Polymele

 

NASA - LUCY Mission patch.

Aug 16, 2022

Even before its launch, NASA’s Lucy mission was already on track to break records by visiting more asteroids than any previous mission. Now, after a surprise result from a long-running observation campaign, the mission can add one more asteroid to the list.

Image above: The asteroid Polymele, illustrated here, was recently discovered to have a small satellite of its own by NASA's Lucy team. Illustration Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

On March 27, Lucy’s science team discovered that the smallest of the mission’s Trojan asteroid targets, Polymele, has a satellite of its own. On that day, Polymele was expected to pass in front of a star, allowing the team to observe the star blink out as the asteroid briefly blocked, or occulted, it. By spreading 26 teams of professional and amateur astronomers across the path where the occultation would be visible, the Lucy team planned to measure the location, size, and shape of Polymele with unprecedented precision while it was outlined by the star behind it. These occultation campaigns have been enormously successful in the past, providing valuable information to the mission on its asteroid targets, but this day would hold a special bonus.

Image above: A graphic showing the observed separation of asteroid Polymele from its discovered satellite. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

We were thrilled that 14 teams reported observing the star blink out as it passed behind the asteroid, but as we analyzed the data, we saw that two of the observations were not like the others,” said Marc Buie, Lucy occultation science lead at the Southwest Research Institute, which is headquartered in San Antonio. “Those two observers detected an object around 200 km (about 124 miles) away from Polymele. It had to be a satellite.”

Using the occultation data, the team assessed that this satellite is roughly 3 miles (5 km) in diameter, orbiting Polymele, which is itself around 17 miles (27 km) along its widest axis. The observed distance between the two bodies was about 125 miles (200 km). Following planetary naming conventions, the satellite will not be given an official name until the team can determine its orbit. As the satellite is too close to Polymele to be clearly seen by Earth-based or Earth-orbiting telescopes – without the help of a fortuitously positioned star – that determination will have to wait until either the team gets lucky with future occultation attempts or until Lucy approaches the asteroid in 2027. At the time of the observation Polymele was 480 million miles (770 million km) from Earth. Those distances are roughly equivalent to finding a quarter on a sidewalk in Los Angeles – while trying to spot it from a skyscraper in Manhattan.

Graphic above: Using the occultation data, the team assessed that this satellite is roughly 3 miles (5 km) in diameter, orbiting Polymele, which is itself around 17 miles (27 km) along its widest axis. The observed distance between the two bodies was about 125 miles (200 km). Graphic Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Asteroids hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system – perhaps even the origins of life – and solving these mysteries is a high priority for NASA. The Lucy team originally planned to visit one main belt asteroid and six Trojan asteroids, a previously unexplored population of asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. In January of 2021, the team used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover that one of the Trojan asteroids, Eurybates, has a small satellite. Now with this new satellite, Lucy is on track to visit nine asteroids on this incredible 12-year voyage.

“Lucy’s tagline started out: 12 years, seven asteroids, one spacecraft,” said Lucy program scientist Tom Statler at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We keep having to change the tagline for this mission, but that’s a good problem to have.”

Lucy’s principal investigator is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about NASA's Lucy mission, visit: https://www.nasa.govl/lucy

Images (mentioned), Graphic (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Jamie Adkins/GSFC/Nancy N. Jones/Southwest Research Institute/By Katherine Kretke.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ESO telescope images a spectacular cosmic dance

 

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

Aug 16, 2022

NGC 7727’s spectacular galactic dance as seen by the VLT

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has imaged the result of a spectacular cosmic collision — the galaxy NGC 7727. This giant was born from the merger of two galaxies, an event that started around a billion years ago. At its centre lies the closest pair of supermassive black holes ever found, two objects that are destined to coalesce into an even more massive black hole.

Just as you may bump into someone on a busy street, galaxies too can bump into each other. But while galactic interactions are much more violent than a bump on a busy street, individual stars don’t generally collide since, compared to their sizes, the distances between them are very large. Rather, the galaxies dance around each other, with gravity creating tidal forces that dramatically change the look of the two dance partners. ‘Tails’ of stars, gas and dust are spun around the galaxies as they eventually form a new, merged galaxy, resulting in the disordered and beautifully asymmetrical shape that we see in NGC 7727.

Close-up view of the nearest pair of supermassive black holes

The consequences of this cosmic bump are spectacularly evident in this image of the galaxy, taken with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument at ESO’s VLT. While the galaxy was previously captured by another ESO telescope, this new image shows more intricate details both within the main body of the galaxy and in the faint tails around it.

In this ESO VLT image we see the tangled trails created as the two galaxies merged, stripping stars and dust from each other to create the spectacular long arms embracing NGC 7727. Parts of these arms are dotted with stars, which appear as bright blue-purplish spots in this image.

Wide-field view of the region of the sky hosting NGC 7727

Also visible in this image are two bright points at the centre of the galaxy, another telltale sign of its dramatic past. The core of NGC 7727 still consists of the original two galactic cores, each hosting a supermassive black hole. Located about 89 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Aquarius, this is the closest pair of supermassive black holes to us.

The black holes in NGC 7727 are observed to be just 1600 light-years apart in the sky and are expected to merge within 250 million years, the blink of an eye in astronomical time. When the black holes merge they will create an even more massive black hole.

Bumps in the heaven

The search for similarly hidden supermassive black hole pairs is expected to make a great leap forward with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), set to start operating later this decade in Chile’s Atacama Desert. With the ELT, we can expect many more of these discoveries at the centres of galaxies.

Our home galaxy, which also sports a supermassive black hole at its centre, is on a path to merge with our closest large neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, billions of years from now. Perhaps the resulting galaxy will look something similar to the cosmic dance we see in NGC 7727, so this image could be giving us a glimpse into the future.

Journey to the closest pair of supermassive black holes

More information

This image was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration in astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates APEX and ALMA on Chajnantor, two facilities that observe the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

Links:

FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2): https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/fors/

Extremely Large Telescope (ELT): https://elt.eso.org/

Photos of the VLT: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/

For journalists: subscribe to receive our releases under embargo in your language: https://www.eso.org/public/outreach/pressmedia/#epodpress_form

For scientists: got a story? Pitch your research: http://www.eso.org/sci/publications/announcements/sciann17463.html

ESO Cosmic Gems programme: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/gems.html

Images Credits: ESO/Voggel et al./Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin/ESO/VST ATLAS team. Acknowledgement: Durham University/CASU/WFAU/Video Credits: ESO/L. Calçada ; N. Risinger (skysurvey.org); Digitized Sky Survey 2; VST ATLAS team; Voggel et al. Music: Azul Cobalto/Text Credits: ESO/Bárbara Ferreira.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Test Chamber for NASA’s New Cosmic Mapmaker Makes Dramatic Entrance

 

NASA - SPHEREx Mission logo.

Aug. 16, 2022

The SPHEREx mission will create a 3D map of the entire sky. Its cutting-edge instruments require a custom-built chamber to make sure they’ll be ready to operate in space.

Too Big for the Door: How Engineers Installed a NASA Space Telescope Test Chamber

Video above: Custom built by the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), a large stainless steel test chamber for NASA’s SPHEREx telescope required a very special delivery to Caltech in Pasadena, California, where it will be used to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the rigors of space. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

After three years of design and construction, a monthlong boat ride across the Pacific Ocean, and a lift from a 30-ton crane, the customized test chamber for NASA’s upcoming SPHEREx mission has finally reached its destination at Caltech’s Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pasadena.

Set to launch no earlier than June 2024, SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will make a unique map of the cosmos that will contain hundreds of millions of objects, including stars, galaxies, star-forming regions, and other cosmic wonders. Unlike any previous map, it will provide images of individual objects, as well as a spectrum for every point in the sky. Spectra can contain a treasure trove of information about cosmic objects, including their chemical composition, age, and the distance to faraway galaxies.

With this dynamic chart, scientists will be able to answer questions about what happened shortly after the big bang, the prevalence of life-sustaining molecules like water ice in our galaxy’s planet-forming regions, and how galaxies began and evolved over the universe’s lifetime.

Image above: Testing hardware for NASA’s upcoming SPHEREx mission recently arrived at the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Too big to fit through the building’s front door, the hardware was lowered by crane from the street to the basement laboratory. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

But for SPHEREx to make that possible, the telescope must be able not only to withstand the rigors of space but also to thrive there. That’s where the custom test chamber comes in. About the size of a small SUV and made of stainless steel, the cylindrical chamber was built by the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), a partner in the SPHEREx mission. It will be used to test SPHEREx’s detectors (essentially its cameras) and optics (the system that collects light from the cosmos).

Cold Light

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SPHEREx will detect infrared light, which human eyes can’t detect. Sometimes called heat radiation, it is emitted by warm objects, including stars and galaxies, as well as the telescope’s instruments. So the chamber is designed to cool the detectors to about minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 200 degrees Celsius) to make sure their own heat won’t overwhelm the light from the objects they’re built to observe.

But first, the SPHEREx team needs to test whether the detectors are in focus. This is determined by their distance from the optics, similar to how moving a magnifying glass closer to or farther away from your eye brings objects into or out of focus. The team will have to get the distance between the detectors and the optics correct to within 0.0003 inches (7.5 micrometers), or about one-tenth the width of a human hair. To do this, they’ll point the optics and detectors at a projected source of infrared light located outside the chamber’s window, which is made of sapphire because glass blocks infrared. The source will serve as a stand-in for the objects that SPHEREx will observe in space, and the resulting image will tell engineers if the spacing is correct.

Image above: This illustration shows a cross section of NASA’s upcoming SPHERE mission, revealing the spacecraft’s telescope and detectors surrounded by three shiny photon shields that protect them from the Sun. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

“A number of factors can influence the focus position of our instrument as it gets down to its operating temperature,” said Phil Korngut, the SPHEREx instrument scientist and a researcher at Caltech. “It’s absolutely essential that we get this thing sharply into focus before we fly, and the only way to accomplish that is through specific cryogenic optical testing in the environment provided by the KASI chamber.”

The chamber is also customized to calibrate the SPHEREx spectrometer, which will provide a spectrum of every point on the sky.

Long Journey

In 2018, KASI launched a mission called the Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer for Star formation history (NISS), which has similarities to SPHEREx. Working on NISS gave the KASI team the right experience to build the custom chamber.

After traveling by ship from Korea to Long Beach, California, the chamber was transported north to Caltech. Too large to fit through the main entrance of its new home, it had to travel under the building: A 30-ton crane lifted off a removable section of an adjacent road and then lowered the test chamber, along with its components, into a high-ceilinged, windowless receiving room unofficially known as “the crypt.” The chamber was then wheeled into the SPHEREx test lab, where it will stay for about 18 months until the hardware tests are complete.

Image above: The large, stainless steel cylinder on the left is a custom-built test chamber for NASA’s SPHEREx mission. An extension, on the right, can be attached to make the chamber larger in order to perform certain preflight tests. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

“Not only the SPHEREx team at KASI, but the whole Korean astronomical community are very interested in the SPHEREx data and its science objectives,” said Woong-Soeb Jeong, the principal investigator for SPHEREx for KASI. “So KASI’s participation in the SPHEREx mission is expected to have a great impact on the research in our astronomical community. That heritage will be of great help in developing our own medium- or large-class space telescope in the future.”

More About the Mission

SPHEREx is managed by JPL for NASA’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission’s principal investigator, James Bock, has a joint position between Caltech and JPL. Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, will supply the spacecraft. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions across the U.S. and in South Korea. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available.

For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/spherex/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Calla Cofield.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Spacewalk, Dragon Ops Near as Health Research Continues

 

ISS - Expedition 67 Mission patch.

August 15, 2022

Mission managers have given the “go” for the seventh spacewalk of the year scheduled to take place in the middle of the week. A U.S. cargo craft is also nearing the end of its mission with its undocking and return to Earth planned for the end of the week.

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon space freighter approaches the space station during an orbital sunrise on July 16, 2022. Image Credit: NASA.

Two cosmonauts are gearing up for a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to continue setting up the European robotic arm (ERA) for operations on the outside of the International Space Station’s Russian segment. Commander Oleg Artemyev and Flight Engineer Denis Matveev will exit the Poisk module’s airlock on at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Wednesday in their Russian Orlan spacesuits. The pair will install cameras on the ERA, move its external control panel, remove the robotic arm’s launch restraints, and test the arm’s grasping mechanism. NASA TV, on the agency’s app and website, will begin its live spacewalk coverage at 9 a.m.

Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Korsakov is assisting his fellow cosmonauts with the spacewalk preparations while also maintaining orbital lab systems and conducting space research. Today, he worked on ventilation systems inside the Nauka module then explored effective exercise techniques to maintain physical fitness in microgravity.

Russian Cosmonauts Spacewalk. Animation Credits: NASA/ROSCOSMOS

Meanwhile, the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship is nearing the end of its monthlong stay on the Harmony module’s forward port. Expedition 67 Flight Engineers Jessica Watkins of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) spent Monday afternoon packing Dragon with some of the more than 4,000 pounds of station gear and completed science experiments it will return to Earth. Dragon will undock at 11:05 a.m. on Thursday and parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida the following day for retrieval. Live undocking coverage on NASA TV begins at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday.

NASA Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines spent Monday focusing on life science to improve human health on and off the Earth. Lindgren set up tissue stem cell samples inside the Life Science Glovebox (LSG) to explore how weightlessness affects immunological aging possibly promoting therapies to protect astronauts and Earthlings. Afterward, Hines cleaned up the LSG in the Kibo laboratory module to prepare for experiment operations that will use the microgravity environment to develop new wound treatment techniques.

Related links:

Expedition 67: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition67/index.html

Poisk module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/poisk-mini-research-module-2

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

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

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

Life Science Glovebox (LSG): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7676

Kibo laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/japan-kibo-laboratory

New wound treatment techniques: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=8227

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

Artemis I Moon Rocket Ready to Roll to the Launch Pad

 

NASA - ARTEMIS-1 Mission patch.

August 15, 2022

Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida have completed the final testing and checkouts of the Artemis I Moon rocket ahead of rolling to Launch Pad 39B. NASA is targeting as soon as 9 p.m. EDT of Tuesday, Aug. 16 for rollout ahead of a targeted Aug. 29 launch.

Artemis I Moon rocket rollout to Launch Pad 39B

The crawler-transporter will roll inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and under the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft later today. Teams are currently working to prepare the integrated stack for rollout.

Over the weekend the team completed testing of the flight termination system, which marked the final major activity prior to closing out the rocket and retracting the final access platforms in the VAB.

The agency will provide a live stream of the rollout beginning at 3 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 16 on the NASA Kennedy You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/kscnewsroom

Related articles:

Progress Continues Toward Artemis I Launch
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/07/progress-continues-toward-artemis-i.html

NASA’s Moon Rocket and Spacecraft Arrive at Vehicle Assembly Building
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/07/nasas-moon-rocket-and-spacecraft-arrive.html

Artemis I Rollback to VAB Rescheduled for July 1 (July 2 for Europa)
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/07/artemis-i-rollback-to-vab-rescheduled.html

Teams on Track for Artemis I Wet Dress Rehearsal Test
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/06/teams-on-track-for-artemis-i-wet-dress.html

Artemis I Moon Rocket Heads Back to Launch Pad for Testing
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/06/artemis-i-moon-rocket-heads-back-to.html

Artemis I Moon Rocket to Return to Launch Pad 39B in Early June
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/05/artemis-i-moon-rocket-to-return-to.html

Artemis I Mission Availability
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/05/artemis-i-mission-availability.html

Work Continues to Return Artemis I Moon Rocket Back to Launch Pad for Next Test
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/05/work-continues-to-return-artemis-i-moon.html

NASA’s Artemis I Moon Rocket to Depart Launch Pad 39B Today
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/nasas-artemis-i-moon-rocket-to-depart.html

Artemis I WDR Update: Teams Working Solution to Continue Propellant Loading Operations
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/artemis-i-wdr-update-teams-working.html

Artemis I Update: Countdown is Underway for Wet Dress Rehearsal
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/artemis-i-update-countdown-is-underway.html

NASA Prepares for Next Artemis I Wet Dress Rehearsal Attempt
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/nasa-prepares-for-next-artemis-i-wet.html

Artemis I WDR Update: Go to Proceed for Tanking – Countdown Resumes
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/artemis-i-wdr-update-go-to-proceed-for.html

NASA ‘Go’ for Artemis I Wet Dress Rehearsal
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/03/nasa-go-for-artemis-i-wet-dress.html

Standing tall: Moon rocket milestone for Artemis
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/03/standing-tall-moon-rocket-milestone-for.html

NASA Readies Rocket for Artemis I Wet Dress Rehearsal
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/03/nasa-readies-rocket-for-artemis-i-wet.html

Related link:

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

Space Launch System (SLS): https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

Orion spacecraft: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/Madison Tuttle.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Awards Next-Generation Spaceflight Computing Processor Contract

 

NASA - ARTEMIS Program logo.

August 15, 2022

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has selected Microchip Technology Inc. of Chandler, Arizona, to develop a High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor that will provide at least 100 times the computational capacity of current spaceflight computers. This key capability would advance all types of future space missions, from planetary exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions.

Image above: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has selected Microchip Technology Inc. to develop a high-performance spaceflight computing processor that will support future space missions. Image Credit: NASA.

“This cutting-edge spaceflight processor will have a tremendous impact on our future space missions and even technologies here on Earth,” said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation within the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This effort will amplify existing spacecraft capabilities and enable new ones and could ultimately be used by virtually every future space mission, all benefiting from more capable flight computing.”

Microchip will architect, design, and deliver the HPSC processor over three years, with the goal of employing the processor on future lunar and planetary exploration missions. Microchip’s processor architecture will significantly improve the overall computing efficiency for these missions by enabling computing power to be scalable, based on mission needs. The design also will be more reliable and have a higher fault tolerance. The processor will enable spacecraft computers to perform calculations up to 100 times faster than today’s state-of-the-art space computers. As part of NASA's ongoing commercial partnership efforts, the work will take place under a $50 million firm-fixed-price contract, with Microchip contributing significant research and development costs to complete the project.

"We are pleased that NASA selected Microchip as its partner to develop the next-generation space-qualified compute processor platform.” said Babak Samimi, corporate vice president for Microchip’s Communications business unit. “We are making a joint investment with NASA on a new trusted and transformative compute platform. It will deliver comprehensive Ethernet networking, advanced artificial intelligence/machine learning processing and connectivity support while offering unprecedented performance gain, fault-tolerance, and security architecture at low power consumption. We will foster an industry wide ecosystem of single board computer partners anchored on the HPSC processor and Microchip’s complementary space-qualified total system solutions to benefit a new generation of mission-critical edge compute designs optimized for size, weight, and power.”

Current space-qualified computing technology is designed to address the most computationally-intensive part of a mission – a practice that leads to overdesigning and inefficient use of computing power. For example, a Mars surface mission demands high-speed data movement and intense calculation during the planetary landing sequence. However, routine mobility and science operations require fewer calculations and tasks per second. Microchip’s new processor architecture offers the flexibility for the processing power to ebb and flow depending on current operational requirements. Certain processing functions can also be turned off when not in use, reducing power consumption. This capability will save a large amount of energy and improve overall computing efficiency for space missions. 

“Our current spaceflight computers were developed almost 30 years ago,” said Wesley Powell, NASA’s principal technologist for advanced avionics. “While they have served past missions well, future NASA missions demand significantly increased onboard computing capabilities and reliability. The new computing processor will provide the advances required in performance, fault tolerance, and flexibility to meet these future mission needs.”

Microchip’s HPSC processor may be useful to other government agencies and applicable to other types of future space mission to explore our solar system and beyond, from Earth science operations to Mars exploration and human lunar missions. The processor could potentially be used for commercial systems on Earth that require similar mission critical edge computing needs as space missions and are able to safely continue operations if one component of the system fails. These potential applications include industrial automation, edge computing, time-sensitive ethernet data transmission, artificial intelligence, and even Internet of Things gateways, which bridge various communication technologies.

In 2021, NASA solicited proposals for a trade study for an advanced radiation-hardened computing chip with the intention of selecting one vendor for development. This contract is part of NASA’s High-Performance Space Computing project. HPSC is led by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development program with support from the Science Mission Directorate. The project is led by JPL, a division of Caltech.

Related links:

High-Performance Space Computing (HPSC): https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/game_changing_development/projects/HPSC

Game Changing Development program: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/game_changing_development/index.html

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

Moon to Mars: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Sarah Frazier/JPL/Ian J. O’Neill.

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