NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars

 

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover logo.

April 20, 2022

The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two moons, to study how its orbit is changing over time.

NASA's Perseverance Rover Sees Solar Eclipse on Mars

Video above: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest-frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars’ potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle.

Captured with Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds – much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth’s Moon. (Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.)

The images are the latest in a long history of NASA spacecraft capturing solar eclipses on Mars. Back in 2004, the twin NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity took the first time-lapse photos of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trend with videos shot by its Mastcam camera system.

Image above: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to shoot of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. (Screen Capture) Image Credits:  NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

But Perseverance, which landed in February 2021, has provided the most zoomed-in video of a Phobos solar eclipse yet – and at the highest-frame rate ever. That’s thanks to Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera system, a zoomable upgrade from Curiosity’s Mastcam.

“I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing,” said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.

Howson noted that although Perseverance first sends lower-resolution thumbnails that offer a glimpse of the images to come, she was stunned by the full-resolution versions: “It feels like a birthday or holiday when they arrive. You know what’s coming, but there is still an element of surprise when you get to see the final product.”

Mars Moons (Illustration). Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Color also sets this version of a Phobos solar eclipse apart. Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. “You can see details in the shape of Phobos’ shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon’s landscape,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers. “You can also see sunspots. And it’s cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.”

As Phobos circles Mars, its gravity exerts small tidal forces on the Red Planet’s interior, slightly deforming rock in the planet’s crust and mantle. These forces also slowly change Phobos’ orbit. As a result, geophysicists can use those changes to better understand how pliable the interior of Mars is, revealing more about the materials within the crust and mantle.

Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed: The moon is getting closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the surface of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientists to refine their understanding of Phobos’ slow death spiral.

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 NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

Mars Perseverance Rover. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.

For more about Perseverance:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ and http://www.nasa.gov/perseverance

Mastcam-Z camera: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/mastcam-z/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Naomi Hartono/Karen Fox/Alana Johnson/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Black Holes Raze Thousands of Stars to Fuel Growth

 

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

April 20, 2022

Image Credits: X-ray: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Washington State Univ./V. Baldassare et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI.

A new survey of over 100 galaxies by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has uncovered signs that black holes are demolishing thousands of stars in a quest to pack on weight. The four galaxies shown in this graphic are among 29 galaxies in the sample that showed evidence for growing black holes near their centers. X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been overlaid on optical images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxies NGC 1385, NGC 1566, NGC 3344, and NGC 6503. The boxes that appear in the roll-over outline the location of the burgeoning black holes.

These new results suggest a somewhat violent path for at least some of these black holes to reach their present size — stellar destruction on a scale that has rarely if ever been seen before.

Astronomers have made detailed studies of two distinct classes of black holes. The smaller variety are "stellar-mass" black holes that typically weigh 5 to 30 times the mass of the Sun. On the other end of the spectrum are the supermassive black holes that live in the middle of most large galaxies, which weigh millions or even billions of solar masses. In recent years, there has also been evidence that an in-between class called "intermediate-mass black holes" (IMBHs) exists. The new study with Chandra could explain how such IMBHs are made through the runaway growth of stellar-mass black holes.

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

One key to making IMBHs may be their environment. This latest research looked at very dense clusters of stars in the centers of galaxies. With stars in such close proximity, many stars will pass within the gravitational pull of black holes in the centers of the clusters. Theoretical work by the team implies that if the density of stars in a cluster — the number packed into a given volume — is above a threshold value, a stellar-mass black hole at the center of the cluster will undergo rapid growth as it pulls in, shreds and ingests the abundant neighboring stars in close proximity.

Of the clusters in the new Chandra study, the ones with density above this threshold had about twice as many growing black holes as the ones below the density threshold. The density threshold depends also on how quickly the stars in the clusters are moving.

The process suggested by the latest Chandra study can occur at any time in the universe's history, implying that intermediate-mass black holes can form billions of years after the Big Bang, right up to the present day.

A paper describing these results was accepted and appears in The Astrophysical Journal. It is also available online. The authors of the study are Vivienne Baldassare (Washington State University), Nicolas C. Stone (Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel), Adi Foord (Stanford University), Elena Gallo (University of Michigan), and Jeremiah Ostriker (Princeton University):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02517

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

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

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

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Astronomers discover micronovae, a new kind of stellar explosion

 

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

April 20, 2022

A team of astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion — a micronova. These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.

“We have discovered and identified for the first time what we are calling a micronova,” explains Simone Scaringi, an astronomer at Durham University in the UK who led the study on these explosions published today in Nature. “The phenomenon challenges our understanding of how thermonuclear explosions in stars occur. We thought we knew this, but this discovery proposes a totally new way to achieve them,” he adds.

Artist’s impression of a micronova

Micronovae are extremely powerful events, but are small on astronomical scales; they are much less energetic than the stellar explosions known as novae, which astronomers have known about for centuries. Both types of explosions occur on white dwarfs, dead stars with a mass about that of our Sun, but as small as Earth.

A white dwarf in a two-star system can steal material, mostly hydrogen, from its companion star if they are close enough together. As this gas falls onto the very hot surface of the white dwarf star, it triggers the hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium explosively. In novae, these thermonuclear explosions occur over the entire stellar surface. “Such detonations make the entire surface of the white dwarf burn and shine brightly for several weeks,” explains co-author Nathalie Degenaar, an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Artist’s impression of a micronova (close up)

Micronovae are similar explosions that are smaller in scale and faster, lasting just several hours. They occur on some white dwarfs with strong magnetic fields, which funnel material towards the star’s magnetic poles. “For the first time, we have now seen that hydrogen fusion can also happen in a localised way. The hydrogen fuel can be contained at the base of the magnetic poles of some white dwarfs, so that fusion only happens at these magnetic poles,” says Paul Groot, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study.

“This leads to micro-fusion bombs going off, which have about one millionth of the strength of a nova explosion, hence the name micronova,” Groot continues. Although ‘micro’ may imply these events are small, do not be mistaken: just one of these outbursts can burn through about 20 000 000 trillion kg, or about 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza, of material [1].

Artist’s animation of a micronova

These new micronovae challenge astronomers’ understanding of stellar explosions and may be more abundant than previously thought. “It just goes to show how dynamic the Universe is. These events may actually be quite common, but because they are so fast they are difficult to catch in action,” Scaringi explains.

The team first came across these mysterious micro-explosions when analysing data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). “Looking through astronomical data collected by NASA’s TESS, we discovered something unusual: a bright flash of optical light lasting for a few hours. Searching further, we found several similar signals,” says Degenaar.

The team observed three micronovae with TESS: two were from known white dwarfs, but the third required further observations with the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s VLT to confirm its white dwarf status.

Artist's animation of a binary with a white dwarf

“With help from ESO’s Very Large Telescope, we found that all these optical flashes were produced by white dwarfs,” says Degenaar. “This observation was crucial in interpreting our result and for the discovery of micronovae,” Scaringi adds.

The discovery of micronovae adds to the repertoire of known stellar explosions. The team now want to capture more of these elusive events, requiring large scale surveys and quick follow-up measurements. “Rapid response from telescopes such as the VLT or ESO’s New Technology Telescope and the suite of available instruments will allow us to unravel in more detail what these mysterious micronovae are,” Scaringi concludes.

Notes

[1] We use trillion to mean a million million (1,000,000,000,000 or 10¹²) and billion to mean a thousand million (1,000,000,000 or 10⁹). The weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Cairo, Egypt (also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or Pyramid of Cheops) is about 5,900,000,000 kg.

More information

This research was presented in a paper title "Localised thermonuclear bursts from accreting magnetic white dwarfs" (doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04495-6) to appear in Nature. A follow-up letter, titled "Triggering micronovae through magnetically confined accretion flows in accreting white dwarfs" has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The team on the Nature paper is composed of S. Scaringi (Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, UK [CEA]), P. J. Groot (Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University, Nijmegen,the Netherlands [IMAPP] and South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa [SAAO] and Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town, South Africa [Cape Town]), C. Knigge (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK [Southampton]), A.J. Bird (Southampton) , E. Breedt (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK), D. A. H. Buckley (SAAO, Cape Town, Department of Physics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa), Y. Cavecchi (Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México), N. D. Degenaar (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), D. de Martino (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy), C. Done (CEA), M. Fratta (CEA), K. Iłkiewicz (CEA), E. Koerding (IMAPP), J.-P. Lasota (Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland and Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS et Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France), C. Littlefield (Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, USA and Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, USA [UW]), C. F. Manara (European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany [ESO]), M. O’Brien (CEA), P. Szkody (UW), F. X. Timmes (School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Arizona, USA, Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics - Center for the Evolution of the Elements, USA).

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:

Micronovae – a New Kind of Stellar Explosion (ESOcast 254 Light)
https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso2207a/

Research paper (Nature): https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2207/eso2207a.pdf

Follow-up research paper (MNRAS): https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2207/eso2207b.pdf

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

ESO’s New Technology Telescope: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/ntt/

X-shooter instrument: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/x-shooter/

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

Images Credits: ESO/M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada/Mark Garlick (http://www.markgarlick.com/)/Videos Credits: ESO/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser/Text Credits: ESO/Bárbara Ferreira/Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University/Paul Groot/Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam/Nathalie Degenaar/Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University/Simone Scaringi.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CMS measures the mass of the top quark with unparalleled accuracy

 

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

April 20, 2022

Precise knowledge of the top-quark mass is of paramount importance to understand our world at the smallest scale

Image above: The classical signature of a top-quark pair produced in LHC collisions is four jets (yellow cones), one muon (red line, also detected by the CMS muon detectors as red boxes), and missing energy from a neutrino (pink arrow). (Image: CERN).

The CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has performed the most accurate ever measurement of the mass of the top quark – the heaviest known elementary particle. The latest CMS result estimates the value of the top-quark mass with an accuracy of about 0.22%. The substantial gain in accuracy comes from new analysis methods and improved procedures to consistently and simultaneously treat different uncertainties in the measurement.

The precise knowledge of the top-quark mass is of paramount importance to understand our world at the smallest scale. Knowing this heaviest elementary particle as intimately as possible is crucial because it allows testing of the internal consistency of the mathematical description of all elementary particles, called the Standard Model.

For example, if the masses of the W boson and Higgs boson are known accurately, the top-quark mass can be predicted by the Standard Model. Likewise, using the top-quark and Higgs-boson masses, the W-boson mass can be predicted. Interestingly, despite much progress, the theoretical-physics definition of mass, which has to do with the effect of quantum-physics corrections, is still tough to pin down for the top quark.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Animation Credit: CERN

And remarkably, our knowledge of the very stability of our universe depends on our combined knowledge of the Higgs-boson and top-quark masses. We only know that the universe is very close to a metastable state with the precision of the current measurements of the top-quark mass. If the top-quark mass was even slightly different, the universe would be less stable in the long term, potentially eventually disappearing in a violent event similar to the Big Bang.

To make their latest measurement of the top-quark mass, using data from proton–proton LHC collisions collected by the CMS detector in 2016, the CMS team measured five different properties of collision events in which a pair of top quarks is produced, instead of the up to three properties that were measured in previous analyses. These properties depend on the top-quark mass.

Furthermore, the team performed an extremely precise calibration of the CMS data and gained an in-depth understanding of the remaining experimental and theoretical uncertainties and their interdependencies. With this innovative method, all of these uncertainties were also extracted during the mathematical fit that determines the final value of the top-quark mass, and this meant that some of the uncertainties could be estimated much more accurately. The result, 171.77±0.38 GeV, is consistent with the previous measurements and the prediction from the Standard Model.

The CMS collaboration has made a significant leap forward with this new method to measure the top-quark mass. The cutting-edge statistical treatment of uncertainties and the use of more properties have vastly improved the measurement. Another big step is expected when the new approach is applied to the more extensive dataset recorded by the CMS detector in 2017 and 2018.

Note:

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

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

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

Related links:

The latest CMS result: http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/preliminary-results/TOP-20-008/index.html

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

CMS experiment: https://home.cern/science/experiments/cms

Standard Model: https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model

Higgs boson: https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson

W boson: https://home.cern/science/physics/w-boson-sunshine-and-stardust

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

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/By CMS collaboration.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

The Moon – where no satnav has gone before

 

ESA - Moonlight Mission patch.

April 20, 2022

The test version of a unique satellite navigation receiver has been delivered for integration testing on the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft. The NaviMoon satnav receiver is designed to perform the farthest ever positioning fix from Earth, employing signals that will be millions of times fainter than those used by our smartphones or cars.

Lunar Pathfinder

“This engineering model of our NaviMoon receiver is the very first piece of hardware to be produced in the context of ESA’s Moonlight initiative, to develop dedicated telecommunications and navigation services for the Moon,” explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, Head of ESA’s Navigation Science Office and managing all ESA lunar navigation activities.

“It will be flown aboard the Lunar Pathfinder mission into orbit around the Moon, from where it will perform the furthest satellite navigation positioning fix ever made, at more than 400 000 km away to an accuracy of less than 100 m. This represents an extraordinary engineering challenge, because at such a distance the faint Galileo and GPS signals it makes use of will be barely distinguishable from background noise. This demonstration will imply a true change of paradigm for lunar orbiting navigation.”

NaviMoon receiver and Low Noise Amplifier

The washing-machine-sized Lunar Pathfinder is being built as a commercial mission by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, SSTL, in the UK. ESA is funding guest payloads for it including the 1.4 kg NaviMoon receiver that will be accommodated beside the spacecraft’s main X-band transmitter that links it with Earth.

“Receiving physical hardware for a mission is always fantastic,” remarks Lily Forward, SSTL system engineer. “This engineering model receiver will be integrated into our ‘FlatSat Test Bed’ version of the mission to test all our systems communicate and work together properly, ahead of receiving the flight model receiver and antenna later this year.”

Relaying signals for multiple lunar missions

This will be SSTL’s first full-fledged mission beyond Earth, she adds: “Laying the foundations for numerous scientific missions that will come after it, Lunar Pathfinder is a communications relay satellite, intended to serve assets on both the nearside and farside, orbiting in an ‘elliptical lunar frozen orbit’ for prolonged coverage over the South Pole – a particular focus for future exploration. Then during regular intervals we will orient the spacecraft towards Earth to test out the NaviMoon receiver.”

Satnav position fixes from the receiver will be compared with conventional radio ranging carried out using Lunar Pathfinder’s X-band transmitter as well as laser ranging performed using a retroreflector contributed by NASA and developed by the KBR company.

Lunar Pathfinder will relay communications from orbital and surface missions

“This will be the first time these three ranging techniques will be used together in deep space” explains ESA navigation engineer Pietro Giordano. “There is a long heritage of lunar laser ranging, going back to the Apollo missions, and the retroreflector we are using is an evolution from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The combination of all ranging techniques will improve the orbit estimation further, potentially beyond what radio ranging can achieve.

“In principle this could mean that future missions could navigate themselves to the Moon autonomously using satellite navigation signals alone with no help from the ground.”

Laser ranging station

Finding ultra-faint satnav signals

The satnav signals employed down here on Earth are already vanishingly faint, equivalent to a single pair of car headlights shining all across Europe. By the time these signals reach the Moon after they have crossed distances of more than 20 times further still, attenuating through space like ripples from a stone splashed in water.

“Adding to the difficulty, the satnav constellations are not designed to transmit up into space but keep their antennas facing Earth,” adds Pietro. “So we are reliant on much weaker ‘side lobe’ signals, like light spilling from the sides of a flashlight. To be able to make use of these signals we turned to a specialist in space-based satellite navigation, whose signal-processing techniques have really proven the magic ingredient.”

Galileo 'side lobe' signals

SpacePNT, based in Switzerland, oversaw the NaviMoon receiver design.  “We began working on the idea of lunar-distance satnav positioning back in 2013 as something of a scientific challenge.” explains Cyril Botteron, heading the company.

“The combination of Galileo dual frequency signals with those of the existing GPS satellites is what started to make it feasible. Although, along with the extreme sensitivity that is demanded, the other big problem is that from the Moon all the satnav satellites are in the same narrow geometry of sky around Earth, periodically rotating out of view.”

Receiver team at SSTL

The solution that SpacePNT came up with leverages more than half a century of lunar exploration. The company installed a dynamic software model of all the forces acting upon the satellite into the receiver, including the gravitational influences of the Moon, Earth, Sun and planets as well as the very slight push from sunlight itself – solar radiation pressure – along with factors such as clock error and the radio signal direction.

Cyril explains: “As we experience a given acceleration the receiver can judge it is most probably at one particular point in its orbit. Usually a satnav receiver needs signals from four satellites to fix its position, but with this approach even less than four signals is still enough to obtain useful information, constraining the model to minimise any error drift.”

Lunar navigation satellites will ultimately help guide Moon landings

European Engineering & Consultancy, EECL, in the UK was assigned the task of turning SpacePNT’s design into fully-tested hardware, additionally designing the crucial low noise amplifier that sifts through noise to boost usable signals.

“The amplifier is a high-end custom diplexer covering the dual frequency satnav bands, hand-tuned using the best possible components and incorporating heat sink technology to further reduce unwanted noise,” says Ben Kieniewicz, ECCL founder.

Moonlight: bringing connectivity to the Moon

“Along with contributing to other design aspects, we also built, tested and delivered the receiver to SSTL, making use of our space-qualified cleanroom assembly and test area.”

Lunar Pathfinder will be ready for launch at the end of 2024, offering near side, farside, orbit and polar services to missions launching in the coming years, laying the foundations for a constellation of combined telecommunications and navigation satellites around the Moon.

Infographic: Infographic: Moonlight - Navigation for the Moon

“Our Moonlight initiative proposes the initial placing of three to four satellites in lunar orbit, offering at least five consecutive hours of service in any 24 hours, focused on the lunar south pole where most of the missions are initially planned,” adds Javier. “Our system is conceived to be expandable and the idea is to progressively enlarge the constellation, and most likely to also include surface beacons on the Moon. This will enable full coverage across the lunar surface, higher availability and excellent accuracies – a great opportunity for Europe.”

About Moonlight

Moonlight is the Agency’s initiative to forge a lasting link with the Moon by developing lunar telecommunications and navigation services, helping enable future exploration.

ESA will propose the creation of a constellation of telecommunications and navigation satellites in lunar orbit for approval by ESA Member States’ ministers at the Agency’s Council at Ministerial Level at the end of 2022.

Related links:

Navigation: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Navigation

ESA’s Moonlight initiative: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Telecommunications_Integrated_Applications/Lunar_satellites

Lunar Pathfinder: https://www.sstl.co.uk/space-portfolio/missions-in-build/2022/lunar-pathfinder

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL): https://www.sstl.co.uk/

KBR company: https://www.kbr.com/en

SpacePNT: https://spacepnt.com/

European Engineering & Consultancy (EECL): http://engineeringconsultancy.eu/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/K Oldenburg/ATG-Medialab/SSTL.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Next stop, Uranus? Icy planet tops priority list for next big NASA mission

 

NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center logo.

April 20, 2022

Influential panel’s recommendation makes the ice giant a likely destination for a flagship space mission.

Image above: A US probe to Uranus (artist’s impression) is the top-priority space mission of an influential group of planetary scientists. Image Credits: QAI Publishing/Universal Images Group.

The long-neglected planet Uranus might get a visitor for the first time in decades. NASA should send a flagship mission to study the giant planet, says a new report from a panel of US planetary scientists. The agency almost always follows the panel’s advice.

The Uranus mission would be the first since Voyager 2 whizzed by the ice-cold body in 1986. The expedition could reveal how the planet, its rings and its moons formed and evolved over billions of years.

“This mission will be absolutely transformative,” says Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who worked on the 19 April report, published by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC. Uranus is full of scientific mysteries, such as why it rotates nearly on its side and how it developed a complex magnetic field. More broadly, studying Uranus could provide insights into planets orbiting other stars; of the more than 5,000 known exoplanets, the most common are around the size of Uranus.

Some planetary scientists have recently called for space agencies to send a major mission to Uranus or Neptune, which was also last visited by Voyager 2, in 1989. Both planets are ‘ice giants’, made up of large amounts of icy material swirling around a small rocky core. But Neptune did not make the cut in the report. “Uranus ranked higher because it is technologically achievable right now,” says Simon.

A Uranus mission could launch aboard a commercial Falcon Heavy rocket, a type of launch vehicle that is already operational. Launch could come as early as 2031, the first date by which a spacecraft could be designed and built, if it is fully funded. A mission to Neptune, which is farther from Earth than Uranus, would probably require a bigger rocket, such as NASA’s Space Launch System, which has not yet flown.

The report proposes a mission that would drop a probe towards Uranus to explore mysteries such as what drives the powerful winds blowing through its atmosphere, composed of hydrogen, helium and methane. The main spacecraft would spend years flying around the planet, gathering observations on features such as the magnetic field that probably powers Uranus’s glowing aurorae. “We are talking about a mission to study the entire Uranus system,” says Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The mission would explore some of Uranus’s 27 known moons — perhaps Titania and Oberon, which are big enough to have water beneath their icy surfaces, or the pockmarked Phoebe and the mottled Puck. Together, the orbiter and probe “will provide a remarkable breadth of new science”, says Heidi Hammel, vice-president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington DC. “I could go on and on.”

Giant planet, big price tag

If NASA decides to pursue a Uranus mission, which could cost up to US$4.2 billion, it might find a partner in the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2021, ESA published a long-range prioritization study that included a proposal that the agency partner with another space agency to study an ice-giant planet.

“The key question now is whether there’s room in national budgets and ESA’s science programme for an ambitious partnership,” says Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester, UK. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

The new US report covers many aspects of planetary exploration and is likely to guide decisions by NASA and the US National Science Foundation for years to come. Its second-highest priority for a flagship planetary mission, after Uranus, is a probe to Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which has plumes of water squirting from a buried ocean. That mission would send a lander to Enceladus’s surface to scoop up material deposited by one of the plumes and search it for evidence of life.

Space-rock surveillance scrutinized

For the first time, the report analysed NASA’s preparations for defending Earth from killer asteroids. It advises the agency to launch a mission to detect near-Earth asteroids as soon as possible — a project NASA recently announced it would delay by two years, to 2028, to save money.

And the report highlights the dismal state of equity and inclusiveness in US planetary science. It notes that scientists from racial and ethnic minority groups routinely face discrimination and that leadership of planetary missions does not reflect the diversity that it should. Only 5% of scientists who proposed planetary missions to NASA between 2014 and 2020 identified as belonging to an underrepresented community. The past decade, the report says, has seen “a shocking lack of change”.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01087-2

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC): https://www.nasa.gov/goddard

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: Nature/Alexandra Witze.

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NASA, Axiom Space, SpaceX Wave Off Private Astronaut Mission Undocking

 

Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) patch.

 

April 19, 2022

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon Endeavour crew ship is pictured docked to the Harmony module. Image Credit: NASA.

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX waved off the undocking opportunity of Axiom Mission 1 from the International Space Station on Tuesday, April 19 due to unfavorable weather conditions for return. The integrated NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX teams are continuing to assess the next best opportunity for return of the first private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory based on weather conditions and space station operations.

Related article:

Axiom Mission 1: Dragon Endeavour Departure Postponed
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/04/axiom-mission-1-dragon-endeavour.html

Related links:

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

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

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Gary Jordan.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch