Space News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

New NASA Missions Will Study Venus, a World Overlooked for Decades

One of the spacecraft will probe the hellish planet’s clouds, which could potentially help settle the debate over whether they are habitable by floating microbes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/scie ... 175be38b67

By Kenneth Chang
June 2, 2021, 3:49 p.m. ET

NASA is finally going back to Venus, for the first time in more than three decades. And a second time too.

On Wednesday, Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, announced the agency’s latest choices for robotic planetary missions, both expected to head to Venus in coming years: DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.

[weatheriscool]

NASA Delays James Webb Space Telescope Launch Again
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/323 ... unch-again
By Ryan Whitwam on June 2, 2021 at 1:31 pm

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is expected to expand the bounds of human knowledge, allowing us to investigate the most distant, and therefore oldest, objects in the universe. So far, all it’s done is cost a lot of money and get delayed. Well, prepare for more of the same. NASA has confirmed that the telescope will not hit its planned October 31st launch. However, the delay might only be a few weeks this time.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been in development for more than 20 years, but it took a few years for the plan to take shape. NASA made changes to the design in the early 2000s, which pushed the expected 2007 launch date back to 2009, and then 2010, and then 2011. You can probably see where this is going. It’s 2021 and NASA still isn’t sure exactly when this telescope will launch.

WTF? It would have been better to build another kepler with better camera's and shit. A plus. This james webb thing is a disgrace!!!! We could have had 3 or 4 keplers for the price of this thing.

[wjfox]

New NASA Missions Will Study Venus, a World Overlooked for Decades

One of the spacecraft will probe the hellish planet’s clouds, which could potentially help settle the debate over whether they are habitable by floating microbes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/scie ... 175be38b67

By Kenneth Chang
June 2, 2021, 3:49 p.m. ET

NASA is finally going back to Venus, for the first time in more than three decades. And a second time too.

On Wednesday, Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, announced the agency’s latest choices for robotic planetary missions, both expected to head to Venus in coming years: DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.

[weatheriscool]

NASA’s Mars Lander Cleaned Sand Off Its Solar Panels Using More Sand
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/323 ... -more-sand
By Ryan Whitwam on June 3, 2021 at 4:23 pm

NASA’s InSight lander has been on the red planet since 2018, and it relies on solar panels for power, unlike the nuclear-powered Perseverance rover. That means there’s the potential for dust build-up on the solar panels, which is becoming an issue as the planet descends into another frigid winter. Luckily, engineers at JPL devised an ingenious way to get the sand off the solar panels. All it took was more sand.

InSight got its mission extension in early 2021, shortly before the team decided to give up on the burrowing HP3 heat probe that stubbornly refused to burrow. However, the SEIS instrument has exceeded expectations as the first seismometer on another planet. The team has been working to wrap up InSight’s science operations for the season. The robot was designed to go quiet during the long Martian winter to save power for its heater and communication gear. Maybe there’s a little wiggle room, though?

[weatheriscool]

SpaceX launches tiny critters, solar panels to space station
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-spacex-ti ... anels.html
by Marcia Dunn

SpaceX launched thousands of tiny sea creatures to the International Space Station on Thursday, along with a plaque-fighting toothpaste experiment and powerful solar panels.

The 7,300-pound (3,300-kilogram) shipment—which also includes fresh lemons, onions, avocados and cherry tomatoes for the station's seven astronauts—should arrive Saturday.

SpaceX's Falcon rocket blasted into the hazy afternoon sky from Kennedy Space Center. The first-stage booster was new for a change, landing on an offshore platform several minutes after liftoff so it can be recycled for a NASA astronaut flight this fall.

[weatheriscool]

One SpaceX Raptor Engine Every Two Days
June 2, 2021 by Brian Wang

Elon Musk says that Raptor engine production has reached one every two days. This is a runrate of 180 per year. The previous Merlin engines had reached a production rate of 400 engines per year. SpaceX will likely at least double Raptor engine production to the old Merlin engine level in 2022.

SpaceX needs 29 Raptor engines for a full Super Heavy Booster and seven engines for a fully loaded Starship. SpaceX current Raptor engine production levels are enough for five fully populated Super Heavy Boosters and five fully loaded Starships.

SpaceX likely needs about 100 Raptor engines to complete the testing phase for Super Heavy and Starship. SpaceX should have two Super Heavy Starships ready for long term usage at the end of this year. Two Super Heavy Starships flying once every two weeks would be able to match the launch rate of the Falcon 9 fleet but with four times the payload.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/06/o ... -days.html

[weatheriscool]

NASA's Juno to get a close look at Jupiter's moon Ganymede
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nasa-juno ... ymede.html
by NASA

The first of the gas-giant orbiter's back-to-back flybys will provide a close encounter with the massive moon after over 20 years.

On Monday, June 7, at 1:35 p.m. EDT (10:35 a.m. PDT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The flyby will be the closest a spacecraft has come to the solar system's largest natural satellite since NASA's Galileo spacecraft made its penultimate close approach back on May 20, 2000. Along with striking imagery, the solar-powered spacecraft's flyby will yield insights into the moon's composition, ionosphere, magnetosphere, and ice shell. Juno's measurements of the radiation environment near the moon will also benefit future missions to the Jovian system.

Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetosphere—a bubble-shaped region of charged particles surrounding the celestial body.

"Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible," said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century, both complementing future missions with our unique sensors and helping prepare for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system—NASA's Europa Clipper and ESA's [European Space Agency's] JUpiter ICy moons Explorer [JUICE] mission."

[Time_Traveller]

Axiom Space purchases three Crew Dragon missions

June 3, 2021

WASHINGTON — Axiom Space has signed a contract with SpaceX for three additional Crew Dragon missions, enough to meet its projections for private astronaut missions to the International Space Station through at least 2023.

Axiom, which already has a deal with SpaceX for the Ax-1 mission to the ISS launching in early 2022, said June 2 the new contract covers the projected Ax-2, 3 and 4 missions to the station. All will use Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on Falcon 9 rockets.

The companies did not disclose the terms of the agreement, including whether Axiom Space negotiated a lower price through a block buy. Axiom spokesman Beau Holder told SpaceNews that the biggest benefit of the agreement was ensuring access to the Crew Dragon for its future missions.

“It secures a vehicle that is flight-proven and ready to support the crewed launch cadence Axiom is planning: approximately every six or seven months leading up to near the launch of the first Axiom module to ISS,” he said. “Expanding this partnership between two key industry leaders cements the commercialization of low Earth orbit.”

Axiom finalized an agreement with NASA for the Ax-1 mission May 10. That Crew Dragon mission, scheduled for launch in early 2022, will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría with three customers: Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe.

https://spacenews.com/axiom-space-purch ... -missions/

[weatheriscool]

A catalyst that destroys perchlorate in water could clean Martian soil
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-catalyst- ... -soil.html
by Holly Ober, University of California - Riverside

Ateam led by UC Riverside engineers has developed a catalyst to remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen for human Mars explorers.

Perchlorate, a negative ion consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms, occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and is especially abundant in Martian soil. As a powerful oxidizer, perchlorate is also manufactured and used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks, munitions, airbag initiators for vehicles, matches and signal flares. It is a byproduct in some disinfectants and herbicides.

Because of its ubiquity in both soil and industrial goods, perchlorate is a common water contaminant that causes certain thyroid disorders. Perchlorate bioaccumulates in plant tissues and a large amount of perchlorate found in Martian soil could make food grown there unsafe to eat, limiting the potential for human settlements on Mars. Perchlorate in Martian dust could also be hazardous to explorers. Current methods of removing perchlorate from water require either harsh conditions or a multistep enzymatic process to lower the oxidation state of the chlorine element into the harmless chloride ion.

[Yuli Ban]

New NASA Missions Will Study Venus, a World Overlooked for Decades

One of the spacecraft will probe the hellish planet’s clouds, which could potentially help settle the debate over whether they are habitable by floating microbes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/scie ... 175be38b67

By Kenneth Chang
June 2, 2021, 3:49 p.m. ET

NASA is finally going back to Venus, for the first time in more than three decades. And a second time too.

On Wednesday, Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, announced the agency’s latest choices for robotic planetary missions, both expected to head to Venus in coming years: DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.

Thank Christ! We really do need to investigate this planet further.