Space Roundup Dec 20th, 2020
Hello, dear space lover!
Here’s a brief summary of my personal highlights of the week. So many things going on in space exploration! :)
Launches, launches, launches!
Two SpaceX launches this week: in the first one, SpaceX crushed the commercial Falcon 9 reuse record: seven times! And then, the fifth reuse of a first stage booster for the NROL mission, the last mission for this year. Just wow.
Not falling behind, just 25 days after their previous launch, RocketLab successfully launched their Electron rocket. It is their 17th successful Electron mission! Congrats for such a quick turnaround!
Astra wants to be the third commercial company to reach orbit...but they missed it for just 0.5km/s last week (Sooooooooo close to orbit!), just three months after their previous attempt (impressive). It seems to be an issue with their fuel mixture. I’m pretty sure next time they’ll nail it. Huge achievement, Astra team!
Russia launched Angara’s second test flight six years after the first test, not a very rapid turnaround, to be honest... but it was a success anyways! Also, onboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, Arianespace launched 36 OneWeb’s satellites.
and finally, India successfully launched its PLSV-C50 rocket to orbit. Not bad! So many successful launches for a week! :)
Sample returns
What a week of sample return missions! First, the Japanese team at JAXA reported the first set of images of the samples they have gathered from asteroid Ryugu - and what’s more important, they’ve managed to collect the gas that was inside the capsule. This is the first time in history we can study material in a gaseous state from deep space on Earth.
And then, less than a month after launch, the Chinese announced the successful recovery of the reentry capsule full of Moon samples. Launch, go to Moon’s orbit, descent to surface, a robotic gathering of regolith and rocks, back to Moon orbit, and then back to Earth...in just 23 days! This blows my mind.
ISRU, nuclear energy and robots!
Scientists have found a new method to turn martian water into oxygen, in a 25x more productive way than previous methods, PLUS it can generate hydrogen (and not only oxygen as MOXIE does), so we could also produce fuel for rockets on Mars. Isn’t it amazing? I want this to be tested at scale in our next launch window.
Another very relevant update regarding energy in outer space came from NASA, which released a statement supporting the development of space nuclear power and propulsion. I think these are great news, as this is key to being able to transport and sustain humans on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
These two announcements sound like key building blocks to me: nuclear energy to sustain in-situ-resource-utilization systems that are able to generate oxygen, water, hydrogen, and rocket fuel…what’s missing to me is the ability to store these resources on the surface, given the extreme conditions of radiation and temperature on the Moon and Mars. This is something I need to do some additional research about.
And last but not least, dog robots!
Researchers at NASA/JPL-Caltech are already training dog robots to explore lava tubes and caves on the Moon and Mars. These caves are natural shelters against radiation and extreme temperature changes, so they are very interesting to study for future crewed missions. There are even speculations about the fact that in case there’s life on Mars it should be “hidden” inside of those caves, and not exposed to the harsh conditions of the planet’s surface…definitelly worth sending a bunch of smart robots to have a look! :)
Picture of the week
Caldwell 78 (or NGC 6541), a cluster of stars 22,000 light-years away captured by the Hubble telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Piotto.
Upcoming launches
Dec. 22nd: First launch of Long March 8
Dec. 28th Soyuz • CSO 2
Space jobs
Do you want to play an active role on space exploration? Here are some open positions in the aerospace industry:
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut