Space Roundup Nov 15th, 2020
Hi, space lovers!
Here’s the weekly Space Roundup for you. There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on at the moment. Please, take a seat and enjoy!
News
Last Tuesday NASA released a report indicating it is well-positioned for its Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign to bring rocks and sand from Mars to Earth in the 2030s. I wish this was way sooner, but if you read the report you can easily see how complex this mission is
A robotic sample return mission that is launching by the end of November is China’s Chang’e-5. They are planning to collect 2kgs of Moon rocks and send them back to earth for the first time in 40 years. This will be so exciting to witness!
If you want to learn more about the Chinese space program you can’t miss last week David Burbach’s interview for The Cosmic Controversy Podcast (I recommend subscribing to this podcast by Bruce Dorminey if you haven’t already!)
ULA successfully launched its Atlas 5 rocket this week, while SpaceX experienced some serious issues while testing Starship SN8: crossing fingers for it to be fixed soon so that we can witness the first 15km hop test.
Talking about excitement, SpaceX and NASA Crew-1 mission is going to be launched later today. The first operational commercial mission to the ISS, with four astronauts on board. You can watch the launch live in NASA’s YouTube channel
Space pic of the week
Melotte 15 - The Heart Of The Heart
Beautiful cluster of stars 7,500 light-years away from Earth - credits
Events of the week
Nov 18th - Russian spacewalk outside the ISS
Nov 19th - Rocketlab launch. They will try their first rocket booster recovery
Nov 21st -NASA Sentinel-6 launch
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut