The Space Roundup - April 11th, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
There we go with another week full of space awesomeness! Are you ready?
5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
The Martian Helicopter gets ready!
After surviving the cold mars nights, the Ingenuity helicopter is getting ready to launch next week. It has performed several tests (one of which ended earlier than expected and that is why it’s been postponed a bit) and everything seems just fine. You can watch the flight live here - https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public
Successful launches
After a successful launch of the Soyuz rocket to the ISS this week, now there are ten (TEN!) astronauts aboard the ISS…so crowded! This team is going to be working hard not only on scientific experiments but also preparing the ISS for the arrival of the new laboratory: the Russian Nauka module, scheduled to launch next July.
SpaceX did it AGAIN! They successfully launched a Falcon 9 full of Starlink satellites this week, while they get ready for the next very important Crew-2 mission with four astronauts onboard heading to the ISS next April 22nd.
Talking about SpaceX, their SN15 prototype is now in the launchpad ready to be tested before the test flight that might probably (???) happen next week. We’ll see, we’ll: will this be the successful test flight we’ve all been waiting for? Crossing fingers.
Progress on future missions
NASA’s Psyche mission, the one that is going to visit a metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, is making good progress! Last week the final assembly of the spacecraft started, in preparation for the launch next year. A world of wonder awaits us there!
Also this week, the Orion capsule that is going to take humans to the moon again as part of the Artemis program went for a swim and took a bath in a pool to test all sensors are good to collect data from the splash-down tests they’ll be performing next.
The Indians at ISRO announced this week that they are going to launch the Gaganyaan uncrewed mission even if the data relay satellite is not ready: they’d use a foreign one to be practical, just not to stop the progress of this mission, which is a requirement before the first crewed mission launches next.
Scientific data releases
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has released a new dataset reaching a new milestone: 2.200 new exoplanet candidates identified! Now the challenge for the astronomers is to follow up with each of them to characterize them and identify interesting details of their formation, habitability, and more. Nice!
China, which successfully launched a satellite for space environment study earlier this week, has also released a lot of scientific data from the Chang-e’4 mission for the international community to benefit from it. Apart from the diplomacy relevance, this is especially important, as Chang-e’4 is the first mission to land on the far side of the Moon.
China is taking space very seriously. And not only state-owned but also commercial space. Last week I mentioned their intention to build a commercial spaceport, but now they won’t be building one but TWO. And not small ones. They have announced a $3 billion investment to build a spaceport at Xiangshan, capable of launching up to 100 missions per year! That’s a rocket every three days!
Dreamers and innovators
And which additional new players are innovating in space? You know I like this Indian startup called Agnikul Cosmos, which is building the first single-piece 3d printed rocket engine. Last week they performed a thermal steady-state qualification burn, needed to make sure the engine is ready for a flight-long burn. And it worked just fine! Getting ready for the next milestone: a full-duration burn.
This week I have also had the chance to chat with two teams of brilliant people willing to change the future of humanity. Let me talk to you about them.
Democratizing the astronaut training industry
You know that commercial space is booming and if everything goes according to plan, in the next couple of decades we will be able to send hundreds if not thousands of civilians to space. One of the problems is that the current state of the art on astronaut training is extremely lacking, slow, and expensive. What if we could have a standard certification curriculum anyone could follow, train for, and then be acknowledged by NASA, ESA, JAXA, SpaceX, Axiom, and others as spaceflight-ready? Something like the scuba-diving license or the driving license but for commercial astronauts. This is precisely the mission of the United Space Team. They have so many interesting initiatives in the roadmap that I’ll be following the project and sharing the news with you as they evolve.
Spacecrafts that clone themselves!
The other team I’ve had the chance to engage with is the Initiative for Interstellar Studies. One of their areas of research that I’m in love with is the self-replicating probe. They have released a new paper with a study about a probe that is able to clone itself using local resources and keep exploring the universe. This has been in studies for many years (also known as Von Neumann machines), and although we are still far from it being a real possibility, imagine having a device that can fly to a space body, gather local resources, 3D-print a clone, and then keep exploring: we would be able to expand our presence on the universe at amazing speeds. The next step after the theoretical framework design is a first prototype that can work on our planet. Not an easy feat for sure, but something worth following! I’ll keep you updated.
Picture of the week
The picture of this week is one from a while ago: it’s a picture taken by the SpaceX team during the launch of the Falcon Heavy. 27 Merlin engines spitting fire like a group of crazy dragons… this image is mind-blowing!
Upcoming launches & events
Here are the most relevant launches and events of the week. Note: these are all tentative dates that are yet to be confirmed.
Wednesday, April 14th - Ingenuity Mars Helicopter test flight.
(??) Friday, April 16th - SpaceX Starship SN11 | 10 km Flight
Sunday, April 18th - ISRO GSLV Mk.2 • GISAT 1
And that’s it for this week! :) If you enjoy my Space Roundup, PLEASE SHARE IT by clicking the SHARE button below, consider supporting me on Patreon (or buy me a coffee!) to help me share our excitement about human space flight with the world:
Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut