The Space Roundup - Jan 30th, 2022
Hello, hello, my dear space lover! Get ready for another week of space awesomeness!
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3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!
Blue Origin's space robots!
Blue Origin enters the space robotics market. Yes! Blue Origin has acquired Honeybee Robotics. This firm, active since 1983, is specialized in ISRU, drills, sample collection, and mining both on Earth and in space. Wow. This is a key element in the space exploration architecture and Blue Origin is betting hard moving forward with this acquisition. Extremely interesting!
I’d like to see how SpaceX reacts to this: will they acquire another similar competitor or will they just move forward on their own and create all the ISRU robots and infrastructure themselves? Amazing race…
OrbitFab's on fire!
Talking about robots, OrbitFab is on fire! This week they’ve announced a partnership with Rogue Space to use their orbital robots for satellite inspections while equipping them with their refueling port to make them refuelable.
Also this week, they have shared that they are working with Phase Four Plasma to make their Maxwell engines refuelable. This would mean their whole ecosystem of engines and satellites will soon be capable of using OrbitFab’s services and greatly extend the missions of their customers. Way to go, fam!
Sponsor update
Hurry up! There’s a limited offer for pre-orders of the "Goodnight moon base” book before February 1st! It includes exclusive bonus perks from the author. Check it out!
Anomalies & issues
Astroscale has paused its debris-removal demo because of an anomaly. In this test, two satellites flying close to each other had to rendezvous and dock autonomously, but an anomaly made it be unsafe. The team is now looking into the data. We’ll keep an eye on the mission. Good luck, Astroscale!
Remember the anomaly that happened right after the launch of NASA’s Lucy mission? One of the two solar arrays failed to latch and now the cause of the problem has been identified. Next is to decide whether they retry or leave it as it is: it can operate just fine as it is right now, but might be dangerous when turning on the engines…fingers crossed!
What else didn’t go as planned this week? Well, the Mars helicopter is grounded for now. For the first time in human history, there’s a flight delay because of bad weather on another planet 🙂 Nothing to worry about, but it’s safer to wait for the dust storms to clear out.
Solar updates
NASA/ESA Solar Orbiter caught a comet by the tail for the second time! Yes, again, it intercepted a comet on its way to the sun and could gather a ton of scientific data for us to learn more about these amazing objects. What a surprise present for all!
NASA’s low-cost solar sail mission NEA Scout will intercept the smallest asteroid ever to be studied by an aircraft when it launches onboard the Space Launch System during Artemis 1 mission. Cool mission to have an eye on!
Launches of the week
The following launches are scheduled for this week:
Mon, Jan 31st - SpaceX Falcon 9 | CSG-2
Mon, Jan 31st - Space X Starlink Group 4-7 | Falcon 9
Wed, Feb 2nd - SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 | NROL-87
Thurs, Feb 3rd - Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat-M | Neitron (?)
And that’s it for this week!
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut