The Space Roundup - Jul 18th, 2021
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
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Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
The hottest news from the Sun
This week NASA’s Parker Solar probe has approached the Sun to measure the Sun’s magnetic field at just 14,5 million kilometers. This is closer than any spacecraft has ever dared to go before. These measurements are crucial to understanding the solar winds and their very serious impact on Earth’s communications systems and the radiation on deep space.
Tests and advances in new engines
NASA has awarded three contracts to companies to develop designs for nuclear thermal propulsion reactors that can be used to propel spacecraft into deep space in the future, in a much powerful way than current propulsion systems. If we want fast round trips to Mars and start exploring interstellar space, we need to wake up and develop this kind of technology ASAP.
This week Ad Astra rocket company has released results from its successful long duration (28 hours!) test with their VASIMIR plasma engine. Plasma engines have extremely low fuel consumption and much higher power and/or performance as compared to other electric or chemical rockets. (Pdf - press release). They claim to be able to reach the same power of a traditional chemical rocket but with ten times the fuel efficiency. The next goal is to reach 100kW during 100 hours.
Not being these updates enough for this week, the Indians at ISRO have successfully performed a 240 seconds long-duration hot test of the Vikas engine that will take humans to orbit as part of the Gaganyaan program. Even Elon Musk congratulated them for the success! :)
Next super exciting fire test? Yes! SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster next week! Can’t wait! 🙂
Secret Chinese reusable rocket
Last Friday the Chinese launched a reusable suborbital rocket. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, this one lands horizontally but can also be used as 1st stage of two-stage to orbit reusable space transportation system. Extremely interesting stuff! We’ll be monitoring its progress.
Commercial updates
After the successful commercial flight of Virgin Galactics space plane this week that got everyone excited, next week is the turn of Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin first crewed commercial flight. This week we’ve known that the super-rich person that paid $28M for a seat had “scheduling conflicts” to fly that day (WHHHHHAAAAT?), so BlueOrigin decided to give the seat to the second bidder. Well, who actually is going to fly is his son, an 18-year-old Dutch teenager that is going to be the youngest person in space ever. Godspeed, Blue Origin team!
Also related to commercial space, NASA has published a request for proposals looking for providers interested in building commercial space stations. It is interesting that they are looking for alternatives for the moment the ISS gets decommissioned by the end of the decade.
Pic of the week
This week, astronomers have released a new picture taken by the Hubble telescope that is now back to operational mode (Yay!). It is a galactic duo: two galaxies in the same picture, clearly visible and with extremely high resolution.
Both galaxies are lying about 350 million light-years away from us, in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Perseus is one of the biggest objects in the known universe.
Launches of the week
Tuesday, July 20 - NS-16 | New Shepard Blue Origin
Wednesday, July 21 - Proton • Nauka laboratory module to the International Space Station with the European Robotic Arm.
Friday, July 23rd - CNSA Yaogan-30 10
And that’s it for today! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain! :)
Juan, the Curious Astronaut