The Space Roundup - Jul 4th, 2021
Non-stop space awesomeness
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
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Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
Commercial surprise
Space millionaires are surprising us every week. Right after Bezos announced his intention to fly by the end of next month, suddenly Richard Branson announced that he’s going to be flying on July 11th (just nine days before Bezos!) to the edge of space onboard the first fully crewed Virgin Galactic spaceplane.
In that same flight, other flight specialists will be conducting tests and zero-gravity experiments, so it is not “just” a commercial flight, but also a scientific experiment. Nice!
This week, the other “Virgin” (Virgin Orbit) successfully launched seven satellites to orbit, launched from a 747 airplane. This was just their third test flight and it was a complete success. Go, Virgin Orbit!
Martian updates
This is what I wanted to hear from NASA: "The Mars Helicopter could fly for months”… these are great news! Initially, it was not clear it could even fly. Then they pushed the limits of the test aircraft during initial tests and now they have realized it is solid and performs well, so they are pushing it even further during the next weeks or even months. During its next flight (9th flight already!) it is going to travel more than 600 meters and it’s going to be taking color pics along the way. This is the speed of light compared to the speed the rovers can achieve.
And talking about rover speed, engineers at JPL are going to test a new way of driving around the red planet on auto-pilot: they are going to start using an algorithm to analyze the terrain and make decisions about navigation and obstacle avoidance in real-time, instead of moving forward, taking pictures, sending them back to Earth and planning for the next day’s trip. This means the rover will start defining its own routes to avoid obstacles and it will multiply by a factor of five its speed. Boum. Massive improvement.
Also, scientists have identified that Mars may have dozens of lakes beneath its south pole. Although it has to be confirmed yet, it might mean there is an extremely high quantity of water available in that region, which would be crucial for establishing a human presence on the red planet.
Also on Mars this week, The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Hope Mars mission made its first major finding just a couple of months after arriving at the Red Planet: for the first time, they have captured images of a Martian Aurora that we have been chasing for more than 15 years.
Chinese solar power in space!
Boum, how amazing does that sound? Yes, China is planning to build its first space-based solar power station, with the first launch already scheduled for next year. Cool, but why? Well, think about this: current solar panels only work during the day (that’s 50% of power capacity loss) plus there are issues such as cloudy days, dust storms, etc AND they can only generate energy in certain locations. Space-based solar power means being always exposed to the sun (there’s no night at certain altitudes), there are no clouds and there are no dust storms. On top of that, they can wirelessly beam the energy to receivers located anywhere on Earth. Need energy on New Delhi? There you go. Need extra energy on Nigeria or Rome? There you go.
Experts are talking that it can be 5 to 7 times cheaper to produce energy compared to ground-based solar power stations, once in-orbit manufacturing and operations are solved, and that is what China wants to test: how to economically deliver, integrate and operate these panels at scale. Extremely amazing.
Indian power
This week India announced that they are opening to more and more public-private cooperation by allowing private companies to establish and operate rocket launch sites. This is great news for the Indian space industry.
Talking about India and ISRO, they keep trying to make their first human-rated test flight a reality in 2021, but it is becoming less and less likely due to COVID effects in the supply chain of the country. Sad. But they’ll eventually make it! Go, India!
Successful rideshare mission!
SpaceX successfully completed its Transporter-2 mission this week, delivering 88 satellites from many many different public and private organizations. I love these missions because there are so many interesting experiments going on at the same time.
My favorite experiment this time? Orbit Fab’s experiment without a doubt! They have sent two devices to test their fluid transfer interface RAFTI: basically, it is a gas station and a demo satellite to test how propellant can be transferred from their fuel deposits to satellites. This is revolutionary, as in-orbit refueling is one of the stepping stones to boost a new market in space. You can read more about it here.
Pic of the week
The picture of the week: a cosmic hand hitting a wall. Can you see it? In reality, it is a nebula, but the shape is very impressive. Read more about this amazing exploding star here.
Launches
Monday, July 5th MON JUL 05 Fengyun-3E | Long March 4C - China
Wednesday, July 7th, Long March 3C/E | Tianlian 1-05 China
Sunday, July 11th SpaceShipTwo | VSS Unity 22 Virgin Galactic fully crewed flight!!!!
And that’s it! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain! :)
Juan, the Curious Astronaut
Hi, Juan! Another awesome edition, as always!!! 😍🏆👍.
I particularly liked the articles about UAE's EMUS early discovery of those Mars discrete auroras and Orbit Fab's RAFTI refueling mission. Stupendous! 🚀