Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
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Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
Jeff got balls XD
Well, this caught me off-guard. I didn’t expect Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and Blue Origin, and his brother, to be part of the first crew to test their new reusable rocket. Next July 20th they’ll be flying to the edge of space on an 11-minute flight that will be an important next step in the commercial space flight. He’s risking his own life for a project he truly believes in: this is skin in the game! 👏
The Chinese are going FAST
Next Thursday, the Chinese are sending the first crewed mission to their Space Station. Yes, it only took two launches in a bunch of weeks to have everything ready for these Taikonauts to fly after more than four years without flying humans to space. The pace is incredible, above all knowing they are making progress on low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars at the same time.
Moon!
Talking about the Moon, NASA has selected this week three new Science projects to be sent to the Moon as part of their PRISM (Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon) program and will be flown aboard one of the CLPS program commercial landers. The goal of these missions is to keep learning about the Moon before sending the first crewed missions for the Artemis program. Very important.
More news about the Moon: NASA is going to have more money for contracting additional lunar landers. It seems Congress wants to have a plan B in case SpaceX’s Lunar Starship fails: we still need to know which of the other two contestants (Dynetics or Blue Origin) is going to benefit from this.
ESA is going to Venus (too!)
Just a week after NASA announced two missions to Venus, the European Space Agency has announced they are also planning to go there!
Planned to launch in the early 2030s, it will be searching for signs of volcanic and other geological activity, and trying to reveal how “the most Earth-like planet in the Solar System evolved so differently to our own.”
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Martian updates
NASA’s Perseverance has left behind all system tests and the tasks to support the Ingenuity helicopter's initial set of flights to now focus on science. Since last week it is officially beginning its first science campaign and it’s heading south to explore Jezero Crater’s lakebed in search of signs of ancient microbial life.
Ingenuity did perform its amazing 7th flight this week: this time it was a one-minute flight that took it 100 meters away from its previous location and for the first time it landed in a spot that hasn’t been decided by previous aerial pictures, but this time it was decided based on images taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Picture of the week
Talking about Mars, the picture of the week is a “selfie” that the Chinese rover Zhurong took on the surface of Mars. He brought a camera, left it on the surface, and went back to take a pic with its lander. How amazing is it? I love the surprise face this rover has, haha!
Upcoming launches & events
Let’s see what we have in the week ahead!
Sunday, June 13th - TacRL-2 (Pegasus)
Tuesday, June 15th - NROL111 (Minotaur-1)
Thursday, June 17th - China’s Long March 2F | Shenzhou 12
Thursday, June 17th - SpaceX’s Falcon 9 - GPS III mission
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut
Another concise, interesting and sharp focused edition!
Awesome work, Juan!