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Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
We’re going to Venus!
NASA has announced they have selected two missions to visit our sister planet, Venus! It’s crazy how close we are and how little we know about it. After more than 30 years without a mission to Venus, NASA is sending DAVINCI+ and VERITAS. One to determine if it ever had an ocean and to analyze how its atmosphere formed and evolved, while VERITAS will be mapping the surface to understand why its geography developed so differently than Earth.
Resupplying space stationS
This week both the Chinese Space Agency and NASA+SpaceX have sent autonomous spacecraft to deliver cargo to their respective space stations.
NASA’s was carrying a very interesting cargo: apart from new solar arrays that will be adding an extra boost of energy to the station, they brought squid and 5000 tardigrades. What are these? Tardigrades are mini-monsters that are super resistant to extreme conditions such as space and they are super interesting to researches about humans in deep space. Oh, god: look how ugly these monsters are
SpaceX Starship Progress
Apart from this resupply mission and the SXM mission, SpaceX has been busy making progress on their Starship project. They are ramping up production of their Raptor Engines to one every 48 hours, they are making progress on the Deimos oceanic launch platform, they are preparing the engines for orbital flights after performing their first 6-minutes static fire test this week.
[EXCLUSIVE!] This week I have had the chance to interview a member of SpaceX’s Starship team (can’t disclose his name), and when asked about the real chances of an orbital flight by this summer, his reaction was amazing:
“I feel fabulous about it. We can do it! I know Elon will be there alongside us making sure it happens”
Awesome!
Commercial Space
Axiom, the company providing human spaceflight services to the International Space Station, has announced this week that they have contracted SpaceX’s Dragon for four missions to the ISS. So not only they are launching their first mission AX-1 in January’22 but they are already planning way beyond that: this is not a drill! This is real!
Some argue against commercial space travel is that it is a waste of resources that could be used for scientific purposes. This week, Virgin Galactic, as a way to diversify its business beyond space tourism, has announced they will fly Kellie Gerardi, a STEM influencer affiliated with the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) on a future flight. He will use the flight to experiment with biomedical sensors several other tech demonstrations.
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Transformers on the Moon!
I couldn’t let this JAXA update slip this week’s newsletter! JAXA is sending a small transforming robot to the Moon aboard a iSpace lunar lander next year. This transformer robot has the appearance of a ball and transforms into a kind of a small mouse that will be exploring the lunar surface to gather data for a future JAXA pressurized rover to be delivered next.
Picture of the week
This picture of the week is authored by the amazing photographer Trevor Mahlmann (go follow him! @TrevorMahlmann), and it shows an amazing RocketLab’s Electron rocket during launch in December 2018. Mind-blowing picture, yes sir!
Upcoming launches & events
Let’s see what we have in the week ahead! Oh, just one launch…but as a Mike Oldfield fan, I love the mission name :)
Sunday, June 13th - Virgin Orbit LauncherOne | “Tubular Bells, Part One”
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut