The Space Roundup - March 21st, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
There we go with another week full of space awesomeness! Are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
Mars!
This week we’ve known that Perseverance has found a good spot to let the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter go. Next week, on Tuesday, NASA will inform us about the flight plans for it. We’ve also heard the first recordings of the rover driving on the surface.
Two important scientific discoveries on Mars this week. NASA’s InSight spacecraft has been able to measure and estimate the size of its core for the first time...and it’s surprisingly large.
Also: scientists have been wondering for years about the question of where did the martian water go? It appears now that vast amounts of water may be locked up on the planet's crust.
Rockets!
NASA Mega Moon Rocket, the SLS performed a full-duration static-fire test that gets us closer to the first Moon mission of the Artemis program.
SpaceX has already stacked their first massive Super Heavy Booster, the largest rocket booster ever built, Starship SN11 is ready to be tested this week and they said they want to go to orbit with both SH and SN by this summer. It is an extremely tight deadline, for sure, but lets you think how ambitious this team is, and that’s exciting!
Not only that, they have already started their commercial offering. This week SpaceX bid on a launch of NASA cubesat mission with a vehicle different from Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy (that can only mean Starship, wow)
Space debris!
We all know how serious of an issue the orbital debris has become and much worse it’ll be if we don’t do anything about it. The Space Force stated this week that it is considered a major threat and is willing to support commercial initiatives to remove it.
In the meantime Northrop Grumman’s MEV-2 servicer satellite is quickly approaching the satellite it is going to dock with to extend its life serving as a new engine and fuel tank for this satellite that has been active since 2004. This is key now to let these engineering wonders just die and become space thrash.
Tomorrow, March 22nd, Astroscale will launch its first debris removal demo mission ELSA-d. This mission includes two satellites: a 175-kilogram servicing satellite and a 17-kilogram client satellite. If all goes to the plan, they will both rendezvous, capture and release several times as an exercise before they both reenter the atmosphere and burn. This will be key for future missions.
The UK is in ground control for this Astroscale mission and they are willing to make this an opportunity to fight for the leading position as an in-orbit servicing player worldwide.
Venus!
It’s not all about Mars and Moon, team! This week Roscosmos reported on the progress of the Venera-D mission to Venus. First, this will be a Russian-American mission, which makes me happy because I really like all kinds of international cooperation for big missions, and also, the Russian design phase has already begun. It will most likely be comprised of a Russian lander full of American scientific payloads to take measurements of the hellish surface and also probably a flying probe to measure the atmospheric details. It is still very soon and more details will be unveiled, but only the fact that we’re planning a mission to our sister planet is already super exciting!
Talking about international friendship, this week there’s been a bilateral meeting between JAXA and ISRO (Japan and India), to celebrate and keep sharing knowledge, technology, and interesting missions that are more doable if they’re done together.
China!
And what’s China been up to? First, they have been growing SUPER RICE! :) They sent rice seeds to deep space aboard the Chang’e-5 capsule and after retrieving them they are now planting them to study the genetic effects of radiation and no-gravity to the genes of the rice.
This same Chang'e 5 orbiter, after its mission to the Moon has now entered the 1st Lagrange Point of Sun-Earth system, making it perfect to continue studying the Sun as a low-cost extended scientific mission
A new Chinese startup called Rocket PI has been funded to build a space lab by 2025 to study all about natural life-supporting technologies that will be crucial to deep space human exploration.
As more and more startups appear in the Chinese space industry, they run out of places to launch rockets, so they are now going to construct a commercial spaceport to support this industry.
Moving black holes? OMG!
Just in case massive black holes aren’t scary enough, astronomers have now detected a supermassive black hole on the move. This is a very unusual motion we don’t have an explanation for so far. Something worth studying, that’s for sure!
Picture of the week
The picture of this week is the fully stacked Super Heavy Booster. As I mentioned before, this is the biggest rocket booster ever built, 70m high, and I can’t just imagine how this will look like with the Starship on top of it, heading towards space. Amazing!
Upcoming launches & events
Monday, March 22nd - Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat-M | CAS500-1 & rideshare
Monday, March 22nd - Rocketlab Electron | They Go Up So Fast
Thursday, March 24th - SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink 22
Thursday, March 24th - SpaceX Starship SN11 | 10 km Flight
Friday, March 25th - Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M | OneWeb 5
Sunday, March 28th - ISRO GSLV Mk II | EOS-03 (GISAT-1)
And that’s it for this week! :)If you enjoy my Space Roundup, PLEASE SHARE IT by clicking the SHARE button below or consider supporting me on Patreon (or buy me a coffee!) to help me share our excitement about human space flight with the world:
Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut