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!
Many successful launches!
This has been a week full of successful satellite launches: two Russia’s Soyuz rockets and then Rocket lab and SpaceX. The two first launches (Soyuz and Rocket lab’s) were rideshare launches, meaning that many organizations from different countries share a rocket to make it cheaper. This is very exciting because allows all sizes of orgs launch their projects to space, ranging from universities, small startups, big multi-nationals, or even governments. If you are curious about the payloads of these rockets, check them out here and here.
NASA, NASA, NASA!
On Tuesday NASA announced that the Perseverance rover is driving towards what they called A Martian Airfield, where they are planning to drop the Ingenuity helicopter to let it fly no earlier than April 8th. Exciting! They also announced this week that they are open to start funding studies for commercial space stations: how cool is that? They seem to be shifting their focus a lot towards their commercial strategy to take advantage of its agility, and another example of that is their desire to hurry up with a lunar orbiter satellite launch using a commercial launcher.
Discoveries
Astronomers found evidence that Saturn's moon, Enceladus, could have global ocean currents like those found on Earth. And also this week, astronomers have been able to image magnetic fields around a black hole for the first time.
Tests go well, tests go wrong
This week Space X’s Starship SN11 performed successful static fire tests, getting ready for tomorrow’s 10km test flight, while the ISRO wasn’t that lucky: their Small Satellite Launch Vehicle test didn’t go as expected, which might have a negative impact on their launch schedule.
While China has been in conversations with Russia about their future Lunar base, South Korea has announced its plan to land on the moon before 2030 and also to launch a mission to the asteroid Apophis when it flies past Earth in 2029.
Picture of the week
The picture of this week is the new image of Mars taken on March 18 by China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft. Beautiful picture, isn’t it?
Upcoming launches & events
Not a very active week ahead, my friends. Just the Starship flight test on Monday
Monday, March 29th - SpaceX Starship SN11 | 10 km Flight
And that’s it for this week! :)If you enjoy my Space Roundup, PLEASE SHARE IT by clicking the SHARE button below, 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
Thanks, Juan, for highlighting the new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) static fire test.
The assembly time (72 hours!!!) is going to be truly disruptive if ISRO manages to achieve it!
(...) Sivan had earlier termed the SSLV an innovative vehicle, which can be assembled in just 72 hours. "Instead of 60 days (for building a PSLV), it (SSLV) will be assembled in three days; instead of 600 people (needed to build a PSLV), it (SSLV) will be done by six people," he had said.