The Space Roundup - May 16th, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
Yet another week full of space awesomeness! Are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
The Martian family grows!
Last Friday, May 14th, China successfully landed its Zhurong rover on Mars! Wohooo! Congrats, China! This was for sure the most difficult part of the Mars mission and the most challenging operation in deep space for the CNSA so far. The final landing place was Utopia Planitia. What’s next? During the next week, the rover will get out of the lander and will start its 100-days scientific mission to explore the Martian environment.
Meanwhile, Perseverance has been very busy performing Martian geological investigations this week, and back on Earth, the European rover Rosalind Franklin keeps making progress to join the Martian family next year.
Rocket Lab’s failed mission :(
Yesterday, Saturday 15th, Rocket Lab lost a mission, the second this year. It seems for non-disclosed reasons the second stage shut down seconds after ignition causing the end of the mission. It was carrying two commercial satellites from BlackSky. Very sad. Let’s hope the team learns from this experience and uses it as a way to keep improving and growing.
Water!
Scientists have discovered liquid water on a meteorite for the first time in history. Researchers found it in a meteorite that fell to Earth in 2012 and it opens so many questions. Water is the origin of life: did it originate on Earth or did it come from outer space? So many questions still to be answered. An exciting discovery for sure!
SpaceX going orbital!
After yet another successful Falcon 9 Starlink and rideshare mission this week, SpaceX outlined its plans for its first orbital flight in a 6 months time window that might start as soon as next June 20th! Amazing! All the information is on an application for an FCC license, detailing an “experimental orbital demo and recovery test of the Starship test vehicle”. Both SuperHeavy booster and Starship are planned to land on the Ocean for security reasons but in order for this plan to become a reality and for them to launch they not only need to have the rocket ready (which is already a massive challenge) but also need an FAA license approval that hasn’t been granted yet. We’ll be on top of this.
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Exclusive interview with Jayakumar Venkatesan!
This week I had the great privilege to interview Jayakumar Venkatesan, CEO of Valles Marineris, CEO of Cygnus Aerospace, and CTO of Synergy Moon. No more, no less! He’s an Indian serial aerospace entrepreneur and I asked him about the top challenges and key missions for the Indian space sector.
“Current top challenges are developing the first human spaceflight program of India, development of man-rated spacecraft and testing, etc. India is also planning to work on space debris challenges and moon exploration Missions. ISRO is also planning for Venus and Mars mission near future.” - no shortage of challenges in there!
What about the public-private opportunities in India? - “In India, public-private partnership is quite difficult in the space sector” - let’s hope that improves in the close future: we can already see fruitful progress across NASA, ESA, CNSA, and more.
And what is the most exciting project you are currently working on? - “Currently we are working for Soyuz Spacecraft training simulators for cosmonaut training and lunar landing missions” - so basically, they are preparing astronauts to fly and live on the moon for the missions planned for the next decade… amazing!
Space tourism & movies! :)
The Russian space agency has announced this week that next December 8th, 2021, two Japanese tourists will fly to the International Space Station for a 12-days experience, and also this year, a movie called “Challenge” will be filmed aboard the ISS. The expedition of astronaut-actors flying next October 5th has been successfully going through medical reviews and is getting ready to fly. Read more.
Picture of the week
The picture of the week was shared this week on Twitter by @SpaceHub_SL - and it is breathtaking: our planet as seen from the ISS with a great view of a Soyuz spacecraft. Beautiful!
Upcoming launches & events
Let’s see what we have in the week ahead!
Monday, May 17th - ULA Atlas 5 • SBIRS GEO Flight 5
Wednesday, May 19th - CNSA Long March 4B | Haiyang 2D
Thursday, May 20th - CNSA Long March 7, Tianzhou 2. First resupply mission to the Chinese space station
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut