The Space Roundup - May 30th, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
Yet another week full of space awesomeness!
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Now, are you ready? 5,4,3,2,1...lift-off!
Martian updates
This week the Ingenuity helicopter performed its 6th flight, but was quite nerve wracking: due to a software issue it experienced an in-flight anomaly that could have make it crash. Hopefully it could recover and safely land, getting ready for its next mission, but, omg, death was close! Engineers are now using this experience to learn and try to make it more robust on next flights.
Meanwhile, the Chinese rover gets ready for its 3-months scientific adventure, the Arab Mars Hope mission keeps studying the Martian atmosphere and NASA’s Curiosity rover captured a beautiful picture of the Martian clouds above mount Mercou
Tons of satellites!
This week we’ve seen two successful satellite missions: a SpaceX Falcon 9 loaded with 60 Starlink satellites and a Soyuz rocket loaded with 36 OneWeb satellites. You can see how frequent these missions are becoming… and how dangerous it can make the space debris issue. On top of it, this same week China has established a company to build yet another 13.000 satellites megaconstellation.
The SpaceX mission is somewhat historical because it was the 100th successful launch of a Falcon 9, 85th landing of a booster and a record fifth reuse of the fairing. Very impressive.
Moon
While NASA budget fights continue in the congress, they show a very strong focus on science, while they also request additional funding for the lunar lander(s).
Also this week Lockheed Martin and General Motors have announced a partnership to develop a lunar vehicle for NASA astronauts.
In the meantime, the Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 keeps exploring the far side of the Moon. After waking up for the 29th time since landing in January 2019, China believes its rover could be critical in determining the surface evolution history on the moon and tracing the source of surface materials discovered by the rover. Go, Yutu-2!
Another very important highlight from China this week has been the first successful resupply mission to their Tianhe Space Station. Yesterday, the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft autonomously docked with the station delivering propellant and supplies getting ready for a first crewed mission in June.
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Picture of the week
The picture of the week was shared on Twitter by the incredible photographer Nathan Barker @NASA_Nerd (go follow him!) for NASA Spaceflight. It shows the amazing SpaceX Falcon Heavy with Arabsat 6A back in April 2019. So beautiful. I wish it flights again very soon.
Upcoming launches & events
Let’s see what we have in the week ahead!
Sunday, May 30th: Long March 3B | Fengyun 4B geostationary weather satellite
Wednesday, June 2nd - Long March 3B/E | Fengyun-4B
Thursday, June 3rd - Falcon 9 Block 5 | CRS-22 with new solar arrays for the ISS
Sunday, June 6th - Falcon 9 Block 5 | Sirius SXM-8
And that’s it for this week! :)
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut