The Space Roundup - Nov 7th, 2021
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
Get ready for yet another week of space awesomeness! Sorry for missing last week’s newsletter: I’ve recently been a father and it has been pretty challenging to keep up with everything. Thanks to all of you who reach out to me saying you missed it :)
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3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!
Scientific discoveries
This week we have a couple of very interesting astronomy discoveries. The first one is that the Curiosity rover found organic molecules in a Martian sand dune. After performing a ‘wet chemistry’ experiment, it’s found benzoic acid, ammonia, phosphoric acid, phenol, several nitrogen-bearing molecules, and a number of organic compounds that have yet to be identified.
Distant water! Also this week, astronomers have spotted the most distant detection of water in our history. It has been identified in a star-forming galaxy, 12.88 billion light-years from Earth. Just wow.
SpaceX & NASA updates
DART asteroid impact spacecraft has now arrived at SpaceX’s base ready for its launch later this month.
NASA decided to postpone this weekend’s Crew-3 launch and will bring station crew-2 home first.
Blue Origin
This week we’ve known that the Federal court ruled against Blue Origin in the HLS lawsuit. Let’s see if they focus now on what they need to focus on: more on space, less on the court.
In that line, they have announced that they are in conversations with the United Arab Emirates to partner and boost space tourism. This might imply building a spaceport in the desert. Exciting initiative for sure!
China’s new Mars mission
Well, well, well… look at this update from China. We’ve known this week that China is planning the most complex Mars mission ever attempted: a sample return mission on a single Earth-Mars launch window.
This means that they will attempt to launch two rockets: one with a lander and an ascent vehicle in charge of touching the surface, picking up the samples and going back to Mars orbit, and a second rocket with an orbiter and a re-entry capsule to take the samples back to Earth.
Planned for 2028, it would be back in 2031. Will they beat NASA-ESA on their attempt to bring back home the samples collected by Perseverance? Game on!
More sats!
Astra has filed an FCC application for a 13,600-satellite constellation. They are planning to deploy this massive constellation to provide broadband services worldwide. The satellites will be built in-house. This makes me wonder how many constellations can we have and the impact it’ll have on space debris and access to deep space. Let’s see how responsible we all are with this.
Launches of the week
Busy week ahead! 5 launches this week:
Tuesday, Nov 9th - RAISE-2 & Others | Epsilon
Tuesday, Nov 9th - STP-27AD2 | Astra Rocket 3
Thursday, Nov 11th - Crew-3 (USCV-3) | Falcon 9 Block 5
Thursday, Nov 11th - Love At First Insight | Electron
Friday, Nov 12th - Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink 4-1
And that’s it for this week!
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut