The Space Roundup - Oct 10th, 2021

Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!

Today is a very special day, as it is THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE SPACE ROUNDUP! 🎉 Since I started this project one year ago, I’ve sent an email every Sunday of the year, sharing the most amazing updates in the space exploration arena.

I’ve learned a lot, made great contacts in the industry, even friends! I have received dozens of positive comments and I have shared my passion with thousands of readers from across the world.

Today I wanted to thank you all for being there with me, enjoying this amazing time we are living in, and above all thanks to my Patrons and subscribers that are supporting me since day #1. If you enjoy the roundup, or if I make your life just a tiny bit better every Sunday, just let me know: your feedback is my fuel. ❤️

Now, get ready for yet another week of space awesomeness! 3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!

1000 days on the moon!

China’s Yutu-2 rover is celebrating an amazing milestone: 1000 days of life on the surface of the moon! It arrived on January 2nd, 2019 and since then it’s covered more than 800 meters of lunar ground, sending more than 3600 Gigabytes of scientific data and picture back to Earth. This is a massive record (the previous record was 321 days of the Russian Lunokhod-1 rover). Both the rover and the satellite that helps with communications are in good shape, so let’s see how long they last. Go, Yutu! 

New Small Satellite Chinese Platform 

More news coming from China: they’ve announced the debut of DFH-3E, a new small satellite platform that will open opportunities to countries seeking an affordable solution for their own space-based internet networks. Instead of building, launching, and managing expensive satellites many countries can’t afford, they’d now be able to integrate their sensors in their platform and use it for communication, data transfer, propulsion, and power. Space accessibility: nice move.  

Commercial Open Standards 

On October 4th, Orbit Fab, the company launching Gas Stations to orbit, announced they are releasing an open license of its RAFTI valve, which means any spacecraft can now access the technical specifications of their valve to attach and refuel on one of the depots they are planning to deploy. Commercial open standards are the way to go if we want this new space economy to bloom, so hooray for Orbit Fab! 

Testing Cool Solar Sails 

Rocket Lab has been selected by NASA to launch the very exciting ACS3 mission next year: an experimental cubesat with a deployable solar sail that will power it. This Advance Composite Solar Sail System will eliminate the need for bringing rocket propellant to move around and explore deep space in the future. You can read more about this amazing tech here.

Emirates growing space ambitions

This week the UAE announced a super ambitious new mission: a mission to flyby Venus, visit 7 other asteroids in the solar system... and then, the first Arab landing attempt on an asteroid. How amazing is this? This is way more ambitious than their HOPE mission to Mars, and they want to build and launch in just seven years. Just wow. Inspiring. Good luck! 

SpaceX updates

After the last delay, now Falcon Heavy is going to launch three times in six months. Wow.  Grab your popcorn, because we’re going to have fun.     

NASA is throwing in the towel with Boeing, reassigning Boeing Starliner astronauts onto the SpaceX Crew-5 mission next year. Point for SpaceX.

Thanks to the increasing demand for crewed flights to the ISS and beyond, SpaceX is doubling the size of their fleet of Crew Dragon spaceships from two to four in the next months. 

This and other reasons are behind the new record valuation of SpaceX: 100 billion dollars. Yes, it is now the world’s second most valuable privately held company.

Pic of the week

Today I’m sharing one of the last pics sent by the Perseverance rover. Yeah, this is not the Sahara desert, this is Mars and its amazing sand dunes. Great.

Launches of the week!

Watch out because this is going to be an extremely busy week.

• Tuesday, Oct. 12th New Shepard | NS-18

• Thursday, Oct. 14th Soyuz • OneWeb 11

• Friday, Oct. 15th Long March 2F • Shenzhou 13

• Saturday, Oct. 16th Atlas 5 • Lucy - GO, GO, GO, LUCY!!!
  

And that’s it for this week!

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Cheers from sunny Spain!

Juan, the Curious Astronaut