The Space Roundup - Oct 17th, 2021
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
Get ready for yet another week of space awesomeness!
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3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!
Successful launches
Lucy in the sky (without diamonds)! The first mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, LUCY, successfully launched this Saturday on a ULA Atlas V rocket! With the goal to investigate how planets form, it will spend the next 12 years flying to the asteroid belt and will study seven different asteroids. Go, Lucy!
This Saturday too, China's three-person crew arrived at its new space station. After a safe 6-hour trip to the station, they will spend the next six months in orbit, the longest Chinese mission yet.
Space tourism and commercial activity
Blue Origin’s second civilian crew successfully reached space this week, while sadly Virgin Galactic delays next flights and its commercial service is now expected to commence in Q4 2022.
Remember the commercial space station Axiom wants to build? Well it’s getting closer to become real! Thales Alenia recently took a major step forward in the construction of Axiom commercial space station’s first module: the welding of the pressurized module panels has begun!
Something else that is getting closer is space factories. What? Yes! Varda Space has signed a contract with SpaceX and RocketLab to launch the first module of an autonomous factory that will be capable of creating materials and small satellites in zero-gravity and send them back to Earth in small reentry capsules. Scheduled for early 2023, the plan is to scale and automate what is currently being done at the ISS by the crew. Amazing.
Moon updates
Australia is heading to the Moon! They have reached an agreement with NASA to include an Australian semi-autonomous rover in a future mission that will be in charge of collecting lunar soil that NASA, using separate equipment, will aim to extract oxygen from. Generating oxygen from regolith is so critical for future human missions!
Astrobotic’s CubeRover team is preparing to support four new contracts. The tiny CubeRover has now completed all functional and mobility testing on top of a hardware performance report for NASA. I am really excited about the possibilities this cheap and general-purpose commercial rover can bring to us.
Extra: JWST
The famous $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope finally arrived at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. Planned to launch in December, it is now going to be prepared for the launch. Can’t wait!
Pic of the week
Today I wanted to share an incredible picture of this galaxy: Messier 82 (also known as the Cigar Galaxy). It is 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, and it is about five times more luminous than the Milky Way. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Launches of the week
Tuesday, Oct. 19th - CNSA Kuaizhou-1A | Jilin-1-02F
Thursday, Oct. 21st - Nuri | Maiden Flight Korea
Saturday, Oct. 23rd - ESA Ariane 5 ECA | SES-17 & Syracuse-4A
And that’s it for this week!
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut