The Space Roundup - Sep 5th, 2021
Hello, my dear space lovers!
How are you doing today? Let’s dive into all the amazing stories going on in the space arena
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Mars
Finally! NASA's Perseverance Rover successfully cored its first rock! After a few attempts and some weird tests, the rover finally did what it was sent to Mars for: it was able to collect and store a rock sample. NASA wants to take better pics to confirm the sample is in the tube before proceeding to store and get it ready to return to Earth in a future mission, but they are confident everything is ok.
Radiation alert! Scientists found out that the maximum duration of a trip to mars has to be only four years for astronauts to survive the exposure to radiation - this imposes some restrictions to organizations planning the trip and forces everyone to study radiation shelters and suits way more urgently.
China is developing its own Mars helicopter! Now that we have learned so much after Ingenuity’s flights, they can make progress on top of what NASA has already discovered, pushing the engineering limits even more.
And what about ESA? ESA and Roscosmos are undergoing final testing of the ExoMars program that will take the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars by next year, right before shipping it to Kazakhstan for launch. After a lot of problems and delays, it seems that they are finally moving forward with the mission. Go, ESA!
Moon updates!
The Japanese company iSpace has unveiled the design of a new bigger lunar lander, capable of taking 500 kgs of payload to the surface of the moon and will be ready by 2024.
China is not forgetting the Moon! China wants to speed up its crewed missions to the Moon by reusing an existing rocket design and this way they are trying to get to the surface of the Moon, by 2030, maybe faster than NASA…this is a Moon race!
Bad news
This week we’ve seen Firefly Alpha rocket exploding during its first launch. It is very sad, but somewhat expected: launching a payload to orbit is far from being easy and this is just another step forward. They were able to collect tons of data that will help them get closer to their target next time, hopefully very soon. Go, Firefly!
Inspiration
SpaceX keeps making progress towards the Inspiration4 mission that will launch next week. With a duration of three days, launching on September 15th, this will be the first human spaceflight to orbit Earth with exclusively private citizens on board.
This week, the crew has visited the SpaceX facilities to experience the new transparent panoramic dome they have to experience great views from space: I’m so jealous!!!! 🙂
Launches of the week
Thursday, Sep 9th - Soyuz 2.1v | Razbeg #1 Roscosmos
Thursday, Sep 9th - Long March 3B/E | Zhongxing-9B
And that’s it!
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Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut