Space Stories: Fancy Space Suits, Giant Blinding Satellites, and More Russian Space Station Leaks

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Credit: Dezeen

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Dezeen: “Prada Designing Lunar Spacesuits for NASA Moon Mission“

Fashion house Prada has teamed up with commercial space company Axiom Space to create lunar spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis III mission, which will be the first crewed moon landing since 1972. Called Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the suits will be designed to give astronauts “advanced capabilities for space exploration,” Prada said. They are an evolution of NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit design and will use “innovative technologies and design” to be more flexible and provide more protection against the harsh lunar environment, according to the brand.

—Scientific American: “Giant Satellite Outshines Most Stars in the Sky“

On some nights, one of the brightest objects in the sky is neither a planet nor a star. It is a telecommunications satellite called BlueWalker 3, and at times it outshines 99% of the stars visible from a dark location on Earth, according to observations reported today in Nature. BlueWalker 3 is the most brilliant recent addition to a sky that is already swarming with satellites. The spaceflight company SpaceX alone has launched more than 5,000 satellites into orbit, and companies around the globe have collectively proposed launching more than half a million satellites in the coming years — a scenario that astronomers fear could hamper scientific observations of the Universe.

—The Guardian: “Third Space Station Leak in a Year Prompts Doubts About Russia’s Programme“

The Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has sprung its third coolant leak in under a year, raising new questions about the reliability of the country’s space programme even as officials said crew members were not in danger. Flakes of frozen coolant spraying into space were seen in an official live feed of the orbital lab provided by Nasa on Monday, and confirmed in radio chatter between US mission control and astronauts. “The Nauka module of the Russian segment of the ISS has suffered a coolant leak from the external (backup) radiator circuit, which was delivered to the station in 2012,” Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Telegram, adding temperatures remained normal in the affected unit.

Space Missions: Good News for an Asteroid Sample, But Bad News for a Lunar Rover

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Image (Credit): NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule safely situated in the Utah desert earlier today. (Keegan Barber/NASA)

First, let discuss the good news. The capsule carrying the sample material from the asteroid Bennu successfully landed in the Utah desert earlier today, as planned. NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission was a success. The space agency has plenty to celebrate.

And now for the bad news. India’s Chandrayaan-3 moon lander as well as its lunar rover were supposed to wake up around September 22 with the return of sunlight to the Moon’s South Pole. Unfortunately, neither craft showed any signs of coming back online. That said, the India space agency still has plenty to celebrate given its ability to successfully explore the South Pole before night set in.

Pic of the Week: Shackleton Crater

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Image (Credit): Shackleton Crater on the lunar surface. (Mosaic created by LROC and ShadowCam teams with images provided by NASA/KARI/ASU)

This week’s image shows the Shackleton Crater located at the Moon’s South Pole. To create what you see above, an image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) was combined with another image from ShadowCam, a NASA instrument on board a KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) spacecraft called Danuri,

Here is more information from NASA concerning the two cameras:

LROC can capture detailed images of the lunar surface but has limited ability to photograph shadowed parts of the Moon that never receive direct sunlight, known as permanently shadowed regions. ShadowCam is 200-times more light-sensitive than LROC and can operate successfully in these extremely low-light conditions, revealing features and terrain details that are not visible to LROC. ShadowCam relies on sunlight reflected off lunar geologic features or the Earth to capture images in the shadows.

ShadowCam’s light sensitivity, however, renders it unable to capture images of parts of the Moon that are directly illuminated, delivering saturated results. With each camera optimized for specific lighting conditions found near the lunar poles, analysts can combine images from both instruments to create a comprehensive visual map of the terrain and geologic features of both the brightest and darkest parts of the Moon. The permanently shadowed areas in this mosaic, such as the interior floor and walls of Shackleton Crater, are visible in such detail because of the imagery from ShadowCam. In contrast, the sunlit areas in this mosaic, like the rim and flanks of the crater, are a product of imagery collected by LROC.

Space Quote: Venezuela Aims for the Moon

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Image (Credit): Artist’s concept of a Chinese Moon base. (South China Morning Post)

“…scientific, technological, industrial and aerospace cooperation will sooner rather than later (send) the first Venezuelan man and woman to the moon in a Chinese spacecraft.”

–Statement by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in reference to an agreement with China that would train Venezuelan astronauts in China in preparation for a future Moon mission. China has previously stated its plans to land humans on the lunar surface by 2030 and establish a Moon base in the 2030s. Other countries have already signed agreements with China related to the lunar base, including Russia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Space Stories: New Lunar Water Estimates, Coronal Mass Ejection, and Oxygen on Mars

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Image (Credit): Shadows on the Moon’s south pole. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Southwest Research Institute: “New Findings Suggest Moon May Have Less Water Than Previously Thought“

A team recently calculated that most of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are at most around 3.4 billion years old and can contain relatively young deposits of water ice. Water resources are considered key for sustainable exploration of the Moon and beyond, but these findings suggest that current estimates for cold-trapped ices are too high.

—Scientific American: “Massive Sun Outburst Smacks NASA Spacecraft“

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was built to withstand the ravages of the environment near our sun—and with good reason. The car-size spacecraft has now flown through a giant solar outburst of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME). If that CME had it hit Earth instead, it may have caused vast, continent-wide blackouts, scientists say. Some of those searing particles whipped through space at about three million miles per hour.

—BGR: “NASA Successfully Generated Oxygen on Mars“

NASA’s Perseverance rover has done the unthinkable. Or, at least, a small device on the rover has. According to a tweet and article shared by NASA’s Perseverance team on Twitter, a device known only as MOXIE has proven that we can generate oxygen on Mars using the planet’s CO2-concentrated atmosphere. This tech is a huge boon, and the success of this story could help pave the way for future oxygen generation on the Red Planet, something that would make long-term exploration of the planet far more feasible.