NASA Looks to Rocketlab on Mars Sample Return

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Rocketlab.

NASA is moving forward with planned studies to address the Mars Sample Return. Earlier in the week, NASA awarded a contract to Rocketlab for this very purpose.

Rocketlab announced the following:

…the Company has been selected by NASA to complete a study for retrieving rock samples from the Martian surface and bringing them to Earth for the first time. The mission would fulfill some of the highest priority solar system exploration goals for the science community – to revolutionize humanity’s understanding of Mars, potentially answer whether life ever existed on the Martian surface, and help prepare for the first human explorers to the Red Planet.

NASA’s Rapid Mission Design Studies for Mars Sample Return solicits industry proposals to carry out rapid studies of mission designs and mission elements capable of delivering samples collected by the Mars Perseverance rover from the surface of Mars to Earth. The results of this study will inform a potential update to NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program and may result in future procurements with industry. Rocket Lab’s study will explore a simplified, end-to-end mission concept that would be delivered for a fraction of the current projected program cost and completed several years earlier than the current expected sample return date in 2040.

This is just one of many studies expected to be conducted to find the best method for interplanetary rock retrieval.

Good luck to Rocketlab and the other involved in this endeavor.

Good News: Hurricane Milton Had Little Impact on NASA Facilities

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): View of the Kennedy Space Center following Hurricane Milton. (NASA)

NASA has reported that it has so far detected little damage from Hurricane Milton at the Kennedy Space Center.

Here is what NASA shared today via Twitter/X:

Kennedy is now OPEN!

The Damage Assessment and Recovery Team has completed their assessment of the center and its facilities, and determined that employees can safely return on-site to resume working.

The damage identified is manageable and in-line with the items the Ride Out Teams previously identified, including minor impacts such as ripped awning, and damage to doors and traffic lights.

It is interesting that NASA is using DART in a whole way here compared to yesterday’s story about the European Space Agency’s Hera mission. I just hope that the DART mission never leads to a DART event here on Earth.

Pic of the Week: The Launch of Hera

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Visitors at ESA’s control center in Germany watching the Hera launch. (ESA / J.Mai)

This week’s image shows a crowd in Germany watching the launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission on October 7, 2024. The launch itself took place from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida via a SpaceX Falcon 9.

Hera’s goal is to study how binary asteroid systems like Didymos form and function to learn more about to defend the Earth from approaching asteroids. You may remember Didymos from the earlier NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

Here is more from the ESA on the mission:

Hera’s first deep space manoeuvre will begin in late October and put the spacecraft on course for its next major milestone, a flyby of Mars in March 2025. During this flyby, Hera will use its instruments to study Deimos, the smaller and more enigmatic of Mars’s two moons. This will serve as an important test for many of the spacecraft’s instruments, ensuring they are fully operational before the spacecraft arrives at its final destination, Didymos.

Hera will perform a second deep space manoeuvre in February 2026. An ‘impulsive rendezvous’ in October 2026 will bring Hera into the vicinity of the Didymos asteroid system. The spacecraft will begin its detailed survey of the moonlet Dimorphos in 2027, which will turn the 151 m asteroid into one of the most studied objects in the Solar System.

Space Stories: NASA’s Probe Explorers, Finding Exoplanet Atmospheres, and an Australian Space Antenna

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Universe Today: “NASA Announces a New Class of Space Missions: Probe Explorers“

NASA has sent a whole host of spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond. They range from crewed ships to orbit and to the Moon to robotic explorers. Among them are a range of mission classes from Flagships to Discovery Class programs. Now a new category has been announced: Probe Explorers. This new category will fill the gap between Flagship and smaller missions. Among them are two proposed missions; the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite and the Probe Far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics.

—uChicago News: “UChicago Researchers Use New Method of Finding Atmospheres in Distant Planets“

It is a major goal of astronomical research to find planets other than Earth that might be suitable for sustaining life. There are a number of factors which many scientists agree are essential to a planet being habitable, but an important one is whether or not a planet has an atmosphere. Scientists have found other rocky, Earth-like exoplanets, but none that we can definitively say have atmospheres. Finding these planets will reveal insights into how such atmospheres are formed and retained, so that we can better predict which planets could be habitable. A study conducted by University of Chicago PhD student Qiao Xue with Prof. Jacob Bean’s group has demonstrated a new way to determine if faraway exoplanets have an atmosphere—and showed that it was simpler and more efficient than previous methods. The new technique, when applied to more planets, has the potential to help us learn more about patterns in atmosphere formation.

—European Space Agency: “ESA Crowns New Deep Space Antenna in Australia“

A giant wakes as the Sun sets in Western Australia. The workers can finally rest easy after more than a day spent using an enormous crane to lift the colossal 122-tonne, 35-metre diameter reflector dish and crown ESA’s newest deep space communication antenna. With the dish and its quadrupole now installed, ESA is on track to inaugurate its fourth deep-space antenna, and second at the New Norcia site in Australia, by the end of 2025. Referred to as NNO3, the New Norcia 3 antenna will allow spacecraft to send and receive more valuable data collected from onboard scientific instruments and vital flight instructions for mission operations.