Space Stories: Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is Back, Reclaiming More Water on the ISS, and Directly Imaging an Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—NASA: “NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Phones Home“

The 52nd flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is now in the official mission logbook as a success. The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing. The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. 

—Phys.org: “NASA Achieves Water Recovery Milestone on International Space Station“

Astronauts on interplanetary missions will be a bit less thirsty after a new NASA system succeeded at reclaiming 98% of waste water aboard the International Space Station (ISS) by converting things like urine into a drinkable state. Future crewed deep space missions that will last months or even years will be very different from any that have come before. Until now, astronauts have either carried their own supplies along or relied on regular visits from cargo ships. As to waste products, these were simply disposed of in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, deep space missions don’t have that luxury.

—SCI.News: “Astronomers Directly Image Jupiter-Like Exoplanet around Nearby Young Star“

AF Leporis is a bright F8V star located about 87.5 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Lepus. Also known as AF Lep, HD 35850, HIP 25486 and HR 1817, the star has an age of 24 million years and a mass of 1.2 solar masses. The star hosts a young exoplanet, AF Leporis b (AF Lep b), which is located about 8 times the Earth-Sun distance and is among the first ever discovered using a technique called astrometry. This method measures the subtle movements of a host star over many years to help astronomers determine whether hard-to-see orbiting companions, including planets, are gravitationally tugging at it.

Space Quote: NASA’s Mars Simulator Has Long-term Guests

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Interior of NASA’s Mars Simulator, the Mars Dune Alpha. (NASA)

“They are about to embark on an analog mission that encompasses operations, logistics, and research of living and working on Mars. The importance of this study cannot be overstated…NASA scientists will learn critical insights on the physical and behavioral aspects of a mission on Mars.”

-Statement by Judith Hayes, NASA’s Chief Science Officer in the Human Health and Performance Directorate, as quoted in Universe Today. The four member “crew” entered the simulator last week and will live in the 1,700 square foot facility for the next year. The year-long mission is one of three planned by NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

A Success for Virgin Galactic

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Interior of Galactic 01 after the successful launch. (Virgin Galactic)

Last Thursday, Virgin Galactic successfully brought paying customers to space, or at least to the edge of space. In this case, it was three Italians, an instructor, and two pilots. You can watch a video of the flight here.

Below is the statement by Virgin Galactic’s CEO:

Tourist flights (at $450,000 per seat) are expected to begin next month. It is too bad that this flight comes so close to the loss of the Titan submersible, but the show must go on.

I expect we might learn just as much about our home planet at the bottom of the sea than miles up in the atmosphere, but such learning will be dangerous and need the right people and skills. The rest is playful profits.

ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope Safely Launched

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: ESA

Earier today, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Space Telescope was safely launched from Cape Canaveral on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket (though the original plan was to use a Russian Soyuz rocket until the invasion nixed that idea). The space telescope is destined for the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), which is an average distance of 1 million miles beyond Earth’s orbit. It will join the James Webb Space Telescope.

In addition to the 1.2 meter diameter telescope, the mission includes two scientific instruments: a visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument, VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP). 

The focus of the new space telescope will be to create a 3D map of the universe to better understand dark matter and dark energy. As noted on the ESA’s website, Euclid hopes to answer these questions:

  • What is the structure and history of the cosmic web?
  • What is the nature of dark matter?
  • How has the expansion of the Universe changed over time?
  • What is the nature of dark energy?
  • Is our understanding of gravity complete?

It is a tall order for this new telescope. Astronomer Isobel Hook from the UK’s Lancaster University put it this way to BBC News:

It will be like setting off on a ship before people knew where land was in different directions. We’ll be mapping out the Universe to try to understand where we fit into it and how we’ve got here – how the whole Universe got from the point of the Big Bang to the beautiful galaxies we see around us, the Solar System and to life.

Pondering ‘Oumuamua on International Asteroid Day

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of Oumuamua, an asteroid from outside out solar system. (JPL/NASA)

On International Asteroid Day, I thought it was worth revisiting an earlier video from Cool Worlds Lab on the first detected asteroid from outside our solar system. The video, “‘Oumuamua: An Interstellar Visitor,” notes that scientists have never seen an asteroid within our solar system with these cigar-shaped dimension.

Scientists now believe that more that 10,000 of such alien comments are now present in our solar system. That may offer us an opportunity for a future mission to study such an asteroid and learn about another solar system (given that the asteroids tend to stick around for about 10 years). It may also give us a better idea as whether such asteroids could have introduced life into our solar system.

This is quite a bit to ponder on this day dedicated to pondering asteroids.