A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest (find previous space policy roundups here):
As more nations send satellites and missions into the galaxy, new questions about space ethics are being raised.
Advances in space technology potentially open up whole new worlds for humans to explore.
But what are the rules to prevent those technologies from having negative outcomes in the cosmos.
Associate Professor of Ethics and Leadership at UNSW Canberra, Dr Stephen Coleman spoke to ABC Radio Canberra’s Paula Kruger about some of the difficult questions regarding space travel.
In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk, Niklas Hedman, Chief of the Committee, Policy and Legal Affairs Section of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in Vienna talked about the governance phases under the 60 year history of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) and the “New Frontier” with increasing governance, commercial and scientific interests in planetary exploration, space resources, and planetary protection. The talk addressed the role of multilateralism in this “New Frontier” Era.
** E25 – What is Planetary Protection and Why Should We Care (Meg Abraham and Bhavya Lal) – Aerospace CSPS on Vimeo
Michael Maloney of Satellite Design for Recovery returns to the Cold Star Project, and we’re continuing our discussion of the problems in space traffic management. While many people think STM is already figured out, the truth is this is a phantom idea. Current systems are cobbled together and do not represent a serious solution to the problem. With host Jason Kanigan, Michael discusses:
– what space traffic management is and why we need it – how we can measure capacity and utilization in STM – why Air Traffic Control can be used as a model in developing a functional STM solution – what limits there are in executing a Space Traffic Management program – a future path to STM including better Space Situational Awareness, mitigation of space debris, and timely remediation.
** The Space Show – Mon. July.20.2020 – Rand Simberg “was welcomed back for a two segment 91 minute discussion about Apollo 11 and the entire Apollo program, the significance of the ceremony he and others created, Evoloterra (evoloterra.com) plus a commercial space and property rights update”.
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):
Mars
** Launch of the UAE Hope Mars mission on a Japanese H-IIA rocket on July 19th was a success. The spacecraft is on course to reach Mars and go into orbit in February. It’s primary mission is to study the Martian atmosphere and weather.
HOPE-2 infographic shows mission phases from launch to Mars orbit operations.
We received the Hope probe’s first sighting of its destination, Mars, after the spacecraft travelled one million km into space. Beyond the sky is where our dreams start. pic.twitter.com/jN7MBxKa7U
If you could stand on the surface of Mars, what would you hear? While 8 missions have returned stunning views from the surface of the Red Planet, none have returned any sound.
That’s about to change. NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is days away from blasting off on a mission to search for signs of past life and collect samples for future return to Earth, will have not one, but two microphones aboard. One will listen as the rover plummets through the Martian atmosphere for landing, and another will record sounds as the rover does its scientific work in Jezero Crater—an ancient river delta where life may have flourished.
“Even if only a few minutes of Martian sounds are recorded from this first experiment, the public interest will be high and the opportunity for scientific exploration real,” Sagan wrote.
NASA’s InSight lander has been using its robotic arm to help the heat probe known as the “mole” burrow into Mars. The mission is providing the first look at the Red Planet’s deep interior to reveal details about the formation of Mars and, ultimately, all rocky planets, including Earth.
Akin to a 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) pile driver, the self-hammering mole has experienced difficulty getting into the Martian soil since February 2019. It’s mostly buried now, thanks to recent efforts to push down on the mole with the scoop on the end of the robotic arm. But whether it will be able to dig deep enough – at least 10 feet (3 meters) – to get an accurate temperature reading of the planet remains to be seen. Images taken by InSight during a Saturday, June 20, hammering session show bits of soil jostling within the scoop – possible evidence that the mole had begun bouncing in place, knocking the bottom of the scoop.
NASA InSight’s ‘Mole’ Taps the Bottom of the Lander’s Scoop – NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: After the scoop on the end of NASA’s Mars InSight lander was used to push down on the top of the spacecraft’s “mole,” or self-hammering heat probe, it was held in place to essentially block the mole from popping out of the soil. The movement of sand grains in the scoop, seen here, suggested that the mole had began bumping up against the bottom of the scoop while hammering on June 20, 2020. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Comparative images from NASA’s InSight Mars lander from Sol 10 to Sol 578 show that the spacecraft is quite dusty.
Robotic arm-mounted, Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) images taken on December 7, 2018, Sol 10 and recent July 12, 2020, Sol 578 photos reveal the coating of Mars dust.
InSight landed on the Red Planet on November 26, 2018.
** The latest on Curiosity rover’s activities and plans:
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. By trip’s end, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it’s been exploring since 2014, searching for conditions that may have supported ancient microbial life.
Located on the floor of Gale Crater, Mount Sharp is composed of sedimentary layers that built up over time. Each layer helps tell the story about how Mars changed from being more Earth-like – with lakes, streams and a thicker atmosphere – to the nearly-airless, freezing desert it is today.
Once they complete this week’s drilling effort, expect the rover to quickly head east again, aiming for the gap between the very rough Greenheugh Piedmont and the first steep cliffs of Mt. Sharp. They hope to reach this point in the fall, when the rover will finally leave the foothills of Mt Sharp and begin climbing the mountain. Their goal is the dark canyon in the first image above, uphill from where Curiosity sits now.
** Leonard David also gives frequent updates on Curiosity’s roving:
It’s a banner year for sample return missions. Not since the 1970s has there been so much invested in returning rocks to Earth from space. This year, China, Japan, and the United States will all have sample return missions in flight, seeking to retrieve material from near-Earth asteroids, the Moon, and eventually Mars.
It might seem a bit far-fetched but yes, it’s true: if you could line up all of the other planets in our Solar System in a row edge-to-edge (or more geometrically accurately, limb-to-limb) and for good measure even include Pluto, the entire queue would easily fit within the space between Earth and the Moon.
On its way inbound for a Dec. 26, 2019, flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew in the proximity of the north pole of the ninth-largest object in the solar system, the moon Ganymede. The infrared imagery collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument provides the first infrared mapping of the massive moon’s northern frontier.
Larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede consists primarily of water ice. Its composition contains fundamental clues for understanding the evolution of the 79 Jovian moons from the time of their formation to today.
Ganymede is also the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. On Earth, the magnetic field provides a pathway for plasma (charged particles from the Sun) to enter our atmosphere and create aurora. As Ganymede has no atmosphere to impede their progress, the surface at its poles is constantly being bombarded by plasma from Jupiter’s gigantic magnetosphere. The bombardment has a dramatic effect on Ganymede’s ice.
“The JIRAM data show the ice at and surrounding Ganymede’s north pole has been modified by the precipitation of plasma,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “It is a phenomenon that we have been able to learn about for the first time with Juno because we are able to see the north pole in its entirety.”
“These images [from the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft [taken] on Dec. 26, 2019, provide the first infrared mapping of Ganymede’s northern frontier. Frozen water molecules detected at both poles have no appreciable order to their arrangement and a different infrared signature than ice at the equator.” Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAMSee also: First Images of Jovian Moon Ganymede’s North Pole | Mission Juno.
Astronomy
** A big list of the most exotic objects detected in the universe is being maintained by the Berkeley SETI program:
San Francisco, CA – June 22, 2020 – Breakthrough Listen, the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the Universe, today released an innovative catalog of “Exotica” – a diverse list of objects of potential interest to astronomers searching for technosignatures (indicators of technology developed by extraterrestrial intelligence). The catalog is a collection of over 700 distinct targets intended to include “one of everything” in the observed Universe – ranging from comets to galaxies, from mundane objects to the most rare and violent celestial phenomena.
The comprehensive new catalog is the first in recent times that aims to span the entire breadth of astrophysical phenomena, from distant galaxies, to objects in our own Solar System. The Listen team developed it conceptually, compiled it, and shared it with the astronomical community in the hope that it can guide future surveys – studying life beyond Earth and/or natural astrophysics – and serve as a general reference guide for the field.
“Many discoveries in astronomy were not planned,” remarked the lead author of the new catalog, Dr. Brian Lacki. “Sometimes a major new discovery was missed when nobody was looking in the right place, because they believed nothing could be found there. This happened with exoplanets, which might have been detected before the 1990s if astronomers looked for solar systems very different than ours. Are we looking in the wrong places for technosignatures? The Exotica catalog will help us answer that question.”
“The catalog is not just limited to SETI, though,” noted Lacki. “My hope is that any program with a new capability may use the Exotica catalog as a shakedown cruise around the Universe.”
Sun
** First images from ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter released.
“The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft took these images on 30 May 2020. They show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees.”. Credits: ESA
The ratio of next cycle sunspots vs sunspots from the past maximum has also been shifting. More and more, the new sunspots belong to the next cycle and less to the last. The ramp up to the next maximum is definitely beginning, though to call it a “ramp up” at this point is a big exaggeration. Sunspot activity remains low, though the last few months have seen some activity, unlike the seven months of nothing seen during the second half of last year.
The upcoming prediction for the next maximum calls for it to be very weak. Interestingly, the activity in June surpassed that prediction. This does not mean that the prediction will be wrong, only that June was more active when compared to the smooth prediction curve. As the cycle unfolds the monthly numbers will fluctuate up and down, as they did last cycle. The question will be whether their overall numbers will match closely with the prediction. In the past cycle actual sunspot activity was consistently below all predictions. It is too soon to say how well the new prediction is doing.
The unusual dark greenish and glistening “gel-like” substance in a crater on the far side of the moon has attracted widespread interest following its discovery by the Chang’e-4 rover in July 2019.
A research team led by Prof. DI Kaichang from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators analyzed the substance in detail by using multiple datasets from the rover’s panoramic camera (Pancam), hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam), and the visible and near-infrared spectrometer (VNIS).
The researchers found that the unusual substance is actually an impact melt breccia, and the provenance of the rover measured surrounding regolith might originate from a differentiated melt pool or from a suite of igneous rocks. Their findings were published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
“Impact melt breccia and surrounding context.” Credits: CNSA, CLEP, and AIR
What started out as a hunt for ice lurking in polar lunar craters turned into an unexpected finding that could help clear some muddy history about the Moon’s formation.
Team members of the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft found new evidence that the Moon’s subsurface might be richer in metals, like iron and titanium, than researchers thought. That finding, published July 1 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, could aid in drawing a clearer connection between Earth and the Moon.
“The LRO mission and its radar instrument continue to surprise us with new insights about the origins and complexity of our nearest neighbor,” said Wes Patterson, Mini-RF principal investigator from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and a study coauthor.
** Investigating ancient volcanism on the Moon with images and altimetry data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO):
“Kathleen, a pyroclastic vent, and Rima Mozart extending east from the vent found in the eastern-most DTM in the Featured Image (seen above). Centered at 25.3263°N, 359.322°E – here in Quickmap.” Credits: LRO
The image above, reduced to post here, is a colorized digital terrain model produced from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) data. On top of the original mosaic of photos the LRO science team has overlaid the elevation data obtained by LRO’s laser altimeter. It shows a tadpole shaped pit dubbed Kathleen, with its tail trailing off to the southeast. As they note:
Kathleen is a pyroclastic vent with a sinuous rille (colloquially known as Rima Mozart [Not IAU confirmed]) that extends from the southeast end of the vent. Rilles are large channels formed by sustained channelized lava flows. This vent is a great location to investigate ancient volcanism on the Moon.
The elevation data reveals one interesting feature: The lowest part of the vent pit is not at its western end, where one would think at first glance, based on the general dip that produced the rill flowing to the east. That the lowest point is at the widest section of the pit instead suggests that this pit no longer looks as it did when it was venting. In the almost four billion years since it is thought all volcanic activity here ceased, there has been plenty of time for the slow erosion processes on the Moon, caused by radiation, micrometeorites, and the solar wind, to partly fill this pit and round out its cliff walls.
A near-Earth binary asteroid system, named after the Greek word for ‘twin’, Didymos’s main body measures about 780 m across, with its previously nameless moonlet about 160 m in diameter, approximately the size of Egypt’s Great Pyramid.
In 2022, this moonlet will be the target of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first full-scale demonstration of an asteroid deflection technology for planetary defence. ESA’s Hera mission will be launched two years later, to perform a close-up survey of Dimorphos, along with its parent asteroid, following DART’s impact.
NASA DART will impact the small Dimorphos companion to the Didymos asteroid in 2022. Credits: ESA
“Dimorphos is Greek for ‘having two forms’,” says Kleomenis Tsiganis, a planetary scientist at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and member of both the DART and Hera teams, who suggested the name.
“It has been chosen in anticipation of its future status as the first celestial body to have its ‘physique’ intentionally altered by human intervention, the kinetic impact of DART. Hence, it will be known to us by two, very different forms, the one seen by DART before impact and the other seen by Hera, a few years later.”
DART’s kinetic impact into Dimorphos is expected to alter its orbit around Didymos as well as create a substantial crater, which will be studied by the Hera spacecraft when it arrives several years later. The DART impact itself will be recorded by the Italian-made LICIACube CubeSat, deployed from DART several days earlier, with longer-term effects studied by telescopes on Earth’s surface and in space.
Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is nearly home. Having collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu last year, the spacecraft is just months away from returning them to Earth. The samples contain material that likely dates back to the dawn of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago. They could provide fresh insights into how celestial bodies came to be and even how life on Earth began. But before all that, there is the small matter of getting Hayabusa2’s precious cargo down from the harsh vacuum of space and safely into scientists’ hands.
On July 14 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in partnership with the Australian Space Agency, announced the landing date for the samples: December 6, 2020. JAXA’s landing site for the mission is a 122,000-square-kilometer region of South Australian outback known as the Woomera Range Complex. “Woomera is a very remote area,” says Karl Rodrigues, acting deputy director of the Australian Space Agency. “It makes it ideal for the safe management and landing of this particular craft and capsule.”
** Watch Comet Neowise from the ISS to the accompaniment of a nice soundtrack:
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Fruit Punch and Foam: Managing Liquids in Space – NASA Johnson
When NASA astronaut Doug Hurley squeezed a bag of fruit punch aboard the International Space Station last month, he did not get a refreshing drink. Instead, the red fluid that emerged from his drink bag wound down a clear tube, and soaked into a block of white foam. While it might not look like much, this simple experiment is providing researchers with better information about managing liquids in microgravity. Learn more here: https://go.nasa.gov/32JQUPM Learn more about the research being conducted on station: https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science
** SpaceX Crew Dragon Flies Through Habitability Testing – NASA Johnson
It is a “demonstration” mission, so the crew of the SpaceX Crew Dragon are demonstrating that the systems on this new commercial spaceship all work as designed while it’s docked to the International Space Station. Take a look inside while the Expedition 63 crew members verify that astronauts and cosmonauts can live, work, and sleep as planned when the vehicle is executing its mission in space. Additional footage from the Habitability tests on July 8, 2020
** Expedition 63 Inflight interview with Yahoo Finance KPRC TV – July 24, 2020
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA and NASA Flight Engineers Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken discussed life on the orbital outpost and preparations for a return to Earth for Hurley and Behnken on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft during a pair of in-flight interviews July 24 with Yahoo Finance News and KPRC-TV, Houston. Cassidy is in the midst of a six-hand-a-half month mission on the laboratory while Hurley and Behnken are in the final days of their mission following their launch on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket May 30 that restored a U.S. launch capability from U.S. soil. Hurley and Behnken are scheduled to return to Earth on the Crew Dragon vehicle Aug. 2 for the first splashdown of U.S. astronauts since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.
** Expedition 63 Progress 76 Docking – NASA TV
An unpiloted Russian cargo ship blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan July 23 on a delivery mission to bring some three tons of food, fuel and hardware to the residents of the International Space Station. The ISS Progress 76 craft arrived at the complex less than four hours after launch, automatically docking to the Pirs Docking Compartment on the Russian segment of the station where it will spend a little more than three months.
A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):
Germany’s University of Wurzburg Experimental-4 (UWE-4) cubesat avoided a potential collision in early July while lowering its altitude with Morpheus Space’s NanoFEEP electric propulsion system.
It was the first time a one-unit cubesat performed a collision-avoidance maneuver, Istvan Lorincz, Morpheus president and co-founder, told SpaceNews.
“UWE ‑ 4 with Thrusters, Neutralizer and a new kind of sun sensors on each panel.” Credits: Univ. of Wurzburg
The 1U CubeSat, developed and built at the Chair for Robotics and Telematics, is equipped with the electric propulsion system NanoFEEP which has been developed by TU Dresden.
Several manoeuvres have been performed within 11 days between June 23rd – July 3rd 2020 such that the altitude of the CubeSat was reduced by more than 100 m, compared to an average of 21 m with natural decay. This marks the first time in CubeSat history that a 1U CubeSat changed its orbit using an on-board propulsion system.
As chance would have it, the team of UWE-4 received a conjunction data message (CDM) in the morning of July 2nd 2020 from the United Air Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron. A conjunction of UWE-4 with a non-operational Iridium satellite (ID: 34147) in the morning of July 5th 2020 with a minimum range of about 800 m was a threat to the safety of UWE-4. An analysis has shown that the altitude of UWE-4 would already be below the Iridium satellite at the time of conjunction. Thus the on-going altitude lowering manoeuvre could only improve the situation and can be considered as a collision avoidance manoeuvre. No further CDMs have been issued regarding this possible conjunction. An analysis of the orbit of the two spacecraft after July 5th 2020 results in a closest approach of more than 6000 m.
** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects:
PLIX CubeSats – “A series of creative learning workshops designed to support public library patrons in learning about outer space environments and how they can be characterized with small spacecrafts. “
Millennium Space experiment to measure speed of satellite deorbiting system – SpaceNews – “A few days into the mission, one of the satellites will autonomously deploy a 230-foot-long Terminator Tape tether provided by Tethers Unlimited. The untethered satellite will be allowed to naturally decay. Millennium will use radar to track them and collect data.”
** Florian Gautier – Landing CubeSats On Asteroids – Cold Star Project S02E50
University of Kansas Doctoral candidate (Physics and Astronomy) Florian Gautier is on the Cold Star Project to discuss several of the research projects he’s been involved in. With host Jason Kanigan, Florian describes his aerospace engineering and astrophysics education journey from Europe to North America and opportunities to work on:
– Student CubeSat project at ISAE-SUPAERO to develop 12U cubesats for missions like ATISE – Land3U project, simulation of CubeSat landing on asteroids, sponsored by ESA Drop Your Thesis! 2018 programme (the drop tower used is fascinating) – AGILE, development of a new compact particle detectors suitable to be flown on a CubeSat.
I also ask Florian, who has two Masters degrees (Astronautics & Space Engineering and Astrophysics, Space Science & Planetary Science), about his future goals and where he thinks space work will take him.
Welcome to Week 1 of PLIX CubeSats Online! 🛰️ In this session, we’ll be covering the PLIX CubeSats activities, a series of creative learning workshops designed to support public library patrons in learning about outer space environments and how they can be characterized with small spacecrafts. Read more about the CubeSats activity on our PLIX Activity Repository: – PLIX CubeSats
** Generating Quantum Random Numbers On a CubeSat (SpooQy-1)
CQT Online Talks – Series: Conference presentations This talk was given at CLEO. Speaker: Ayesha Reezwana, Alexander Ling Group, CQT,
NUS Abstract: We demonstrate a quantum random number generator based on entangled photon-pair statistics on-board a CubeSat orbiting in Low Earth Orbit.
