Space policy roundup – July.19.2019

July 19, 2019 TopSpacer

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:

Webcasts:

** Back to the Moon: This Time to Stay? – SETI Institute. The first of two public seminars on NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

… Greg Schmidt, Director of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), and Michael Sims, CEO, and founder of Ceres Robotics will present this first talk.

Greg leads NASA’s lunar exploration research program and will give us an update on Artemis. Michael, an expert on AI and robotic exploration, will describe the activities of Ceres Robotics in the exploration of the Moon and the understanding of its geology and surface properties. After a short presentation, both speakers will participate in a discussion about the past, present, and future of lunar exploration moderated by David Morrison, Senior Scientist at SSERVI and former director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute.

** July 16, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

** Episode T+126: The NASA Ousters – Main Engine Cut Off

** The Space Show – Tue, 07/16/2019 – Douglas Messier talked about Virgin Galactic, “human spaceflight, NASA key personnel changes, congressional funding for NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin and much more”.

====

Safe Is Not an Option

History, Space Arts, The Moon

Video: “How to Draw the Lunar Lander”

July 18, 2019 TopSpacer

Artist Stanley Von Medvey shows how to draw the Apollo lunar lander:

If you prefer to build a model of the lander, here are some paper model guides for download:

Here’s a 1960s era NASA fact sheet for the Lunar Module (pdf).

And a simulator: Eagle Lander 3D (EL3D)

====

Aoshima Apollo Lunar Module Eagle-5 Model Kit

Asteroids & Comets, Astronomy, Space Science

Space sciences roundup – July.17.2019

July 17, 2019 TopSpacer

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items:

Asteroids

** JAXA Hayabusa2 made a successful 2nd sample grab from asteroid Ryugu on July 11th. The :

From SFN:

The robot explorer’s sampling mechanism works by firing a metal bullet into the asteroid once the probe’s sampler horn, which extends from one side of the spacecraft, contacts the surface. The projectile is designed to blast away rock and dust on the asteroid’s surface, then direct the material through the sampler horn into a collection chamber inside the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft.

This image shows debris thrown up from the surface of Ryugu by the bullet.

Hayabusa2 2nd Touchdown — *Image of surface immediately after touchdown. Taken with the Optical Navigation Camera – Wide angle (ONC-W1). Credits: Hayabusa-2 project.*

A diagram of the touch-and-go surface sampling operation:

*Outline of the 2nd touchdown operation.*

More about the The 2nd touchdown – JAXA Hayabusa2 project

** Help OSIRIS-REx mission map the rugged surface of the Bennu asteroid NASA Invites Public to Help Asteroid Mission Choose Sample Site | NASA

Citizen scientists assemble! NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu needs extra pairs of eyes to help choose its sample collection site on the asteroid – and to look for anything else that might be scientifically interesting.

Bennu surface — “This image shows a view of asteroid Bennu’s surface in a region near the equator. It was taken by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on March 21 from a distance of 2.2 miles (3.5 km). The field of view is 158.5 ft (48.3 m). For scale, the light-colored rock in the upper left corner of the image is 24 ft (7.4 m) wide. Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona”

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been at Bennu since Dec. 3, 2018, mapping the asteroid in detail, while the mission team searches for a sample collection site that is safe, conducive to sample collection and worthy of closer study. One of the biggest challenges of this effort, which the team discovered after arriving at the asteroid five months ago, is that Bennu has an extremely rocky surface and each boulder presents a danger to the spacecraft’s safety. To expedite the sample selection process, the team is asking citizen scientist volunteers to develop a hazard map by counting boulders.

“For the safety of the spacecraft, the mission team needs a comprehensive catalog of all the boulders near the potential sample collection sites, and I invite members of the public to assist the OSIRIS-REx mission team in accomplishing this essential task,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For this effort, NASA is partnering with CosmoQuest, a project run out of the Planetary Science Institute that supports citizen science initiatives. Volunteers will perform the same tasks that planetary scientists do – measuring Bennu’s boulders and mapping its rocks and craters – through the use of a simple web interface. They will also mark other scientifically interesting features on the asteroid for further investigation.

The boulder mapping work involves a high degree of precision, but it is not difficult. The CosmoQuest mapping app requires a computer with a larger screen and a mouse or trackpad capable of making precise marks. To help volunteers get started, the CosmoQuest team provides an interactive tutorial, as well as additional user assistance through a Discord community and livestreaming sessions on Twitch.

For more info see:

Cosmoquest CSB – Bennu Mappers

Microgravity Science & Technology R&D

** SpaceX Cargo Dragon to deliver wide range of science and technology experiments to the ISS. Liftoff of mission CRS-18 is currently set for July 21st at 7:35 pm EDT (2335 GMT)

Highlights of Science Launching on SpaceX CRS 18 – July 8, 2019 –

Solar Science

** Sunspot count near zero in June. Faint spots subsequently show signs of start of next cycle: Sunspot update June 2019: Down to zero again, with next cycle making an appearance | Behind The Black

These two visible sunspots for the next solar cycle are very significant. They indicate that we will have an upcoming solar maximum, and are not heading into a grand minimum, when no sunspots are visible for decades.

Their appearance however does not mean that solar minimum is over. On the contrary, the solar cycles typically overlap by one or two years, with new sunspots for the next solar cycle appearing even as the Sun ramps down to minimum and remains relatively inactive for many months.

I cannot deny that I will be disappointed if a grand minimum does not occur. Such an event would have been a wonderful opportunity for solar scientists to get answers to their many questions about the Sun’s solar cycles that today remain unanswered and will likely not be answerable while the Sun follows its behavior of the last three hundred years.

At the same time, if the upcoming solar cycle is weak, as has been predicted by some solar scientists, it will help confirm some theories that try to explain the Sun’s behavior.

ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression - NOAA

Check SpaceWeather.com for the daily sunspot count. More solar images and measurements can be found on the Space-for-All page The Sun & Space Weather.

Continue reading Space sciences roundup – July.17.2019 →

General

Carnival of Space #619 & #620 – Urban Astronomer & Citizen Science

July 16, 2019 TopSpacer

The Urban Astronomer hosts the Carnival of Space #619. And the Citizen Science blog hosts the Carnival of Space #620.

*Artist’s rendering of a black hole and its accretion disk. Credits: Western News at Western University via Carnival of Space*

====

Manned Lunar Landing and Return

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – July.16.2019

July 16, 2019 TopSpacer

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** University built RFTSat to test space-based solar power microwave transmission system: Launch of RFTSat this Sunday! – The Propagation Group/Georgia Tech

This Sunday, a Falcon 9 rocket will launch a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will rendezvous with the International Space Station. Part of this mission will include RFTSat, developed by a team of Northwest Nazarene University (Boise, Idaho) led by Prof. Joshua Griffin and a team of Georgia Tech Researchers in ECE.

This CubeSat experiment will have a unique RF energy-harvesting radio designed and built by the Georgia Tech Propagation Group. PhD student researcher Cheng Qi has built a one-of-a-kind microwave backscatter reader and tag-sensor combo that will drive the mission science package.

The low-powered reader designed by our team deploys a sensor that unfurls a distance away from the spacecraft. The reader then energizes and receives backscatter information from the device using a 5.8 GHz transmission. The launch info can be tracked here. Interesting articles on the launch can be found here and here.

The project was funded by NASA, but could not have been completed without private matching funds from the Space Solar Power Institute. Complete with generator, retrodirective antenna, and rectenna harvester, the radio package qualifies as the first microwave space-based solar power satellite ever tested — despite the somewhat limited 1m range. You have to start somewhere!