NASA's new solar sail system to be tested on-board NanoAvionics' satellite

NanoAvionics has been selected to build a 12U nanosatellite bus for an in-orbit demonstration of NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3). This a result of a contract between NASA Ames Research Center and AST for a 12U bus to carry NASA's payload into low Earth orbit (LEO) including an approximately 800 square foot (74 square meter) composite boom and solar sail system. The aim of the ACS3 mission is to replace conventional rocket propellants by developing and testing solar sails using sunlight beams to thrust the nanosatellite. These solar sail propulsion systems are designed for future small interplanetary spacecrafts destined for low-cost deep-space and science missions requiring long-duration, low-thrust propulsion. With already more than 75 successful satellite missions and satellite-related commercial projects, NanoAvionics will assemble the 12U bus at its new Columbia facility in Illinois, while the final integration of the payload will be carried out at NASA Ames facilities. Matching NASA Ames' mission requirements, the 12U bus shares the same flight-proven subsystems as NanoAvionics' flagship M6P bus but with up to 10U payload volume. The larger volume will be necessary to provide enough room for the 4.6 kg payload that includes the composite boom and solar sail system as well as cameras to monitor the solar sail during and after deployment. "I'm tremendously proud and excited that NanoAvionics will be part of NASA's effort to validate a new beam-powered propulsion system, eventually leading to more marvelous deep-space missions following the first inter-planetary CubeSats MarCO-A and B (Mars Cube One)," said F. Brent Abbott, CEO of NanoAvionics North America.

"The technology demonstration using NanoAvionics' 12U bus will be the first ever in-orbit trial of NASA's composite booms as well as sail packing and deployment systems for a solar sail. It will guide the development of a next generation nanosatellites with solar sail propulsion system for small inter-planetary spacecraft."

As part of this agreement the company will also supply a mechanical testbed model and a FlatSat model. In addition, a team of NanoAvionics engineers will provide the support required for testing, integration and operations of the nanosatellite.

The FlaSat model has identical software functionality as the final 12U bus hardware, hosting the actual payload. It allows NASA Ames to run tests via remote network connectivity without having to ship equipment back and forth. The mechanical testbed model can be used for testing payload integration and other mechanical tests, such as the deployment of solar sails.

In 2018 AST acquired a controlling interest in NanoAvionics as part of its strategy to establish manufacturing capabilities in Europe and North America. Abel Avellan, CEO and chairman of AST serves as chairman of NanoAvionics' Board of Directors.

Airbus will support France and India to monitor climate change with TRISHNA

The French Space Agency (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, CNES) has recently signed a contract with Airbus Defence and Space for the development and manufacture of the thermal infrared instrument for the TRISHNA satellite. TRISHNA (Thermal infraRed Imaging Satellite for High resolution Natural resource Assessment) will be the latest satellite in the joint Franco-Indian satellite fleet dedicated to climate monitoring and operational applications. CNES and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) are partnering on the development of an infrared observation system with high thermal resolution and high revisit capability including a satellite and associated ground segment. TRISHNA observations will enhance our understanding of the water cycle and improve management of the planet's precious water resources, to better define the impacts of climate change, especially at local levels. In the international partnership workshare, ISRO will provide the platform, the visible and short wave infrared instrument and will be the prime contractor for the satellite, while CNES is co-responsible for the mission and will provide the thermal infrared instrument, to be developed by Airbus. The ground segment is shared between both countries. For this mission, Airbus is leveraging the latest innovations and synergies from other programmes (IASI-NG, CO3D...) to offer an affordable high performance instrument, with the aim of encouraging development of a commercial market.

Measuring surface temperatures provides information on hydric stress - a lack of water - and its impact on the vegetative cycle, and this monitoring of water and energy cycles is one of the main objectives of the mission, to be applied particularly in agriculture and hydrology.

"This mission will also serve numerous other applications: surveillance of continental and coastal waters, follow up of urban heat traps, risk monitoring (fire detection and volcanic activity), study of the cryosphere (glaciers, frozen lakes) and radiation budget assessment.

TRISHNA represents a significant step forward, both in terms of resolution and refresh rate, compared with existing missions, improving research opportunities and enabling further development of applications.

While existing missions are limited in terms of resolution (above 1km) and with revisit only every few weeks, TRISHNA will image the Earth every three days, at 50m resolution, observing a wide temperature range, from approx. -20C to +30C, with high precision (0.3C).

Jean-Marc Nasr, Head of Space Systems at Airbus said: "Thanks to ambitious science missions like TRISHNA, our industry has reached a technological maturity that opens up a new era of commercial observation of the Earth and all related applications.

"France's world-leading expertise in the Earth observation export market, combined with the unmatched efficiency and ambition of the Indian Space industry is going to bring thermal infrared imagery to a new level. This will enable breakthrough applications in agriculture, urban and coastal zone management, meteorology, climate science and many commercial applications."

NASA CubeSat Will Shine a Laser Light on the Moon's Darkest Craters

As astronauts explore the Moon during the Artemis program, they may need to make use of the resources that already exist on the lunar surface. Take water, for instance: Because it's a heavy and therefore expensive resource to launch from Earth, our future explorers might have to seek out ice to mine. Once excavated, it can be melted and purified for drinking and used for rocket fuel. But how much water is there on the Moon, and where might we find it? This is where NASA's Lunar Flashlight comes in. About the size of a briefcase, the small satellite - also known as a CubeSat - aims to detect naturally occurring surface ice believed to be at the bottom of craters on the Moon that have never seen sunlight. "Although we have a pretty good idea there's ice inside the coldest and darkest craters on the Moon, previous measurements have been a little bit ambiguous," said Barbara Cohen, principal investigator of the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Scientifically, that's fine, but if we're planning on sending astronauts there to dig up the ice and drink it, we have to be sure it exists." Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the spacecraft is a technology demonstration: It will seek to achieve several technological firsts, including being the first mission to look for water ice using lasers. It will also be the first planetary spacecraft to use a "green" propellant, a new kind of fuel that is safer to transport and store than the commonly used spacecraft propellant hydrazine.

"A technology demonstration mission like Lunar Flashlight, which is lower cost and fills a specific gap in our knowledge, can help us better prepare for an extended NASA presence on the Moon as well as test key technologies that may be used in future missions," said John Baker, Lunar Flashlight project manager at JPL.

Peering Into the Shadows

Over the course of two months, Lunar Flashlight will swoop low over the Moon's South Pole to shine its lasers into permanently shadowed regions and probe for surface ice. Found near the North and South Poles, these dark craters are thought to be "cold traps" that accumulate molecules of different ices, including water ice. The molecules may have come from comet and asteroid material impacting the lunar surface and from solar wind interactions with the lunar soil.

"The Sun moves around the crater horizon but never actually shines into the crater," said Cohen, whose team includes scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Colorado. "Because these craters are so cold, these molecules never receive enough energy to escape, so they become trapped and accumulate over billions of years."

Lunar Flashlight's four-laser reflectometer will use near-infrared wavelengths that are readily absorbed by water to identify any accumulations of ice on the surface. Should the lasers hit bare rock as they shine into the South Pole's permanently shadowed regions, their light will reflect back to the spacecraft, signaling a lack of ice. But if the light is absorbed, it would mean these dark pockets do indeed contain ice. The greater the absorption, the more widespread ice may be at the surface.

While the CubeSat can provide information only about the presence of ice on the surface, and not below it, Lunar Flashlight seeks to fill a critical gap in our understanding of how much water ice these regions possess. "We will also be able to compare the Lunar Flashlight data with the great data that we already have from other Moon-orbiting missions to see if there are correlations in signatures of water ice, thereby giving us a global view of surface ice distribution," added Cohen.

The mission is detailed in a new paper published in the April 2020 issue of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.

Lunar Flashlight is funded by the Small Spacecraft Technology program within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program is based at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. It will be one of 13 secondary payloads aboard the Artemis I mission, the first integrated flight test of NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems, including the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launching from the newly upgraded Exploration Ground Systems at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Space Surveillance Telescope Sees First Light: through US and Australian Partnership

In partnership with the Australian Ministry of Defense, the U.S. Space Force's (USSF) Space and Missile Systems Center's (SMC) Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) Program recently achieved "first light" on March 5, 2020, reaching a key milestone after it was moved from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico to Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Station in Western Australia. "This key Space Domain Awareness, or SDA, partnership builds on the long history of close defense space cooperation between the United States and Australia and has been a cornerstone of our continued alliance," said Gordon Kordyak, SMC Special Programs Directorate Space Domain Awareness Division chief. Moving the SST to Australia satisfied a critical objective to improve the broader USSF Space Surveillance Network's ground-based electro-optical coverage of the geosynchronous space regime. First light is a significant milestone in meeting this objective. It means that course alignment of the telescope optics with the wide field of view camera has been completed to allow the first images of objects in orbit to be seen by the telescope. "Whether it is space traffic management or the protection and defense of critical space-based capabilities, delivering sensors that continuously improve our ability to maintain real-time awareness of the space domain is essential to facilitate the broader needs of both the U.S. and Australia," said Lani Smith, SMC Special Programs Directorate deputy director. "The SST program, which is a jointly operated program, represents delivery of our next iteration of sensing capability to meet this need."

The collaboration and installation of the SST in Australia included the successful completion of an Australian purpose-built facility with mission-enabling site infrastructure and a 2-Megawatt Central Power Station for powering the telescope and the site. Moving forward, SST will undergo a comprehensive integration and testing regime before officially entering service in 2022.

Once operational, the SST will become part of the global Space Surveillance Network, providing Space Domain Awareness for the United States, Australia and their key allies. The Royal Australian Air Force will operate SST with oversight and management by the USSF 21st Space Wing once the telescope is operational.

China's first Mars exploration mission named Tianwen-1

China's first Mars exploration mission has been named Tianwen-1, announced the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Friday, China's Space Day. The name comes from the long poem "Tianwen," meaning Questions to Heaven, written by Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC), one of the greatest poets of ancient China. In "Tianwen," Qu Yuan raised a series of questions in verse involving the sky, stars, natural phenomena, myths and the real world, showing his doubts about some traditional concepts and the spirit of seeking the truth. CNSA said all of China's planetary exploration missions in the future will be named the Tianwen series, signifying the Chinese nation's perseverance in pursuing truth and science and exploring nature and the universe. CNSA also unveiled the logo of China's planetary exploration missions, featuring the letter C, signifying China, international cooperation and capacity of entering space. China plans to launch the Mars probe in 2020, aiming to complete orbiting, landing and roving in one mission. Since 2016, China has set April 24 as the country's Space Day to mark the launch of its first satellite Dongfanghong-1 into space on April 24, 1970. This year is the 50th anniversary of the start of China's entry into space. The various activities on Space Day have become a window for the Chinese public and the world to get a better understanding of China's aerospace progress. Zhang Kejian, head of CNSA, said that over the past 50 years, Chinese space engineers and scientists have overcome various difficulties and achieved aerospace development through self-reliance and independent innovation.

He said CNSA is willing to work together with the international community to make new and greater contributions to exploring the mysteries of the universe and promoting human welfare on the basis of equality, mutual benefit, peaceful utilization and inclusive development.

Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Wagner, the Russian crew members of the International Space Station, sent a congratulatory video to China from the space station.

The achievements of China over the 50 years of the establishment of the national space program deserve to be recognized and respected. Although humankind is now facing a severe crisis related to the epidemiological threat, such important anniversaries should not be overshadowed, said the astronauts.

"The fact that the whole country celebrates it allows us to believe not only in overcoming this situation as soon as possible and returning to normal life, but also in successfully solving all future tasks and problems that will be faced by our planet," the astronauts said.

Other space officials and personnel from the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, the International Astronautical Federation, the European Space Agency, the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, Brazil, France, Pakistan and Russia also sent congratulatory videos or letters, and expressed the hope to strengthen aerospace cooperation with China.

USGS releases first-ever comprehensive geologic map of the moon

Have you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those bright and dark splotches on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new authoritative map to help explain the 4.5-billion-year-old history of our nearest neighbor in space. For the first time, the entire lunar surface has been completely mapped and uniformly classified by scientists from the USGS, in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute. The lunar map, called the "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon," will serve as the definitive blueprint of the moon's surface geology for future human missions and will be invaluable for the international scientific community, educators and the public-at-large. The digital map is available online now and shows the moon's geology in incredible detail (1:5,000,000 scale). "People have always been fascinated by the moon and when we might return," said current USGS Director and former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly. "So, it's wonderful to see USGS create a resource that can help NASA with their planning for future missions." To create the new digital map, scientists used information from six Apollo-era regional maps along with updated information from recent satellite missions to the moon. The existing historical maps were redrawn to align them with the modern data sets, thus preserving previous observations and interpretations. Along with merging new and old data, USGS researchers also developed a unified description of the stratigraphy, or rock layers, of the moon. This resolved issues from previous maps where rock names, descriptions and ages were sometimes inconsistent.

"This map is a culmination of a decades-long project," said Corey Fortezzo, USGS geologist and lead author. "It provides vital information for new scientific studies by connecting the exploration of specific sites on the moon with the rest of the lunar surface."

Elevation data for the moon's equatorial region came from stereo observations collected by the Terrain Camera on the recent SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) mission led by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Topography for the north and south poles was supplemented with NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter data.

Nanocardboard flyers could serve as martian atmospheric probes

This summer, NASA plans to launch its next Mars rover, Perseverance, which will carry with it the first aircraft to ever fly on another planet, the Mars Helicopter. As the first of its kind, the Mars Helicopter will carry no instruments and collect no data - NASA describes merely flying it all as "high-risk, high-reward" research. With the risks of extraterrestrial flight in mind, Penn Engineers are suggesting a different approach to exploring the skies of other worlds: a fleet of tiny aircraft that each weigh about as much as a fruit fly and have no moving parts. These flyers are plates of "nanocardboard," which levitate when bright light is shone on them. As one side of the plate heats up, the temperature differential gets air circulating through its hollow structure and shooting out of the corrugated channels that give it its name, thrusting it off the ground. A recently published study demonstrates nanocardboard's flying and payload-carrying abilities in an environment similar to that of Mars. The thinner atmosphere there would give the flyers a boost, enabling them to carry payloads ten times as massive as they are. The weaker Martian gravity would further enhance their capabilities. The study, published in the journal Advanced Materials, was led by Igor Bargatin, Class of 1965 Term Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), and John Cortes, then a graduate student in his lab. Fellow lab members, Christopher Stanczak, Mohsen Azadi, Maanav Narula, Samuel M. Nicaise and MEAM Professor and master's program chair Howard Hu also contributed to the study.

"The Mars Helicopter is very exciting, but it's still a single, complicated machine," Bargatin says. "If anything goes wrong, your experiment is over, since there's no way of fixing it. We're proposing an entirely different approach that doesn't put all of your eggs in one basket."

Bargatin's group has been experimenting and improving on their nanocardboard design since 2017. Inspired by the common paper packaging material, they collaborated with researchers at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology to achieve a record-setting ratio of weight and stiffness, as reported in a recent Nature Communications paper.

Like paper cardboard and other "sandwich structured composites" used in architecture and aviation, nanocardboard's material properties stem from corrugation. Consisting of a hollow plate of aluminum oxide walls that are only a few nanometers thick, that corrugation is a regular pattern of channels spanning the plate, which enhance its bending stiffness and prevent cracks from propagating.

These channels are also responsible for the plates' ability to levitate, as creating a temperature differential generates an air current that flows through their hollow structure.

"The air current through these micro-channels is caused by a classical phenomenon called 'thermal creep,'" says Hu, "which is a rarefied gas flow due to the temperature gradient along the channel wall."

Their recent study allowed the researchers to measure the flyers' ability to lift mock payloads - silicone rings, attached to the top of the plates - thanks to a new low-pressure test chamber with integrated cameras and light sources.

Studying these dynamics are important for vetting nanocardboard's potential as a material for atmospheric probes, especially on other worlds, including Mars, Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton. Because Bargatin's nanocardboard flyers weigh about a third of a milligram, it would take more than a million of them to equal the mass of the Mars Helicopter, and more than six billion to equal the ground-based rover that will deploy it.

But even in the ideal environment of the Martian atmosphere, the tiny flyers would still be limited to sensors and payloads that are at most a few milligrams. As such, Bargatin is now collaborating with other researchers on how to miniaturize chemical sensors that could detect water or methane - key signatures of life on Mars.

"In addition to carrying sensors," Bargatin says, "our flyers could simply land and have grains of dust or sand passively stick to them, then transport them back to the rover so it doesn't need to travel as far."

The rover could also provide a means of piloting the nanocardboard flyers. Despite having no moving parts, they can be steered by way of a pinpoint laser, since the direction of the air flowing out of their channels depends on which parts of the plate are heated.

Terrestrial applications are also possible.

"The Earth's mesosphere is pretty similar to the Martian atmosphere in terms of density, and we currently don't have anything that flies there, since it is too low for space satellites but too high for airplanes and balloons," Bargatin says. "Ideally, you'd like to have some sensors up there as well. The more knowledge you have about the movement of the atmosphere at that level, the better predictions you can make about Earth's climate and even weather."

Ending global plant tracking, Proba-V assigned new focus

ESA's cubic-metre-sized Proba-V minisatellite will soon end its nearly seven-year global mission to monitor the daily growth of all Earth's vegetation. As Copernicus Sentinel-3 takes on this task instead, Proba-V will be free to perform experimental monitoring over Europe and Africa - including co-observations with new companion missions. Despite its small size, Proba-V maintains a continent-spanning perspective: its main Vegetation imager has a 2250-km wide swath. This enables it to cover nearly the entire vegetated surface of the globe every day. Allowing for cloud cover, the mission builds up a complete snapshot of global plant growth every 10 days. Overall, the mission has acquired more than a petabyte of environmental data during its time in orbit. Proba-V's extremely wide view comes about because Vegetation is made up of three separate imaging telescopes, possessing 300 m spatial resolution, which rises to 100 m resolution in the central telescope - a marked improvement on the previous generation of Vegetation instruments. "Proba-V began as a 'gap-filler' mission to ensure data coverage between the Vegetation instruments flown on the full-sized Spot-4 and -5 satellites and Copernicus Sentinel-3," explains ESA Earth Observation operations manager Roberto Biasutti. "It started with a two-year mission lifetime, which was repeatedly extended, and the satellite remains in excellent overall health. So even though its global mission is due to end this June, shortly after its seventh birthday, the plan is to let it go on working."

Proba-V was launched into what is called a 'Sun-synchronous' orbit, where it keeps pace with the Sun as it circles Earth at 820 km altitude, allowing it the maximum possible observing daylight. This orbit is gradually decaying however, and the minisatellite lacks onboard thrusters to correct it. Tugged by the gravitational pull of Earth's equatorial bulge, its observing time is gradually growing earlier in the local morning.

"Basically one of the cameras on Proba-V will soon be observing night-time rather than daylight, meaning it cannot go on delivering daily global coverage anymore to continue the 20 year plus Vegetation time series, so its operational global mission has to end," comments Dennis Clarijs of VITO, the Belgian research and service centre processing and distributing Proba-V data to users.

"But this isn't the end of the mission. Instead ESA will be applying its excellent geometric and radiometric performance to make test observations in Europe and Africa, particularly the African Sahel where its results help provide early drought warnings.

"This means the more than 1800 research teams making use of Proba-V data today still have more data to look forward to, albeit on an experimental rather than operational basis. This is good because its 100-m imagery fills a particular niche, as a midway step between Copernicus Sentinel-2 and -3, able to resolve individual field delineations in some cases. Proba-V's 100-m imagery is also routinely used to cross-check other products, such as the Copernicus Global Land Service."

Proba-V will also be increasing its observations of the Moon. It is not generally known, but many Earth observation satellites routinely observe our planet's natural satellite along with Earth itself: the unchanging state of the lunar surface makes it an excellent calibration target.

In the past Proba-V made such lunar acquisitions on a monthly basis. Now the minisatellite will increase them, experimenting with changing frequencies and view angles for the benefit of future Earth-observing missions.

In addition, the plan is to launch in 2021 an additional tiny satellite carrying a single telescope version of the same Vegetation imager aboard Proba-V.

Roberto comments: "This companion mission is currently being developed by Belgian startup Aerospace Lab for launch next year. Based on a tiny 12-unit CubeSat - built up from standardised 10 cm cubic units - it will image the same targets as Proba-V areas at the same time except from a different viewing angle, allowing the creation of combined 'fusion' image products.

"A major motive behind the original Proba-V mission was to see if an instrument previously hosted on a full-sized satellite could do good work from a smaller platform. With this companion satellite we will raise the bar, using an even smaller, cheaper platform."

Another companion satellite is also being planned, to host either a thermal infrared imager or an hyperspectral instrument, both of which would offer valuable synergies with Vegetation observations, and test the feasibility of small satellite constellations entering operations in future.

Proba-V's orbital decay will finally bring it into complete darkness in October 2021, when it will either be shut down, or placed in suspended animation, awaiting a time when its orbit brings it into daylight again.

"There is a precedent for such an arrangement," adds Roberto, "with predecessor mission Proba-1, launched back in 2001, hosting a hyperspectral camera. Having passed through such a period of orbital darkness it is still observing to this day."

Intelsat 901 Satellite Returns to Service Using Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle

Intelsat announced Friday that Intelsat 901 has returned to service following the successful docking with the first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) from Northrop Grumman Corporation and the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, SpaceLogistics LLC, on February 25 - the first time that two commercial spacecraft docked in geostationary orbit. Since the February rendezvous, MEV-1 has assumed navigation of the combined spacecraft stack reducing its inclination by 1.6 degrees and relocating IS-901 to its new orbital location. Intelsat then transitioned roughly 30 of its commercial and government customers to the satellite on April 2. The transition of service took approximately six hours. IS-901 is now operating at the 332.5E orbital slot and providing full service to Intelsat customers. Intelsat views life-extension services, like MEV technology, as a cost-effective and efficient way to minimize service disruptions, enhance the overall flexibility of its satellite fleet and better support the evolving needs of its customers. "With a focus on providing the best customer experience in our industry, Intelsat is proud to have pioneered this innovative first with Northrop Grumman. We see increased demand for our connectivity services around the world, and preserving our customers' experience using innovative technology such as MEV-1 is helping us meet that need," said Intelsat Chief Services Officer Mike DeMarco. "I want to thank Northrop Grumman, SpaceLogistics and our valued Intelsat customers, who put their trust in us to successfully execute this historic mission. As commercial space-servicing technology progresses, Intelsat looks forward to pioneering new applications in support of our customers' continued success."

"Our partnership with Intelsat was critical to delivering this innovative satellite technology into operation," said Tom Wilson, vice president, Northrop Grumman Space Systems and president, SpaceLogistics, LLC.

"This historic event, highlighted by the first in-orbit rendezvous and docking of two commercial satellites and the subsequent repositioning of the two-spacecraft stack, demonstrates the business value that MEV offers to customers. Now that MEV-1 has successfully delivered on its mission to place the Intelsat 901 satellite back into operational service, we will continue to pioneer the future of on-orbit servicing through our multi-year technology roadmap leading to additional services such as inspection, assembly and repair."

Under the terms of the contract, Northrop Grumman and SpaceLogistics will provide five years of life extension services to IS-901 before returning the spacecraft to a final decommissioned orbit.

MEV-1 will then be available to provide additional mission extension services for new clients including orbit raising, inclination corrections and inspections. Intelsat has already also contracted with Northrop Grumman for a second MEV (MEV-2) to service Intelsat 1002 satellite later this year.

Scientific machine learning paves way for rapid rocket engine design

"It's not rocket science" may be a tired cliche, but that doesn't mean designing rockets is any less complicated. Time, cost and safety prohibit testing the stability of a test rocket using a physical build "trial and error" approach. But even computational simulations are extremely time consuming. A single analysis of an entire SpaceX Merlin rocket engine, for example, could take weeks, even months, for a supercomputer to provide satisfactory predictions. One group of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin is developing new "scientific machine learning" methods to address this challenge. Scientific machine learning is a relatively new field that blends scientific computing with machine learning. Through a combination of physics modeling and data-driven learning, it becomes possible to create reduced-order models - simulations that can run in a fraction of the time, making them particularly useful in the design setting. The goal of the work, led by Karen Willcox at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, is to provide rocket engine designers with a fast way to assess rocket engine performance in a variety of operating conditions. "Rocket engineers tend to explore different designs on a computer before building and testing," Willcox said. "Physical build and test is not only time-consuming and expensive, it can also be dangerous." But the stability of a rocket's engine, which must be able to withstand a variety of unforeseen variables during any flight, is a critical design target engineers must be confident they have met before any rocket can get off the ground.

The cost and time it takes to characterize the stability of a rocket engine comes down to the sheer complexity of the problem. A multitude of variables affect engine stability, not to mention the speed at which things can change during a rocket's journey.

The research by Willcox is outlined in a recent paper co-authored by Willcox and published online by AIAA Journal. It is part of a Center of Excellence on Multi-Fidelity Modeling of Rocket Combustion Dynamics funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Air Force Research Laboratory.

"The reduced-order models being developed by the Willcox group at UT Austin's Oden Institute will play an essential role in putting rapid design capabilities into the hands of our rocket engine designers," said Ramakanth Munipalli, senior aerospace research engineer in the Combustion Devices Branch at Air Force Rocket Research Lab.

"In some important cases, these reduced-order models are the only means by which one can simulate a large propulsion system. This is highly desirable in today's environment where designers are heavily constrained by cost and schedule."

The new methods have been applied to a combustion code used by the Air Force known as General Equation and Mesh Solver (GEMS). Willcox's group received "snapshots" generated by running the GEMS code for a particular scenario that modeled a single injector of a rocket engine combustor.

These snapshots represent the instantaneous fields of pressure, velocity, temperature and chemical content in the combustor, and they serve as the training data from which Willcox and her group derive the reduced-order models.

Generating that training data in GEMS takes about 200 hours of computer processing time. Once trained, the reduced-order models can run the same simulation in seconds. "The reduced-order models can now be run in place of GEMS to issue rapid predictions," Willcox said.

But these models do more than just repeat the training simulation.

They also can simulate into the future, predicting the physical response of the combustor for operating conditions that were not part of the training data.

Although not perfect, the models do an excellent job of predicting overall dynamics. They are particularly effective at capturing the phase and amplitude of the pressure signals, key elements for making accurate engine stability predictions.

"These reduced-order models are surrogates of the expensive high-fidelity model we rely upon now," Willcox said. "They provide answers good enough to guide engineers' design decisions, but in a fraction of the time."

How does it work? Deriving reduced-order models from training data is similar in spirit to conventional machine learning. However, there are some key differences. Understanding the physics affecting the stability of a rocket engine is crucial. And these physics must then be embedded into the reduced-order models during the training process.

"Off-the-shelf machine learning approaches will fall short for challenging problems in engineering and science such as this multiscale, multiphysics rocket engine combustion application," Willcox said.

"The physics are just too complicated and the cost of generating training data is just too high. Scientific machine learning offers greater potential because it allows learning from data through the lens of a physics-based model. This is essential if we are to provide robust and reliable results."

NASA announces first SpaceX crewed flight for May 27

A SpaceX rocket will send two American astronauts to the International Space Station on May 27, NASA announced on Friday, the first crewed spaceflight from the US in nearly a decade. "On May 27, @NASA will once again launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil!" Jim Bridenstine, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said in a tweet. Since July 2011, the United States has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to send American astronauts to the ISS. The US space agency had been aiming to conduct the crewed mission in May and is sticking with the plan despite the global coronavirus pandemic. Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly to the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft also built by SpaceX, the company founded by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. They will lift off at 4:32 pm (2032 GMT) on May 27 from historic launch pad 39A, the same one used for the Apollo and space shuttle missions, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said. Behnken and Hurley have been training for years for the mission, which would move the United States closer to no longer being reliant on Russia for crewed flights. The Crew Dragon capsule is a modified version of SpaceX's Dragon capsule which has been used to send supplies to the ISS since 2012. It will take approximately 24 hours after liftoff for them to dock with the ISS. The length of their stay aboard the ISS has not been determined. One American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are currently aboard the ISS.

The May mission will be a milestone for NASA, which has had trouble turning the page on the space shuttle era. Shuttles transported American astronauts into space for three decades but two of them also blew up.

After abandoning the shuttle, NASA turned to private industry to develop its next generation spacecraft and SpaceX and Boeing have been competing on rolling out a crewed capsule.

SpaceX came up with Crew Dragon and Boeing the Starliner but the Starliner suffered a setback in December during a test run.

SpaceX is now poised to become the first private company to send astronauts into space.

In March, Musk's Crew Dragon capsule made a round trip to the ISS, which is in orbit more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with a mannequin on board, before returning to the Atlantic after six days in space.

SpaceX has made the trip 15 times since 2012, but only to refuel the station.

New Horizons pushing the frontier ever deeper into the Kuiper Belt

New Horizons is healthy and performing perfectly as it flies deeper and deeper into the Kuiper Belt! Recently we conducted an engineering review of the spacecraft to "trend" how it was working compared to when it was launched. The result was amazing: Every system and science instrument aboard New Horizons is working as well as it did when we lifted off, more than 14 years and almost 5 billion miles ago. As mission principal investigator I could not be prouder - the men and women who designed, built and tested New Horizons literally created a masterpiece of American workmanship that will likely be able to perform and explore for many more years and many more miles! Before I update you on mission news, I want to highlight something cool on our mission website. There's a crazy amount of detail there for anyone interested in knowing more about the New Horizons mission and our scientific discoveries, but we've also posted a file to create 3D spacecraft models. With this file anyone with access to a 3D printer can create their own New Horizons to have at home or at work! Now for some mission happenings, starting with a cool public engagement project we're doing this month and next. As I mentioned, New Horizons is almost 5 billion miles from Earth. That is so far away, that the very closest stars appear in different positions in the sky than they do from Earth. This is due to the different perspective New Horizons has of these stars from its far away perch.

On April 22 and 23, New Horizons will image two of the closest stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolfe 359. Here on Earth, astronomical observatories and amateur observers will simultaneously take images of the same stars. Using software to combine imagery from the spacecraft and the ground, we'll be able to produce stereo images of these star fields showing each star "popping out" because of the "parallax," or changed perspective, between Earth and New Horizons.

Nothing like this has ever been accomplished before! We'll release these 3D images in May, so stay tuned. But in the meantime, details on how you can take part in this experiment are on the mission website.

My first mission news update is that this summer, we'll be using a trio of the largest telescopes on Earth, specifically, the Japanese Subaru telescope, and the U.S. Gemini and Keck telescopes to discover new Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) for New Horizons to study. We expect to literally find hundreds of new KBOs! Most of these will be too far to study from New Horizons, but a few dozen will be close enough for the spacecraft to image.

Although the objects will just be points of light in the distance, millions or even tens of millions of miles from our spacecraft, New Horizons images will be valuable for studying their surface properties, their satellite systems, their shapes and their rotations in ways that cannot be accomplished from Earth - owing to their great distance and our limited viewing angles from the inner solar system.

New Horizons has been conducting studies of KBOs like this since 2016, but we've only been able to find and study about 20 so far. With discoveries from the Gemini, Subaru and Keck telescopes, we hope to triple or even quadruple that number, greatly enhancing our scientific return from the Kuiper Belt.

We will also scour the set of newly discovered KBOs for any that New Horizons might be able to fly by, as we did with the KBO Arrokoth early last year. Computer models indicate the probability of finding another close flyby target is small, because we have so little fuel on board to divert toward such a flyby - but that won't stop us from looking! Our fondest hope is that we get lucky and have the opportunity for one more close flyby of a KBO. After all, no other spacecraft is exploring (or ever has explored) the Kuiper Belt, and none are on the drawing board to do so. This is humankind's best chance to get such a close up of another KBO for decades to come!

I also want to update you on another cool development for the mission: We are looking at how to increase the capabilities of New Horizons' instrument payload through software upgrades. The team is evaluating several cost and capability- increase options for six of the seven instruments, and we expect to decide which ones to implement in May. By about this time next year, these "flight software" changes will be made, tested and sent to New Horizons for us to begin using those new capabilities. Later this year, once we've selected which enhancements to implement, I'll describe each of them.

I'll close with some scientific news. First, I want to announce the forthcoming publication late this year or early next of a 1,000-plus page technical research volume called The Pluto System After New Horizons. This book, to be published in the distinguished University of Arizona Space Science Series, will contain 24 chapters detailing essentially every aspect of what was learned about Pluto and its moons from the historic first-ever flyby exploration of Pluto, which New Horizons conducted in July 2015.

All 24 chapters are now written, each by a team of scientific experts. Some have already completed review by other scientists to improve them, while others are undergoing that step. By May or June, we expect all 24 chapters to be in production for publication. The book should then be published about six months later.

The other science news I want to relay is about a blockbuster discovery this mission made as a result of its close flyby of the Arrokoth. We published the first indications of this discovery in the esteemed research journal Science in 2019; a much deeper analysis confirming the early results was published in Science this February. The discovery is about how Arrokoth, and by inference most other primordial "planetesimals" (or planetary building blocks), came into existence.

For many years, two competing mathematical models of planetesimal formation existed. The data from New Horizons shows, definitely, that only one of these models - variously called the "streaming instability" or "pebble cloud collapse" model - can produce an object like Arrokoth. Our evidence? The detailed shape, geology and alignment of the two halves, or "lobes" of Arrokoth.

The New Horizons images, compositional spectra, and color data on Arrokoth all point to this model being how Arrokoth formed. We summarized this discovery in a Feb. 13 press release. This may be the single most impactful discovery of the entire New Horizons mission so far, pointing to how planets got their start while settling what has literally been a decades-long computer modeling duel between competing theories.

And with that big news, I'll conclude this report. I'll write again this summer. Meanwhile, I hope you'll keep on exploring - just as we do!

Xplore wins USAF award for innovative Cislunar commercial capabilities

Xplore Inc., a commercial space company has announced they have won an Air Force award to study positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions for cislunar space. The award category, for commercial and technical innovations between the Earth and the Moon - is entirely new for the Air Force, which is investigating the capabilities necessary to extend operations beyond geosynchronous orbit to now include cislunar space. Today, Earth-orbiting satellites rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation circling the Earth at an altitude of about 20,000 km (12,427 miles) - to know where they are and how to navigate to a destination. This GPS infrastructure, a public service provided by the U.S. Government, is essential to satellite operations and separately has become an integral part of our daily lives. Smartphones receive GPS signals that allow us to seamlessly perform a wide range of tasks such as planning travel itineraries, hailing a rideshare, viewing local weather or ordering a pizza and tracking its delivery in real-time. Beyond Earth orbit an equivalent positioning and navigation system does not exist. Given this, it can be extremely difficult for spacecraft, landers or rovers on the Moon or on Mars to identify their exact position. Navigation considerations have been an integral part of Xplore's development strategy since the company started rigorously developing its platform and multi-mission Xcraft - an ESPA-class space vehicle that will fly missions at destinations from Earth to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and other locations across the inner solar system.

Beyond the more obvious hardware requirements for operating in extreme environments, Xplore will maximize the full value of its orbital assets by designing a PNT architecture that mirrors the accessibility and reliability of GPS for cislunar space. The Xcraft's ability to operate across these vast distances provides tremendous value to customers in academia, industry, civil space and national security agencies.

Xplore Founder Lisa Rich said, "We understood the need to build navigation architectures beyond Earth orbit early in our development and are proud that our thought-leadership has been recognized. Xplore is among the first to win an Air Force award in this groundbreaking new category for missions and services around the Moon. We are uniquely qualified to provide innovative commercial solutions to the Air Force and rapidly advance space domain awareness now that cislunar space operations is a focal point."

She added, "Xplore is honored to respond to the growing and dynamic needs of our national security architecture beyond Earth orbit. We are poised to set new standards across the industry and our exceptional team is excited to provide these foundational capabilities and work with the USAF to ensure mission success."

Xplore's ability to design, built and test new PNT architectures beyond Earth orbit will expand the deep space ecosystem and will provide new opportunities for civilian space agencies, national security agencies, sovereign space agencies and commercial space companies to navigate in this challenging environment. Xplore can supply navigation capabilities for Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) regimes where typical GPS receivers fail to pick up a signal.

Dr. Clive R. Neal, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, who has over 30 years of experience in advancing our understanding of the Moon said: "Xplore's solution has strong technical and programmatic merit, and it supports USAF objectives.

The company has created a strong plan to use its Xcraft asset to facilitate a precision positioning, navigation and timing architecture to service our growing civil and national security needs. Not only is it a step in obtaining security in the cislunar domain, it provides vital infrastructure for expanding humanity to the Moon, and for creation of a vibrant cislunar economy. This first opportunity for Xplore has good potential."

Xplore plans to accelerate innovation and commercialize deep space via higher cadence, low-cost missions to the inner solar system. The highly capable Xcraft, a modular next-generation spacecraft, is uniquely designed to service the needs of multiple customers on a single mission, and operate in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), cislunar space and deep space.

Dr. Lou Friedman, founder of The Planetary Society and Advisor to Xplore said, "Xplore demonstrated tremendous foresight in their plans for deep space exploration as they build architectures to achieve positioning, navigation and timing between the Earth and the Moon. They understood early on that GPS doesn't work beyond the Earth, and to navigate beyond Earth, we must develop new technologies to perform in deep space environments."

Positioning, navigation and timing systems will directly benefit existing and future operations in cislunar and interplanetary space. As Xplore ventures beyond Earth orbit, their new infrastructure will support our nation's strategy and form essential building blocks for a sustainable cislunar economy.

Japan plans to launch micro probe into lunar orbit using solid-fuel rocket

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is planning to launch a micro explorer to the Moon's orbit using a solid-fuel Epsilon rocket in the first half of the 2020s, the Kyodo news agency reported on Monday, citing an informed source. The use of solid-fuel rockets in space exploration is not common, but compared to liquid propellants, it can make the process easier and cheaper. Japan is trying to expand its presence in space and take part in lunar exploration by creating a simpler method to send a space probe, according to the Kyodo news agency. The news outlet noted that past space missions to explore the moon organised by the Soviet Union and the United States used liquid propellant rockets. Epsilon is the next-generation solid-fuel rocket that uses cutting-edge technologies for improved operational performance and reduced costs. The vehicle is equipped with an advanced board computer.

NASA awards propellants and life support services contract

NASA has awarded a contract to AECOM Management Services Inc. of Germantown, Maryland, to support the agency's need for propellants and life support services for NASA and NASA-sponsored payloads. As a multi-user spaceport for launches of government and commercial spaceflights, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station have a recurrent need for propellants and life support services. The Kennedy Space Center Propellants and Life Support Services II (KPLSS II) contract is a fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, with an award-term incentive. The maximum potential value of the contract is $165 million. The contract has a three-month phase-in period that begins July 1, 2020, followed by a two-year base period from Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2022. A two-year option period and six one-year award term periods are available which will bring the total potential period of performance to 10 years. The KPLSS II contract serves a critical role in supporting launch operational requirements by providing propellants and life support operations, maintenance, and engineering support for assigned systems and equipment. Work performed under the KPLSS II contract will include manufacturing, processing, and hands-on, day-to-day distribution of hazardous, high-pressure gases, cryogenic fluids, hypergols, and other material to spaceport customers.

It also will provide critical life support services to spaceport customers working in toxic or oxygen deficient environments, as well as operations, maintenance, and engineering of facilities systems, equipment, and utilities. AECOM also will provide project management and design engineering services.

Mars Helicopter attached to Perseverance Mars rover

With the launch period of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opening in 14 weeks, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the past week, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed important milestones, fueling the descent stage - also known as the sky crane - and attaching the Mars Helicopter, which will be the first aircraft in history to attempt power-controlled flight on another planet. Over the weekend, 884 pounds (401 kilograms) of hydrazine monopropellant were loaded into the descent stage's four fuel tanks. As the aeroshell containing the descent stage and rover enter the Martian atmosphere on Feb. 18, 2021, the propellant will be pressure-fed through 120 feet (37 meters) of stainless steel and titanium tubing into eight Mars landing engines. The engines' job: to slow the spacecraft, which will be traveling at about 180 mph (80 meters per second) when it's 7,200 feet (2,200 meters) in altitude, to 1.7 mph (0.75 meter per second) by the time it's about 66 feet (20 meters) above the surface. Maintaining this rate of descent, the stage will then perform the sky crane maneuver: Nylon cords spool out to lower the rover 25 feet (7.6 meters) below the descent stage; When the spacecraft senses touchdown at Jezero Crater, the connecting cords are severed and the descent stage flies off. "The last hundred days before any Mars launch is chock-full of significant milestones," said David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at JPL. "Fueling the descent stage is a big step. While we will continue to test and evaluate its performance as we move forward with launch preparations, it is now ready to fulfill its mission of placing Perseverance on the surface on Mars."

The Helicopter
After the descent stage fueling, the system that will deliver the Mars Helicopter to the surface of the Red Planet was integrated with Perseverance. The helicopter, which weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) and features propellers 4 feet (1.2 meters) in diameter, is cocooned within the delivery system.

In one of the first steps in the day-long process on April 6, technicians and engineers made 34 electrical connections between the rover, the helicopter and its delivery system on the rover's belly. After confirming data and commands could be sent and received, they attached the delivery system to the rover.

Finally, the team confirmed the helicopter could receive an electrical charge from the rover. Before being deployed onto the surface of Jezero Crater, the Mars Helicopter will rely on the rover for power. Afterward, it will generate its own electrical power through a solar panel located above its twin counter-rotating propellers.

The helicopter will remain encapsulated on the rover's belly for the next year and will be deployed around the beginning of May - roughly two-and-a-half months after Perseverance's landing. Once the rover drives about 330 feet (100 meters) away and the helicopter undergoes an extensive systems check, it will execute a flight-test campaign for up to 30 days.

The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. No matter what day Perseverance launches during its July 17-Aug. 5 launch period, it will land on Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

Bartolomeo connected to Columbus

The first European external commercial facility on the International Space Station arrived at its new home last week: the Columbus laboratory module. Bartolomeo, named after the younger brother of Christopher Columbus, was installed by robotic arm on the forward-facing side of the space laboratory on 2 April 2020. The platform, with blue hinges centre-right of the photo, is at the end of the Dextre attachment that is part of Canada's 16-m robotic arm for the International Space Station. In an intricate process controlled from Earth, the robotic arm took Bartolomeo from the external trunk of the Dragon cargo vessel and moved it into position on Columbus. The 20th SpaceX Dragon mission departed from the Space Station earlier this week to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Bartolomeo is built and operated by Airbus, and hosted by ESA on the International Space Station. The facility has a clear view of Earth and the service benefits from high-speed data transfer to provide easy access to space at competitive prices. Previous spacewalks prepared Columbus' hull to receive the new host facility by adapting support pins to which Bartolomeo will connect. Astronauts will perform another spacewalk to install Bartolomeo in the next few months, together with a new terminal called ColKa that will upgrade the European space laboratory.

The photograph is taken with Earth above, the blue and white facility, space storm hunter, ASIM, can also be seen top right. This Danish-led facility is pointing down at Earth and monitoring the events that occur above thunderstorms. It celebrates its second year in orbit this month. Results coming in have already shown how lightning can affect the upper reaches of our atmosphere and much more.

Boeing to fly second uncrewed Starliner orbital flight test for NASA

Boeing has decided to fly a second uncrewed flight test as a part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Although no new launch date has been set, NASA has accepted the proposal to fly the mission again and will work side-by-side with Boeing to resume flight tests to the International Space Station on the company's CST-100 Starliner system. The agency's Commercial Crew Program is a unique approach to human spaceflight in which NASA provides a set of mission and safety requirements and private companies, like Boeing and SpaceX, propose their own unique strategies to prove the systems meet the intent of the requirements. Consistent with that approach, Boeing had the responsibility to bring NASA its proposal on how to proceed with the flights. An uncrewed flight test originally was proposed by Boeing to demonstrate the Starliner system could perform as designed to fly to the space station prior to having a crew onboard. With that proposal, the uncrewed flight became a part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract in 2014 between NASA and Boeing. Although many of the objectives of Boeing's first uncrewed flight test in December 2019 were accomplished, Boeing decided the best approach to meeting the agency's requirements would be to fly the mission again, including docking with the space station. Data from the next and previous flight test will be used as part of NASA's process of certifying Boeing's crew transportation system for carrying astronauts to and from the space station.

If Boeing would have proposed a crewed mission as the next flight, NASA would have completed a detailed review and analysis of the proposal to determine the feasibility of the plan. However, as this was not the recommendation made by Boeing, NASA will not speculate on what the agency would have required.

The second uncrewed flight does not relieve Boeing from completing all the actions determined from the joint NASA/Boeing independent review team, which was commissioned following the flawed initial flight. NASA still intends to conduct the needed oversight to make sure those corrective actions are taken.

NASA and Boeing are in the early stages of the decision to fly a second uncrewed orbital mission to the station, and a timeline for flying crew has not been determined.

Although completing a second uncrewed flight test was not in the timeline for returning U.S. human spaceflight on Starliner, NASA fully supports our Boeing partner's commitment to flying astronauts as safely as possible.

This is exactly why NASA decided to select two partners in the commercial crew effort. Having dissimilar redundancy is key in NASA's approach to maintaining a crew and cargo aboard the space station and to keeping our commitments to international partners. It also allows our private industry partners to focus on crew safety rather than schedule. The safety of our commercial crew team always will remain as our top priority.

Choosing rocks on Mars to bring to Earth

If you could bring something back from Mars to Earth, what would you choose? This question is becoming reality, as ESA opens a call for scientists to join a NASA team working to determine which martian samples should be collected and stored by the Perseverance rover set to launch this Summer. Perseverance is a standalone mission seeking signs of habitable conditions on our neighbour planet, but it is also part of the international Mars Sample Return campaign that ESA Member States agreed to finance last year during Space19+. Traveling over 53 million km to Mars, landing, collecting samples and launching a vehicle to return to Earth is unprecedented. This campaign will span a decade and involve four launches, including three from Earth and the first launch from another planet. When Perseverance lands on Mars it will scout the area for over a year. One of its main tasks will be to collect samples in cigar-sized metal cylinders that it will leave on the surface for pickup at a later date. As part of this international collaboration, ESA plans to provide a sophisticated Sample Fetch Rover to be operated during NASA's Sample Retrieval Lander mission in the middle of this decade. The ESA rover will collect the samples that the Perseverance rover gathered and bring them to the lander, where they will be carefully stored in a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The MAV will launch the sample container from the martian surface, placing it in orbit around Mars.

Another important ESA contribution will be the biggest and most robust spacecraft flying to Mars - the Earth Return Orbiter that will rendezvous with the sample and bring it to Earth.

Packing for a return to Earth
Although the full campaign is in its early project phase, scientific experts must be selected now so they can begin training and operate alongside the Perseverance science team to enhance the value of the samples that will be collected. The selected scientists will also have to anticipate the needs of future investigators who may analyse these samples for a very diverse range of studies on Earth.

"We encourage applications from experts outside of the space field," says ESA's interim Mars Sample Return Programme Scientist Dr. Gerhard Kminek. "We need field geologists and laboratory experts who know how to pick the right samples based on information from the instruments that Perseverance has on-board."

ESA's human spaceflight team leader adds, "experts selected through this call will receive training to form part of the international team of martian-geologists-at-a-distance. These are exciting times and we are looking forward to receiving the best proposals Europe has to offer."

Uncovering the secrets of our Solar System
Studying Mars samples on Earth will allow scientists to use instruments more powerful than anything that could be flown on robotic missions. The chance to learn and share resources, including sending samples to the best laboratories around the world, offers incredible opportunities for new discoveries.

Samples may be analysed again and again, enabling new information to be extracted - much like with lunar samples brought to Earth in the 1960s and 1970s, which continue to reveal new discoveries to this day.

Gerhard concludes, "There are many reasons to study Mars, but one of the most pressing is that, while life arose and evolved on Earth, we still don't know if life had a chance on Mars. Planetary scientists can study rocks, sediments and soils for clues to uncover the geological and potential biological history of Mars. Then, by comparing those findings with Earth we also learn more about our own planet."

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover gets its wheels and air brakes

Final assembly and testing of NASA's Perseverance rover continues at Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the July launch window approaches. In some of the last steps required prior to stacking the spacecraft components in the configuration they'll be in atop the Atlas V rocket, the rover's wheels and parachute have been installed. Perseverance received its six flight wheels on March 30, 2020. While the rover took a test drive last December, it was on "flight spares" that wouldn't be making the trip to Mars. Designed for the kind of off-roading Perseverance will perform on the Red Planet, the wheels are re-engineered versions of the ones NASA's Curiosity has been using on its traverses of Mount Sharp. Machined out of a block of flight-grade aluminum and equipped with titanium spokes, each wheel is slightly larger in diameter and narrower than Curiosity's, with skins that are almost a millimeter thicker. They also feature new treads, or grousers: In place of Curiosity's 24 chevron-pattern treads are 48 gently curved ones. Extensive testing in the Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the rover and manages operations, has shown these treads better withstand the pressure from sharp rocks and grip just as well or better than Curiosity's when driving on sand.

The Parachute
The job of adding Perseverance's parachute to the back shell, where the rover will be stowed on the journey to the Red Planet, took several days and was finished on March 26. Tasked with slowing the heaviest payload in the history of Mars exploration from Mach 1.7 to about 200 mph (320 kph) during the rover's landing on Feb., 18, 2021, the 194 pounds (88 kilograms) of nylon, Technora and Kevlar fibers are packed so tightly into a 20-inch-wide (50-centimeter-wide) aluminum cylinder that it is as dense as oak wood. When deployed at about 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the Martian surface, the chute will take about a half-second to fully inflate its 70.5-foot-wide (21.5-meter-wide) canopy.

The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. No matter what day Perseverance launches during its July 17-Aug. 5 launch period, it will land on Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

L3Harris Technologies to modernize US capabilities to detect orbital objects

L3Harris Technologies has been awarded a $23 million contract to modernize and sustain critical space infrastructure used by the military to keep track of activities and objects in space. The current estimated contract value with the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center is $1.2 billion over 10 years. Under the Maintenance Of Space Situational Awareness Integrated Capabilities (MOSSAIC) contract, L3Harris will provide sustainment services for current and future ground-based space domain awareness sensors and space battle management command and control capabilities. MOSSAIC is a follow-on program to the Systems Engineering and Sustainment Integrator program, which L3Harris won in 2002. "Space as a warfighting domain has a complex and interdependent system supporting it from the ground, air and space," said Ed Zoiss, President, Space and Airborne Systems, L3Harris. "L3Harris supports our customers in each of these domains, giving us a unique understanding of the ecosystem and the mission, and enabling us to make quick modifications, provide necessary sustainment and introduce new capabilities."

COVID-19: how can satellites help?

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has virtually paralysed daily life as we know it. Even when the spread of this highly infectious disease has been stemmed, the world will face huge challenges getting back to normal. To help support experts working in Europe's research centres and technical organisations during these unprecedented times, ESA has issued two new initiatives related to understanding the effects that COVID-19 is imposing on society, the economy and the environment. As road traffic in cities around the world comes to a near standstill, Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite mission is providing key information about changes in concentrations of atmospheric pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. However, there remains huge potential to use Earth observation data to shed new light on other societal and economic changes currently taking place. To see how Earth-observing missions could be further used to explore the effects of COVID-19, ESA has issued a new call for proposals. The aim is to see how satellite data can be used, for example, to map changes around transport networks, commercial ports and heavy industry such as oil refineries. ESA's Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Josef Aschbacher, said, "COVID-19 is putting society under huge strain. While ESA isn't really placed to help forecast the progression of the virus, we certainly continue to have a wealth of data streaming back to us from some of the most sophisticated satellites ever built as well as new artificial intelligence technologies that can be used to understand and monitor some of the societal shifts.

A new call related to COVID-19 has been added to the Permanently Open Call, which is part of ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme

"Innovation is key to using satellite data to help serve society during these challenging times and we trust that our new call will return some valuable proposals."

This new call has been added to the Permanently Open Call, which is part of ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme.

In addition to the new call, on 6 April ESA in coordination with the European Commission is launching a special edition of the Custom Script Contest. The contest calls for remote sensing experts, machine learning scientists as well as the interested public to submit ideas on how satellite data could help mitigate the situation for economic sectors such as industry, commerce, transport and agriculture, but is also open to other ideas. Anyone can contribute an idea.

The best contributions will be rewarded with cash prizes on a weekly basis. Also, every month there will be a prize for the best idea in each category and a final prize for the best overall contribution.

Grega Milcinski, from Sinergise said, "Participants should simply compose a set of slides presenting their ideas using the Earth observation data, tools and machine learning technologies made easily available for all skill levels. These will be evaluated on a weekly basis in order to make use of them as soon as possible - the COVID-19 situation needs it!"

China's lunar rover travels over 424 meters on moon's far side

China's lunar rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, has driven 424.455 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration of the virgin territory. Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have ended their work for the 16th lunar day, and switched to dormant mode for the lunar night due to the lack of solar power, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration. China's Chang'e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3, 2019. Yutu-2 has worked much longer than its three-month design life, becoming the longest-working lunar rover on the moon. The rover has helped scientists unveil the secrets buried deep under the surface on the far side of the moon, enriching human's understanding about the history of celestial collision and volcanic activities and shedding new light on the geological evolution on the moon. The scientific tasks of the Chang'e-4 mission include conducting low-frequency radio astronomical observations, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms. The Chang'e-4 mission embodies China's hope to combine wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

China plans to launch its first Mars probe and the Chang'e-5 probe to bring lunar samples back to Earth later this year. CNSA said it was making all-out efforts to carry out the missions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

NASA, SpaceX Simulate Upcoming Crew Mission with Astronauts

Joint teams from NASA and SpaceX continue making progress on the first flight test with astronauts to the International Space Station by completing a series of mission simulations from launch to landing. The mission, known as Demo-2, is a close mirror of the company's uncrewed flight test to station in March 2019, but this time with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft launching atop a Falcon 9 rocket as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). Over the last several months, key members of flight control teams working from NASA's Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers and SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, simulated different phases of the upcoming mission while the Demo-2 astronaut crew practiced procedures from inside a realistic simulator of Crew Dragon. "The simulations were a great opportunity to practice procedures and to coordinate decision-making for the mission management team, especially with respect to weather," said Michael Hess, manager of Operations Integration for CCP. "Simulation supervisors do a great job at picking cases that really make the team think and discuss." Recent simulations saw teams execute timelines from hatch closure to undocking with the space station - as well as a free flight in preparation for re-entry and splashdown. In March, the control teams and crew ran through a simulated mission starting at prelaunch and continuing through ascent and eventual rendezvous with the station. This recent sim makes the excitement all the more tangible, especially for the greater NASA team.

"What's happening in commercial crew is a big deal," Hess said. "It will be the first time to launch astronauts from U.S. soil since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, and it will be the first time since STS-1 that we will launch astronauts in a new spacecraft. This new spacecraft, Crew Dragon, was designed and built by SpaceX, not by NASA and traditional contractor partnerships - another first. Bob (Behnken) and Doug (Hurley) will definitely be earning their spacecraft test pilot wings with this mission. Also, the Space Station Program is really looking forward to another way to rotate crews to station to perform science and experiments to benefit all."

As the countdown clock winds down, Crew Dragon is undergoing final testing and prelaunch processing in a SpaceX facility on nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. All the activity is also kicking off "more simulations, final crew training and flight readiness reviews to ensure all of the mission systems and subsystems are ready for a crewed test flight," Hess noted.

When Crew Dragon launches atop a Falcon 9 rocket with Behnken and Hurley strapped inside as early as mid-to-late May, it will herald a new era for human spaceflight, enabling greater access to low-Earth orbit and destinations beyond with the help of commercial partners.

The Demo-2 crew is proceeding with its scheduled training activities. Astronaut trainers, along with all NASA employees, are closely adhering to CDC recommendations on infection control for the coronavirus. As all NASA centers are currently operating in a mode that requires any non-mission-essential work to be done remotely, the number of employees in contact with the crew is limited.