New Rocket Thruster Concept Exploits the Mechanism Behind Solar Flares

A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma(link is external), electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward. Current space-proven plasma thrusters use electric fields to propel the particles. The new concept would accelerate the particles using magnetic reconnection, a process found throughout the universe, including the surface of the sun, in which magnetic field lines converge, suddenly separate, and then join together again, producing lots of energy. Reconnection also occurs inside doughnut-shaped fusion(link is external) devices known as tokamaks(link is external). “I’ve been cooking this concept for a while,” said PPPL Principal Research Physicist Fatima Ebrahimi, the concept’s inventor and author of a paper(link is external) detailing the idea in the Journal of Plasma Physics. “I had the idea in 2017 while sitting on a deck and thinking about the similarities between a car’s exhaust and the high-velocity exhaust particles created by PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX),” the forerunner of the laboratory’s present flagship fusion facility. “During its operation, this tokamak produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at around 20 kilometers per second, which seemed to me a lot like thrust.”

Fusion, the power that drives the sun and stars, combines light elements in the form of plasma — the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that represents 99% of the visible universe — to generate massive amounts of energy. Scientists are seeking to replicate fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity.

Current plasma thrusters that use electric fields to propel the particles can only produce low specific impulse, or speed. But computer simulations performed on PPPL computers and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, showed that the new plasma thruster concept can generate exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometers per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters.

That faster velocity at the beginning of a spacecraft’s journey could bring the outer planets within reach of astronauts, Ebrahimi said. “Long-distance travel takes months or years because the specific impulse of chemical rocket engines is very low, so the craft takes a while to get up to speed,” she said. “But if we make thrusters based on magnetic reconnection, then we could conceivably complete long-distance missions in a shorter period of time.”

There are three main differences between Ebrahimi’s thruster concept and other devices. The first is that changing the strength of the magnetic fields can increase or decrease the amount of thrust. “By using more electromagnets and more magnetic fields, you can in effect turn a knob to fine-tune the velocity,” Ebrahimi said.

Second, the new thruster produces movement by ejecting both plasma particles and magnetic bubbles known as plasmoids. The plasmoids add power to the propulsion and no other thruster concept incorporates them.

Third, unlike current thruster concepts that rely on electric fields, the magnetic fields in Ebrahimi’s concept allow the plasma inside the thruster to consist of either heavy or light atoms. This flexibility enables scientists to tailor the amount of thrust for a particular mission. “While other thrusters require heavy gas, made of atoms like xenon, in this concept you can use any type of gas you want,” Ebrahimi said. Scientists might prefer light gas in some cases because the smaller atoms can get moving more quickly.

This concept broadens PPPL’s portfolio of space propulsion research. Other projects include the Hall Thruster Experiment which was started in 1999 by PPPL physicists Yevgeny Raitses and Nathaniel Fisch to investigate the use of plasma particles for moving spacecraft. Raitses and students are also investigating the use of tiny Hall thrusters to give small satellites called CubeSats greater maneuverability as they orbit the Earth.

Ebrahimi stressed that her thruster concept stems directly from her research into fusion energy. “This work was inspired by past fusion work and this is the first time that plasmoids and reconnection have been proposed for space propulsion,” Ebrahimi said. “The next step is building a prototype!”

Scientists discover solar system with planets in a strange 'rhythm'

Astronomers recently found a solar system whereby six planets are suspended in a strange rhythm. The solar system hosts stars that seem to be performing a "rhythmic dance" as they continue to dance around the orbits. The system is located around a star called TOI-178, which is 200 lightyears away, and could help explain how stars in our solar system are born and how they evolve. Besides being fixed in an unusual rhythmic order, planets in this solar system are also off the expected course, as per scientists. The orbital motion of the system is in harmony, but the physical properties of all planets vary from planet to planet, which challenges the beliefs of scientists around solar systems. All planets have different densities.  “It appears there is a planet as dense as the Earth right next to a very fluffy planet with half the density of Neptune, followed by a planet with the density of Neptune,” Nathan Hara from the Université de Genève, Switzerland, who was also involved in the study told The Independent.

Artist's impression of the view from the planet in the TOI-178 system

China collects 100PB of Earth observation data

China has collected around 100PB (about 100 million GB) of Earth observation data, according to the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The collected data resources have been used for both free and commercial usage to serve more than 300,000 users, inducing significant social and economic benefits, according to a recent report on China's Earth observation data resources development. The report was jointly drafted by the national Earth observation data center and the National Science and Technology Infrastructure, both run by the AIR. China's Earth observation data have attracted global attention, and the country has initially established a service system for global users, the report noted. Over the past decades, China has sent more than 60 Earth observation satellites and made significant progress in related technologies.

'Symbiotic stars' caught snacking on each other outside the Milky Way

For the first time, stars snacking on their stellar neighbors outside the Milky Way have had their orbits fully mapped. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, astronomers have identified two pairs of stars beyond the galaxy that are consuming their companions. The new discovery can help astronomers understand if distant galactic environments function similarly to or differently from the Milky Way. It can also provide insight into one of the fundamental methods of measuring distance in the night sky. More than half the stars in the Milky Way come in pairs. While it seems likely that binary stars should make up a significant fraction of other galaxies, scientists have been unable to confirm that because at such large distances ordinary stars are too faint to see.But so-called symbiotic stars, where one companion consumes the other, can be extremely bright, making them easier to observe. "Measuring the orbits of these symbiotic star systems is an important step towards learning whether other galaxies create binary stars like those in the Milky Way," Jasmin Washington, a co-author of the new study and a graduate student at the University of Arizona, said in a statement. She was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia during the project. Washington and her fellow author, Hannah Lewis, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, presented the results on Tuesday (Jan 12) at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held virtually last week.

An artistic impression of the Draco C1 symbiotic binary star system showing material flowing off the red giant star onto its white dwarf companion.

(Image: © John Blondin/North Carolina State University)

"We have developed for the first time ever the complete understanding of the architecture of an extragalactic [symbiotic] system," Washington said at the briefing.

Serendipitous snackers

Although a pair of stars may be born together, they can age differently due to their masses. The more massive of the two will quickly burn through its material to reach the end of its lifetime first. If that star is large enough, it will leave behind a compact white dwarf. Although small and dim, white dwarfs can pack the mass of the sun into an object the size of the Earth. If close enough, the gravity of the dense objects can pull material from their companion, creating a signal that astronomers can identify from extremely far away. While astronomers know that stellar pairs are common in the Milky Way, they remain uncertain how large a fraction they make up in other galaxies.

"The properties of binary systems likely depend on the environment that they formed in," Lewis said at the briefing. "Those environmental properties can vary vastly between galaxies."

For the last decade, Sloan Telescope’s Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Explorer (APOGEE) survey has studied the sky, gathering data about hundreds of thousands of stars in the Milky Way and its nearest galactic neighbors. These include the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), roughly 260,000 and 200,000 light-years respectively.

"These two galaxies alone show how conditions can vary wildly between systems," Lewis said. Draco is an ancient galaxy, a hundred thousand times smaller than the Milky Way, and is dominated by dark matter rather than stars. The SMC is younger and larger, only 200 times smaller than our galaxy and composed of old and young stars. Both galaxies are home to a symbiotic stellar pair visible to APOGEE, the Draco C1 and LIN 358 pair, respectively.

This graph shows the motions measured by the APOGEE data for the Draco C1 symbiotic binary star system, which has been monitored repeatedly over the last five years. Black dots represent the data, while the blue curve shows the computer model for the orbit of the red giant as it circles the white dwarf, moving toward and away from the observer. (Image credit: Washington et al.)

Slurping material from the neighboring stars only allows astronomers to identify the pair. The Doppler shift — the same phenomena responsible for causing train whistles to reach a higher pitch as they move closer and lower as they move farther away — also causes changes in the frequency of light coming from a star, depending on whether it is moving closer to or farther from the observer. That back-and-forth motion can help astronomers to calculate the full orbit of the binary system and the masses of both stars.

By combing through several years of APOGEE data, Washington realized that the stars in Draco C1 take roughly three Earth years to orbit one another, while LIN 358's components take just over two. The results reveal the first full orbital measurements of any symbiotic star system outside the Milky Way.

"Very few symbiotic stars have ever been monitored long enough for astronomers to watch the full willing dance," Lewis said in a statement. "And no one has ever done this in detail for symbiotic stars in other galaxies."

The new measurements will help astronomers better understand star formation in other galaxies.

"Dwarf galaxies have very different internal environments and evolutionary histories from the Milky Way," Borja Anguiano, also at the University of Virginia, said in the statement. A co-author on the paper, Anguiano originally discovered that APOGEE had serendipitously observed Draco C1 and LIN 358 several times.

"Soon we will have enough orbits mapped for binaries in other galaxies that we may begin to answer the question of whether different types of galaxies are more efficient at making binary stars."

The results from the observations of Draco C1 were published earlier this year in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Standard candles

In some symbiotic stars, the white dwarf can slurp enough material from its companion that it explodes in a Type Ia supernova. These extremely bright blasts can be seen across the universe, and they all start out with the same brightness for a nearby observer. Astronomers can use the apparent brightness of the supernova to calculate its distance, making Type Ia supernovas a "standard candle" for measuring the universe.

While Draco C1 and LIN 358 are unlikely to explode as supernovae anytime soon, understanding how they work can provide insights into how these standard candles evolve.

"Because we rely on Type Ia supernovae as distance measurements, it's important that we understand exactly how they work, and what systems we should be looking for as possible supernovae progenitors," Anguiano said. "Being able to study the orbits of symbiotic stars in other galaxies will allow us to confirm whether the process of forming Type Ia supernovae is universal."

Mapping the orbital characteristics of Draco C1 and LIN 358 is a "first incredible step" towards using a decade's worth of APOGEE data to understand binary stars outside the Milky Way, Washington said at the briefing.

"Studying extragalactic symbiotic stars in great detail and being able to precisely derive their orbits and stellar parameters could provide important insights into these cosmic markers," she said.

Back to Venus armed with laboratory findings

Venus's impenetrable atmosphere has long made it difficult to conduct a thorough investigation of our neighbouring planet. In a step forward, by conducting laboratory experiments scientists from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) have now developed a way of determining the nature of the planet's surface using new instruments from orbit. The entire surface of Venus can now be mapped mineralogically for the first time, addressing a large gap in planetary research. Venus is Earth's sister planet. It is almost exactly the same size and orbits on average only 40 million kilometres closer to the Sun. However, the two planets developed in very different ways. On Earth, continents formed, separated by oceans. Then some three and a half billion years ago, life emerged under its atmosphere and evolved into the vast variety of organisms that we know today. Things happened very differently on Venus, which is surrounded by an atmosphere of gas a hundred times thicker than that of Earth. Within it, the extreme greenhouse effect results in a constant surface temperature of 470 degrees Celsius - a temperature at which water would instantly evaporate and even lead would melt. The planet is permanently enveloped in thick clouds of sulphuric acid, making it impossible for telescopes on Earth or instruments on board spacecraft to acquire even a glimpse of the surface. Scientists have managed, however, to map its landscape using radar. And now, through a series of laboratory experiments, DLR researchers have developed a new method for determining the nature of the planet's surface from orbit.

"For a good ten years, we have been using a unique laboratory facility to measure the emission properties of various rocks of the kind we might expect to find on Venus under the same extreme conditions that prevail on the planet," says Jorn Helbert, Head of DLR's Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) and lead author of a research paper that has now been published in Science Advances magazine. "The reflectance and emissivity of rocks change when they are exposed to the high temperatures that you find on Venus. As a result, spectral profiles measured at terrestrial temperatures cannot simply be applied there. But now, we have a tool that we can use as the basis for new instruments on the next planned missions to Venus that will finally allow us to determine which types of rock exist there."

Concordance with existing surface measurements from Venus
The four-person research group made up of researchers from DLR, the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts have used the results of their laboratory experiments to devise a new 'spectral library' for various types of rock. "Determining the emission spectra in this way has enabled us to reconstruct the iron oxide content at the landing site of the Soviet Union's Venera 9 and Venera 10 landers for the very first time," says DLR Planetary Scientist Alessandro Maturilli. "In 1975, the two landers transmitted images from Venus and provided important measurements. However, they were not equipped with an instrument that could directly measure iron oxide content."

The two landers provided the only direct spectral measurements of Venusian rocks. The emission profiles determined in the laboratory and the spectra determined by the Venera missions are in very good agreement. "As such, we have demonstrated the accuracy of our new method, which represents a big step forward," says Jorn Helbert. Although further Venus lander missions are currently under discussion, global mapping of the planet can only be conducted from orbit. However, the atmosphere of Venus is impenetrable to wavelengths of visible light - those that the human eye can see. To make mapping of the surface possible despite the planet's atmosphere, scientists are focusing on what are known as 'atmospheric windows'. These are narrow bands of wavelengths at which the atmosphere of Venus is transparent, and thus allow a view of the surface. Five such 'windows' exist at wavelengths close to 1000 nanometres (one micrometre). These wavelengths are in the near-infrared, which is adjacent to the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (approximately 400-700 nanometres).

Venus returns to the focus of planetary research
Through their experiment, the researchers have shown that for rock types measured in the laboratory, the spectra and their characteristic profiles can be used to reliably identify them from orbit. "Our aim is now to create the first global map of rocks on Venus," says Helbert. "That would be a major achievement! After all, we know far too little about Venus. In its infancy, the planet may have had water, like Earth, and may also have been less hostile to life." The scientists are looking to use the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) instrument to implement their plan, mapping emissions in the few atmospheric windows available at near-infrared wavelengths. VEM could be installed on the EnVision mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and on NASA's VERITAS orbiter later this decade.

Venus, Earth's celestial neighbour and often described as its sister planet, was the first target for interplanetary spacecraft. The Soviet mission Venera 1 launched in 1961 and the American Mariner 2 in 1962. Despite a number of spectacular successes, particularly the Soviet space programme's initial orbiters and then eight landings between 1970 and 1983, the planet named after the Roman goddess of love later fell somewhat out of favour in planetary research. Between 1990 and 1994, NASA's Magellan orbiter mapped Venus using radar, revealing myriad details of its multifaceted surface in high-resolution. From 2006 to 2015, ESA's Venus Express mission investigated the planet across a series of seven experiments.

However, we still know little about the nature of the planet's surface. For Earth's other immediate neighbours, the Moon and Mars, determining rock types, mineralogical composition and the abundance of chemical elements was far easier. As a result, nowadays we have a fairly thorough understanding of them. The astronauts involved in the Apollo missions and the robotic missions of the Soviet Union returned 400 kilograms of sample material from the Moon to Earth. Half a dozen landers have been able to analyse the rocks on Mars. A landing on Venus would be a heroic feat, as the lander descends into an increasingly hot oven. The high temperatures and atmospheric pressure - which reaches 92 bar on the ground (equivalent to the pressure at 900 metres underwater on Earth) - would put the electronics under immense strain. The Venera 13 lander was able to withstand these conditions for the greatest amount of time so far and, on 30 October 1981, succeeded in transmitting data from the furnace-like surface of Venus for almost two hours. The new method developed in this laboratory study would allow the surface of Venus to be studied systematically from orbit over a period of many years, without having to run the risk of a landing.

NASA to Host Virtual Briefing on February Perseverance Mars Rover Landing

NASA is hosting a media briefing on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 4:30 p.m. EST to discuss the upcoming landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The event will air live on NASA TV, the agency's website, and YouTube. Perseverance lands Feb. 18, carrying new science instruments and technologies, including the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on its belly. Perseverance will use a drill on the end of its robotic arm to capture rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) samples in metal tubes, which will be deposited on the surface of Mars for a future mission to collect and return to Earth. The rover will seek signs of ancient life on the Red Planet as a primary goal.

Perseverance was built and managed for NASA by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Participating in the briefing are:


Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Lori Glaze, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 deputy project manager, JPL
Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent, and landing lead, JPL
Ken Farley, Mars 2020 project scientist, Caltech
Briony Horgan, Mars 2020 science team member, Purdue University


Media who would like to ask questions via phone during the event must provide their name and affiliation by noon EST Tuesday, Jan. 26, to Rexana Vizza at rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov.

Media and the public also may ask questions on social media during the briefing using #CountdownToMars.

To learn more about Perseverance, visit:

https://nasa.gov/perseverance

 and

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

Citizen scientists help create 3D map of local stellar neighborhood

Is our solar system located in a typical Milky Way neighborhood? Scientists have gotten closer to answering this question, thanks to the NASA-funded Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, a "citizen science" collaboration between professional scientists and members of the public. Scientists tapped into the worldwide network of 150,000 volunteers using Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 to find new examples of brown dwarfs. These objects are balls of gas that are not heavy enough to be stars, since they can't power themselves through nuclear fusion the way stars do. And while "brown" is in the name, they would appear magenta or orange-red if a person could see them close up. By making a complete map of these objects, scientists could find out whether different kinds of brown dwarfs are evenly distributed in our solar system's neighborhood. Telescopes can detect brown dwarfs because they emit heat, in the form of infrared light, left over from their formation. Infrared light is invisible to human eyes, but it can reveal tantalizing details about brown dwarfs and other objects throughout the universe. The result of the new citizen science effort is the most complete map to date of L, T and Y dwarfs in the vicinity of the solar system. These brown dwarf varieties can have temperatures of up to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, but the Y dwarfs, which are the coolest, may have below-freezing temperatures and clouds made of water.

This image shows Earth surrounded by the nearest brown dwarfs, shown in red, against the backdrop of surrounding constellations.


Of course, an astronomer's idea of a neighborhood is different in space than on Earth. The map encompasses a radius of 65 light-years, or about 400 trillion miles, with "close neighbors" inhabiting space within about 35 light-years, or 200 trillion miles.

Since 2017, citizen scientists have been searching for brown dwarf candidates as part of Backyard Worlds, using data from NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite along with all-sky observations collected between 2010 and 2011 under its previous moniker, WISE. The Backyard Worlds team also collaborated with Caltech's Summer Research Connection program to involve high school students in finding brown dwarfs. Both worldwide volunteers and high school students in the Pasadena, California, area are listed as co-authors of the study, which was presented at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

While brown dwarfs are millions to billions of years old, this team of professional and citizen scientists had a much shorter deadline to find them. They knew that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was the only operating observatory that could confirm the distances and positions of the brown dwarfs they were interested in, and Spitzer was set to retire in January 2020. It was a frantic rush to find as many brown dwarfs as they could so Spitzer could reveal their locations more precisely.

Fortunately, citizen scientists helped save the day - they discovered dozens of new brown dwarfs.

"Without the citizen scientists, we couldn't have created such a complete sample in so short a time," said J. Davy Kirkpatrick, scientist at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena and lead author of the study. "Having the power of thousands of inquiring eyes on the data enabled us to find brown dwarf candidates much faster."

Professional astronomers then used Spitzer to observe 361 local brown dwarfs of types L, T, and Y, and combined them with previous discoveries to make a 3D map of 525 brown dwarfs. Besides the citizen science discoveries, scientists made use of CatWise, a NASA-funded catalog of objects from WISE and NEOWISE, to complete their census.

And there's a surprise: One of our solar system's neighbors - the galaxy's coldest known Y dwarf, with temperatures likely below freezing - represents a rare resident in the cosmic neighborhood. Astronomers would have expected to find a lot more of them in the vicinity. But this may be because current telescopes aren't sensitive enough to find them, since these objects are so faint.

As previous research has found, of the seven objects nearest to our solar system, three are rare types of brown dwarfs. The rest are normal stars: red dwarfs Proxima Centauri and Barnard's Star, and Sun-like stars Alpha Centauri A and B.

"If you were to put the Sun at a random place within our 3D map and you were to ask, 'Typically, what do its neighbors look like?' We find that they would look very different from what our actual neighbors are," said Aaron Meisner, assistant scientist at the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab and co-author of the study.

So, is the Sun in an unusually diverse cosmic neighborhood, or is it just that nearby Y dwarfs are easiest to spot? Astronomers will need to investigate further to find out.

Some of these L, T, and Y dwarfs have masses and temperatures similar to exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. Getting details about distant planets can be challenging because if they orbit other stars, starlight is a lot brighter than the planet. Since brown dwarfs in this study do not orbit stars, a telescope does not have to subtract starlight to look at them. This makes brown dwarfs a new kind of laboratory for understanding exoplanets.

Scientists will learn even more about brown dwarfs with NASA's forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which will examine these mysterious objects in detail in infrared light. NASA's upcoming SPHEREx mission, which will be an all-sky infrared survey, also presents new opportunities to characterize more brown dwarfs.

The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project is ongoing and open to anyone worldwide who wants to join the quest to find more mysterious objects in spacecraft data. In addition to a total of about 3,000 brown dwarfs, volunteers have helped find the oldest, coldest white dwarf surrounded by a disk of debris.

"I enjoy this project because the objects that we send to the researchers might get observed with a big telescope," said Melina Thevenot, a citizen scientist in Germany who is listed as a co-author of the new study. "I think we volunteers can really see the fruits of our efforts with this project and the publications by the science team."

New solar arrays to power International Space Station Research

As the International Space Station orbits Earth, its four pairs of solar arrays soak up the sun's energy to provide electrical power for the numerous research and science investigations conducted every day, as well as the continued operations of the orbiting platform. The space station is the springboard to NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon, a platform to test advanced technologies for human exploration of deep space and future mission to Mars. NASA also has opened the space station for business and commercial activities, including private astronauts missions. Designed for a 15-year service life, the solar arrays have been operating continuously since the first pair was deployed in December 2000, with additional array pairs delivered in September 2006, June 2007, and March 2009. The first pair of solar arrays has now provided continuous electrical power to the station for more than 20 years as more modules were added and dozens of crews tackled thousands of scientific experiments and continued operations through hundreds of spacewalks, cargo missions, and more. Though they are functioning well, the current solar arrays are showing signs of degradation, as expected. To ensure a sufficient power supply is maintained for NASA's exploration technology demonstrations for Artemis and beyond as well as utilization and commercialization, NASA will be augmenting six of the eight existing power channels of the space station with new solar arrays.

Boeing, NASA's prime contractor for space station operations, its subsidiary Spectrolab, and major supplier Deployable Space Systems (DSS) will provide the new arrays. The combination of the eight original, larger arrays, and the smaller, more efficient new arrays will restore the power generation of each augmented array to approximately the amount generated when the original arrays were first installed, providing a 20% to 30% increase in power for space station research and operations.

The new solar arrays will be a larger version of the Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA) technology that successfully demonstrated the mechanical capabilities of solar array deployment during its test on the space station in June 2017.

The new solar arrays will be positioned in front of six of the current arrays, and will use the existing sun tracking, power distribution, and channelization. This approach is similar to the one used to upgrade the station's external television cameras to high definition, using the existing power and control mechanisms.

The new arrays will shade slightly over half of the length of the existing arrays and will be connected to the same power system to augment the existing supply. The eight current arrays are currently capable of generating up to 160 kilowatts of power during orbital daytime, about half of which is stored in the station's batteries for use while the station is not in sunlight. Each new solar array will produce more than 20 kilowatts of electricity, eventually totaling 120 kilowatts (120,000 watts) of augmented power during orbital daytime.

In addition, the remaining uncovered solar array pair and partially uncovered original arrays will continue to generate approximately 95 kilowatts of power for a total of up to 215 kilowatts (215,000 watts) of power available to support station operations at completion. For comparison, an active computer and monitor may use up to 270 watts, and a small refrigerator uses about 725 watts.

The solar arrays will be delivered to the International Space Station in pairs in the unpressurized trunk of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft during three resupply missions starting in 2021, when the second pair of current arrays reaches the 15th year of its design life. The installation of each solar array will require two spacewalks: one to prepare the worksite with a modification kit and another to install the new solar array.

NASA signed a modification to the ISS Vehicle Sustaining Engineering contract with Boeing to provide the six new solar arrays. Doing so provides the International Space Station with enough power to maintain normal operations and ensure adequate power for future opportunities in low-Earth orbit, whether for NASA and its international partners or commercial companies.

Chang'e 4 probe resumes work for 26th lunar day

The lander and rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have resumed work for the 26th lunar day on the far side of the moon. The lander woke up at 3:13 a.m. on Friday (Beijing time), and the rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, woke up at 10:29 a.m. on Thursday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration. Landing on the moon on Jan. 3, 2019, the Chang'e-4 probe has survived 736 Earth days on the moon. A lunar day is equal to about 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is of the same length. The solar-powered probe switches to dormant mode during the lunar night. During the 26th lunar day, Yutu-2 will move northwest toward the basalt area or the impact craters with high reflectivity. Yutu-2 will take panoramic photos, and its infrared imaging spectrometer, neutral atom detector and lunar radar will continue to carry out scientific explorations. Research teams will analyze the detection data and release the scientific results.

Seven things to know about the NASA rover about to land on Mars

With only about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) left to go in its 293-million-mile (471-million-kilometer) journey, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is nearing its new planetary home. The spacecraft has begun its approach to the Red Planet and in 43 days, on Feb. 18, 2021, Perseverance will blaze through Mars' atmosphere at about 12,100 mph (19,500 kph), touching down gently on the surface about seven minutes later. "We're working on our last adjustments to put Perseverance in perfect position to land in one of the most interesting places on Mars," said Fernando Abilleira, deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "The team can't wait to put these wheels in some Martian dirt." Built and managed by JPL for NASA, Perseverance will be joining another rover and lander currently at work on Mars, with several orbiters in the skies above. What sets this six-wheeled robot apart?

1. Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient life.


While the surface of Mars is a frozen desert today, scientists have learned from previous NASA missions that the Red Planet once hosted running water and warmer environments at the surface that could have supported microbial life.

"We want Perseverance to help us answer the next logical question: Are there actually signs of past microbial life on Mars?" said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist at JPL. "This demanding goal means sending the most sophisticated robotic scientist yet to Mars."

To tackle this question, which is key in the field of astrobiology, Perseverance carries a new suite of cutting-edge science instruments. Two of them will play a particularly important role in the search for potential signs of past life: SHERLOC (short for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), which can detect organic matter and minerals, and PIXL (short for Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), which maps the chemical composition of rocks and sediments. The instruments will allow scientists to analyze these features together at a higher level of detail than any Mars rover has achieved before.

Perseverance will also use some instruments to gather science data from a distance: Mastcam-Z's cameras can zoom in on rock textures from as far away as a soccer field, while SuperCam will use a laser to zap rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) to study their composition in the resulting vapor. RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment) will use radar waves to probe geological features underground.

2. The rover is landing in a place with a high potential for finding these signs of past microbial life.


Terrain that is interesting to scientists can be challenging to land on. Thanks to new technologies that enable Perseverance to target its landing site more accurately and to autonomously avoid landing hazards, the spacecraft can safely touch down in a place as intriguing as Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) basin that has steep cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields.

More than 3.5 billion years ago, a river there flowed into a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe, depositing sediments in a fan shape known as a delta. The Perseverance science team believes this ancient river delta and lake deposits could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.

3. Perseverance is also collecting important data about Mars' geology and climate.

Context is everything. Mars orbiters have been collecting images and data from Jezero Crater from about 200 miles (322 kilometers) above, but finding signs of ancient life on the surface requires much closer inspection. It requires a rover like Perseverance.

Understanding Mars' past climate conditions and reading the geological history embedded in its rocks will give scientists a richer sense of what the planet was like in its distant past. Studying the Red Planet's geology and climate could also give us a sense of why Earth and Mars - despite some early similarities - ended up so different.

4. Perseverance is the first leg of a round trip to Mars.


The verification of ancient life on Mars carries an enormous burden of proof. Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars in order to package promising samples for return to Earth by a future mission.

Rather than pulverizing rock the way the drill on NASA's Curiosity rover does, Perseverance's drill will cut intact rock cores that are about the size of a piece of chalk and will place them in sample tubes that it will store until the rover reaches an appropriate drop-off location on Mars. The rover could also potentially deliver the samples to a lander that is part of the planned Mars sample return campaign by NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency).

Once the samples are here on Earth, we can examine them with instruments too large and complex to send to Mars, providing far more information about them than even the most sophisticated rover could.

5. Perseverance carries instruments and technology that will help pave the way for human missions to the Moon and Mars.


Among the future-looking technologies on this mission that will benefit human exploration is Terrain-Relative Navigation. As part of the spacecraft's landing system, Terrain-Relative Navigation will enable the descending spacecraft to quickly and autonomously comprehend its location over the Martian surface and modify its trajectory.

Perseverance will also have more autonomy on the surface than any other rover, including self-driving smarts that will allow it to cover more ground in a day's operations with fewer instructions from engineers on Earth. This fast-traverse capability will make exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies more efficient for other vehicles.

In addition, Perseverance carries a technology experiment called MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) that will produce oxygen from Mars' carbon dioxide atmosphere. It will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen for rocket propellant as well as for breathing.

Two other instruments will help engineers design systems for future human explorers to land and survive on Mars: The MEDLI2 (Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2) package is a next-generation version of what flew on the Mars Science Laboratory mission that delivered the Curiosity rover, while the MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) instrument suite provides information about weather, climate, and surface ultraviolet radiation and dust.

Perseverance is also giving a ride to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. A technology experiment separate from the rover's science mission, Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled aircraft flight at another world. If the helicopter is successful in its 30-Martian-day (31-Earth-day) demonstration window, the data could help future explorations of the Red Planet - including those by astronauts - by adding a new aerial dimension.

6. The Perseverance rover embodies the NASA - and the scientific - spirit of overcoming challenges.

Getting the spacecraft to the launch pad during a pandemic, searching for signs of ancient life, collecting samples, and proving new technologies are no easy feats. Nor is a soft touchdown on Mars: Only about 50% of Martian landing attempts, by any space agency, have been successful.

The mission team draws inspiration from the name of its rover, with particular awareness of the challenges the entire world is experiencing at this time. With that in mind, the mission installed a special plate to honor the dedication and hard work of the medical community and first responders around the globe. The team hopes to inspire the entire world, and future explorers, to forge new paths and make discoveries on which the next generation can build.

7. You will get to ride along.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission carries more cameras than any interplanetary mission in history, with 19 cameras on the rover itself and four on other parts of the spacecraft involved in entry, descent, and landing. As with previous Mars missions, the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission plans to make raw and processed images available on the mission's website.

If all goes well, the public will be able to experience in high-definition what it's like to land on Mars - and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with an off-the-shelf microphone affixed to the side of the rover. Another microphone on SuperCam will help scientists understand the property of rocks the instrument is examining and can also listen to the wind.

If you are among the 10.9 million people who signed up to send your name to Mars, your name is stenciled on one of three silicon chips embedded on a plate on the rover that carries the words "Explore as one" in Morse code.

Houston Spaceport aims to be first commercial space station builder

Houston Spaceport, the nation's 10th commercially licensed Spaceport, will be home to the world's first commercial space station builder, Axiom Space. The aerospace company announced plans to create a 14-acre headquarters campus to train private astronauts and begin production of its Axiom Station-the world's first free-flying, internationally available private space station that will serve as humanity's central hub for research, manufacturing and commerce in low Earth orbit. "While we have confronted the challenges of a global pandemic this year, our work to move our city forward never stops. This announcement is another leap that demonstrates how Houston embraces humankind's boldest challenges and lives-up to every bit of its namesake - The Space City," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said. "With Axiom Space at the Houston Spaceport, we expect to energize our workforce by adding more than a thousand high-quality jobs and engage our communities that are focused and dedicated to the STEM fields." The new Axiom Space Headquarters campus will be located in phase one of the 400 acres Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport, EFD. The first phase, 153 acres, was completed in December and includes vital infrastructure like streets, utilities, robust communications systems. The Houston Spaceport is ideally located minutes from downtown Houston. "We had a vision of Houston Spaceport bringing together a cluster of aviation and aerospace enterprises that would support the future of commercial spaceflight," Houston Airports Aviation Director Mario Diaz said. "Today, we have an urban center for collaboration and ideation, a place where the brightest minds in the world can work closely together to lead us into the next frontier of space exploration."

Axiom Space's Houston Spaceport headquarters campus will include the construction of approximately 322,000 square feet of facility space to accommodate Axiom Station modules and terminal building space to house private astronauts, operations, engineering and other requirements. The campus will have ease of access to the Ellington airfield.

"Houston Spaceport represents an ideal headquarters location with its infrastructure and benefits as well as its co-location at Ellington Airport," Axiom Space CEO Mike Suffredini said. "The opportunity to build high-bay hangars where we can assemble the Axiom Station while simultaneously training our private astronauts for missions gives us the flexibility we need as we build the future of commercial space."

The development is estimated to bring more than a thousand jobs to Houston, which already has one of the highest concentrations of engineering talent in the nation. Johnson Space Center, which employs more than 11,000 people and utilizes airfields at Ellington Airport, is just minutes from the Houston Spaceport.

"Axiom Space's announcement is a game-changer for Houston as we extend our position as a commercial aerospace leader," President and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, the economic development organization serving the Greater Houston area, Bob Harvey said.

"Houston is a city built on innovation with a technology-focused workforce, and this move adds to the region's momentum as one of the country's leading next-generation tech hubs."

One of Houston Spaceport's tenants includes Intuitive Machines, a private company that secured a NASA contract to build the NOVA-C Spacecraft, a nearly 13-foot lunar lander that will deliver cargo to the moon in 2021. San Jacinto College has also invested in building its Edge Center, the official education partner for Houston Spaceport that offers aerospace training and career pathways for students.

"The same great environment that produced so many technological advancements in Houston's past is, once again, creating its next successful venture into space - Axiom Station - the world's first commercial space station," President of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership Bob Mitchell said.

"The synergies now being realized at the Houston Spaceport - between Houston's dynamic industry partners, its world class training and academic providers, and its far-sighted community investors - are not only benefitting Axiom but will only get stronger over time. We are all in this together and the best is yet to come!"

Danes staying in origami-inspired 'Lunar' camp in Greenland end their mission

The two architects built the foldable futuristic-looking shelter as part of an experiment to establish whether ordinary people without training could survive in harsh conditions, including those on the Moon. Danish "space architects" Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sorensen have wrapped up their mission in Greenland aimed at testing a "Lunark" shelter - an origami-inspired camp designed to withstand lunar conditions. The shelter weighing 1,700 kilogrammes was designed by the SAGA Space Architects where Aristotelis and Sorensen are employees. The habitat can be folded so as to fit in a space rocket without occupying much space. It is also designed to weather temperatures as low as -45 Celsius and wind speeds up to 89 kilometres per hour. The intrepid Danes spent two months in the collapsible shelter in Greenland's uninhabited central region, surviving on protein shakes and water obtained from thawed ice. Heralding the possible era of space tourism, the experiment sought to find out how feasible it is to live in such a shelter in hostile environments. "We are civilians and if we are looking at a future with more civilians in space, that's one of the most important things for us as architects to figure out", Aristotelis told MailOnline upon returing to Copenhagen.

Lunar gold rush could create conflict on the ground if we don't act now

When it comes to the Moon, everyone wants the same things. Not in the sense of having shared goals, but in the sense that all players target the same strategic sites - state agencies and the private sector alike. That's because, whether you want to do science or make money, you will need things such as water and light. Many countries and private companies have ambitious plans to explore or mine the Moon. This won't be at some remote point in time but soon - even in this decade. As Martin Elvis, Alanna Krolikowski and I set out in a recent paper, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, this will spark tension on the ground unless we find ways to manage the situation imminently. So far, much of the debate around exploring and mining the Moon has focused on tensions in space between state agencies and the private sector. But as we see it, the pressing challenge arises from limited strategic resources. Important sites for science are also important for infrastructure construction by state agencies or commercial users. Such sites include "peaks of eternal light" (where there is almost constant sunlight, and hence access to power), and continually shaded craters at the polar regions, where there's water ice. Each is rare, and the combination of the two - ice on the crater floor and a narrow peak of eternal light on the crater rim - is a prized target for different players. But they occur only in polar regions, rather than at the equatorial sites targeted by the Apollo programme in the 1960s and 1970s.

The recent successful landing of Chang'e 5 by China targeted a relatively smooth landing site on the lunar nearside, but it is part of a larger, phased programme due to take China's space agency down to the lunar south pole by 2024.

India tried a more direct polar route, with its failed Chandrayaan-2 lander crashing in the same region in 2019. The Russian Roscosmos, collaborating with the European Space Agency, is also targeting the south polar region for landings late in 2021 and, in 2023, at Boguslavsky crater, as a test mission. Next, Roscosmos will aim for the Aitken Basin in the same region in 2022 on the to prospect for water in permanently shadowed areas. A number of private companies also have ambitious plans for mining the Moon for resources.

Strategic resources that aren't in the polar regions tend to be concentrated rather than evenly distributed. Thorium and uranium, which could be used for radioactive fuel, are found together in 34 regions that are areas of less than 80km wide. Iron resulting from asteroid impacts can be found within broader territories, ranging from 30-300km across, but there are only around 20 such areas.

And then there is the poster boy of lunar resources, mined in dozens of science fiction films: Helium-3, for nuclear fusion. Seeded by the Sun in the powdery crushed rock of the lunar surface, it is present in wide areas across the Moon, but the highest concentrations are found in only about eight regions, all relatively small (less than 50km across).

These materials will be of interest both to those trying to establish infrastructure on the Moon and are later targeting Mars as well as commercial exploitation (mining), or science - for example creating telescopic arrays on the lunar far side, away from the growing noise of human communications.

How then do we deal with the problem? The Outer Space Treaty (1967) holds that "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind." States do not get to claim parts of the Moon as property, but they can still use them. Where this leaves disputes and extraction by private companies is unclear.

Proposed successors to the treatment, such as the Moon Agreement (1979), are seen as too restrictive, requiring a formal framework of laws and an ambitious international regulatory regime. The agreement has failed to gain support among key players, including the US, Russia and China. More recent steps, such as the Artemis Accords - a set of guidelines surrounding the Artemis Program for crewed exploration of the Moon - are perceived as heavily tied to the US programme.

In the worst case, this lack of framework could lead to heightened tensions on Earth. But it could also create unnecessary duplication of infrastructure, with everyone building their own stuff. That would drive up costs for individual organisations, which they would then have reasons to try to recoup in ways that could compromise opportunities for science and the legacy we leave for future generations.

Ways forward
Our best initial response may be modest, taking its cue from overlooked sites on Earth. Small terrestrial resource pools, such as lakes bordered by several villages, or fish stocks are often managed through approaches developed locally by the key players involved.

These suggest that a first step toward lunar-resource governance will be creating agreement among users. This should focus on the nature of the resources at stake, how their benefits should be distributed, and, crucially, the worst-case scenarios they seek to avoid. For example, actors will likely need to decide whether the peaks of eternal light should be managed as a patch of high-value real estate or as a volume of energy output to be shared. It may also be worth deciding on a case-by-case basis.

Another challenge will be fostering compliance with the governance arrangements that are devised. To that end, lunar users would be well advised to build shared installations, such as landing and supply facilities, to function as carrots that can be withheld from misbehaving actors. Such partial solutions will be difficult to add after a country or company has made irreversible investments in mission designs. Clearly, the time to devise these approaches is now.