Terran Orbital acquires new satellite development facility

Terran Orbital, the parent company of Tyvak and PredaSAR, has leased a new four-story facility in Irvine, California, to house satellite design, engineering and development. Terran Orbital will continue to manufacture satellites at a separate Irvine facility, which the company is expanding to support its “robust pipeline,” according to a Sept. 22 news release. Terran Orbital is growing rapidly, both in terms of its workforce and facilities, due to strong demand from government and commercial customers, Marc Bell, Terran Orbital co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. Terran Orbital’s new Irvine facility covers nearly 8,262 square meters. “The new space will significantly increase our operational efficiency and permit us to continue to expand our workforce at a rapidly accelerating pace, while also allowing us to expand our manufacturing capacity at our current location,” Bell said in a statement. One of Tyvak’s recent orders was from Lockheed Martin, a Terran Orbital investor. Lockheed is buying a pair of 12-unit cubesats for LINUSS, short for Lockheed Martin In-space Upgrade Satellite System, to demonstrate satellite servicing in geosynchronous orbit. Tyvak also developed and built the spacecraft bus for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), a satellite destined for the same orbit as the lunar Gateway. CAPSTONE is scheduled to launch later this year on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand.

CAPSTONE, a lunar cubesat developed by Advanced Space for NASA, will launch in the fourth quarter on an Electron rocket from New Zealand, not Virginia as originally planned. Credit: Advanced Space/Tyvak, a Terran Orbital Company

Forget rockets – a lunar elevator is the future of Moon travel

What do you see when you look at the Moon? Beauty? Craters? Some people see dollar signs. You’ll occasionally see our only natural satellite billed as ‘Earth’s eighth continent’ because it’s full of resources that are hard to ignore. A rare form of helium, helium-3, could be used in fusion power stations here on Earth. Rare elements, such as neodymium, could be extracted and returned home for use in smartphones and other electronics. But how do we get them here without blowing all the profits on rockets? According to a study published in 2019, a lunar elevator could be the answer. A cable anchored to the lunar surface would stretch most of the 400,000km (250,000 miles) home. It couldn’t be directly attached to the Earth, due to the relative motions of the two objects, but it could terminate high in Earth orbit. That would have the added benefit of placing it above the bulk of our space junk, a growing problem as we launch ever more satellites. Solar-powered robotic shuttles could move up and down the cable, acting as a conveyor belt to ferry precious resources our way. It may sound like an outlandish prospect, but Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford – the two University of Columbia astronomy PhD candidates behind the study – believe we could pull it off for a few billion US dollars. To put that into context, Jeff Bezos liquidates $1bn (over £700m) of his Amazon stock every year to fund his Blue Origin space tourism company. NASA’s Artemis programme, which is sending the first female astronaut and first astronaut of colour to the Moon later this decade, is costing $86bn (£60bn). Such is the value of the Moon’s resources, a separate study estimated that a lunar elevator would pay for itself within just 53 trips.

The cable, which would be no thicker than a pencil, would weigh 40 tonnes – well within the remit of modern rockets, such as SpaceX’s Starship. Unlike a space elevator that would travel from Earth’s surface into space, a lunar elevator stopping slightly shy of our planet wouldn’t have to contend with huge gravitational forces.

The Moon has no atmosphere either, which simplifies matters. That means the cable could be made from existing materials, such as Kevlar, instead of the yet-to-be-invented super-strong materials needed for an Earth-to-space elevator.

We could also combine the two. In April 2021, Chinese state-run media presented the country’s idea for a ‘Sky Ladder’. This would see a spacecraft winched up an elevator from Earth’s surface to a waiting space station, before being flung towards the Moon where it would meet another elevator that would lower it down to the lunar surface.

The idea of space elevators has been around for over a century without much progress. But if enough people – or, more likely, corporations – become enamoured with the chance of making big bucks, we could see the lunar equivalent of a gold rush in the decades ahead. Elevators could well turn out to be a way to keep costs down and profits literally sky-high.

China's Zhurong Mars rover returns panorama ahead of planetary blackout

China's Mars rover Zhurong has produced a remarkable new panorama of its surroundings in Utopia Planitia to mark 100 days of activity on the Red Planet as preparations continue for the rover to spend more than a month in safe mode this autumn. The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover has covered 3,491 feet (1,064 meters) since rolling onto the Martian surface on May 22. But from mid-September to late October, the rover and its orbiting companion, Tianwen-1, will be in safe mode as the sun's charged particles interfere with their communication with Earth. In preparation for the break, Zhurong paused to take a good look around with its panoramic camera. The returned image shows the rover and its solar arrays and antenna close to a dune, a feature type that mission scientists are keen for Zhurong to analyze. A number of distant features can be seen on the horizon of the panorama including, above Zhurong's antenna, the backshell from the rover's landing in May. Zhurong visited the discarded gear up close in July. Since landing on May 14 and deploying onto the surface a week later, Zhurong has been moving south from its landing platform, analyzing different rocks, dunes and other features as it goes. The Tianwen-1 orbiter with which Zhurong hitched a ride to Mars has been orbiting so that it passes over Zhurong once a day to relay data to mission control in China. The National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) also released an image from Tianwen-1's high resolution camera which shows Zhurong's journey from the lander, including tracks the rover left in the Martian surface.

A panorama of Utopia Planitia returned by the Zhurong rover in late August 2021. (Image credit: CNSA/PEC)

Meanwhile, a new paper on the geological characteristics of Zhurong's landing area identifies a number of features and landforms that scientists working on the mission hope to study as the rover continues south.

A high-resolution image from the Tianwen-1 orbiter showing Zhurong's roving progress through late August 2021.  (Image credit: NAOC)

According to the paper, the rover will investigate transverse aeolian ridges, or dunes, as well as troughs, caused by erosion, and particularly mysterious pitted cones. One of the scientists' key objectives is to use Zhurong's ground penetrating radar to determine the thickness and distribution of Martian soil near some landforms hypothesized to have been created by the presence of subsurface water or ice.

The presence of water would have profound implications for understanding of the climate history of Mars, potential resources for future crewed missions and even as a habitat for simple subsurface life.

The paper also notes that a number of pitted cones are present a number of kilometers to the south of the rover's position. A close-up look at these with Zhurong's terrain camera, multispectral camera, and Mars Surface Composition Detector could help provide fresh insights into how these features were formed, since current hypotheses range from volcanism, mud- or hydrovolcanism, or even underground water flows.

Despite their industry, both Zhurong and Tianwen-1 will soon go into safe mode because of a solar conjunction preventing communications between Earth and Mars. Both spacecraft will pause activities from mid-September through late October, as the sun and the charged particles it releases will obscure our view of Mars from Earth and interfere with radio communications between the two planets. 

A route map showing Zhurong's travels south from its landing platform. (Image credit: BACC)

Both spacecraft will autonomously carry out health assessments, self-monitoring and trouble-shooting until communications can be restored. 

The China National Space Administration and the People's Bank of China also jointly released silver and gold commemorative coins featuring the rover to celebrate Zhurong's 100 days on Mars.