THE GURU'S LAB

NASA Will be Sending two More Missions to Mars in 2024, Costing Just $80 Million

One of the biggest ongoing changes in space exploration is the introduction of commercial methods into the field. Commercial launch providers like RocketLab and SpaceX have fundamentally changed the way the industry does business. Now researchers are taking their “ move fast and break things ” approach to another part of the industry – actual mission design. One of a trio of missions that will attempt to lower a mission’s cost to launch by a factor of 10 is led by researchers at UC Berkeley . Known as the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers ( ESCAPADE ), the mission will consist of twin satellites, known as “Blue” and “Gold” after UC Berkeley’s colors. Their primary mission will be to monitor Mars, watching for its atmosphere and how the planet is affected by the solar wind. One of the most intriguing things about the project is that it should cost only around $80 million from start to data collection in Mars orbit. Visualization of the focal points of ESCAPADE

By Eric Ralph Posted on August 27, 2021 Likely to the relief of many, SpaceX appears to have successfully tested a prototype of the custom-built Starbase propellant storage tanks that will eventually hold thousands of tons of fuel and oxidizer. For reasons unknown, SpaceX’s built its first ground support equipment (GSE) ‘test tank’ – a subscale prototype designed to quickly verify basic production quality and design goals – months after it began mass-producing operational storage tanks. In fact, of the seven total GSE tanks expected to be built, SpaceX has already completed seven, installed five, and scrapped one. Known as GSE4, SpaceX actually used modified parts of that scrapped tank to assemble the GSE test tank that first rolled to Starbase’s launch (and test) facilities on August 23rd. Two days later, SpaceX subjected the small tank to its first test

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FOR AS LONG AS THE WORLD CAN REMEMBER

FOR AS LONG AS THE WORLD CAN REMEMBER , Elon Musk has wanted to bring humans to space . But none of that astronaut stuff — Musk wanted to float real, everyday humans into orbit so that, one day, we could all live beyond Earth if we’d like. This September, a SpaceX ship will bring humanity one flight closer to that possibilit

NASA’s Perseverance Plans Next Sample Attempt

The rover will abrade a rock this week, allowing scientists and engineers to decide whether that target would withstand its powerful drill. In its search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is once again preparing to collect the first of many rock core samples that could eventually be brought to Earth for further study. This week, a tool on the rover’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm will abrade the surface of a rock nicknamed “Rochette,” allowing scientists to look inside and determine whether they want to capture a sample with the rover’s coring bit. Slightly thicker than a pencil, the sample would be sealed in one of the 42 remaining titanium tubes aboard the rover. Should the team decide to acquire a core from this rock, the sampling process would be initiated next week. The mission attempted to capture their first record of the crater floor on Aug. 6 from a rock that ultimately proved too crumbly , breaking into powder and fragments of ma

My Favorite Martian Image: Helicopter Sees Potential Rover Road Ahead

Perseverance scientist impressed with aerial images of location considered for rover exploration. Ask any space explorer, and they’ll have a favorite photograph or two from their mission. For Ken Farley, the project scientist for NASA’s Perseverance rover, one of his current favorites is a color image of “South Seítah,” an area the mission’s science team had considered potentially worthy of a rover visit. The agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took the image during its 12th and most recent flight, on Aug. 16. Prior to Ingenuity’s latest flight, the majority of what the Perseverance science team knew of the southern portion of the Seítah feature came from orbiter images. Based on that data, they believed the site could possibly be a treasure trove of complex geology, providing information that could play a valuable role as the rover team searches for signs of ancient microbial life and attempts to characterize the geology of the area and to understand the area’s history. They used the r

One Year Out: NASA’s Psyche Mission Moves Closer to Launch

As part of NASA’s Discovery Program, the mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid is well on its way to an August 2022 launch. With NASA’s Psyche mission now less than a year from launch, anticipation is building. By next spring, the fully assembled spacecraft will ship from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a launch period that opens Aug. 1, 2022. In early 2026, the Psyche spacecraft will arrive at its target, an asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe asteroid Psyche, which is about 140 miles (226 kilometers) wide, is made largely of iron and nickel and could be the core of an early planet. The spacecraft will spend 21 months orbiting the asteroid and gathering science data with a magnetometer, a multispectral imager, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer. The information the instruments gather won’t just help scientists understand this particula

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on ripples in Saturn’s rings have revealed new information about the gas giant’s mysterious core. Their results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that Saturn’s core is not a hard ball of rock, as some previous theories had proposed, but a diffuse soup of ice, rock, and metallic fluids — a so-called ‘fuzzy’ core. They also reveal that the core extends across 60% of the planet’s diameter, which makes it substantially larger than previously estimated.

An illustration of Saturn and its ‘fuzzy’ core. Image credit: R. Hurt, IPAC / Caltech. The idea that Saturn’s oscillations could make waves in its rings and that the rings could thus be used as a seismograph to study the planet’s interior first came about in studies in the early 1990s by Mark Marley and Carolyn Porco, who later became the leader of the Cassini imaging team. The first observation of the phenomenon was made by Matt Hedman and P.D. Nicholson in 2013, who analyzed data taken by Cassini. They found that Saturn’s C-ring contained multiple spiral patterns driven by fluctuations in the gas giant’s gravitational field and that these patterns were distinct from other waves in the rings caused by gravitational interactions with the Saturnian moons. In the new study, Caltech astronomers Christopher Mankovich and Jim Fuller analyzed the pattern of waves in the rings to build new models of Saturn’s sloshing interior. “Saturn is always quaking, but it’s subtle,” Dr. Mankovich said. “

Individual regional dust events can boost planetary water loss by a factor of five to ten and represent an important driver of atmospheric evolution on Mars, according to an analysis of data collected by a trio of spacecraft: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter

. This artist’s concept depicts the dry environment seen at Mars today versus the early Martian environment. Image credit: Simon Fraser University. Dust storms heat up higher altitudes of the Martian atmosphere, preventing water vapor from freezing as usual and allowing it to reach farther up. In the higher reaches of Mars, water molecules are left vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation, which breaks them up into their lighter components of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen, which is the lightest element, is easily lost to space, with oxygen either escaping or settling back to the surface. Planetary scientists have long suspected that Mars has lost most of its water largely through this process, but they didn’t realize the significant impact of regional dust storms, which happen nearly every summer in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Globe-enveloping dust storms that strike typically every three to four Martian years were thought to be the main culprits, along with the hot summer months in t

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In a new blind survey of gravitational microlensing, an international team of astronomers has detected likely evidence for four Earth-sized planets wandering freely through interstellar space. Using observations from the aging Kepler Space Telescope , researchers led by Iain McDonald at the University of Manchester picked out key signs of microlensing by the planets in a crowded and noisy field of stars. Their success in the face of challenging circumstances clearly demonstrates the feasibility of blind, space-based microlensing surveys in future missions. In some star systems, astronomers predict that the strong gravitational tug of large planets could have thrown their smaller planetary neighbours out into interstellar space. Without any host star, these roughly Earth-sized “free-floating planets” (FFPs) would be virtually impossible to detect using conventional exoplanet searching techniques – but should be detectable through the effect of gravitational microlensing. First p

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Another source said Musk believes humanity needs to leave Earth to ensure the survival of our species in the case of catastrophe or disaster. On Tuesday December 10, two days after SpaceX’s starship launch was cancelled a mere 1.3 seconds before lift-off, the giant gleaming steel rocket exploded on landing after reaching an altitude of 12.5 km, performing a flip and returning back to its launch pad. A week earlier, SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk gave the test flight 2 in 3 chances of failure. In a bout of excitement, he tweeted out, “Mars, here we come!!” But even before the failure of its largest prototype spaceship, SpaceX was already busy working on two newer prototypes. For Musk, who has single-handedly revitalised spaceflight, it’s all about moving fast, learning from mistakes, and developing technology and engineering methods that haven’t even been created yet, on the go, on the fly. SpaceX knew many things could go wrong with Starship. After all, the first two Starships blew up.

Elon Musk's Space X wants to land humans on Mars by 2026 . That matters because Musk's vision of humans as a multi-planet species with a reduced risk of extinction from a catastrophe on Earth is smart. ... Successful colonization on Earth has always benefited from precursors in some form. Dornald the guru then asked the following question: Do you think he has considered the risks of sending people to Mars