Ingenuity Update: The Mars Helicopter Is Ready to Broaden Its Horizon...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to Begin New Demonstration Phase (Press Release)

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has a new mission. Having proven that powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, the Ingenuity experiment will soon embark on a new operations demonstration phase, exploring how aerial scouting and other functions could benefit future exploration of Mars and other worlds.

This new phase will begin after the helicopter completes its next two flights. The decision to add an operations demonstration is a result of the Perseverance rover being ahead of schedule with the thorough checkout of all vehicle systems since its February 18 landing, and its science team choosing a nearby patch of crater bed for its first detailed explorations. With the Mars Helicopter’s energy, telecommunications, and in-flight navigation systems performing beyond expectation, an opportunity arose to allow the helicopter to continue exploring its capabilities with an operations demonstration, without significantly impacting rover scheduling.

“The Ingenuity technology demonstration has been a resounding success,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Since Ingenuity remains in excellent health, we plan to use it to benefit future aerial platforms while prioritizing and moving forward with the Perseverance rover team’s near-term science goals.”

The operations demonstration will begin in about two weeks with the helicopter’s sixth flight. Until then, Ingenuity will be in a transitional phase that includes its fourth and fifth forays into Mars’ crimson skies. Flight four will send the rotorcraft about 436 feet (133 meters) south to collect aerial imagery of a potential new landing zone before returning to land at Wright Brothers Field, the name for the Martian airfield on which Ingenuity’s first flight took place. This 873-foot (266-meter) roundtrip effort would surpass the range, speed, and duration marks achieved on the third flight. Ingenuity was programmed to execute a fourth flight Friday, with a takeoff to take place at 10:46 a.m. EDT (7:46 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. local Mars time) and first data to be returned at 1:39 p.m. EDT (10:39 a.m. PDT). The fifth flight would send Ingenuity on a one-way mission, landing at the new site. If Ingenuity remains healthy after those flights, the next phase can begin.

Change of Course

Ingenuity’s transition from conducting a technology demonstration to an operations demonstration brings with it a new flight envelope. Along with those one-way flights, there will be more precision maneuvering, greater use of its aerial-observation capabilities, and more risk overall.

The change also means Ingenuity will require less support from the Perseverance rover team, which is looking ahead for targets to take rock and sediment samples in search of ancient microscopic life. On April 26 – the mission’s 66th sol, or Martian day – Perseverance drove 33 feet (10 meters) with the goal to identify targets.

“With the short drive, we have already begun our move south toward a location the science team believes is worthy of investigation and our first sampling,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for the Perseverance rover from Caltech in Pasadena, California. “We’ll spend the next couple of hundred sols executing our first science campaign looking for interesting rock outcrop along this 2-kilometer (1.24-mile) patch of crater floor before likely heading north and then west toward Jezero Crater’s fossil river delta.”

With short drives expected for Perseverance in the near term, Ingenuity may execute flights that land near the rover’s current location or its next anticipated parking spot. The helicopter can use these opportunities to perform aerial observations of rover science targets, potential rover routes, and inaccessible features while also capturing stereo images for digital elevation maps. The lessons learned from these efforts will provide significant benefit to future mission planners. These scouting flights are a bonus and not a requirement for Perseverance to complete its science mission.

The cadence of flights during Ingenuity’s operations demonstration phase will slow from once every few days to about once every two or three weeks, and the forays will be scheduled to avoid interfering with Perseverance’s science operations. The team will assess flight operations after 30 sols and will complete flight operations no later than the end of August. That timing will allow the rover team time to wrap up its planned science activities and prepare for solar conjunction – the period in mid-October when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun, blocking communications.

“We have so appreciated the support provided by the Perseverance rover team during our technology demonstration phase,” said MiMi Aung, project manager of Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. “Now we have a chance to pay it forward, demonstrating for future robotic and even crewed missions the benefits of having a partner nearby that can provide a different perspective – one from the sky. We are going to take this opportunity and run with it – and fly with it.”

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The aerial journey continues!🚁

The #MarsHelicopter will soon embark on a new operations demonstration phase. It’ll shift its focus from proving flight is possible on Mars to demonstrating flight operations that future aerial craft could utilize. https://t.co/wH9OHZvIjv pic.twitter.com/Is50qZWhhk

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 30, 2021

ONLY 3 DAYS REMAIN for You to Send Your Name to the Moon by Supporting the Iris Lunar Rover!

Carnegie Mellon University

Just thought I'd re-share this cool crowdfunding campaign where you can send your name to the Moon by donating a generous contribution to the Iris lunar mission! This miniature, student-built rover is set to fly later this year aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander...which is hitching a NASA-sponsored ride on the United Launch Alliance's newest rocket, the Vulcan Centaur. The students at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)—which constructed Iris—are looking to gain extra funding to cover the final cost of this mission (which includes paying for vital pre-launch tests of flight components, as well as funding the operational cost of the project's Mission Control itself)...and they're looking to the general public for help in doing so. Their campaign goal is to reach at least $50,000 (they're currently at $39,411), and they have until SATURDAY, MAY 1 to achieve it. It will be up to CMU to decide whether or not the Iris Team can keep the money already donated if they fail to reach their goal.

So here is the link where you can make the dreams of many aspiring college students, who are clearly passionate about space exploration, a reality:

https://crowdfunding.cmu.edu/campaigns/moonshot#/

For your awesome donation—which can be as little as $50—your name will be included with those of other benefactors (like me) on the flash memory aboard the Iris Rover! Ad lunam.


Carnegie Mellon University


Astrobotic




United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance

Perseverance Update: One Day After Ingenuity's Momentous Flight on Mars, the Rover Makes History of Its Own...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Extracts First Oxygen from Red Planet (Press Release - April 21)

The growing list of “firsts” for Perseverance, NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, includes converting some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen. A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task. The test took place April 20, the 60th Martian day, or sol, since the mission landed Feb. 18.

While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact – isolating and storing oxygen on Mars to help power rockets that could lift astronauts off the planet’s surface. Such devices also might one day provide breathable air for astronauts themselves. MOXIE is an exploration technology investigation – as is the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) weather station – and is sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

“This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for STMD. “MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars. Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe. Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.”

For rockets or astronauts, oxygen is key, said MOXIE’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory.

To burn its fuel, a rocket must have more oxygen by weight. Getting four astronauts off the Martian surface on a future mission would require approximately 15,000 pounds (7 metric tons) of rocket fuel and 55,000 pounds (25 metric tons) of oxygen. In contrast, astronauts living and working on Mars would require far less oxygen to breathe. “The astronauts who spend a year on the surface will maybe use one metric ton between them,” Hecht said.

Hauling 25 metric tons of oxygen from Earth to Mars would be an arduous task. Transporting a one-ton oxygen converter – a larger, more powerful descendant of MOXIE that could produce those 25 tons – would be far more economical and practical.

Mars’ atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. MOXIE works by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. A waste product, carbon monoxide, is emitted into the Martian atmosphere.

The conversion process requires high levels of heat to reach a temperature of approximately 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 Celsius). To accommodate this, the MOXIE unit is made with heat-tolerant materials. These include 3D-printed nickel alloy parts, which heat and cool the gases flowing through it, and a lightweight aerogel that helps hold in the heat. A thin gold coating on the outside of MOXIE reflects infrared heat, keeping it from radiating outward and potentially damaging other parts of Perseverance.

In this first operation, MOXIE’s oxygen production was quite modest – about 5 grams, equivalent to about 10 minutes worth of breathable oxygen for an astronaut. MOXIE is designed to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour.

This technology demonstration was designed to ensure the instrument survived the launch from Earth, a nearly seven-month journey through deep space, and touchdown with Perseverance on Feb. 18. MOXIE is expected to extract oxygen at least nine more times over the course of a Martian year (nearly two years on Earth).

These oxygen-production runs will come in three phases. The first phase will check out and characterize the instrument’s function, while the second phase will run the instrument in varying atmospheric conditions, such as different times of day and seasons. In the third phase, Hecht said, “we’ll push the envelope” – trying new operating modes, or introducing “new wrinkles, such as a run where we compare operations at three or more different temperatures.”

“MOXIE isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world,” said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations within STMD. It’s the first technology of its kind that will help future missions “live off the land,” using elements of another world’s environment, also known as in-situ resource utilization.

“It’s taking regolith, the substance you find on the ground, and putting it through a processing plant, making it into a large structure, or taking carbon dioxide – the bulk of the atmosphere – and converting it into oxygen,” she said. “This process allows us to convert these abundant materials into useable things: propellant, breathable air, or, combined with hydrogen, water.”

More About Perseverance

A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

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Photos of the Day: I'm FULLY VACCINATED!

Happy Hump Day, everyone! Just thought I'd share these pics that I took after I got my second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine at Cal Poly Pomona earlier today. This comes exactly three weeks after I got my first dose...and just like the first time around, I celebrated this milestone by going to Krispy Kreme to feast on another Original Glazed Doughnut afterwards! (Oh, and I then bought lunch at Chick-fil-A.) If it's anything like the first time around, I'll only wake up with a slight pain at the injection site on my upper right arm the next morning. Knock on wood.

As a reminder, folks 16 years of age and older are now eligible to get vaccinated in the United States! Don't wait! Get your shot and let's end the COVID-19 pandemic once and for all! Overlooking the fact that we'll all need to receive a third dose within the next 12 months—and most likely be vaccinated annually just like what's done with the seasonal flu... Carry on!

INGENUITY HAS MADE AVIATION AND INTERPLANETARY HISTORY!

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight (Press Release)

Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

The solar-powered helicopter first became airborne at 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT) – 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time) – a time the Ingenuity team determined would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicate Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed maximum altitude of 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. Additional details on the test are expected in upcoming downlinks.

Ingenuity’s initial flight demonstration was autonomous – piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at JPL. Because data must be sent to and returned from the Red Planet over hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA’s Deep Space Network, Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flight was not observable from Earth in real time.

NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place.

“Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world,” Zurbuchen said. “While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.”

Ingenuity’s chief pilot, Håvard Grip, announced that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) – the United Nations’ civil aviation agency – presented NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration with official ICAO designator IGY, call-sign INGENUITY.

These details will be included officially in the next edition of ICAO’s publication Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services. The location of the flight has also been given the ceremonial location designation JZRO for Jezero Crater.

As one of NASA’s technology demonstration projects, the 19.3-inch-tall (49-centimeter-tall) Ingenuity Mars Helicopter contains no science instruments inside its tissue-box-size fuselage. Instead, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is intended to demonstrate whether future exploration of the Red Planet could include an aerial perspective.

This first flight was full of unknowns. The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight. The helicopter contains unique components, as well as off-the-shelf-commercial parts – many from the smartphone industry – that were tested in deep space for the first time with this mission.

“The Mars Helicopter project has gone from ‘blue sky’ feasibility study to workable engineering concept to achieving the first flight on another world in a little over six years,” said Michael Watkins, director of JPL. “That this project has achieved such a historic first is testimony to the innovation and doggedness of our team here at JPL, as well as at NASA’s Langley and Ames Research Centers, and our industry partners. It’s a shining example of the kind of technology push that thrives at JPL and fits well with NASA’s exploration goals.”

Parked about 211 feet (64.3 meters) away at Van Zyl Overlook during Ingenuity’s historic first flight, the Perseverance rover not only acted as a communications relay between the helicopter and Earth, but also chronicled the flight operations with its cameras. The pictures from the rover’s Mastcam-Z and Navcam imagers will provide additional data on the helicopter’s flight.

“We have been thinking for so long about having our Wright brothers moment on Mars, and here it is,” said MiMi Aung, project manager of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. “We will take a moment to celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next. History shows they got back to work – to learn as much as they could about their new aircraft – and so will we.”

Perseverance touched down with Ingenuity attached to its belly on Feb. 18. Deployed to the surface of Jezero Crater on April 3, Ingenuity is currently on the 16th sol, or Martian day, of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight test window. Over the next three sols, the helicopter team will receive and analyze all data and imagery from the test and formulate a plan for the second experimental test flight, scheduled for no earlier than April 22. If the helicopter survives the second flight test, the Ingenuity team will consider how best to expand the flight profile.

More About Ingenuity

JPL, which built Ingenuity, also manages the technology demonstration project for NASA. It is supported by NASA’s Science, Aeronautics, and Space Technology mission directorates. The agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, MiMi Aung is the project manager, and Bob Balaram is chief engineer.

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ONLY 14 DAYS REMAIN: Send Your Name to the Moon by Supporting the Iris Lunar Rover!

Carnegie Mellon University

Just thought I'd share this cool crowdfunding campaign where you can send your name to the Moon by donating a generous contribution to the Iris lunar mission! This miniature, student-built rover is set to fly later this year aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander...which is hitching a NASA-sponsored ride on the United Launch Alliance's newest rocket, the Vulcan Centaur. The students at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)—which constructed Iris—are looking to gain extra funding to cover the final cost of this mission (which includes paying for vital pre-launch tests of flight components, as well as funding the operational cost of the project's Mission Control itself)...and they're looking to the general public for help in doing so. Their campaign goal is to reach at least $50,000 (they're currently at $23,332), and they have until SATURDAY, MAY 1 to achieve it. It will be up to CMU to decide whether or not the Iris Team can keep the money already donated if they fail to reach their goal.

So here is the link where you can make the dreams of many aspiring college students, who are clearly passionate about space exploration, a reality:

https://crowdfunding.cmu.edu/campaigns/moonshot#/

For your awesome donation, your name will be included with those of other benefactors (like me) on the flash memory aboard the Iris Rover! Ad lunam.

(And FYI, I went to college at California State University, Long Beach! Class of 2004, baby... Our new mascot is Elbee the Shark.)




Astrobotic


United Launch Alliance

New Horizons Update: The Intrepid Robotic Explorer Is About to Achieve Another Distant Accomplishment Two Days from Now...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Southwest Research Institute

NASA’s New Horizons Reaches a Rare Space Milestone (News Release)

Now 50 times as far from the Sun as Earth, History-Making Pluto Explorer Photographs Voyager 1’s Location from the Kuiper Belt

In the weeks following its launch in early 2006, when NASA’s New Horizons was still close to home, it took just minutes to transmit a command to the spacecraft, and hear back that the onboard computer received and was ready to carry out the instructions.

As New Horizons crossed the solar system, and its distance from Earth jumped from millions to billions of miles, that time between contacts grew from a few minutes to several hours. And on April 18 at 12:42 UTC (or April 17 at 8:42 p.m. EDT), New Horizons will reach a rare deep-space milepost -- 50 astronomical units from the Sun, or 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.

New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to reach this great distance, following the legendary Voyagers 1 and 2 and their predecessors, Pioneers 10 and 11. It’s almost 5 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) away; a remote region where one of those radioed commands, even traveling at the speed of light, needs seven hours to reach the far-flung spacecraft. Then add seven more hours before its control team on Earth finds out if the message was received.

“It’s hard to imagine something so far away,” said Alice Bowman, the New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “One thing that makes this distance tangible is how long it takes for us on Earth to confirm that the spacecraft received our instructions. This went from almost instantaneous to now being on the order of 14 hours. It makes the extreme distance real.”

To mark the occasion, New Horizons recently photographed the star field where one of its long-distance cousins, Voyager 1, appears from New Horizons’ unique perch in the Kuiper Belt. Never before has a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt photographed the location of an even more distant spacecraft, now in interstellar space. Although Voyager 1 is far too faint to be seen directly in the image, its location is known precisely due to NASA’s radio tracking.

“That’s a hauntingly-beautiful image to me,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

“Looking back at the flight of New Horizons from Earth to 50 AU almost seems in some way like a dream,” he continued. “Flying a spacecraft across our entire solar system to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt had never been done before New Horizons. Most of us on the team have been a part of this mission since it was just an idea, and during that time our kids have grown up, and our parents, and we ourselves, have grown older. But most importantly, we made many scientific discoveries, inspired countless STEM careers, and even made a little history.”

New Horizons was practically designed to make history. Dispatched at 36,400 miles per hour (58,500 kilometers per hour) on Jan. 19, 2006, New Horizons was and is still the fastest human-made object ever launched from Earth. Its gravity-assist flyby of Jupiter in February 2007 not only shaved about three years from its voyage to Pluto, but allowed it to make the best views ever of Jupiter’s faint ring, and capture the first movie of a volcano erupting anywhere in the solar system except Earth.

New Horizons successfully pulled off the first exploration of the Pluto system in July 2015, followed by the farthest flyby in history – and first close-up look at a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) -- with its flight past Arrokoth on New Year’s Day 2019. From its unique perch in the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons is making observations that can’t be made from anywhere else; even the stars look different from the spacecraft’s point of view.

New Horizons team members use giant telescopes like the Japanese Subaru observatory to scan the skies for another potential (and long-shot) KBO flyby target. New Horizons itself remains healthy, collecting data on the solar wind and space environment in the Kuiper Belt, other Kuiper Belt objects, and distant planets like Uranus and Neptune. This summer, the mission team will transmit a software upgrade to boost New Horizons’ scientific capabilities. For future exploration, the spacecraft’s nuclear battery should provide enough power to keep New Horizons operating until the late-2030s.

Source: New Horizons Website

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ABOVE: The green line marks the path traveled by the New Horizons spacecraft as of 10:00 PM,
Pacific Daylight Time, on April 15, 2021. It is 4.6 billion miles, or 49.8 Astronomical Units (AU),
from Earth. Click here to view the official webpage showing where New Horizons is in space.

VIPER Update: NASA's Lunar Rover and Its Astrobotic Lander Have Just Been Given a Launch Vehicle...

SpaceX

Astrobotic Selects SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket for Griffin-VIPER Moon Mission (Press Release)

Astrobotic announced today its selection of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket in a competitive commercial procurement to launch its Griffin lunar lander to the Moon in late 2023. Griffin will be carrying NASA’s water-hunting Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER).

“Getting to the Moon isn’t just about building a spacecraft, but having a complete mission solution. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy completes our Griffin Mission 1 (GM1) solution by providing a proven launch vehicle to carry us on our trajectory to the Moon. SpaceX has the team, vehicle, and facilities to make this happen,” says Daniel Gillies, GM1 Director for Astrobotic.

Astrobotic was awarded a task order in 2020 from NASA to deliver VIPER to the south pole of the Moon as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. After Falcon Heavy launches Griffin on a trajectory to the Moon, Griffin will land on the surface and VIPER will disembark from Griffin’s ramps to survey the surface and subsurface for water ice. These surveys could be the first step toward utilizing resources in the space environment – rather than carting them all from Earth – to enable more affordable and sustainable space exploration. Griffin’s delivery of VIPER will be Astrobotic’s second CLPS delivery, following the company’s Peregrine lander delivery later this year.

“Having previously sat on the other side of the table as a former SpaceX Mission Manager, I am fully aware of SpaceX’s capabilities and processes and am excited to be working with SpaceX on a mission once again. My first exposure to Falcon Heavy was as a SpaceX Mission Integrator on the STP-2 mission and I’m proud to be utilizing that same launch vehicle for Griffin,” says Gillies.

“Gaining a better learning of resources on the Moon is critical to advancing humanity’s reach beyond Earth, and we are honored to support this exciting mission and NASA’s CLPS program,” said SpaceX Senior Director of Commercial Sales Stephanie Bednarek.

Griffin Mission One is targeted to launch in 2023 from SpaceX’s facilities at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida – the same launch site employed for the NASA Space Shuttle program, Commercial Crew Program, and Apollo missions. Work on the Griffin lunar lander is ongoing with qualification testing planned to be completed towards the end of this year.

Source: Astrobotic

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NASA Ames / Daniel Rutter


Astrobotic

Some People Just Have All the Luck!

Cars.com photo by Christian Lantry

Found out from one of my old high school friends yesterday that she wrote a book! Congrats to her! It's a children's publication that she apparently worked on during the COVID-19 pandemic. My friend also owns a Tesla Model X, while her husband now works at Facebook in Palo Alto [though I'd say that this is actually a downgrade from him working at Google (also in Silicon Valley) before that, heh]. They also have three adorable kids.

What— Me ENVIOUS? Naaaaw!

Photo of the Day: The Los Doyers Got Their Rings!

Just thought I'd share this pic of the Los Angeles Dodgers posing with their 2020 World Series championship rings prior to playing against the Washington Nationals in front of 15,000 fans at Dodgers Stadium yesterday. The Dodgers won, 1-0, on Friday night...while they defeated Washington, 9-5, on the Dodgers' home field again about 20 minutes ago. Nice.

As for the L.A. Lakers, they're currently in the 5th spot of the NBA's Western Conference after beating the Brooklyn Nets, 126-101, in New York tonight. Not bad considering the fact that LeBron James and Anthony Davis, both still injured, are weeks away from returning and bringing the Lake Show back to championship form. Anyways, back to the Dodgers...

In case you needed a reminder. pic.twitter.com/3nKrnR3k27

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 10, 2021

Remembering DMX (1970-2021)...

Rest In Peace, Earl Simmons. The rapper famously known as DMX sadly passed away today after suffering a heart attack at his New York home one week ago. He was 50 years-old. I'll always remember DMX for his memorable jam "Party Up"...which is one of my all-time favorite hip-hop songs that I'll never get tired of listening to on my laptop computer and portable MP3 player. Another great jam by DMX is 2003's "X Gon' Give It to Ya"...a song from the action film Cradle 2 the Grave, which starred DMX and was released in theaters that same year.

Party Up began playing on the radio in 1999 but brings back fond memories of 2000—when it was regularly played on the loudspeakers at STAPLES Center during the Los Angeles Lakers' championship run in the spring of that year. My condolences to DMX's family and friends.

Hubble's Successor Continues to Prepare for Its Summer Trip to Its South American Launch Site...

NASA / Chris Gunn

NASA’s Webb Telescope Packs Its Sunshield for a Million-Mile Trip (News Release)

Engineers working on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have successfully folded and packed its sunshield for its upcoming million-mile (roughly 1.5 million kilometer) journey, which begins later this year.

The sunshield — a five-layer, diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court — was specially engineered to fold up around the two sides of the telescope and fit within the confines of its launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 rocket. Now that folding has been completed at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, the sunshield will remain in this compact form through launch and the first few days the observatory will spend in space.

Designed to protect the telescope’s optics from any heat sources that could interfere with its sight, the sunshield is one of Webb’s most critical and complex components. Because Webb is an infrared telescope, its mirrors and sensors need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures to detect faint heat signals from distant objects in the universe.

In space, one side of the sunshield will always reflect light and background heat from the Sun, Earth and Moon. Thermal models show that the maximum temperature of the outermost layer is 383 Kelvin, or about 230 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, the other side of the sunshield will always face deep space, with the coldest layer having a modeled minimum temperature of 36 Kelvin, or about minus 394 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fully deployed, the telescope’s sunshield measures almost 70 feet by 47 feet (21 meters by 14 meters). When stowed inside the rocket for launch, the folded sunshield will be packaged in a very confined area in between other structures of the observatory to accommodate the limited space inside the 18-foot (5.4-meter) diameter rocket fairing.

“There is nothing really analogous to what we are trying to achieve with the folding up of a tennis court-sized sunshield, but it is similar to packing a parachute,” said Jeff Cheezum, a lead sunshield design engineer at Northrop Grumman. “Just like a skydiver needs their parachute packed correctly in order to open perfectly and to successfully get back to Earth, Webb needs its sunshield to be perfectly stowed to ensure that it also opens up perfectly and maintains its shape, in order to successfully keep the telescope at its required operating temperature.”

The month-long process of folding the sunshield began with laying the five layers as flat as possible. In its deployed state, the sunshield resembles a multilayered silver ship, so its inherently curved surfaces added a degree of complexity to this step. Afterwards, the layers were lifted vertically and propped onto special support equipment so that they could be properly restrained for folding. A team of technicians then carefully folded each layer in a zigzag pattern to create accordion-like stacks of membranes on either side of the telescope.

The first layer of the sunshield is two-thousandths of an inch (0.005 centimeters) thick, while the other four layers are only one-thousandth of an inch thick. For the team, a built-in challenge was the delicacy of folding such thin layers. The folding process also had to account for components such as the sunshield’s 90 different tensioning cables, which must be stowed in a specific manner to ensure the sunshield deploys smoothly.

With the successful completion of sunshield folding, the engineering team has prepared the sunshield for its complex deployment in space. The sunshield will unfold at the end of the telescope’s first week in space after launch, stretching out to its full size and then separating and tensioning each of its five layers. Testing for this unfolding and tensioning procedure was completed for the final time on Earth in December 2020.

“Think of it backwards; we want the deployed sunshield to achieve a specific shape so we get the performance we need. The whole folding process was designed with that in mind. We have to fold cleanly and carefully the same way each time, to ensure the unfolding occurs exactly the way we want it,” said James Cooper, lead sunshield engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For instance, one of the most intricate aspects of the folding process involved aligning the membrane stacks. Each of the sunshield’s layers has hundreds of intentional holes, which are deliberately arranged to avoid light and heat from passing to the optical elements of the telescope when the sunshield is fully deployed. These holes must be lined up during folding so that Webb technicians can insert “pins” through the holes in each membrane stack. The 107 “pins,” or membrane release devices, will help restrain the layers for launch, but release to unfold the sunshield once the telescope is in space.

“It’s a very methodical process that we use to make sure everything is aligned correctly,” said Marc Roth, mechanical engineering lead at Northrop Grumman. “Our team has been through multiple training cycles, and we’ve implemented many lessons learned from the previous times we’ve done this process, all culminating in this last sunshield fold.”

Over the next three months, engineers and technicians will finish stowing and securing the packed sunshield. This process will involve installing the membrane release devices, rigging and securing all of the sunshield cables, and stowing covers for the sunshield membranes. It will also include stowing the two “arms” of the sunshield — the Mid-Boom Assemblies — which will horizontally extend the sunshield outwards during deployment, as well as stowing the two pallet structures that hold the sunshield in place.

The observatory will additionally undergo a final mirror deployment before it is shipped to its launch site in French Guiana, South America.

The Webb engineering team continues to follow personal safety procedures in accordance with current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidance related to COVID-19, including mask-wearing and social distancing.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Chris Gunn

Lucy Update: The Trojan Asteroid-bound Explorer Continues to Come Together Before Its October 16 Launch...

Lockheed Martin

NASA’s Lucy Stretches Its Wings in Successful Solar Panel Deployment Test (News Release)

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing of both solar panels, the final step in checking out these critical spacecraft components in preparation for launch this fall. Once the Lucy spacecraft’s solar panels are attached and fully extended, they could cover a five-story building.

Lucy, the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, requires these large solar panels as it will operate farther from the Sun than any previous solar-powered space mission. During its 12-year tour of the Trojan asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft will operate a record-breaking 530 million miles (853 million km) from the Sun, beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

“The success of Lucy’s final solar array deployment test marked the end of a long road of development. With dedication and excellent attention to detail, the team overcame every obstacle to ready these solar panels,” said Matt Cox, Lockheed Martin’s Lucy program manager, in Littleton, Colorado. “Lucy will travel farther from the Sun than any previous solar-powered Discovery-class mission, and one reason we can do that is the technology in these solar arrays.”

The solar arrays, manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Goleta, California, will be supplying power to the spacecraft and its instruments throughout the 12-year mission. The solar panels need to supply around 500 watts, about equivalent to the energy needed to run a washing machine. Despite this relatively modest need, the solar panels must be large as they need to operate so far from the Sun.

“At about one hour after the spacecraft launches, the solar panels will need to deploy flawlessly in order to assure that we have enough energy to power the spacecraft throughout the mission,” said Principal Investigator Hal Levison of the Southwest Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These 20 minutes will determine if the rest of the 12-year mission will be a success. Mars landers have their seven minutes of terror, we have this.”

Solar array deployment tests occurred between December 2020 and February 2021 in the 29-foot-by-65-foot (8.8-meter-by-19.8-meter) thermal vacuum chamber at Lockheed Martin Space, where the spacecraft is currently undergoing assembly, launch, and testing operations.

Though when folded up the solar panels are a mere 4 inches (10 cm) thick, once expanded each solar panel has a diameter of nearly 24 feet (7.3 meters). What is more, the solar arrays can’t support their own weight of 170 pounds (77 kg) each in Earth gravity, so a special precision weight offload device is employed inside the chamber for additional support.

“In spite of their complexity and size, the mechanical deployment of the arrays executed flawlessly, said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The ingenuity and innovation of the team is truly remarkable!”

These key tests bring the spacecraft one step closer to launch readiness. The Lucy spacecraft will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida this summer to ready it for launch when its window opens in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 16, 2021.

Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison and Cathy Olkin are the principal investigator and deputy principal investigator of the Lucy mission. Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space is building the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Conceptual Image Lab / Adriana Gutierrez

Perseverance Update: Ingenuity Is on the Ground!

NASA / JPL - Caltech

Yesterday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) tweeted this cool photo of the Ingenuity helicopter finally sitting on the surface at Jezero Crater on Mars! The last milestone to take place after this and before Ingenuity's historic first flight will be in the next Martian sol (a.k.a. a day on Mars, which is 24 hours, 39 minutes-long)...when flight controllers at JPL find out whether or not the diminutive aircraft survived its first cold night alone on the ground at the Red Planet. Ingenuity's first flight attempt is scheduled for April 11—with data from this memorable event set to be transmitted back to Earth via the Perseverance rover on April 12 (which marks the 40th anniversary of space shuttle Columbia's first launch on STS-1). Happy Easter!

An Interesting Note About This Date...

So one of my friends posted this image on Instagram earlier today. There's nothing more to say about this except...cool! Especially if you're a rocket nerd like me.

Photo of the Day: My Original Glazed Doughnut, Courtesy of Pfizer...

Just thought I'd share this pic of the Original Glazed Doughnut that I got for free from Krispy Kreme yesterday! This delicious pastry comes courtesy of me showing my vaccination record card at the doughnut shop's drive-thru window...after I received my first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine two days ago.

As a way to encourage people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus (but hopefully not come down with Type 2 diabetes), Krispy Kreme is offering free Original Glazed Doughnuts for folks who show proof that they had an injection through the end of this year. Only vaccination cards are accepted as proof of getting a needle poked into your upper arm; and you only get one doughnut per daily visit through this offer. I definitely plan on returning to get another doughnut after I receive my second dose on April 21! Happy Good Friday.

Europa Clipper Update: The Jupiter-bound Explorer Achieves a Major Milestone on Its Way to Launch in Late 2024...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Europa Clipper Builds Hardware, Moves Toward Assembly (News Release)

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have the potential to harbor life. The spacecraft will use multiple flybys of the moon to investigate the habitability of this ocean world.

Europa Clipper, NASA’s upcoming flagship mission to the outer solar system, has passed a significant milestone, completing its Critical Design Review. During the review, experts examined the detailed design of the spacecraft to ensure that it is ready to complete construction. The mission is now able to complete hardware fabrication and testing, and move toward the assembly and testing of the spacecraft and its payload of sophisticated science instruments.

With an internal global ocean twice the size of Earth’s oceans combined, Jupiter’s moon Europa carries the potential for conditions suitable for life. But the frigid temperatures and the nonstop pummeling of the surface from Jupiter’s radiation make it a tricky target to explore: Mission engineers and scientists must design a spacecraft hardy enough to withstand the radiation yet sensitive enough to gather the science needed to investigate Europa’s environment.

The Europa Clipper orbiter will swoop around Jupiter on an elliptical path, dipping close to the moon on each flyby to conduct detailed reconnaissance. The science includes gathering measurements of the internal ocean, mapping the surface composition and its geology, and hunting for plumes of water vapor that may be venting from the icy crust.

Development of the spacecraft is progressing well, based on the intense examination NASA recently completed. The Critical Design Review conducted a deep dive into the specifics of the plans for all of the science instruments – from cameras to antennas – and flight subsystems, including propulsion, power, avionics, and the flight computer.

“We showed that our project system design is strong,” said Europa Clipper Project Manager Jan Chodas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Our plans for completing the development and integration of the individual pieces hold together, and the system as a whole will function as designed to gather the science measurements we need to explore the potential habitability of Europa.”

Hardware in the Works

Beyond detailed plans, the mission has built prototypes and engineering models to test how well the instruments and engineering subsystems will work. Then there’s the flight hardware itself. Much of it is already being built; individual engineering subsystems and instruments cleared their own design reviews over the last year and a half.

The most striking of Europa Clipper’s features, its signature elements, are taking shape. Nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter, the disc-shaped high-gain antenna, which will receive commands from Earth and transmit science data back down, is in its final stage of assembly. And by far the most visible of Europa Clipper’s hardware – the massive solar arrays that will unfurl in deep space like wings – are under construction as well. The spacecraft, with its arrays fully deployed, is wider than a basketball court is long, spanning 100 feet (30.5 meters). The arrays will cover over 960 square feet (90 square meters).

They will be attached to the propulsion module being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The propulsion module core consists of two stacked cylinders that together stand almost 10 feet (3 meters) high and hold the propulsion tanks and 16 rocket engines that will propel Europa Clipper once it leaves Earth’s atmosphere.

The giant cylinders embody the cooperative effort needed to put a spacecraft like this together. They were built by APL and shipped to JPL for installation of the Heat Redistribution System tubing, part of a system that will keep the spacecraft thermally controlled. The cylinders were then sent to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for installation of the propulsion subsystem. There are 400 welded connections, each of them X-rayed for quality control, which are key to successfully installing the propulsion subsystem.

APL is also building the telecommunications module for radio communications with Earth and a radiation monitor to gauge the size of the electron blast that is hitting the spacecraft during its 40-plus flybys of Europa.

At JPL, construction is underway on several elements of the flight system, including the protective vault that shields critical electronic hardware from Jupiter’s intense radiation. JPL is also building and testing the avionics subsystem, which includes the flight computer, the power switching and distribution hardware, the flight software needed to perform the science mission, and the ground system tools necessary to fly the mission. Also being built is ground support equipment that will be used to assemble and test Europa Clipper’s large pieces of flight hardware.

“It’s a very exciting time for the team, seeing the fruits of their work that will be orbiting Jupiter in a few years,” said Europa Clipper Deputy Project Manager Jordan Evans of JPL. “Even in the face of COVID-19, the team is firing on all cylinders. Using safe-at-work protocols, they’re performing the necessary work on the hardware while the rest of the team is getting their job done at home.”

A Sophisticated Suite

As this work moves forward, project leaders continue to plan the science of the mission. The spacecraft’s science instruments will measure the depth of the ice crust, measure the depth of the internal ocean and how thick and salty it is, capture color images of surface geology in detail, and analyze potential plumes.

Scientists are especially interested in what makes up the moon’s surface. Evidence suggests that material exposed there has been mixed through the icy crust and perhaps comes from the ocean beneath. Europa Clipper will also investigate the moon’s gravity field, which will tell scientists more about both how the moon flexes as Jupiter pulls on it and how that action could potentially warm the internal ocean.

“We’re doing work that a decade from now will change how we think about the diversity of worlds in the outer solar system – and about where life might be able to exist right now, not in the distant past,” said Europa Clipper Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo of JPL.

But the more instruments a spacecraft carries, the more they interact and potentially affect each other’s operation. To that end, noted Pappalardo, “We’re currently making sure the instruments can all operate at the same time without electromagnetic interference.”

The full suite of instruments will undergo extensive testing after they arrive at JPL in 2021. Early 2022 marks the start of assembly, test, and launch operations. The countdown is on.

“Less than a year to go until all the hardware assemblies need to show up in one place,” Chodas said. “We bring all these pieces together to start building up the full flight system, then test the fully-integrated spacecraft and get it ready to launch.”

The team is on track to have Europa Clipper ready for a launch in 2024.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / Barbara Lambert