Avaruus

[ctg]

ELSA-d is the world's first commercial mission to prove the core technologies necessary for on-orbit satellite servicing in LEO. The mission, which consists of two satellites - a servicer designed to safely remove debris from orbit and a client that serves as a piece of replica debris - was launched as a stack into a 550 km orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in March 2021. The first demonstration, in which the servicer released the client and manually performed magnetic docking, was completed on August 25, 2021, successfully validating the capture system, on-board sensors and cameras.

Mission operations for an Autonomous Capture demonstration began on January 25. After successful release of the client from the servicer's magnetic capture system, the servicer successfully maintained a distance of 30 meters from the client through the use of autonomous relative station-keeping algorithms, with input from the servicer's lower power radio (LPR) sensor.

After successfully demonstrating this important rendezvous capability for more than seven hours, anomalous spacecraft conditions were detected. For the safety of the mission, the ELSA-d team decided not to proceed with the capture attempt. The servicer and client were further separated to allow the team to investigate several issues from a safe distance and by doing so, the spacecraft drifted farther apart, to a maximum distance of approximately 1,700 kilometers.

The biggest challenge of the latest demonstration was replanning the rendezvous approach with the use of only four of the eight thrusters on the servicer. This restricted the ability of the servicer to perform detailed rendezvous maneuvers with the client as originally planned. While a system issue had an impact on three of the thrusters, the root cause for the loss of one thruster is not clear and is under joint investigation by Astroscale and Bradford/ECAPS, the thruster supplier for the ELSA-d mission.

Astroscale's ELSA-d completes complex rendezvous operation

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) May 05, 2022 - Astroscale Holdings Inc. (Astroscale), the market leader in satellite servicing and long-term orbital sustainability across all orbits, has announced that, despite several unexpected setbacks, its

www.spacedaily.com

 

[Teräsmies]

Dream Chaser, Tenacity, has undergone aeroshell and wing deployment system installation. Under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract, Dream Chaser will provide a minimum of six cargo service missions to and from the International Space Station.

 

[magitsu]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1522547601748463616

 

[ctg]

The James Webb Space Telescope is aligned across all four of its science instruments, as seen in a previous engineering image showing the observatory's full field of view. Now, we take a closer look at that same image, focusing on Webb's coldest instrument: the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.

The MIRI test image (at 7.7 microns) shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way provided a dense star field to test Webb's performance.

Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer was the first observatory to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared Universe. Webb, by virtue of its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, will allow us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries.

For example, Webb's MIRI image shows the interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. Here, you can see the emission from 'polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons' - molecules of carbon and hydrogen that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas.

When Webb is ready to begin science observations, studies such as these with MIRI will help give astronomers new insights into the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems.

MIRI's sharper view hints at new possibilities for science

Paris (ESA) May 10, 2022 - The James Webb Space Telescope is aligned across all four of its science instruments, as seen in a previous engineering image showing the observatory's full field of view. Now, we take a closer look

www.spacedaily.com

 

[ctg]

The long-lived Ingenuity helicopter has made contact with NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars after an unexpected communications blackout.

Ingenuity just passed the milestone of a year of operations on the Red Planet, after being designed for five experimental test flights over 30 Martian days during 2021. Thus far, the helicopter has managed to fly more than 4.2 miles in 28 sorties, proving NASA's reputation for over-engineering its space kit.

Ingenuity uses Perseverance as a base station to send data to and receive commands from Earth. Well, up until May 3, when communications between rover and helicopter dropped out. The problem? Dust, it turns out, which was stopping the helicopter from charging properly from its solar panels.

In the hope of hearing a call from the helicopter, engineers commanded the rover to spend much of May 5 listening for a signal. Thankfully, one was received at 1145 local Mars time. While the data was limited in order to preserve battery power, there was enough to indicate the helicopter was OK and its power source was being charged.

Perseverance rover runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), however, Ingenuity uses batteries charged by a solar array. A seasonal increase of dust in the Martian atmosphere means there is less sunlight hitting the array, meaning less charging and available power, and the temperature is dropping as winter approaches, which means more battery-sucking heating to keep the electronics operational.

Although more telemetry is required, engineers reckon, given these circumstances, Ingenuity's power levels dropped below a lower limit resulting in the shutdown of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) that manages the helicopter's electronics. As well as controlling the heaters and turning bits of the helicopter's avionics on and off, the FPGA also maintains time and controls when Ingenuity wakes up for a communications session with Perseverance.

When the solar array began to recharge the batteries, the FPGA came back up. However, its clock was reset, and so when Ingenuity tried to communicate, Perseverance was not listening.

Mars Ingenuity helicopter talking to Perseverance again

NASA drops heater temp to boost batteries as dust hits solar supply

www.theregister.com

 

[Rambo]

Today we’re going inside Starbase with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. He’s going to take us through the High Bay to see where Starships are assembled, we’ll also see the new MegaBay under construction and talk about SpaceX’s plans to get this rocket flying.

 

[magitsu]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1526132871848681472

 

[ctg]

Today, the phrase “big tech” typically resonates negatively. It conjures up disturbing aspects of social media and the rise of megacorporations that seem beyond the reach of the law. And yet decades ago, big tech was typically associated with the glamor of motion: of speed, of power, and the thrill of exploring new frontiers.

Two leaders, Wernher von Braun and Juan Trippe, became household names as they made bold bets that paid off and enabled people to go where few thought it possible not long before. Von Braun had a troubling history: As a 30-year-old, he had convinced Adolf Hitler to fund his V-2 missiles, of which thousands were built, with slave labor. They rained down on Paris, London, and other cities, killing 9,000 people, mostly civilians.

But when von Braun’s Apollo program came to fruition, in the late 1960s, huge crowds gathered every few months on the Florida coast to watch the thundering Saturn V rockets take off. It was a partylike atmosphere and a joyous time. We humans were going to the moon, making a connection that had seemed both improbable and impossible just a few years before.

Can the Artemis Moon Mission Revive the Glamour of Big Tech?

It’s no wonder the tech centibillionaires are building rockets

spectrum.ieee.org

 

[Suluttaja]

The military satellite marked with a "Z" launched from North Russian Cosmodrome Plesetsk is lost

The Cosmos-2555 got out of orbit and perished as it entered the atmosphere.

thebarentsobserver.com

 

[ctg]

American aerospace giant Boeing's Starliner capsule was heading for the International Space Station Thursday, in a critical uncrewed test flight that followed years of failures and false starts.

The spacecraft encountered some propulsion troubles early in its journey, with two thrusters responsible for orbital maneuvering failing for unclear reasons -- but NASA officials said the mission remained on track.

The Orbital Test Flight 2 (OFT-2) mission blasted off at 6:54 pm Eastern Time (2254 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the spaceship fixed atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Its success is key to repairing Boeing's frayed reputation after the first bid, back in 2019, failed to dock with the ISS due to software bugs -- one that led to it burning too much fuel to reach its destination, and another that could have destroyed the vehicle during re-entry.

A second try was scheduled in August of last year, but Starliner was rolled back from the launchpad to address sticky valves that weren't opening as they should, and the capsule was eventually sent back to the factory for fixes.

At a post-launch press conference, senior NASA official Steve Sitch said: "Overall, the spacecraft is doing really well," but he also flagged two anomalies that engineers were now working to understand.

The first was that two out of 12 orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC) thrusters located on Starliner's aft side had initially fired but then shut down, forcing a third to take up their slack.

The second issue was that a device known as a sublimator responsible for cooling the spacecraft was initially slow to get started.

NASA is looking to certify Starliner as a second "taxi" service for its astronauts to the space station -- a role that Elon Musk's SpaceX has provided since succeeding in a test mission for its Dragon capsule in 2020.

Boeing's Starliner encounters propulsion problems on way to ISS

Washington (AFP) May 20, 2022 - American aerospace giant Boeing's Starliner capsule was heading for the International Space Station Thursday, in a critical uncrewed test flight that followed years of failures and false starts.

www.spacedaily.com

 

[ctg]

Japan and the United States said Monday they want to put the first Japanese astronaut on the Moon as the allies deepen cooperation on space projects.

No non-American has ever touched down on the lunar surface, and Japan has previously said it hopes to achieve a Moon landing by the end of this decade.

President Joe Biden, after his first face-to-face meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, said the nations will work together in the US-led Artemis programme to send humans to the Moon, and later to Mars.

Biden said he was "excited" about the collaboration, including on the Gateway facility, which will orbit the Moon and provide support for future missions.

"I'm excited (about) the work we'll do together on the Gateway Station around the Moon, and look forward to the first Japanese astronaut joining us on the mission to the lunar surface under the Artemis programme," he said at a joint press conference.

Japan's domestic space programme focuses on satellites and probes, so Japanese astronauts have turned to the US and Russia to travel to the International Space Station.

But space agency JAXA is looking to revitalise its ranks, last year launching its first recruitment of new astronauts in 13 years.

It lifted the requirement that applicants have a science degree and urged women to apply, because all seven of the nation's current astronauts are men.

Fly me to the Moon: US, Japan aim for lunar landing

Tokyo (AFP) May 23, 2022 - Japan and the United States said Monday they want to put the first Japanese astronaut on the Moon as the allies deepen cooperation on space projects.

www.moondaily.com

<3

 

[ctg]

An autonomous spacecraft exploring the far-flung regions of the universe descends through the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet. The vehicle, and the researchers who programmed it, don't know much about this environment.

With so much uncertainty, how can the spacecraft plot a trajectory that will keep it from being squashed by some randomly moving obstacle or blown off course by sudden, gale-force winds?

MIT researchers have developed a technique that could help this spacecraft land safely. Their approach can enable an autonomous vehicle to plot a provably safe trajectory in highly uncertain situations where there are multiple uncertainties regarding environmental conditions and objects the vehicle could collide with.

The technique could help a vehicle find a safe course around obstacles that move in random ways and change their shape over time. It plots a safe trajectory to a targeted region even when the vehicle's starting point is not precisely known and when it is unclear exactly how the vehicle will move due to environmental disturbances like wind, ocean currents, or rough terrain.

This is the first technique to address the problem of trajectory planning with many simultaneous uncertainties and complex safety constraints, says co-lead author Weiqiao Han, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

"Future robotic space missions need risk-aware autonomy to explore remote and extreme worlds for which only highly uncertain prior knowledge exists. In order to achieve this, trajectory-planning algorithms need to reason about uncertainties and deal with complex uncertain models and safety constraints," adds co-lead author Ashkan Jasour, a former CSAIL research scientist who now works on robotics systems at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Joining Han and Jasour on the paper is senior author Brian Williams, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and a member of CSAIL. The research will be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and has been nominated for the outstanding paper award.

Charting a safe course through a highly uncertain environment

Boston MA (SPX) May 19, 2022 - An autonomous spacecraft exploring the far-flung regions of the universe descends through the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet. The vehicle, and the researchers who programmed it, don't know much ab

www.spacedaily.com

[2203.03038] Non-Gaussian Risk Bounded Trajectory Optimization for Stochastic Nonlinear Systems in Uncertain Environments

 

[ctg]

New photo reveals a NASA spacecraft cloaked in Martian dust

InSight lived up to its name, providing deep insights about the Martian interior.

arstechnica.com

Kun olis paineilma kompura, letkuja, käteviä suuttimia, ja tarpeeksi voimaa ajaa koneistoa, niin nuo panelit voisi pitää puhtaana. Marssin talvi on raaka.

 

[ctg]

 

[FinnNSF]

New photo reveals a NASA spacecraft cloaked in Martian dust

InSight lived up to its name, providing deep insights about the Martian interior.

arstechnica.com

Kun olis paineilma kompura, letkuja, käteviä suuttimia, ja tarpeeksi voimaa ajaa koneistoa, niin nuo panelit voisi pitää puhtaana. Marssin talvi on raaka.

Mä ihmettelin jo Spiritin ja Opportunityn reissailujen aikaan miksi NASAn väki ei laita noihin jonkunlaista harjaa millä voisi tarpeen vaatiessa pyöräyttää edes isommat tomut pois.

 

[Rambo]

 

[ctg]

Researchers at The Asteroid Institute have developed a way to locate previously unknown asteroids in astronomical data, and all it took was a massive amount of cloud computing power to do it.

Traditionally, asteroid spotters would have to build so-called tracklets of multiple night sky images taken in short succession that show a suspected minor planetoid's movement. If what's observed matches orbital calculations, congratulations: it's an asteroid.

Asteroid Institute scientists are finding a way around that time sink with a novel algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR, that can comb through mountains of data, make orbital predictions, transform sky images, and match it to other data points to establish asteroid identity.

Algorithm spots 104 asteroids in huge piles of data

Rocks stood out like a THOR thumb for code

www.theregister.com

 

[magitsu]

A Swedish NATO membership would benefit the Swedish Space Agency, SSC, which operates the Esrange base in Kiruna.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1531735708301463553

 

[ctg]

Ursa Major, America's only privately funded company that focuses solely on rocket propulsion, has introduced the latest in its line of engines. Arroway is a 200,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine that will serve markets including current U.S. national security missions, commercial satellite launches, orbital space stations, and future missions not yet conceived. The reusable Arroway engine is available for order now, slated for initial hot-fire testing in 2023, and delivery in 2025.

Notably, Arroway engines will be one of very few commercially available engines that, when clustered together, can displace the Russian-made RD-180 and RD-181, which are no longer available to U.S. launch companies.

"Arroway is America's engine of the future," said Joe Laurienti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major. "Medium and heavy launch capacity is what U.S. launchers desperately need right now, and because Ursa Major focuses solely on propulsion, we're in a unique position to deliver high-performing, reliable, and affordable engines to meet the increasing market demand, just like we are doing with 'Hadley' and 'Ripley'."

Arroway uses a fuel-rich staged combustion architecture with liquid oxygen and methane propellants. Ursa Major designed the components and their arrangement so that most of the engine can be 3D printed. This approach allows for rapid iteration during the development process as well as efficient scaling of production to meet market demand.

Ursa Major announces new engine to replace unavailable Russian-made engines

Denver CO (SPX) Jun 02, 2022 - Ursa Major, America's only privately funded company that focuses solely on rocket propulsion, has introduced the latest in its line of engines. Arroway is a 200,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen and me

www.spacedaily.com

vaihtoehto moottori

 

[ctg]

Mitsubishi Electric has developed the prototype of what is believed to be the world's first* optical receiver for use in laser communication terminals (LCTs), that integrates space optical communication using laser beams and a function to detect the direction of received beams in the 1.5-um band, a general-purposeband used for terrestrial optical fiber communications and other applications.

High-resolution satellite imagery is used to assess damage caused by disasters, but since such images are transmitted via radio waves it has been difficult to transmit high-resolution images in real time due to limitations in data capacity and the size of satellite antennas.

Large-capacity, high-speed space optical communications that do not require optical fiber are thus required to support fast and accurate damage assessments following disasters. But space optical communications use very narrow laser beams, about 1/1000th of that of radio waves, so the challenge has been how to precisely align laser beams with satellites traveling at high speed.

Mitsubishi Electric develops innovative laser comms terminal

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jun 01, 2022 - Mitsubishi Electric has developed the prototype of what is believed to be the world's first* optical receiver for use in laser communication terminals (LCTs), that integrates space optical communica

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MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC News Releases Mitsubishi Electric Develops World's First Laser Communication Terminal Integrating Space Optical Communication and Spatial Acquisition

All the updated information of Mitsubishi Electric Global website and other Mitsubishi Electric websites around the world is provided here.

www.mitsubishielectric.com