Missions Archives

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Seth Lockman

Robots Might Jump Around to Explore the Moon

LEAP (Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau) is a mission concept study, funded by ESA, to explore challenging lunar terrains using ANYmal, a four-legged robot developed at ETH Zürich and its spin-off ANYbotics. Credit: ETH Zürich/Robotics Systems Labs (RSL)

How great are wheels, really? Wheels need axles. Suspension. Power of some kind. And roads, or at least swaths of relatively flat and stable terrain. Then you need to maintain all of it. Because of their cost many civilizations across human history, who knew all about wheels and axles, didn’t bother using them for transportation. Another way to look at it – much of human technology mimics nature. Of the simple machines, levers, inclined planes, wedges, and even screws are observed in nature. Why not the wheel?

September 28, 2022September 28, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Watch a Nicely Stabilized Video of DART Flying Past Didymos and Slamming Into Dimorphos

The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA’s DART mission from ~7 miles (12 kilometers) from the asteroid and 2 seconds before impact. The image shows a patch of the asteroid that is 100 feet (31 meters) across. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

Here’s one of the best videos we’ve seen of the last minutes of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission as it headed towards and slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos. This stabilized version of the last five-and-a-half minutes of images leading up to DART’s intentional collision with the asteroid was produced from NASA’s DART images. It was produced by the YouTube channel Spei’s Space News from Germany.

September 27, 2022September 27, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

This is the Last Thing DART saw as it Smashed Into its Asteroid Target

The first-ever planetary defense technology demonstration mission successfully conducted its mission, slamming into the surface of a distant asteroid and going out in a blaze of glory. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft acted as a kinetic impactor, colliding with the small and harmless asteroid Dimorphos on September 26 at 7:14PM ET, with the hope of deflecting it.

September 8, 2022September 13, 2022 by Seth Lockman

Socks, The Final Frontier

ISS026-E-011334 (18 Dec. 2010) --- NASA astronaut Catherine (Cady) Coleman, Expedition 26 flight engineer, is pictured with a stowage container and its contents in the Harmony node of the International Space Station.

What is the greatest challenge facing humans as we prepare for the first crewed missions to Mars? Solar and cosmic radiation? Atrophying bone and muscle? Growing food? How about laundry? It’s strange but true, right now we don’t have a way to clean laundry in space.

August 24, 2022August 24, 2022 by Matt Williams

Want to Live on Mars? Here's Where the Water is

Mineral map of Mars showing the presence of patches that formed in the presence of water. Credit: ESA

When crewed missions begin to travel to Mars for the first time, they will need to be as self-sufficient as possible. Even when Mars and Earth are at the closest points in their orbits to each other every 26 months (known as “Opposition“), it can take six to nine months for a spacecraft to travel there. This makes resupply missions painfully impractical and means astronauts must pack plenty of supplies for the journey. They will also need to grow some of their food and leverage local resources to meet their needs, a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).

In particular, astronauts will need to know where to find water on the Red Planet, which is no small challenge. Luckily, the European Space Agency (ESA) has created a mineral map showing the locations of aqueous minerals (rocks that have been chemically altered by water). This map was created by the Mars Orbital Catalog of Aqueous Alteration Signatures (MOCAAS) project and took over ten years to complete. When it comes time to select landing sites for crewed missions to Mars (in the next decade and beyond), maps like this will come in mighty handy!

August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

South Korea’s First Orbital Mission to the Moon is on its Way

A graphic showing the orbital path the Danuri Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft will take to go into orbit around the Moon. Credit: Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI)

South Korea launched its first robotic mission to the Moon last week, as a SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched the Danuri Lunar Pathfinder mission on August 4, 2022 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The spacecraft was placed into a fuel-saving lunar transfer orbit, and it should arrive in lunar orbit in December.

Translated, Danuri means “enjoy the Moon.”

July 30, 2022July 30, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA’s EnVision Mission Doesn’t Have a lot of Fuel, so it’s Going to Aerobrake in the Atmosphere of Venus

Artist impression of ESA's EnVision mission. Credit:ESA/VR2Planets/Damia Bouic

Venus has almost been “the forgotten planet,” with only one space mission going there in the past 30 years. But the recent resurgence of interest in Earth’s closest neighbor has NASA and ESA committing to three new missions to Venus, all due to launch by the early 2030s.

ESA’s EnVision mission Venus is slated to take high-resolution optical, spectral and radar images of the planet’s surface. But to do so, the van-sized spacecraft will need to perform a special maneuver called aerobraking to gradually slow down and lower its orbit through the planet’s hot, thick atmosphere. Aerobraking uses atmospheric drag to slow down a spacecraft and EnVision will make thousands of passages through Venus’ atmosphere for about two years.

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022 by Evan Gough

Uh Oh, NASA is Reviewing Psyche and May Terminate the Mission

NASA's mission to asteroid 16 Psyche has been delayed. Now a review panel is examining the delay. Credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA is reviewing its mission to visit the asteroid 16 Psyche. The Administration has convened a 15-member review board to examine the mission and its failure to meet the scheduled 2022 launch. The review began on July 19, and the board will present their findings to NASA and JPL in late September.

July 18, 2022July 26, 2022 by Matt Williams

A New Method for Making Graphene has an Awesome Application: A Space Elevator!

The Space Elevator is one of those ideas that seems to have an endless supply of lives. Originally proposed about a century ago, this concept calls for a tether of supermaterial that connects a station in orbit to Earth’s surface. Our planet’s rotation would keep this tether taut, and a system of “climbers” would transport people and payloads to and from space. The engineering challenges and costs associated with such a structure have always been enormous. But every generation or so, new research comes along that causes engineers and space agencies to reevaluate the concept.

The single-greatest challenge has always been the tether since no known material has ever been strong enough to handle the stresses involved. But as it turns out, this issue may finally be resolved! According to scientists with the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), a cost-effective manufacturing process could produce graphene ribbons that are strong enough to fashion a tether! Their latest findings are detailed in a paper they will present at the upcoming 2022 International Astronomical Congress in Paris.

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by Evan Gough

Two Spacecraft Could Work Together to Capture an Asteroid and Bring it Close to Earth for Mining

Mining asteroids might be necessary for humanity to expand into the Solar System. But what effect would asteroid mining have on the world's economy? Credit: ESA.

Humanity seems destined to expand into the Solar System. What exactly that looks like, and how difficult and tumultuous the endeavour might be, is wide open to speculation. But there are some undeniable facts attached to the prospect.

We need materials to build infrastructure, and getting it all into space from Earth is not realistic. (Be quiet, space elevator people.)