Space and astronomy news
If alien technological civilizations exist, they almost certainly use solar energy. Along with wind, it’s the cleanest, most accessible form of energy, at least here on Earth. Driven by technological advances and mass production, solar energy on Earth is expanding rapidly.
It seems likely that ETIs (Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using widespread solar energy on their planet could make their presence known to us.
Continue reading “Could Alien Solar Panels Be Technosignatures?”
Solar panel technology has advanced significantly in recent years, to the point where solar energy is the fastest-growing renewable power source. The solar panels we have today are a by-product of those used in space. If you want to power a satellite or crewed spacecraft, there are only two ways: solar energy or nuclear power. Of the two, only solar energy isn’t limited by the amount of fuel you bring on board. As we contemplate traveling to other star systems, this raises the question: will solar panels work near other stars?
Continue reading “Will Solar Panels Work at Proxima Centauri?”
Power infrastructure will be critical for any long-term space colony, and one of the most critical pieces of that power infrastructure, at least in the inner solar system, is solar cells. So in-situ research experts were thrilled when Blue Origin, ostensibly a rocket company, recently announced that they had made functional solar cells entirely out of nothing other than lunar regolith simulant.
Continue reading “Blue Origin is Building Solar Cells out of (Simulated) Lunar Regolith”
Like every solar-panel-powered vehicle on Mars, maintaining electrical power always becomes an issue at some point in the mission. Last week, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. While they were able to re-establish communications, which is done through the Perseverance rover, engineers know that keeping Ingenuity’s batteries charged is going to be increasingly difficult as the dark winter is on the way to Jezero Crater.
Continue reading “Martian Dust is Starting to Darken Ingenuity’s Solar Panels”
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, currently on its way to the outer Solar System to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, has a solar panel problem. Shortly after its launch last October, engineers determined that one of Lucy’s two solar panels failed to open completely. While the spacecraft has enough power to function, the team is concerned about how the unlatched panel might hinder Lucy’s performance going forward. In an attempt to fix the problem, the team will carry out a new procedure next month that is designed to unfurl the solar panel the rest of the way, and latch it firmly in place.
Continue reading “NASA is Ready to try and fix Lucy’s Unlatched Solar Panel”
As we’re fond of saying here at UT, space exploration is hard. Many things can go wrong when launching thousands of kgs of highly engineered equipment that took years to develop into space. Now, something seems to have gone wrong with NASA’s latest Discovery mission. Lucy, launched successfully by a ULA rocket on October 16th, seems to have a solar panel that didn’t quite “latch.”
Continue reading “Uh oh, one of Lucy’s Solar Arrays Hasn’t Latched Properly”
Ever have an idea that was so crazy that it just might work? A few weeks ago, members of the InSight Mars team came up with a crazy, counter-intuitive way to try to get dust off the lander’s solar panels: pour *more* dust on the panels.
Yes, that sounds crazy. But yes, it actually worked!
Continue reading “Clever Trick Used to Clean off InSight’s Solar Panels and Boost its Power”
Space missions often have to go where the sun don’t shine. Or at least where it shines very faintly. That is particularly important if the mission draws its power from the sun. Luckily, engineers have a way of dealing with that problem – just make really really big solar panels. That is exactly what they did for Lucy, a mission to visit the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter. Those sails have now been tested on the ground, and they are magnificent.
Continue reading “Trojan Mission Lucy Tested its Solar Panels for the First Time. Those Things are Huge”
Philae is awake… and taking pictures! This image, acquired last night with the lander’s CIVA (Comet nucleus Infrared and Visible Analyzer) instrument, shows the left and right solar panels of ESA’s well-traveled Rosetta spacecraft, upon which the 100-kilogram Philae is mounted.
Philae successfully emerged from hibernation on March 28 via a wake-up call from ESA.
After over a decade of traveling across the inner Solar System, Rosetta and Philae are now in the home stretch of their ultimate mission: to orbit and achieve a soft landing on comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will be the first time either feat has ever been attempted by a spacecraft. Read more here.
Source: ESA Rosetta Blog
Following the speed boosting slingshot of Earth on Wednesday, Oct. 9, that sent NASA’s Juno orbiter hurtling towards Jupiter, the probe has successfully transmitted back data and the very first flyby images despite unexpectedly going into ‘safe mode’ during the critical maneuver.
“Juno is transmitting telemetry today,” spokesman Guy Webster, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), told me in a phone interview late today (Oct. 10), as Juno continues sailing on its 2.8 Billion kilometer (1.7 Billion mile) outbound trek to the Jovian system.
The new images of Earth captured by the Junocam imager serves as tangible proof that Juno is communicating.
“Juno is still in safe mode today (Oct. 10),” Webster told Universe Today.
“Teams at mission control at JPL and Lockheed Martin are actively working to bring Juno out of safe mode. And that could still require a few days,” Webster explained.
Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for Juno.
The initial raw images of Earth snapped by the craft’s Junocam imager were received by ground stations late today.
See above a day light image mosaic which I reconstructed and realigned based on the original raw image (see below) taken with the camera’s methane filter on Oct. 9 at 12:06:30 PDT (3:06:30 PM EST). Juno was to be flying over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Juno performed a crucial swingby of Earth on Wednesday that accelerated the probe by 16330 MPH to enable it to arrive in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
However the gravity assist maneuver did not go entirely as planned.
Shortly after Wednesday’s flyby, Juno Project manager Rick Nybakken, of JPL, told me in a phone interview that Juno had entered safe mode but that the probe was “power positive and we have full command ability.”
“After Juno passed the period of Earth flyby closest approach at 12:21 PM PST [3:21 PM EDT] and we established communications 25 minutes later, we were in safe mode,” Nybakken explained.
The safe mode was triggered while Juno was in an eclipse mode, the only eclipse it will experience during its entire mission.
The Earth flyby did accomplish its objective by placing the $1.1 Billion Juno spacecraft exactly on course for Jupiter as intended.
“We are on our way to Jupiter as planned!”
“None of this affected our trajectory or the gravity assist maneuver – which is what the Earth flyby is,” Nybakken stated.
Juno’s closest approach was over South Africa at about 561 kilometers (349 miles).
During the flyby, the science team also planned to observe Earth using most of Juno’s nine science instruments since the slingshot also serves as a key test of the spacecraft systems and the flight operations teams.
Juno also was to capture an unprecedented new movie of the Earth/Moon system.
Many more images were snapped and should be transmitted in coming days that eventually will show a beautiful view of the Earth and Moon from space.
“During the earth flyby we have most of our instruments on and will obtain a unique movie of the Earth Moon system on our approach, Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton told me. Bolton is from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), San Antonio, Texas.
“We will also calibrate instuments and measure earth’s magnetosphere, obtain closeup images of the Earth and the Moon in UV [ultraviolet] and IR [infrared],” Bolton explained to Universe Today.
Juno is approaching the Earth from deep space, from the sunlit side.
“Juno will take never-before-seen images of the Earth-moon system, giving us a chance to see what we look like from Mars or Jupiter’” says Bolton.
Here is a description of Junocam from the developer – Malin Space Science Systems
“Like previous MSSS cameras (e.g., Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Mars Color Imager) Junocam is a “pushframe” imager. The detector has multiple filter strips, each with a different bandpass, bonded directly to its photoactive surface. Each strip extends the entire width of the detector, but only a fraction of its height; Junocam’s filter strips are 1600 pixels wide and about 155 rows high. The filter strips are scanned across the target by spacecraft rotation. At the nominal spin rate of 2 RPM, frames are acquired about every 400 milliseconds. Junocam has four filters: three visible (red/green/blue) and a narrowband “methane” filter centered at about 890 nm.”
During a one year long science mission – entailing 33 orbits lasting 11 days each – the probe will plunge to within about 3000 miles of the turbulent cloud tops and collect unprecedented new data that will unveil the hidden inner secrets of Jupiter’s origin and evolution.
NBC News has also featured this Juno story – here
Read more about Juno’s flyby in my articles – here and here
Stay tuned here for continuing Juno, LADEE, MAVEN and more up-to-date NASA news.