Lifeboat Foundation

When landing Apollo 11 in 1969, astronauts looked out the window for distinguishing features that they recognized from maps of the Moon and were able to steer the lander to avoid a disastrous touchdown on top of a rocky area. Now, 50 years later, the process can be automated. Distinguishing features, like known craters, boulders, or other unique surface characteristics, provide insight into surface hazards to help avoid them while landing.

NASA scientists and engineers are maturing technology for navigating and landing on planetary bodies by analyzing images during descent – a process called terrain relative navigation (TRN). This optical navigation technology is included on NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, which will test TRN when it lands on the Red Planet in 2021, paving the way for future crewed missions to the Moon and beyond. TRN was also being used during NASA’s recent Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resources Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission Touch-and-Go (TAG) event to collect samples of the asteroid Bennu in order to better understand the characteristics and movement of asteroids.

Since reaching Bennu in 2018, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has mapped and studied its surface, including its topography and lighting conditions, in preparation for TAG. Nightingale crater was chosen from four candidate sites based on its great amount of sampleable material and accessibility for the spacecraft.

A small team of astronomers have found a new way to ‘see’ the elusive dark matter halos that surround galaxies, with a new technique 10 times more precise than the previous-best method. The work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Scientists currently estimate that up to 85% of the mass in the universe is effectively invisible. This ‘dark matter’ cannot be observed directly, because it does not interact with light in the same way as the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets, and life on Earth.

So how do we measure what cannot be seen? The key is to measure the effect of gravity that the dark matter produces.

Last week, SpaceX has launched the Beta for its Starlink internet program. This space-based internet is turning out to be faster than expected, thus having the potential to give many people around the world opportunities to do things that their socio-economic situations would have never allowed them to have.

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Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae—clouds of dust particles and gas—even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas.

Only 18 active Centaurs have been discovered since 1927, and much about them is still poorly understood. Discovering activity on Centaurs is also observationally challenging because they are faint, telescope time-intensive and because they are rare.

A team of astronomers, led by doctoral student and Presidential Fellow Colin Chandler in Northern Arizona University’s Astronomy and Planetary Science PhD program, earlier this year announced their discovery of activity emanating from Centaur 2014 OG392, a planetary object first found in 2014. They published their findings in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, “Cometary Activity Discovered on a Distant Centaur: A Nonaqueous Sublimation Mechanism.” Chandler is the lead author, working with four NAU co-authors: graduate student Jay Kueny, associate professor Chad Trujillo, professor David Trilling and Ph.D. student William Oldroyd.

A meteorite that originated on Mars billions of years ago reveals details of ancient impact events on the red planet. Certain minerals from the Martian crust in the meteorite are oxidized, suggesting the presence of water during the impact that created the meteorite. The finding helps to fill some gaps in knowledge about the role of water in planet formation.

There’s a longstanding question in planetary science about the origin of water on Earth, Mars and other large bodies such as the moon. One hypothesis says that it came from asteroids and comets post-formation. But some planetary researchers think that water might just be one of many substances that occur naturally during the formation of planets. A new analysis of an ancient Martian meteorite adds support for this second hypothesis.

Several years ago, a pair of dark meteorites were discovered in the Sahara Desert. They were dubbed NWA 7034 and NWA 7533, where NWA stands for North West Africa and the number is the order in which meteorites are officially approved by the Meteoritical Society, an international planetary science organization. Analysis showed these meteorites are new types of Martian meteorites and are mixtures of different rock fragments.

The McDonald Laser Ranging Station, near Fort Davis, Texas, USA, uses a laser to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon to an accuracy of 1 cm (0.39 inches). It bounces a laser off reflective targets left on the lunar surface by three US Apollo missions and two Soviet Lunokhod missions. The distance between the centres of the Earth and the Moon is 385,000 km (239,000 miles), and the laser ranging has shown that the Moon is receding from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) per year. This is one of the most accurate distance measurements ever made.

A team of European researchers discovered a new high-pressure mineral in a lunar meteorite which is helping to explain what happens to materials within the extreme pressures of the Earth’s mantle.

The new mineral donwilhelmsite is the first high-pressure mineral found in meteorites with application for terrestrial sediments dragged deep into the Earth mantle by plate tectonics. Mainly composed of calcium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen atoms, donwilhelmsite was discovered within the lunar meteorite Oued Awlitis 001 found in 2014 in the Western Sahara.

The meteorite is compositionally similar to rocks comprising the Earth’s continents. Eroded sediments from these continents are transported by wind and rivers to the oceans, and subducted into the Earth’s mantle as part of the dense oceanic crust. Once dragged to depths of about 460–700 km, their constituent minerals transform at high pressures and high temperatures existing at those depths into denser mineral phases, including the newly discovered mineral donwilhelmsite. In the terrestrial rock cycle, donwilhelmsite is therefore an important agent for transporting continental crustal sediments through the transition zone of the Earth’s mantle (460−700 km depth).

To mark the 20th anniversary of continuous habitation of the International Space Station, ESA commissioned two graphic artists to illustrate the Station from two perspectives. We spoke to the artists and asked them how they approached this challenge.

The International Space Station celebrates a huge milestone on 2 November 2020. For two decades, it has continuously hosted humans in space. Eighteen ESA astronauts have flown to the Station. Altogether, more than 240 crew members and visitors from 19 countries have visited the station and made it their temporary home.

A collaboration between five space agencies, the station has become a symbol of peaceful international cooperation. It represents the best of our space engineering capabilities as well as humankind’s pursuit of scientific knowledge and exploration.

This revolution has already started, with wealthy citizens building their own space programs and entrepreneurs building spacecraft on relatively tiny budgets.

This time it must be about people, not governments. Rather than a centrally controlled quasi-military government race to space by two superpowers, we must enable the people themselves to go where they want to go, to do there what they want. If governments decide to return to the Moon — as seems to be the case — it must be to build villages, not bases, and to do it as rapidly as possible, as it needs to be an immediate challenge, not a distant dream. And if some want to go to Mars or mine asteroids, they need to be seen as part of a new frontier community. Thus, with both public and private players doing what they do best where they want to do it, we can make it happen far faster than many might believe.

Continue reading “It is time to return to the Moon, open Free Space and go to Mars” »