#interplanetary exploration

[sleepydrummer]

I am in awe of the unknown.

Carl Sagan

[pradeep]

How will be balance our space programme?

I think the tone of this post got more serious than I intended for it.

[thoughtlessarse]

Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

The European aerospace company will make a huge satellite to bring Mars rocks back to Earth.

Airbus-France will build the huge satellite that brings the first Martian rock samples back to Earth.

This material will be drilled on the Red Planet by the US space agency's next rover, Perseverance, before being blasted into orbit by a rocket.

It'll be the Airbus satellite's job to grab the packaged samples and then ship them home.

The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take just over a decade to implement.

But scientists say it's probably the best way to confirm whether life has ever existed on the Red Planet.

Any evidence is likely to be controversial and will need the powerful analytical tools only found in Earth laboratories to convince the doubters, the researchers argue.

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Firstly, it’s not a satellite, it’s an interplanetary cargo ship. Satellites by definition stay in orbit around an object and don’t travel between them. Secondly, I’ve seen this sci-fi film. It does not end well for us.

[thoughtlessarse]

BBC News: The United Arab Emirates is sending a spacecraft, Hope, to Mars. The mission aims to find out more about how the Red Planet became the barren, dusty place it's known to be today, by studying its weather and climate. The probe has taken six years to build. Sarah Al-Amiri, the scientist in charge of the mission, spoke to BBC Science Correspondent Rebecca Morelle.

[merelygifted]

Nasa's Mars lander sends back first pictures from red planet | Science | The Guardian

[merelygifted]

MARTIAN CUBESATS AND THE MARS LANDING: For the first time ever, cubesats are approaching Mars. Their mission: To experience 7 minutes of terror. If all goes as planned, on Monday the two tiny spacecraft will watch NASA's InSight lander touchdown on the Red Planet, relaying updates to Earth in near-real time.

InSight is the latest NASA probe to land on Mars--or disintegrate in the attempt. On Nov. 26th, it will tear through the planet's atmosphere in a fireball, shedding more than 12,000 mph of velocity in just under 7 minutes. NASA hopes InSight will touchdown gently on the plains of Elysium Planitia where it can drill into Mars, using seismometers, heat flow sensors, and radios to study the planet's interior.

Officially the two cubesats are known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, but JPL engineers have nicknamed them "WALL-E" and "Eva." They were launched alongside the lander on May 5, 2018. Mission controllers weren't even sure the tiny spacecraft would survive the journey across interplanetary space--but they did. Now they will act as radio relay stations. Instead of waiting several hours for InSight to report back to Earth, WALL-E and Eva will relay entry, descent and landing data much sooner. This is the first time cubesats have traveled beyond Earth orbit, so it will be a significant achievement if they succeed.

NASA will broadcast the landing on NASA TV starting at 2 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 26th. Tune in here.

Spaceweather.com Time Machine

[merelygifted]

Mars probe faces daunting challenge to land safely | Science | The Guardian

[futuristech-info]

Advancement could allow for autonomous interplanetary navigation for spaceships - "GPS in space"

An accurate method for spacecraft navigation takes a leap forward today as the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Leicester publish a paper that reveals a spacecraft’s position in space in the direction of a particular pulsar can be calculated autonomously, using a small X-ray telescope on board the craft, to an accuracy of 2km. The method uses X-rays emitted from pulsars, which can be used to work out the position of a craft in space in 3D to an accuracy of 30 km at the distance of Neptune. Pulsars are dead stars that emit radiation in the form of X-rays and other electromagnetic waves.

READ MORE ON UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

Ref: Towards practical autonomous deep-space navigation using X-Ray pulsar timing. Experimental Astronomy (30 July 2016) | DOI: 10.1007/s10686-016-9496-z (Open Access)

ABSTRACT

We investigate the feasibility of deep-space navigation using the highly stable periodic signals from X-ray pulsars in combination with dedicated instrumentation on the spacecraft: a technique often referred to as ‘XNAV’. The results presented are based on the outputs from a study undertaken for the European Space Agency. The potential advantages of this technique include increased spacecraft autonomy and lower mission operating costs. Estimations of navigation uncertainties have been obtained using simulations of different pulsar combinations and navigation strategies. We find that the pulsar PSR B1937 + 21 has potential to allow spacecraft positioning uncertainties of ~2 and ~5 km in the direction of the pulsar after observation times of 10 and 1 h respectively, for ranges up to 30 AU. This could be achieved autonomously on the spacecraft using a focussing X-ray instrument of effective area ~50 cm2 together with a high performance atomic clock. The Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) instrument, due to be launched on the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury in 2018, is an example of an instrument that may be further developed as a practical telescope for XNAV. For a manned mission to Mars, where an XNAV system could provide valuable redundancy, observations of the three pulsars PSR B1937 + 21, B1821-24 and J0437-4715 would enable a three-dimensional positioning uncertainty of ~30 km for up to 3 months without the need to contact Earth-based systems. A lower uncertainty may be achieved, for example, by use of extended observations or, if feasible, by use of a larger instrument. X-ray instrumentation suitable for use in an operational XNAV subsystem must be designed to require only modest resources, especially in terms of size, mass and power. A system with a focussing optic is required in order to reduce the sky and particle background against which the source must be measured. We examine possible options for future developments in terms of simpler, lower-cost Kirkpatrick-Baez optics. We also discuss the principal design and development challenges that must be addressed in order to realise an operational XNAV system.