Astronomy

Starliner, the new crewed capsule from Boeing, has been in the works for a long time. Originally unveiled in 2010, the capsule has been under development for the last 14 years, primarily utilizing NASA grants and contracts. However, Boeing itself has taken upwards of 1 billion dollars in hits to earnings as part of the craft’s development. After all that time in the prototype stages, Starliner is finally ready for its first crewed flight – which has now officially been scheduled for May 6th.

The launch will utilize a ULA Atlas V, which was also partly developed by Boeing. Like most Atlas V launches, it will take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and take two astronauts – Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – to the International Space Station.

To make room for the capsule, the crew already stationed on the ISS has to do some additional work, including moving a Dragon capsule out of the docking port on the ISS’s Harmony module to which the Starliner will have to attach. To move the capsule, they will also have to complete some additional “science and cargo logistics,” according to a NASA Press release.

Fraser covers Starliner’s successful test flight.

Those logistics seem to be the primary cause of a final five-day delay (from May 1st to 5th) that the Starliner will have to endure. Once at the ISS, Williams and Wilmore will spend a week helping out on the ISS before using the Starliner capsule to return to Earth.

That is assuming all goes well with their flight. Starliner has had at least one spectacular failure as part of its development, though it successfully completed an uncrewed flight in May of 2022. If any astronauts are ready to ride on a new crewed capsule, it’s Williams and Wilmore. Both have been astronauts for over 20 years, and each was a trained Navy Test Pilot before joining NASA.

The capsule they will be using, known as Calypso, has already been to orbit, though not as many times as the astronauts themselves. It was used in the first orbital test flight, and while it didn’t manage to dock up with the ISS, it did land successfully and wouldn’t pose a risk to any astronauts on board.

Video from Boeing showcasing Starliner mounted atop an Atlas V.
Credit – Boeing YouTube Channel

Upon completing this test flight, NASA hopes to rely on the Starliner to provide regular crewed missions to the ISS. This would be supplemental to the SpaceX Dragon capsule the agency already uses and mark the definitive end to the drought of American crewed spaceflight.

Future missions include a four-person flight planned for 2025, assuming all goes well with this first one. Boeing also has a contract with NASA for five additional flights between 2026 and 2030. But first, if all goes well, on May 6th, after decades of work, the world will hopefully gain another crewed vehicle to help facilitate our path to the stars.

Learn More:
NASA – NASA, Boeing Update Launch Date for Starliner’s First Astronaut Flight
UT – Starliner Faces New Delays for Crewed Flights to ISS
UT – Finally! We get to See a View From Inside Boeing’s Starliner During its First Flight
UT – Starliner Needs Even More Fixes, and Probably won’t Carry Astronauts Until 2023

Lead Image:
The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is lifted at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on May 4, 2022.
Photo credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

The post NASA Announces Starliner’s Next Launch Attempt: May 6 appeared first on Universe Today.

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If there’s a Holy Grail on Mars, it’s probably a specific type of rock: A rock so important that it holds convincing clues to Mars’ ancient habitability.

Perseverance might have just found it.

If scientists could design the perfect rock for Perseverance to find, it would be one that displayed evidence of ancient water and was the type that preserves ancient organic material. The rover may have found it as it explores the Margin Unit, a geologic region on the inner edge of Jezero Crater’s rim. The Margin Unit was one of the reasons Jezero Crater was selected for Perseverance’s mission.

“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater.”

Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, Caltech.

The Margin Unit is in a narrow band along the crater’s western rim. Orbital observations showed that it’s one of the most carbonate-rich regions on the planet. “Its presence, along with the adjacent fluvial delta, made Jezero crater the most compelling landing site for the Mars 2020 <Perseverance> mission,” presenters at the 2024 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference wrote.

The Margin Unit lies near the western rim of Jezero Crater. White dots show Perseverance’s stopping points, and the blue line shows the rover’s future route. Image Credit: R.C. Wiens et al. 2024

The decision to send Perseverance to the Jezero Crater and the Margin Unit seems to be paying off. Bunsen Peak caught scientists’ attention because it stands tall compared to its surroundings. One of the rock’s faces also has an interesting texture. Scientists thought the rock would allow for nice cross-sections, and since it stood vertically, there’d be less dust when working on it. Surface dust is a problem for Perseverance because it can obscure the rock’s chemistry.

The Perseverance team decided to sample it and cache the sample along with the rest of its cores for eventual return to Earth. But first, they scanned the rock’s surface with SuperCam and PIXL, the rover’s spectrometers. Then, they abraded the rock’s surface and scanned it again. The results show that Bunsen Peak is 75% carbonate grains cemented together by nearly pure silica.

This image mosaic shows the Bunsen Peak rock that has ignited scientists’ excitement. The rover abraded a circular patch to test its composition and extracted a core sample for return to Earth. The lighter surfaces are dust-covered, so Perseverance avoided those areas as the dust can obscure the rock’s chemistry from the rover’s instruments. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock can even tell us about Mars’s climate conditions that were present when it was formed.”

This image shows the bottom of the Bunsen Peak sample core. The sample contains about 75% carbonate minerals cemented by almost pure silica. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here on our planet, carbonate minerals can form directly around microbe cells. Once encapsulated, the cells can quickly become fossils, and are preserved for a long time. This is what happened to stromatolites here on Earth, and they now constitute some of the earliest evidence of life on our planet.

These minerals are a high priority for return to Earth. This sample is number 24, named Comet Geyser, because everything gets a name when you intend to transport it to Earth from another planet.

There’s something specific that makes this sample even more intriguing. They’re microcrystalline rocks, meaning they’re made of crystals so small that only microscopes can see them. On Earth, microcrystalline rocks like Precambrian chert hold fossilized cyanobacteria. Could the same be true of Bunsen Peak?

“The silica and parts of the carbonate appear microcrystalline, which makes them extremely good at trapping and preserving signs of microbial life that might have once lived in this environment,” said Sandra Siljeström, a Perseverance scientist from the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) in Stockholm. “That makes this sample great for biosignature studies if returned to Earth. Additionally, the sample might be one of the older cores collected so far by Perseverance, and that is important because Mars was at its most habitable early in its history.”

via GIPHY

Comet Geyser is Perseverance’s third sample from the Margin Unit. There’s still more work to do, but the samples support what scientists thought about Jezero Crater before Perseverance landed there: it was once a paleolake.

“We’re still exploring the margin and gathering data, but results so far may support our hypothesis that the rocks here formed along the shores of an ancient lake,” said Briony Horgan, a Perseverance scientist from Purdue University. “The science team is also considering other ideas for the origin of the Margin Unit, as there are other ways to form carbonate and silica. But no matter how this rock formed, it is really exciting to get a sample.”

It wasn’t that long ago that we knew very little about Mars. In the absence of knowledge, imagination took over. American astronomer Percival Lowell wrote three books about canals on Mars, popularizing the idea that intelligent life was extant on Mars and engineering the planet’s surface.

Astronomers didn’t buy the idea, which turned out to be untrue. But now we know that Lowell was at least partially, though inadvertently, correct. There are no canals, but there may have been lakes.

There was no intelligent life, but there may have been simple life in those lakes. Once we get Comet Geyser and the other samples back to Earth, we may find out for sure.

The post Perseverance Finds its Dream Rock appeared first on Universe Today.

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Video: 00:02:35

Europe’s next rocket, Ariane 6, passed all its qualification tests in preparation for its first flight, and the full-scale test model has been removed from the launch pad to make way for the real rocket that will ascend to space.

The test model at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, stood 62 m high. It is exactly the same as the ‘production model’ Ariane 6 rockets that will soon be launched, except that its boosters do not need to be tested as part of the complete rocket, so the boosters are not fuelled.

Teams preparing Ariane 6 for its inaugural flight successfully completed for the first time a launcher preparation and countdown sequence, on 18 July. Representatives of ESA, Ariane 6 prime contractor ArianeGroup and launch base prime contractor and test conductor CNES completed important objectives for system qualification and performed a series of actions fully representative of a launch chronology.

The launch simulation included the removal of the mobile gantry, the chill-down of ground and launcher fluidic systems, the filling of the upper and core stage tanks with liquid hydrogen (–253°C) and liquid oxygen (–183°C), and at the end of the test, the successful completion of a launch chronology up to the ignition of the Vulcain 2.1 engine thrust chamber by the ground system.

On 5 September 2023 the Vulcain 2.1 engine was ignited, fired for four seconds as planned and switched off before its liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuels were drained to their separate underground tanks. The exercise showed again that the system can be kept safe in the event of a launch abort, as already demonstrated during the 18 July test.

A nighttime full-scale wet rehearsal for Ariane 6 was completed on 24 October 2023, the rocket was fuelled and then drained of its fuel. The test lasted over 30 hours with three teams working in shifts of 10 hours each.

A major full-scale rehearsal was conducted on 23 November 2023 in preparation for its first flight, when teams on the ground went through a complete launch countdown followed by a seven-minute full firing of the core stage’s engine, as it would fire on a launch into space.

A third combined test loading occurred on 15 December 2024 that included a launch countdown to qualify the launch system in degraded conditions and ensure its robustness in preparation for operations. This test sequence included qualification tests of several launch system functions in case of aborted launch and included one ignition of the Vulcain 2.1 engine thrust chamber. It was the fifth countdown run to include loading Ariane 6 with cryo-propellants since July.

On 30 January 2024, the cryogenic connection system passed a last system test of the liftoff disconnection operations lines – the yellow arms supporting the fuel lines to the upper stage to power the Vinci orbital engine. Simultaneously at the bottom of the central core the connection system for the main stage also disconnected.

On 5 February, it was the turn of the electrical umbilical lines to be disconnected. These lines supply the launcher and the satellites inside Ariane 6 with electrical power but also host the digital signals for communications with the informatics system as well as carrying sensor information to ensure the flight system is in good shape for liftoff.

The largest components for the first flight model of Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 arrived at the port of Pariacabo in Kourou, French Guiana on 21 February 2024 via the novel ship, Canopée (canopy in French). The Ariane 6 stages and components are all manufactured across Europe.

The two central stages for Ariane 6’s first flight were then assembled in the launcher assembly building (BAL) at Europe’s Spaceport. The core stage and the upper stage for Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 are set to fly in the Summer of 2024. Once assembled, the stages will be transferred to the launch pad.

Watch the total solar eclipse — alongside interviews with scientists and astronauts — with these livestreams.

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ESA’s new Arctic Weather Satellite has taken centre stage at OHB’s facilities in Stockholm, Sweden, before the spacecraft is packed up and shipped to California, US, for a launch currently scheduled for June.

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Watch the first episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.

This episode starts after a successful descent and landing on the Red Planet in 2030.

Rovers on Mars have previously been caught in loose soils, and turning the wheels dug them deeper, just like a car stuck in sand. To avoid this, Rosalind Franklin has a unique wheel-walking locomotion mode to to overcome difficult terrains, as well as autonomous navigation software.

A major goal of the mission is to understand the geological context and identify minerals formed in the presence of water that could be good targets for drilling into and collecting samples for analysis.

The scientific eyes of the rover are set atop the mast on the Panoramic Camera suite, known as PanCam. From its vantage point about two metres above the ground, PanCam cameras come into play to get a whole picture of the site with high resolution imaging.

Enfys, meaning rainbow in Welsh, is an infrared spectrometer to study mineral composition. Enfys and PanCam work in synergy. PanCam is used to obtain colour, visual information of what lies around the rover. Enfys’ job is to inform scientists what the minerals are.

Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures.

The mission will serve to demonstrate key technologies that Europe needs to master for future planetary exploration missions.

This episode shows the spacecraft, the rover and martian landscapes are as true to reality as possible for a simulation.

Check ESA’s ExoMars website and our frequently asked questions for the latest updates.

Credits:

Production: Mlabspace for ESA

3D animation: ESA/Mlabspace

Video footage: ESA/NASA, Shutterstock

Music composed by Valentin Joudrier

On 8 April 2024, a great swath of the United States and Mexico will experience a total solar eclipse, with viewers getting the rare chance to see the Sun’s stunning outer atmosphere.