Category Archives: Space Exploration

What did Yvonne Y. Clark, or Y.Y., actually do as a mechanical engineer? This episode is about the work itselfspecifically, the work Y.Y. did at NASA on the Saturn V rocketandthe design ofthe moon rock box for transporting lunar samples back to Earth. And we take a deep dive into the history of the American space program, the mechanics of a rocketand how Y.Y. brought her troubleshooters mind to a problem that was plaguing some of the countrys top scientists.

This podcast is distributed byPRXand published in partnership withScientific American.

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[Haveyou listened to the previous episodes? No? You can find Episode One hereandEpisode Two here.]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

NASA, Rocket Engines, and the Moon Rock Box

ARCHIVAL TAPE: 1957, year of space and Sputnik dogs Laika, first space traveler, was ready for the takeoff

KATIE HAFNER: As the Cold War heated up, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to achieve breakthroughs in space exploration.

ARCHIVAL TAPE: The United States space program advanced as the Saturn V rocket was rolled out to

KATIE HAFNER: The U.S. set its sights on sending humans to the moon

JOHN F. KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon

KATIE HAFNER: Project Apollo was a completely unprecedented undertaking, and to make it happen, NASA hired outside contractors.

YVONNE CLARK: My assignment was to, um, help design the box that brings the samples the rocks back from the moon.

KATIE HAFNER: One of those contractors was Yvonne Young Clark.

KATIE HAFNER: Im Katie Hafner

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And Im Carol Sutton Lewis

KATIE HAFNER: And this is Lost Women of Science. In this episode, we are diving into the work what Yvonne Young Clark

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: known as YY

KATIE HAFNER: known as YY actually did as a mechanical engineer. Well look at two designs that YY worked on while she was at NASA: the F-1 engine of the Saturn V rocket thats the rocket that got us to the moon and the Moon Rock Box, which was used to collect lunar samples.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: We started looking into YYs work at NASA to learn about what exactly she did there.

But investigating her time at NASA also opened our eyes to the important and complicated history of the space program

KATIE HAFNER: So before we can get into YY's work with rocketry and materials science, we want to take you back to the early days of NASA

ARCHIVAL TAPE: Huntsville, Alabama, founded in 18 hundred and five. Just a few years ago, Huntsville was a quiet town. But today, the sound of industry and progress in this community is the bellow of a rocket motor.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The U.S. army had a post just outside Huntsville, where civilians and army personnel worked on missiles, munitions and rocket design.

ARCHIVAL TAPE: Quiet no longer, Huntsville now is rocket city USA.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Huntsville became rocket city in a pretty surprising way

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Huntsville, Alabama, it's worth noting, is this interesting case...

KATIE HAFNER: Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony is curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum. We talked to her about NASAs history.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The big figure head there is Wernher Von Braun a former Nazi SS officer. And he came to Huntsville with a bunch of German Nazi engineers.

KATIE HAFNER: You heard that right: Nazi engineers. As World War II ended and the Cold War began, the United States started bringing in German scientists to work for the government as part of a top-secret intelligence program called Operation Paperclip. The U.S. wanted to capitalize on Nazi weapons technology and keep these scientists out of the hands of the Soviet Union. Wernher von Braun, whose expertise was rockets, was one of the first to arrive, in September, 1945. Ultimately, more than 1,600 German scientists came to the U.S.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And so Huntsville, Alabama is hugely influenced culturally by all these ex-Nazi engineers who worked on the V2 rocket program in Germany during World War II.

KATIE HAFNER: During the war, it was Germany that had the most advanced rocket technology that countrys V2 rocket was the worlds first long-range guided ballistic missile. The construction was overwhelmingly carried out using forced labor, by concentration camp prisoners. In the U.S., von Braun and his team started building on the design for the V2, expanding its range even farther

This work was the basis for the U.S. space program.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The space age really began in 1957 with the launch of the first artificial satellite, uh, by the Soviet Union in October of 1957. And thats Sputnik.

KATIE HAFNER: Just a decade or so earlier, the US and the USSR had been allies during the second world war. But rising tensions led to the Cold War. The successful launch of Sputnik meant that now, it was the Soviets that had more advanced technology than the Americans.

In 1958, NASA the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created.

ARCHIVAL TAPE (JOHN F. KENNEDY): I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

KATIE HAFNER: On May 25th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy presented Project Apollo and the objective of a lunar landing with a human crew to a joint session of Congress and the public.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: It was an extraordinarily bold and ambitious goal. When he did that, the United States only had 15 minutes of human space flight experience.

KATIE HAFNER: Astronaut Alan Shepard had successfully gone to space and back but he wasnt the first human to do that. The USSR had sent Yuri Gagarin to space a month earlier. So for Kennedy, Project Apollo wasnt just about going to space

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Kennedy wasn't a space enthusiast. He didn't support Apollo because he dreamed of space flight. But he saw sort of the, the important political potential.

KATIE HAFNER: In her book, Operation Moonglow, Teasel explains the political history of Project Apollo. Landing on the moon could help shore up U.S. international influence.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Kennedy thought that this was the type of program that could win the hearts and minds of the world public, um, which he saw was going to be critical to U.S. national strength in that very particular Cold War moment.

KATIE HAFNER: And part of that strategy, according to Teasel, included using the space program to expand civil rights domestically.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Also there is a sort of an important thread, this idea that the space program could help advance U.S. civil rights and that it could be a means for helping to integrate the South, um, and providing job opportunities for African Americans.

KATIE HAFNER: For context, just days before Apollo was announced, the Freedom Riders, a group of demonstrators protesting segregation in the South, were attacked by a white mob in Montgomery, Alabama.

Project Apollo offered an opportunity to both present a different image of the United States and to actively promote integration in the South.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And so there were particular recruitment efforts by NASA to help recruit African American engineers.

KATIE HAFNER: But Teasel Muir-Harmony says the numbers werent huge.

TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: For African Americans in the Apollo program, I think it was 1.5 to three percent of the NASA workforce. And women were two to three. So you can imagine how small the numbers are for African American women.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Its pretty clear YY was one of the very, very few.

KATIE HAFNER: But that doesnt mean she was alone. Multiple efforts are underway now to highlight the work of the diverse scientists, engineers, mathematicians and technicians who contributed to the space program. Some of their stories have been told in the book and the movie Hidden Figures.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And some of them, like YYs, are only now being told

At this point, YY was teaching mechanical engineering at Tennessee State University. That meant she had summer breaks, and she was available to do other work

In 1962, YY headed to Huntsville to start a job at Redstone Arsenal, a garrison for various government departments. Redstone was where the army was doing its rocket research.

YVONNE CLARK: Oh, wow. That was a rough one that summer.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: She worked as a mechanical engineer in the Dynamic Analysis Branch.

YVONNE CLARK: They had me doing six degrees of freedom.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: We talked about this in the last episode. The six degrees are all the ways an object can move through space. YY was now applying that principle to missiles and rockets, calculating their potential movements.

YVONNE CLARK: And that was my first encounter with the government at that level.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: It also meant that YY had broken her third and last never: never work for the government.

But breaking that last never opened up more opportunities.

The next summer, in 1963, YY was hired at the recently-established George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, also based near Huntsville. Shed already been working on missiles and rockets in her previous posting, so she was in her element. And unsurprisingly, she was asked to troubleshoot

YVONNE CLARK: We were having hotspots. So my assignment was to find out what causes the hotspots.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: A hot spot is exactly what it sounds like: a section of a rocket or engine that gets too hot. The rocket YY was working on was the Saturn V, still the largest rocket ever built.

But what exactly did work on these hot spots entail? And how did the hot spot problem fit into the bigger picture of Project Apollo?

COLLEEN ANDERSON: I was trying to figure out exactly the work that she did with NASA. I was in contact with the NASA archives down in Huntsville, where she worked on the Saturn V rocket

KATIE HAFNER: Dr. Colleen Anderson is a colleague of Teasel Muir-Harmonys. Shes the curator for rockets and missiles after 1945 at the National Air and Space Museum.

COLLEEN ANDERSON: and they don't have any documentation saved about the work that she, she did with them.

KATIE HAFNER: Which means weve had to piece a lot of this together from YYs own recollections. As Colleen tells us

COLLEEN ANDERSON: I think there's a lot that was written that was quite good about, you know, the technical history of what things are and how they were built, but who built them, why they built them, uh, has kind of been overlooked.

KATIE HAFNER: Its also important to remember that YY was one contractor among many. So, to figure out what she was doing, weve had to put it into context

COLLEEN ANDERSON: So it seems like given the timing of when, uh, she was at Huntsville working on this problem on the hotspots, this is the same time that engineers and I think it's a team of many, many, engineers, were trying to figure out the problem of the instability, the combustion instability.

KATIE HAFNER: Given that YY joined the project in 1963, its likely that her hot spot assignment was one small part of a much bigger problem. And that big problem was combustion instability.

Rockets and missiles, for that matter work by using combustion reactions.

The fuel, which could be kerosene or hydrogen or some other hydrocarbon, is ignited in the chamber of the engine. It reacts with oxygen and burns. Thats what a combustion reaction is.

But combustion alone wouldnt get your rocket to space, or even very far off the ground. The real power comes from the byproduct of combustion the super hot gases it creates and how those gases are harnessed by the rockets design to propel it forward.

When combustion happens in a small space, like the chamber of a rocket engine, the hot gas expands rapidly. This builds up a whole lot of pressure that has to go somewhere. In a rocket, its forced out through a small nozzle. This is what produces thrust, the force that propels the rocket forward.

The problem NASA was having with the Saturn V was that the combustion reaction in the engine was basically getting out of hand.

COLLEEN ANDERSON: When the kerosene and the liquid oxygen were reacting in the main chamber, it was creating these pressure waves.

KATIE HAFNER: When scientists use combustion to power a rocket, they need to produce heat for power. But NASA was now facing a problem where the fuel was getting so hot and producing so much pressure, it was actually creating pressure changes that caused violent vibrations

COLLEEN ANDERSON: These pressure changes would periodically move through the engine.

KATIE HAFNER: In smaller rockets, this wouldnt have been that big of an issue the pressure waves couldnt build up, or the engine ran out of fuel before any real damage could occur. But the scale in this project was unprecedented. The Saturn V was a huge rocket. And it used some incredibly powerful engines

COLLEEN ANDERSON: One of the engines used on the Saturn I is called the F1.

KATIE HAFNER: The F1 was the most powerful engine of its kind.

COLLEEN ANDERSON: The initial idea was that it would have a million pounds of thrust

KATIE HAFNER: And the plan was to use five of these engines. All together, that was an unbelievable amount of power.

COLLEEN ANDERSON: The power of the F1s was about 80 Hoover dams.

KATIE HAFNER: With the size of the huge F-1s in the Saturn V, combustion instability was a big problem. When NASA tested the engine, violent vibrations would build up in the chamber

COLLEEN ANDERSON: These could be incredibly destructive within less than a second. It could burn through the thrust chamber.

KATIE HAFNER: By 1963, when YY was back in Huntsville, NASA had already lost three F1 engines during testing because of combustion instability. That is a lot of work and money straight down the drain.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Combustion instability was a grave concern at NASA. And the cause of it was complicated. There were so many variables the type of fuel, the pressure inside the chamber, the body and design of the rocket. And the occurrence of combustion instability was difficult to predict in any meaningful way. NASA feared the F1 engine, with its massive size and extraordinary power, would never get off the ground. They turned to multiple government contractors to investigate the issue.

MILTON CLARK: When they initially test fired at the F1 engine, um, they were getting hot spots, and the concern was burn through, the metal fatiguing

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Thats Milton Clark, YYs son. Hes done some research on his mothers work at NASA.

So NASA wanted to fix those hot spots in the F1 engine. And thats where YY came in.

MILTON CLARK: So her reputation in industry was that of a troubleshooter, which was why she was given that assignment.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: According to accounts from both YY and Milton, engineers had noticed that parts of the engine seemed to be overheating.

MILTON CLARK: Her job was to figure out why they were getting those readings.

CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: They were getting these temperature readings using thermocouple sensors. All you need to know about thermocouple sensors is that theyre a type of thermometer, and they use metal wires to take the readings.

YY was instructed to figure out what was wrong with the F1 design why it was producing these hot spots.

Read this article:

NASAs Saturn V Rocket, the Moon Rock Box and the Woman Who Made Them Work Properly - Scientific American

NASA's Perseverance rover has snagged another Red Planet sample for eventual shipment to Earth.

Perseverance, which is exploring Jezero Crater on Mars, collected its 13th drilled-out rock core in recent days, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages the car-sized robot's mission.

"A beautiful site for collecting lucky rock core #13! Currently nerding out over this fine-grained sample, and aiming to get another like it from this area. #SamplingMars," JPL officials said via Twitter (opens in new tab) on Tuesday (Oct. 4), in a post that also featured photos of the newly collected sample.

Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover's 1st year on Mars

As Perseverance grows its cache of Red Planet rocks, rover team members are preparing for an ambitious future phase of the mission: sending these samples to Earth, perhaps as soon as 2033. The sample-return campaign, a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), offers a good chance to hunt for signs of ancient Mars life, as Jezero Crater hosted a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago.

The nominal plan is for Perseverance to deliver the rock cores to a NASA sample-return lander, which will also carry a small rocket. The rocket will launch the samples to Mars orbit, where they'll meet up with an ESA-provided Earth return orbiter. (All of this hardware save Perseverance is still in development.)

Perseverance is collecting two samples from each rock that it drills, however. The rover will keep one set of samples on board and cache the other set in one or more "depots" on Jezero's floor.

The depots represent a backup option, in case Perseverance isn't able to haul the samples to the lander. The lander will also carry two small "fetch" helicopters, which are designed to bring the sample tubes back from the depot(s) one by one if need be.

Simultaneously, NASA is pushing the Ingenuity helicopter that accompanied Perseverance to the surface in February 2021 well beyond its design lifetime, and finding that the helicopter is doing well presenting an opportunity for future drone development. Indeed, Ingenuity's success is already shaping NASA's Mars exploration plans; the two fetch helicopters that will launch with the sample-return lander, for example, will be very similar to Ingenuity.

Ingenuity was originally rated for just five flights and is now looking to break that mark by at least sevenfold. Its most recent and 33rd flight took place in late September; although it landed safely, officials are examining a piece of debris that fell away harmlessly from one of the legs during the flight.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)orFacebook (opens in new tab).

Read more here:

Perseverance Mars rover picks up 'lucky' 13th rock sample for return to Earth - Space.com

BROOKLYN, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HITN-TV, the nations leading Spanish-language media source for educational and cultural programming, announced today that it will join the global event World Space Week 2022 from Oct. 4-10, 2022 (www.hitn.tv/spaceweek/) in benefit of the Hispanic youth in the United States. HITN will offer a slate of space-themed content through its television, digital, and community outreach initiatives. The programming will be available to 40 million homes nationwide through HITN-TV, as well as on its TV-everywhere app HITN GO.

Taking part in World Space Week 2022 deeply aligns with HITNs mission to advance the educational, cultural, and socioeconomic aspirations of U.S. Hispanics. The objective is to inspire younger generations of Latinos to explore science and technology careers by making space-focused content and information for families entertaining and accessible.

Pew Research found that even though Hispanic adults make up 17 percent of the U.S. workforce, they hold only 8 percent of available jobs in STEM fields. Guillermo Sierra, Head of Television and Digital Services for HITN, said, Addressing the need for increased awareness about opportunities and careers in the field of space fueled HITNs desire to actively participate in World Space Week. By showcasing the wonders of space and the science driving exploration, we provide Hispanics with a better understanding of career paths and opportunities in space-related fields many of which take place here on Earth.

HITNs World Space Week initiatives are designed to ignite curiosity and give families a starting point for meaningful conversations about involvement in fields related to space.

Coordinated by the World Space Week Association (WSWA), with the support of the United Nations, World Space Week is a global initiative with more than 20 years in existence serving as an international celebration of the contributions that science and technology have made for the betterment of the human condition. In 2021, more than 6,000 events were organized in over 96 countries.

The special programming lineup for HITN-TV and HITN GO for World Space Week includes:

Acclaimed biologist and conservationist Rosa Vsquez Espinoza will host HITNs World Space Week shows. Vasquez is the founder of MicroAmazon, a multi-disciplinary project focused on exploring the still-unknown universe of extreme natural environments. Her inclusion provides aspiring Hispanic scientists with another role model as they learn about career paths and educational options to further their potential STEM careers.

During this special programming series, its HITNs goal to take viewers somewhere theyve never been before and open their eyes to all thats possible, said Erika Vogt-Lowell, Director of Programming and Acquisitions for HITN. Having Rosa Vsquez Espinoza aboard for World Space Week provides the added benefit of representation, as we showcase the success of a Hispanic female scientist for the many future scientists tuning in to our space week programming.

As part of its community outreach efforts for World Space Week, HITN will host webinars moderated by Rosa Vsquez Espinoza, featuring international experts discussing exciting topics such as aerospace missions, climate change, careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and their impact on our community, among others. Middle schools and high schools are invited to join the one-hour webinars and participate in the Q&A sessions specifically created for their students. Schools can register at https://hitn.tv/spaceweek/webinars/.

World Space Week is intended to be an educational experience about space and science for everyone, including the youngest members of the family. HITN will be extending this initiative to EDYE, its premium SVOD service designed for preschool children, available in both the United States and Latin America (www.edye.com). A variety of episodes from several world-renowned series featuring space-related content will be made available to all platform users during the week of Oct. 4-10, along with an educational guide for parents that can be used to spark conversations with their children about the fascinating world of space and beyond.

For full details about HITNs World Space Week initiatives, please visit http://www.hitn.tv/spaceweek/.

About HITN-TV

HITN-TV is a leading Spanish-language media company that offers educational and cultural programming for the whole family. It reaches more than 44 million homes in the United States and Puerto Rico through DIRECTV, AT&T U-verse, AT&T TV, DISH Network, Verizon FiOS TV, Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Mediacom, CenturyLink, Prism and Altice, Liberty Cable & Claro (Puerto Rico). Download the "HITN GO" Everywhere app available on Apple, Android, Apple TV, and Roku with a wired subscription. For more information, visit: http://www.hitn.org and follow @HITNtv on social platforms.

Read more:

HITN Launches Into World Space Week With Programming That is Out of This World - Business Wire

Robots manning a space station might read like science fiction, but this could be a reality sooner than later. NASA has already been testing robots called Astrobee, which work on the International Space Station (ISS). These three cube-shaped free-flying robots began working independently alongside astronauts on the space station.

The Astrobee robots can use cameras to navigate around the space station based on a map of the station programmed into it. The robot needs to know where it is based on inputs from its camera to decide where to go to reach its destination. As it turns out, that is a very challenging problem, Jose Benavides, project manager for the Astrobee project at NASA, told indianexpress.com over a video interaction.

One reason why robots will be critical to future space station missions is that these stations will be located at quite a distance from Earth. For context, ISS orbits the Earth at an altitude of approximately 400 kilometres above the surface of Earth where distance in communication is not an issue. But in contrast, NASAs proposed Gateway space station will orbit the Moon, which is an average of 384,400 kilometres away from our planet. In such scenarios, robots could solve many of the problems.

But getting the robots to work in space is not so easy even though they might work perfectly fine in the labs as NASAs experience with Astrobee showed.

The environment on ISS is pretty dynamic. Things change day to day with bags moving, and lighting conditions changing. This made it difficult for the robot to navigate the environment. We had to redesign a lot of the software and algorithms that go into this vision-based navigation and ultimately, we got it right, he said.

The Astrobee robots current level of autonomy is an impressive technological feat that makes them great for use on ISS. But for distant space stations, that just wont cut it. It takes a few milliseconds to communicate with robots on ISS from Earth. That gets multiplied manyfold when you are speaking about somewhere as far as the Moon. At that point, we have to go for a little higher level of autonomy where we tell it where to go and what to do but it has to figure out the details of how to do that by itself, Benavides explained.

Apart from the software and algorithms that could go into robots on future space stations, they might also need different physical attributes based on the tasks they have to complete. For example, a robotic arm placed on the outside of a space station will need a completely different form factor from one that works inside.

Future robot platforms could have different form factors. One of the initial Gateway robot design concepts I saw, for example, involved a mobile manipulator, or a robotic arm that is attached at one end and free on the other. It could also be a humanoid robot, like NASAs Robonaut, which has already been to ISS, explained Benavides, who doesnt directly work on the Gateway project.

And while the exact role that robots will play on these space stations is yet to be carved out, no one can deny that they have some advantages over humans. For one, they can handle many mechanical tasks more precisely.

But for now, humans are far better than robots at making in-situ decisions. Current robotics and artificial intelligence technology have a long way to go before they can replicate human versatility. So while robots cannot replace humans in space exploration missions, they could still stand in for humans during certain situations when the need arises.

See the original post here:

Why robots could play a bigger role in distant space stations of the future - The Indian Express

October 03, 2022

(music)

NASA Launch Control: T-minus 15 seconds

Narrator: When a Mars rover is on top of a rocket, ready to leave Earth, it is not simply a rover. Nestled within a space capsule, its computer mind is focused on interplanetary flight, not on driving. In this moment, the rover is an astronaut aiming for the Red Planet.

NASA Launch Control: T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, main engine start, zero, and lift-off!

Narrator: The rocket ignites and climbs high into the sky, and when its fuel is spent, the rocket falls back down into Earths gravity well. Meanwhile, the capsule it had pushed into space continues zooming away from our planet and toward Mars, steered by smaller rockets called thrusters.

[0:55] The space capsule is somewhat like an oyster, with a backshell and a heat shield making up the top and bottom, and the rover concealed like a pearl inside. When it reaches the Mars atmosphere, the capsule turns so the heat shield fully faces its destination.

Al Chen is a JPL engineer who honed the entry, descent and landing procedure or EDL for NASAs Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers.

Al Chen: If you were trying to reduce all of entry, descent and landing to one idea, it is: find a way to stop.

(sound effect: space capsule whoosh)

Narrator: The rovers capsule has built up a lot of speed after its launch off Earth and many-months journey through outer space.

Al Chen: We're coming in really fast. We're coming in at 12,000 or 13,000 miles an hour. And we've got to find a way to get ourselves down to 2 miles an hour or so by the time we touch down, trying to bleed off all that velocity, all that energy.

(sound effect: atmospheric entry)

[1:58] Al Chen: As we're going through the top of the atmosphere, the frictional heating of the atmosphere is slowing us down. Slowing that capsule down heats up the front of the vehicle, and of course, it heats up the atmosphere. And that's where a lot of that velocity is going, 99% of it, we're dumping off as heat into the atmosphere or onto the heat shield itself.

And during that period, we're not only trying to survive, but with Curiosity and Perseverance, we are also trying to steer the vehicle to go where we want to go. And that means firing thrusters on the spacecraft to try to point where it's going.

(sound effect: firing capsule thrusters)

Al Chen: Both Curiosity and Perseverance had a little bit of lift. You can think about it as a kind of really poor airplane. We're pulling that lift in different directions to allow us to control how far the vehicle is going to fly downrange. So that's what we call entry guidance.

But that's all just the hypersonic part of the flight, where we've been heating up and slowing down from 12, 13,000 miles an hour to down around 1,000 miles an hour. And at that point the atmosphere pretty much has done all it can for us, and in fact, if you don't do anything else, if you just let the capsule keep going, the atmosphere will not slow you down any slower than about Mach one and a half. So we deploy this parachute to help slow us down even further, take us down from 1,000 miles an hour to eventually get us subsonic to below the speed of sound down to around 150, 160 miles an hour.

[03:13] (sound effect: parachute opens)

Al Chen: So that parachute gives us a big kick in the you know, really slows us down. (laughs) We're subsonic within a few seconds, actually. And at that point, we finally get to get rid of the heat shield. Now we're going slow enough that there's really no atmospheric heating anymore, so you can pop off that heat shield and finally take a look at the ground.

(sound effect: popping off heat shield)

Narrator: The heat shield had been like a blindfold, preventing the rover from using its radar to get its bearings above Mars.

Al Chen: So the radar really just tells us how fast we're going and how high we are. With Perseverance, we added the capability to actually look at the ground with cameras, and take pictures of the ground rushing up at us. And that way, we can make adjustments to where we want to go.

[3:59] But still, we're descending on the parachute during this period, going, you know, 160-ish miles an hour, even when the parachute is done slowing us down. So, again, if we did nothing else, the spacecraft would hit the ground at about 160 miles an hour, which is not a survivable case. So when we get down to about a mile and a half above the surface, that's when we need to light up rocket engines and get rid of that parachute.

Narrator: NASAs Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers were encased in airbags as they hung from their parachute, and then when the parachute was discarded, they dropped to the surface and bounced across Mars like giant beach balls. Curiosity and Perseverance were too heavy for airbags, so they used jet packs instead. The jet pack didnt take the rover all the way down, but hovered above the surface and lowered the rover by ropes in a maneuver called the sky crane. Once the rovers wheels hit Martian dirt, the ropes were cut and the jet pack flew off into the distance so its rockets couldnt damage the rover.

(sound effect: sky crane and jet pack)

[5:03] Narrator: Entry, descent and landing on Mars happens so fast, the rover has to pilot itself.

Al Chen: Depending on what kind of landing system you are, you have six or seven minutes from the top of the atmosphere to the ground. There's very little time for us to think or for the spacecraft to think about what needs to be done.

The one-way light time the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth varies. It's been around, for a lot of our landings, 10 to 15 minutes or so. So that's just the time it gets to figure out what the spacecraft is telling us. It would take double that time to send back commands to it. So imagine trying to drive a remote-control car with a 20-minute round-trip delay between what you see and what you're trying to drive. Its just not tenable, right?

So the spacecraft has to fly it all the way down on her own, because as you're going through the atmosphere during that seven minutes of terror, you can't call home for help. We'll just acknowledge that there are problems and move on and keep trying to land successfully because there's no reason to stop. Stopping is also death. So you might as well keep going.

[6:03] Narrator: Al has spent years making sure those seven minutes will go like clockwork.

Al Chen: Between Curiosity and Perseverance, I've put in personally 19 years for 14 minutes. It was 10 years for the first seven minutes, and then nine years for the second seven minutes.

Narrator: Those seven minutes are transformational as the spacecraft sheds parts of itself that are no longer needed, while activating other parts for the first time.

Al Chen: We're basically flying multiple different types of spacecraft. We fly one throughout space. We fly another through hypersonic and supersonic flight. Then we fly another one with a parachute. And then once we're done with the parachute, we fly this other what we call the powered flight vehicle the descent stage and rover put together. And then we transform that vehicle at the end into the sky crane to put the rover down. So it's a constant series of things that have to go right, flying all these individual pieces of the spacecraft together in concert. And its not just those cornerstones, but even these more basic parts of the system, any of which going bad means a bad day for everybody.

[7:06] Generally, when you have a spacecraft, you don't want to take it apart until you're sure you want to take it apart. So things like popping off the heat shield, we have these bolts that hold the heat shield on, and we use they're called pyrotechnics because we're breaking those bolts with explosives.

(sound effect: multiple explosive bolts)

Al Chen: And also, in other places where we have different parts of the spacecraft connected to each other with tubes or electrical lines, we use pyrotechnic devices to fire cutters basically explosively-actuated knives to cut through different parts of the spacecraft to separate them. There were upwards of 70 of those on Curiosity.

Narrator: Even if the engineers are confident that every aspect of their landing system will work, theres still the uncontrollable nature of Mars itself. The mission has to forecast far in advance how Mars will behave on landing day. Heres JPL engineer Swati Mohan, who led guidance, navigation and control for Perseverance.

[8:06] Swati Mohan: We take into account so many different attributes in the selection of the launch period and the landing period that it's crazy. We have to take into account the dust season on Mars, the solar cycle season, the angle of the Sun at the proposed landing time. We're deciding this in like 2012, 2013 for things that are going to happen in 2020 and 2021. And there's a cyclic nature to it. Earth and Mars, the way they traverse around the Sun, they come into alignment a little over every two years. So we can get the shortest duration to Mars if we launch during that three-week window.

And then, Mars is extremely challenging to land on, and it's for a number of reasons. The terrain relief at Mars, depending on where you're going, can be really drastic, to extremely high like at the top of Olympus Mons, or really low.

[9:08] Mars is smaller than Earth. It has less gravity, but it also still has an atmosphere. And now, the atmosphere is about a hundred times less than Earth's, so it's in this category where it's just thick enough that you have to account for it. It's not like landing on the Moon where there's no atmosphere and you can go straight down. And the atmosphere changes with the seasons on Mars, so even that variation will give you several hundred meters of extra performance depending on how dense the atmosphere is in the season that you choose to go.

So all of these accommodations for gravity, for terrain, for solar illumination and dust cycle and atmosphere, we have to build in those smarts into the vehicle to manage all of that on the fly as it's descending in order to land safely on Mars.

[10:03] Narrator: Once the spacecraft reaches Mars and begins its swan dive towards the surface, one person in Mission Control is tasked with calling out every step, similar to how an Olympics commentator explains an ice skaters performance, detailing the movements and leaps that result in, hopefully, a triumphant finale. For the Perseverance rovers landing, that commentator was Swati.

Swati Mohan: I knew intimately everything that really could go wrong and what it took for everything to go right in order to actually land on the ground successfully. The role of EDL Commentator, I think the most nerve-wracking part was knowing what to do if things didn't go the way we wanted them to go. I had this huge flowchart of: if we see this data, then say this. If we see this data, then stop talking, and someone with a much, much higher pay grade will take over.

[11:04] EDL Commentator Swati Mohan: Perseverance now has radar lock on the ground. Current velocity is about 100 meters per second, 6.6 kilometers above the surface of Mars. (applause)

Swati Mohan: The first time I saw footage of the entirety of Perseverance entry, descent and landing was six months after the actual landing day. I think until then it was still too much of a traumatic event for me to watch. But I was shocked by the way it was perceived in that show, it just has me stating out all of the events as they happened. But that wasn't my experience at all, actually. For me, I had the whole of the entry, descent and landing team in my ears. I heard all the voices that we'd been working together for years calling these events one after the other.

Now, they were all calling it in the technical speak, right? All the acronyms and jargon, shorthand that we had given these events, and my job was to translate that from what they said into something that the public could understand.

[12:05] But it really was a very surreal feeling. There were parts of it that we could imagine was just like another simulation. We had made the team practice two or three times these exact scenarios to make sure they knew what to do when they got to that actual landing day. But when it really hit home was when that first image came back from Perseverance.

When we did our simulations, that image that would come back would be the testbed engineers in the mock-ups with like two thumbs up. But on landing day, getting that first image from Perseverance that showed Mars, and showed a safe rover on the surface, was just phenomenal. It meant that everything had worked smoothly. It was on the ground, safe, not upside down or anything strange like that. (laughs)

(intro music)

[13:26] Narrator: Welcome to On a Mission, a podcast of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Im Leslie Mullen, and in this fourth season of the podcast, weve been following in the tracks of rovers on Mars. Before a rover can begin to make wheel prints on the Red Planet, it first has to make the harrowing journey from Earth to Mars.

This is episode nine: Before You Can Drive, First You Have to Fly.

(music)

Narrator: A successful Mars landing is the culmination of years of experience that began in 1976 with NASAs Viking 1 and 2 landers.

[14:05] Al Chen: We always lean on the things we've learned before, and some of the decisions we made before shape what we do next. Go all the way back to Viking, right, back to the seventies, we knew very little about Mars. We still don't know that much about Mars, but we know a lot more than they did back then. We didn't know how thick the atmosphere was. We knew it was thin, but we didn't know how thin. And we pretty much didn't know what we would find on the surface.

Narrator: Besides telescope observations from Earth, NASA had sent the Mariner missions in the late 1960s and early 70s to fly by Mars, or in the case of Mariner 9, to orbit the planet. But still, images from those missions didnt provide fine details of the planets surface.

Al Chen: The cameras that we had going by were pretty low resolution. You couldn't see individual rocks or the local terrain on the scale of the thing we were trying to land, which was the Viking landers.

[15:00] Nowadays we tend to go on what we call direct-entry trajectories. Instead, what Viking did was they had the lander attached to the orbiter and sent both together, both for Viking 1 and Viking 2, to Mars, and then put both in orbit prior to separating the lander to land on Mars. And that did a few things for us, right? Because we knew very little about Mars, it allowed the orbiter to do some reconnaissance before trying to set the lander loose to try to land safely on Mars. So that was a big difference from what we do now.

But a lot of the pieces that you see in Viking will reappear for us. They knew that they had to slow down through the hypersonic portion of entry, descent and landing, and deal with the heating that they might see. And in fact, the same shape forebody that Viking flew, we continue to fly to this day. Every NASA mission that has flown to Mars has had the same shape heat shield. It's a 70-degree sphere cone. It might have been different sizes, but it's had the same front we've presented the same face to Mars every time.

[15:57] Viking had the ability to kind of steer itself during entry it had a little bit of lift like Curiosity and Perseverance but because they were so concerned about how thin the atmosphere was and not quite knowing how high the elevation was, everything about Viking was trying to get altitude. They had a radar that could actually look through their heat shield and see how high they were as they went. They were deathly afraid of being unable to stop in time. So as part of that, they developed supersonic parachutes. With that supersonic parachute, they got to the point that they could jettison their heat shield and use a more precise second radar that helps them get velocity on the way down. Then, just like us, they rode the parachute as long as possible, and then needed engines to finish the job.

Because Vikings landed on legs, they had these engines with a bunch of little tiny nozzles we call a showerhead. Instead of one giant nozzle that can create a lot of disturbance on the ground if you think of like a focused jet coming out of a rocket and then hitting a ground, which they didn't know how hard the ground was, whether it was kind of sandy or whether it was rock hard. They were afraid of what we like to call digging your own grave. The rocket engines create craters that you end up landing the vehicle in you just dig a giant hole.

[17:09] So because they were worried about that, they took these throttle engines engines that you could control how much thrust was coming out of them very precisely but added these showerhead nozzles to try to reduce how much of a ground disturbance there was. And they used those three engines to fly all the way to the ground, and then shut those engines down as they touched down.

Narrator: After the Vikings, NASA didnt send another lander to Mars for 20 years. The experiments on Viking designed to detect life were inconclusive, and so NASA focused on other aspects of space exploration. When NASA decided to give the surface of Mars another go in the 1990s, the EDL engineers had to recreate the Viking landing system, but adapt it for the Pathfinder lander and the little Sojourner rover it would carry.

[17:57] Al Chen: Pathfinder itself in many ways was an attempt to show that we could land on Mars again. But Pathfinder tried to land on Mars with a lot fewer resources than Viking. So it didn't go the same approach of trying to go with an orbiter into orbit. We don't want to make an orbiter; we just want to land on Mars. When we launch, we're going to head right for Mars and the Mars atmosphere.

Now we know a little bit more about the atmosphere, we're a little less worried about trying to stop in time. So instead of trying to control the vehicle in the upper part of the atmosphere, let's make a cannonball, and just go where it goes. So that takes us down to the supersonic portion of flight. Let's keep that piece of Viking, that supersonic parachute, because otherwise we're going to hit the ground way too fast, but with more modern materials.

And that's where things get pretty different. Things like throttle engines that Viking developed were pretty expensive. So instead of throttle engines, we have solid rocket motors that are pretty much bang, bang things. There's two throttle levels on a solid rocket motor: on and off. So now we have this, what we call a three-body system: the parachute up top, the back shell in the middle with its rockets, and a lander encased in airbags dangling off the bottom of it. When we get close to the ground, we're going to inflate these airbags.

[19:07] (sound effect: airbags inflate)

Al Chen: It's about two stories tall, so this isn't small. We have a small lander encased in two stories worth of airbags (laughs) trying to protect it for dealing with hitting things like rocks and other terrain. And then when we get really close to the ground, let's fire up those rocket motors that are above us.

(sound effect: rocket motors)

Al Chen: Really slow down at the end. So this is going from 50, 60 miles an hour, to nothing, or as close to zero velocity as possible, and cut that lander loose.

(sound effect: lander cut loose, airbags bouncing)

Al Chen: And that lander, of course, is encased in airbags, will hit the ground and bounce a bit and maybe roll some, but hopefully those airbags will protect us. And then once you've come to a stop, you can deflate those airbags, and open it up. And that's your lander on Mars, safely. And that's exactly what happened with Pathfinder.

Narrator: After the success of the Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover in 1997, NASA was ready to send more rovers to Mars. But the landing recipe had to be tweaked again for the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity that were each scheduled to arrive on Mars in early 2004.

[20:09] Al Chen: For the most part, the landing looks similar: we're going on a direct path to Mars with a ballistic entry, same kind of heat shield, solid rockets in the back shell, airbags to finish. But because the mass has gone up a little bit, we had to add a new system to Spirit and Opportunity to help deal with horizontal velocity.

So previously, Viking with its throttle engines could control vertical velocity and horizontal velocity on the way down. With Pathfinder, with just those solid rocket motors, we pretty much had to deal with whichever way the back shell was facing was the direction that those rockets were going to fire, and that's the direction we were going to slow down.

And so, that meant sometimes if the back shell was tilted as things were swinging around in this three-body system where you have this parachute, and you have this back shell, you have this lander if the back shells rockets aren't pointing straight down when you fire those rocket motors, you're going to pick up velocity going horizontally. And that can be bad. The airbags can only deal with so much. As the rovers got heavier, and therefore the whole thing we're trying to stop gets heavier, the airbag materials that we used were struggling to deal with things like sharp rocks.

[21:11] So we had to add a system for Spirit and Opportunity where we took a couple of pictures as we're going down and tried to figure out from those pictures how fast we were going sideways. And then we added these little tiny rocket motors that pointed sideways on the back shell so we can kind of push it a little bit one way or the other, and therefore the airbags wouldn't have to deal with a ton of sideways-type forces that could tear them up and cause us to have a bad day.

(music)

Narrator: When designing the nearly one-ton Curiosity rover, even more drastic changes had to be made to the landing system.

Al Chen: As you go from Spirit and Opportunity to the next rover, to Curiosity, we're going from about 170 kilos of rover, to about 900 kilos of rover with Curiosity. These airbags are an energy absorption system, and as the mass gets now five times bigger, you have to deal with a lot more energy. But the airbags were at the limit of what we thought we could do from a materials perspective. So when we get to Curiosity, we had to come up with a new approach.

[22:15] Part of Curiosity, and the idea of landing such a much bigger rover, was that we were also going to build bigger wheels and a bigger suspension system for being able to drive around on what Mars could throw at us. We didn't want to just drive around on flat stuff; we wanted to go up really steep hills or drive over rocks. So that left us with an opportunity on the entry, descent and landing side of things. Why not try to use that system that's already built to deal with Mars to land on it, too?

Narrator: The rovers Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity had all been tucked inside a landing platform as well as airbags. After landing, the airbags deflated, the platform opened up, and a ramp extended to provide a path for the rover down to the surface of Mars. Curiosity would need no such platform for its touchdown.

[23:04] Al Chen: The whole idea behind sky crane is, let's land the rover on its wheels, so long as we touch the rover down slow enough that the loads it sees at touchdown are not any worse than it would see driving around on Mars and by loads, I mean the forces. If the vehicle falls off of a rock while driving around, it's going to see some amount of shock and other forces that are going to go through the rover. If we can put the rover down softly, as soft as if it fell off a rock on Mars, then we don't have to build another lander or develop airbags or anything else to help cushion the blow of touchdown.

So to be able to get the rover down, we needed a couple more cornerstones of our landing system. One of them is a radar. We needed a much more precise altimeter and velocimeter the ability to know exactly how fast we're going, down to a tenth of a meter per second accuracy. And on top of that, knowing about it is one thing, but being able to control it is another thing. But solid rocket motors, which have two settings, right on and off are not going to do that job. But good ideas never die. Viking had those high-precision throttle engines; we could dial in pretty much whatever thrust level you wanted.

[24:11] Since it was the 1970s when they developed it, and now it was the early 2000s, we had to do a little bit of an archeological project to figure out how to rebuild those engines. And that meant finding stored old engines that were in cases under people's desks, opening them up, cutting them up to see what was in them, finding all the blueprints for them, trying to figure out how to build those engines again.

But we made a change. Instead of those showerhead nozzles, right, all those small engines to deal with the ground plume disturbance the thrust of the rockets hitting the ground and making giant craters now that we're putting the rover below us and the engines above, with this rocket-powered jetpack, we don't need those showerhead nozzles anymore, because the engines are further away from the ground. So we can actually make a more efficient system with just a single bell nozzle. And of course, because we're landing so much more mass with this nine hundred kilo rover, instead of having just three engines, which is what Viking had, we now have eight.

[25:06] Narrator: The sky crane and rocket motors werent the only changes needed to land a bigger, heavier rover on Mars. Curiositys size also caused problems higher up in the atmosphere. The team wanted to use the same kind of heat shield that had protected the previous rovers from the blaze of entering the Mars atmosphere, but Curiosity was so big, the heat shield and backshell of the rovers space capsule, together called the aeroshell, had to be bigger too.

Al Chen: We went from aeroshells that were 2.65 meters in diameter, to a 4.5-meter diameter aeroshell for Curiosity. And that wasn't free, not just from a building a bigger structure standpoint, but also from a heating standpoint. As you build bigger and bigger spacecraft, you begin to develop turbulence on the heat shield, which causes increased heating. So, as our spacecraft gets both heavier and wider, we have more energy to bleed off.

[26:06] We'd originally intended to use the same heat shield thermal protection material that's worked so well for Viking and Pathfinder and Spirit and Opportunity. But as we started testing to see if that material could deal with the heating conditions we were expecting to see with Curiosity, it just disappeared.

(sound effect: heat shield material destroyed)

Al Chen: It just bled away like crazy. And this was already pretty late in development for us. Design was set, we were getting ready to build everything, and had very little time. We were two years from launch, and we had no heat shield material. But luckily, NASA was working on a new thermal protection system material called PICA phenolic impregnated carbon ablator. And we jumped on that right away.

Narrator: Curiositys parachute also needed to be super-sized, and again, this led to problems.

Al Chen: The parachutes that we've used before, even the Viking-size parachute, which was bigger than the parachutes we used for Spirit and Opportunity, was not going to be enough to slow us down enough. They had a 16-ish-meter parachute for Viking. And we decided that we needed a 21-meter parachute to be able to stop.

[27:12] So we developed a bigger parachute. Again, along the same lines as the Viking design, same shape, just scaled up. And with more modern materials, materials more along the lines of what we'd flown on Spirit and Opportunity. And we took that into the biggest wind tunnel here in the United States, up at Ames Research Center, and had a lot of adventures there too, which usually involved us blowing up chutes, with them inverting and whatnot.

(music)

Al Chen: On Mars, we fire this parachute out of the back of the spacecraft with a mortar or this cannon. And then the parachute inflates in less than a second, in about six-tenths of a second or so. So it's lightning fast how it goes from being really packed, to the density of wood, and then it just inflates extremely violently and extremely quickly to its full size, starting off about the size of an oil can, eventually getting to that giant size it's about the size, when it's inflated, of a Little League infield.

[28:08] But the bigger the parachute you have, the longer it takes to inflate. Which on Mars is not such a big thing because we're talking about five-tenths of a second instead of six-tenths of a second. Everything is fast. But here on Earth, it can take seconds. We're testing in a wind tunnel that's at sea level. The atmosphere is much thicker, and things like gravity can start acting on the parachute.

So as we fire this parachute out of the cannon, it stretches out in a line before enough air fills up the parachute to fully inflate. And during that time, the top parts of the parachute can fall, and what we call leading edge crossover, we have the top edge fall below and through the other lines. And then, when finally enough air gets into the canopy to inflate, everything is misshapen and it tears itself apart. So that's not great.

[28:53] But we eventually decided that this was an Earth-test problem. Because, on Mars, the parachute inflates so quickly, the effects of things like gravity and taking seconds to inflate, there's not enough time on Mars for those things to occur, so we won't have these types of crossovers on Mars. So to deal with that here on Earth, we actually added anti-inversion nets nets that we put between the lines on the edge of the canopy of the parachute to prevent the parachute from pulling itself through where we didn't want it to pull through.

By the way, this method of testing parachutes in wind tunnels was not new. For Spirit and Opportunity, we actually went to this same wind tunnel, but never really saw this problem because the parachute was smaller, so it didn't take as much time to inflate. So, even when you think you're doing something simple, like scaling up a parachute, using the same shape and same materials and just making it a little bigger, things that you don't see coming can bite you.

Read more:

Before You Can Drive, First You Have to Fly NASA Mars Exploration - NASA Mars Exploration

New Delhi, Oct 6 (PTI) The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and US Consulate will host a three-day international conclave titled Space Technology from October 15-18, officials said.

The conclave, to be organised on IIT-Madras campus, will attract participation from national and international space agencies, government bodies and the private sector with a focus on Indo-Pacific countries, they said.

This conclave will bring together major stakeholders in the space technology sector to explore ways to optimise business opportunities and collaboration across the Indo-Pacific region, said Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, coordinator of IIT-Madras National Centre for Combustion Research and Development.

Eminent expert participants will also analyse challenges, risks, and opportunities for entrepreneurs investing in these sectors. As an outcome of the conclave, the organisers aim to establish Association of Space Entrepreneurs in the Indo-Pacific, a networking and lobbying platform focused on innovation and entrepreneurship in the space sector. Stakeholders will recommend a future roadmap to promote international aerospace business and scientific space collaborations.

The United States and India cooperate on a wide range of diplomatic and security issues and space is an important element of our relationship that draws linkages between our two nations in the field of scientific exploration, emerging technologies and commercial partnerships, said Judith Ravin, the US Consul General in Chennai.

Going one step further, this conclave demonstrates the potential for expanding these ties across a network of Indo-Pacific countries poised for increased multilateral collaboration in the field of space exploration. More than 80 experts invited from 15 Indo-Pacific countries, including India, United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia, among others, are expected to take part in the conclave.

Government space agencies participating include the Indian Space Research Organisation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Australian Space Agency. PTI GJS SZM

This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

Read more:

IIT Madras, US consulate in Chennai to organise three-day international space technology conclave - ThePrint

In space, no one can hear you scream, but your corporate overseers can exploit you for profit. Here are our full hands-on impressions of Space Salvage from EGX London 2022.

Not to be confused with Deep Space Salvage Crew VR, Fruity Systems debut game opts for space exploration over an FPS roguelike. Space Salvage takes you to an ultra-capitalistic future, joining the Space Salvage Corporation as its latest 0-hour contract stooge. Make no mistake, you are expendable, a fact regularly reinforced by our cold-hearted AI companion. I could only laugh at this over-the-top satire.

Keeping us firmly inside the cockpit during the demo, your goal as trainee pilot involves recovering cargo from crashed ships with your Space Pod. Charting your course with help from a mini map, collecting cargo is usually straightforward. Gripping a flight stick on the left and accelerator on the right, simply approach the floating cargo and a tractor beam automatically deploys. Be careful though, if youre travelling too fast indicated by that beam turning red youll damage your ship upon impact. Your Space Pod has a fuel gauge, which never fell short enough to cause problems, but Id guess this factors more noticeably into later missions.

Before long, it becomes clear this ship was deliberately attacked and youll need careful coordination to avoid active proximity mines. That would be easier if the accelerator didnt feel somewhat fiddly. Move it a little too far and suddenly youre halfway to the next asteroid. This is admittedly not a major issue, just one that requires a deft touch. Eventually, I unlocked the Pods laser weapon to help clear this threat, letting me destroy mines from a distance.

Finally, the mysterious assailant revealed himself, threatening to kill me for claiming his cargo, leading into combat. I wouldnt call this a dogfight though. Even though I was in one spaceship attacking another, the latters engine was fried. making him an easy target. He could still attack, but was unable to move. Id love more space dogfighting like weve seen in Star Wars: Squadrons or EVE: Valkyrie but for now, the demo provided a fun combat warm up. Space Salvages exploration was entertaining too. Traversal feels smooth, changing course is easy and I never collided with any objects, despite that acceleration issue.

Once youve accomplished your tasks on a given mission, you can mark it as complete by pressing the shiny red button above you. At this point in my demo, I discovered Id missed plenty of hidden optional cargo throughout the level.Overall, it was a promising start for Space Salvage and Im keen to explore the world further. If you want to give it a try yourself, the demo is available for Quest 2 via App Lab for free.

Space Salvage launches later this year on Meta Quest platforms and PC VR via Steam.

More:

Hands-On: Space Salvage Mixes Corporate Satire With An Intriguing VR Space Adventure - UploadVR

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

NASA, SpaceX to study ways to boost orbit of Hubble telescope

Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to fund a study with NASA to examine ways to use the space company's Dragon capsule to raise the Hubble Space Telescope's orbital altitude, which would extend its useful life, agency officials announced on Thursday. SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon capsule ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station for NASA, will fully fund the six-month study, NASA's science chief Thomas Zurbuchen told reporters during a short-notice press conference.

Rocket Lab to fire up first tests of new engine next year - CEO

Launch company Rocket Lab by next year plans to conduct initial hot-fire tests of a new, more powerful engine that will power its next-generation Neutron rocket, the company's chief executive told Reuters. The Long Beach, California-based company routinely launches small satellites into space with its small workhorse Electron rocket. In December, it unveiled a bigger, reusable Neutron rocket, upping its competitive footing with larger vehicles from Elon Musk's SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.

U.S. agency adopts new space junk rules to reduce exploration risks

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 4-0 Thursday on to adopt new rules to address growing risks of orbital debris to space exploration by shrinking the time to remove defunct satellites. The FCC voted to require post-mission disposal of low-Earth orbit satellites within five years. The agency previously recommended operators of satellites in low-Earth orbit ensure spacecraft re-enter Earth's atmosphere within 25 years.

(With inputs from agencies.)

See the original post:

Science News Roundup: NASA, SpaceX to study ways to boost orbit of Hubble telescope; U.S. agency adopts new space junk rules to reduce exploration...

Every year in October nearly 100 countries organise activities to mark World Space Week. The theme this year is space and sustainability. In this interview, Adejuwon Soyinka, West Africa regional editor at The Conversation Africa, asks Etim Offiong about how far Africa has come in the space age and what benefits the continent stands to gain from its investment in space technology.

Sputnik happened partly due to the cold war rivalry between the US and the former Soviet Union. During this period, most African countries were still under colonial rule. Only Ghana had gained independence, earlier that year.

Through the colonial systems and structures put in place then, African countries had no control over their natural and human resources. The colonies were made to focus on the labour, raw materials and agricultural crops that were needed by their colonial masters.

They could not pay attention to research and development, particularly in nuclear physics, space and the oceans. Educational systems were also designed to meet the needs of colonial masters. Outer space was, therefore, of little concern to Africa.

Free nations on the other hand could channel their resources into space exploration.

Despite the restrictions and challenges in their home countries, African scientists still made efforts to study and do research in their areas of interest. These were mostly done abroad through scholarships and fellowships. Some of these scientists were interested in understanding phenomena surrounding the Earth and Sun.

At about this time (1957-8), the International Geophysical Year provided an opportunity for international research on the science and impact of the Sun-Earth system. The US also placed tracking stations in Nigeria and South Africa to support US space missions.

In that sense, one may say that Africa participated in early space activities. But the activities were not designed to benefit African countries.

As African countries started gaining independence, they could, to some extent, control their human and financial resources. The speech made by Ghanas Kwame Nkrumah at the launch of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 highlighted how Africas development and prosperity needed science and technology.

But a major leap in space activities started around 1998, with the establishment by the United Nations of Regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education in developing countries.

Two centres were established in Africa: one in Morocco for the French-speaking African countries, and the other in Nigeria for the English-speaking African countries.

At about this time, South Africa was developing what would become Africas first indigenously built satellite Sunsat which was launched in 1999.

From these early steps, more African nations started developing an interest in space. Those that were already aware of the benefits of space technology in development started seeking means to procure satellites and acquire space-related knowledge.

In addition to national initiatives, there are several externally funded space-related programmes and projects in Africa which have created an inflow of funds, knowledge and infrastructure into the continent.

Furthermore, the African Space Policy and Strategy was adopted in 2016. Some African countries have also developed national space policies and strategies.

So, Africa has made some gains, but it could be better.

There is potential to apply space technology in various areas, including agriculture, transport, urban planning, environmental management, disaster management and natural resource management.

The UN-affiliated regional centres in Morocco and Nigeria have trained several hundred Africans in these areas.

In addition, some African countries have procured small satellites, mostly through the help of academic or commercial institutions abroad. Unfortunately, there has been little or no technology transfer. Similarly, the technology and knowledge from externally funded programmes have yet to be properly internalised, codified and diffused.

Some African countries have commenced academic programmes in areas such as astronomy, remote sensing, space weather, satellite communication, satellite geodesy, satellite meteorology and space law.

The challenge is that there are few jobs for the graduates. Africa eventually loses them to countries where their knowledge and skills are better used. Africa, therefore, needs to be strategic in its engagements and programmes.

In my view, it begins with a national space policy and strategy. A national policy states where a country wants to go, the national space strategy states how it will get there. The policy states the vision, overarching goals and guiding principles; the strategy translates these into actions and programmes.

Space policies and strategies are important because they enable predictable positive outcomes for a country, region, or organisation. They lead, guide and guard all stakeholders government, industry, academia and civil society towards attaining corporate interests, goals and priorities.

Due to the unique nature of the space domain (scientific, commercial, military and geostrategic interests), developing a space policy and strategy is not as simple as other public policies.

On the flip side, space policy and strategy operate within an international legal regime. There are treaties, principles, norms and guidelines for space activities.

This is where the African Space Leadership Institute comes in to develop Africas capabilities in space policy, strategy, law and governance. The institute was also established to provide advice and insight on issues in the African national and continental space landscape. All these would be within the frameworks of the African Unions Agenda 2063 and the UN SDGs.

African countries need to be more deliberate in developing space capabilities. A party can only benefit from bilateral or international cooperation if it brings something to the table, knows what it wants to get from the cooperation and negotiates well.

So, quite a lot of strategic foresight is needed in Africa.

See the article here:

Africa in space: continent has a lot to gain, but proper plans must be put in place - The Conversation Africa

NASA's Commercial Crew Program is launching a crew of four astronauts on the fifth crew rotation mission to the International Space Station launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Kennedy Space Center Wednesday, Oct. 5 at noon EDT (rescheduled from Tuesday, October 4 at 12:23 pm ET).

NASAs SpaceX Crew-5 sends astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the ISS.

With this launch, mission commander, Nicole Aunapu Mann, has become the first Native American woman to travel to space.

Mann told Reuters "I feel very proud. It's important that we celebrate our diversity and really communicate that specifically to the younger generation." Mann is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes.

Crew-5 will spend roughly a day traveling to the ISS after launch. Once the new crew arrives, the members of the Crew-4 mission currently on the ISS will spend five days handing off duties to the new arrivals.

Once the handoff is complete, the astronauts of NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission will undock from the space station and splash down off the coast of Florida, concluding their long duration stay of around six months on the ISS.

The Crew-5 astronauts will live aboard the International Space Station for the next six months, conducting science experiments in areas including cardiac to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to benefit life on Earth as well.

Originally posted here:

The First Native American Woman Travels into Space with NASA's Crew-5 Mission - Discovery