Splash! Artemis I has returned home. Webb has conducted his first deep field survey. Hear the sound of a dust devil on Mars and a space reporter goes to the Moon.
Orion Splashdown
Splash! On December 11, 2022, after nearly 26 days in space, NASA’s Orion capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, California. It had completed a journey of several million kilometers flying beyond the Moon and testing the techniques and technologies that would eventually take humans to the Moon and back. The entire mission went almost without a hitch, but its Cubesat payload wasn’t so lucky: half had already failed. With Artemis I completed, NASA is preparing for Artemis II, which is expected to fly in 2024.
More information on the completion of Artemis 1.
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We also took a comprehensive look at the entire Artemis 1 mission from start to finish. Enjoy!
Launch of Hakuto-R and the Moon Lantern
While the Orion capsule was going from the Moon to Earth, two other missions were going in the opposite direction. These are NASA’s Lunar Lantern and the Japanese Hakuto-R lander. The lunar lantern is designed to trace water ice deposits near the Moon’s poles. This will be very useful for future human missions. Hakuto-R is a lander originally designed for the Google Lunar XPrize. But it had the chance to launch only in 2022, long after the competition ended.
Accident on the ISS. Soyuz coolant leak
The Soyuz spacecraft attached to the International Space Station is leaking coolant into space. Mission controllers aren’t sure how it happened, but it may have been caused by a micrometeorite hitting the station. This is a big deal, as the Soyuz is the only way for the three Russian cosmonauts to return to Earth. The temperature inside the Soyuz is rising and it is unclear whether it can be safely used on a return flight. Russia may need to send a new Soyuz as soon as possible.
More information on the Soyuz accident.
JWST’s first real deep field
The Hubble Deep Field is one of the most famous results of the long-lived space telescope, peering deeper into the Universe than ever before. After James Webb launched, we wondered when we would get a JWST version of the Deep Field using its much more sensitive instruments. A first survey has been completed, using Webb’s 9 hours of observing time to look at a single region of space. As you can imagine, the survey produced some interesting results.
Learn more about Webb’s deep field.
Percy heard a dust devil on Mars
We’ve seen images of dust devils on Mars, both from the surface and from space, but we’ve never heard them. Bye now. NASA’s Perseverance Rover is equipped with a microphone and has already heard the wind blowing, the movement of sand and its own mechanical noises on Mars. And now the rover has captured a spinning dust devil that passed directly over its location. Check out the article and you can hear it yourself.
Learn more about the sounds of a Martian dust devil.
BANG! Testing the Sierra Space inflatable module
The octopus goes to the space habitat. Sierra Space engineers pushed their new LIFE habitat to destruction in a recent Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP). They filled the inflatable habitat with nitrogen gas to test the strength of its materials. NASA required them to reach 182.4 PSI, but they exceeded that milestone and eventually reached 204 PSI when the module broke. The next step will be to test a full-scale model in 2023 and then fly a working module into space a few years later.
Learn more about space habitat testing.
The asteroid as a space habitat
Space habitats are an element of science fiction, with humans living and working far from planet Earth. But space is a harsh environment, and humans are fragile compared to robots, needing artificial gravity, radiation protection, and resources like air and water. What is a realistic way to build a space colony? Debris asteroids like Ryugu or Bennu may hold the key, according to a new study. A strong, lightweight mesh could wrap around an asteroid and then be spun around, with the debris forming a habitable ring in space.
Learn more about turning asteroids into space colonies.
The astronaut goes to the moon every day!
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has announced the eight people who will join him on SpaceX’s first private lunar mission, dubbed Project DearMoon. The mission, which is scheduled for 2023, will see Maezawa and the eight crew members travel to the moon on a SpaceX Starship rocket for a six-day trip around the moon without landing on its surface. The group’s eight core members include electronic dance music artist Steve Aoki, South Korean rapper TOP, Czech choreographer Yemi AD, Irish photographic artist Rhiannon Adam, science communicator Tim Dodd, photographer and filmmaker Karim Iliya, American documentary filmmaker Brendan Hall and Indian TV actor. Dev D. Joshi. The mission is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars, and perhaps more than $100 million.
Learn more about the Dear Moon crew announcement.
Fusion ignition advance
Researchers at the National Ignition Facility have made a historic breakthrough, releasing more energy in a fusion experiment than was pumped in. They fired 192 high-powered lasers at a tiny capsule containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium, using 2.05 megajoules of energy. They extracted 3.15 megajoules of neutron-producing fusion energy, a gain of 1.5. This is an extraordinary achievement, showing that the technique works, but we are still a long way from commercial fusion plants.
Learn more about achieving fusion ignition.
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