More SpaceX! More Orion! More Mars! | SPACE NEWS

Hello citizens of Earth. It's me, Jared. Welcome aboard Station 204. And now that you're here, let's go ahead and get you caught up on the past week's launches in our traffic report. Hope you all like Asia, because that's the only continent we'll be going to this week. Starting off, the return to flight of the Long March 4B. Leaving the pad at the Tuyon Space Center on September 12th at 0326 Universal Time. It successfully placed the Xeon 1-2D Earth Observation Satellite into orbit. Xeon 1-2D will help with resource, disaster, and urban management. Two small secondary payloads were also successfully deployed, one to monitor sea ice and ships sailing through it, and another to test solar sails as a method to de-orbit satellites. A Long March 11 leapt off the launch pad at the Xiquan Launch Center at 0642 Universal Time on September 19th. The five satellites it carried, operated by the Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science and Technology Company Limited, host hyperspectral imaging systems and video cameras that can take footage of objects one meter across on the Earth's surface. And now we head down to the Xichang Space Center, where a Long March 3B lifted off on September 22nd at 2110 Universal Time. Its payload of two Bidu Navigation Satellites were successfully deployed, continuing to build up the Bidu Navigation Satellite System to eventually have global coverage. Now moving a little more east, we arrive at the Tangashima Space Center in Japan, where a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIB locked in the 8th H-II Transfer Vehicle, also called HTV-8, into an orbit to catch up with the International Space Station, which HTV-8 is carrying 3,777 kilograms of supplies for. This includes water, air, crew provisions, tools for upcoming spacewalks, and notably new lithium-ion batteries for use with the ISS' solar arrays. And in this week's arrivals, we go a little far out with Interstellar Object 2I Borisov. It's arrived in the solar system, or, well, we spotted it after it arrived. This is the second interstellar interloper we've seen, but the first one we've seen on approach, as Interstellar Object 1I Oumuamua was seen when it was outbound. This should allow for a long period of study, and expect more on this as we get more data later this year. And now a look at upcoming departures. When I graduated high school back in 2006, NASA awarded the contract for something called the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which we now call Orion. And I've been eagerly watching its development, and NASA's taken some steps recently in order to ensure that they will have Orion spacecraft into the 2030s, and also acknowledging a little bit of the hard lessons they've had to learn in management. NASA only technically has a contract for a handful of Orion vehicles, but now they'll be getting more. If you want a six-pack of Orions, that's going to set you back a cool $4.6 billion. NASA is planning to use these to secure its lunar exploration through the 2020s, and the agency has already stated intentions to purchase up to six more for use in the 2030s. Lockheed Martin is NASA's contractor for Orion, which they received that contract in 2006, so there's not much of a surprise that NASA would stay the course. And that first set of six new Orions will be built under cost-plus contracts, which means whatever the cost of an Orion is, even if it balloons, and spoiler alert, it has ballooned, will be covered. But NASA has taken what, in my opinion, is a big step into making sure that budgetarily, things don't get too out of hand. Those final six Orion options, the ones for the 2030s, are under firm, fixed-price contracts. That means Lockheed Martin gets paid what the contract pays them, and no more than that. So if costs balloon, Lockheed Martin eats those costs with a side of mustard. It is a good move, but also too little too late. Inflation adjusted to 2018 dollars over the course of Orion's lifetime from 2006 to now, over 18 billion dollars have been spent, and all we've gotten is a single flight test and a handful of pad abort tests. NASA's fiscal year 2020 budget has finally been proposed, but we're going to go ahead and talk about that during the next Space News. So let's head on down to the Southern Hemisphere to hear a little bit from Lisa. Usually when something breaks, you need to take a hammer to fix it. But this time, it is the hammer that's broken, and it's on Mars. The InSight mission carried an instrument that was going to do something that had never been done before. It was going to hammer a probe five meters down into the Martian ground and measure the temperature. When I first heard about this Mars probe, I thought the engineering was pretty cool, and we'll get to that later, but sticking a giant thermometer into the sands of Mars didn't sound very inspiring. Boy, was I wrong. First off, the probe itself sends pulses of heat into the surrounding regolith and records how long it takes to cool down. This tells us how fluffy the regolith is, or what the ratio of rock to air is in that patch, and that's kind of important if you want to eventually mine the stuff. And second, the probe is actually 14 thermometers in one. The long cable behind the probe also has temperature sensors, so it can collect data on how the heat flows out from the interior of Mars. And this is what blew my mind. I never actually had ever thought about where the heat inside Mars actually comes from. And scientists think that the primary source of heat in Mars' crust comes from the decay of radioactive compounds like uranium, thorium and potassium. So by collecting multiple temperature measurements at once, we could figure out the concentrations of radioactive elements in the crust. And that's important to me for Mars astronauts in the long term. Imagine if we could build future nuclear power plants for future cities on Mars, we wouldn't have to worry about dust storms. Unfortunately, the probe got stuck not long after it started hammering. It got about 35 centimeters deep before it stopped making progress. A lot of people assumed it had just hit a large rock. But to know for sure, the team had to get a better look by removing the large support structure on top of the probe. In July, InSight's robotic arm was commanded to lift the support structure, and they found something a little bit unexpected. The hole was twice the diameter of the probe and there were multiple foot marks from the support structure. This means the probe was twirling like a spinning top as it was hammering and that the support structure was lifting and bouncing as the probe hammered below it. From these photos, the probe team think they hit a layer of extra sticky regolith called duracrust that has properties similar to cemented sand with clumps and caverns. Which means the culprit is not a rock. And to understand why, I had to dig a little deeper into how the probe actually hammers. The probe uses a spring to provide downward force, but this spring also produces a recoil. So to absorb the recoil, the probe relies on friction between the skin of the probe and the surrounding regolith. So if there's less friction than expected, say from perhaps a giant air cavern, then the recoil is going to cancel out the forward thrust of the spring and the probe will get stuck. But if there's one thing the JPL knows how to do best, it's to make the impossible possible. InSight engineers and the DLR team used InSight's robotic arm scoop to try to push on the sides of the hole to try to collapse it. They pushed with the flat part of the scoop, they pushed with the tip of the scoop, and by mid-August, they had managed to partially collapse the cavern and backfill the pit to about halfway of the original depth. But before they could do any more, the day star got in the way. Solar conjunction means the sun blocks our ability to send or receive data from Mars. The team is using this downtime to plan their next strategy, and it might even include using the scoop to push down on the probe itself to give it more stability. I don't know why they can't just use the scoop to put more dirt inside the hole and fill it up. I don't know, maybe you have some better ideas, and if you do, leave them in the comments below. Solar conjunction is finished up since September 10th, so we should get an update relatively soon. And as soon as we do, I'll be sure to give you the scoop. Speaking of solar conjunction, let's head on over to Dr. Tamethys Gove for our space weather. Space weather this week is definitely picking up. As we switch to our front side sun, you can see two coronal holes, the first of which has already rotated in through the Earth's strike zone over the past couple days, and it's brought us aurora at high latitudes. And along with the small solar storm that's hitting Earth now, we've managed to have some decent aurora show in quite a few places. Now, on top of that, we have this bigger coronal hole. This is the one that brought us that G2-level solar storm just about a month ago. This one brought aurora clear down to Colorado and gave us some gorgeous views over several days, and it's going to be rotating in the Earth's strike zone here in about three or four days, as well, probably about four days, and could give us yet another G1, maybe even G2-level solar storm, so we're really looking forward to that. Ever wonder what a solar eclipse looks like on another world? On September 12th, while the NASA spacecraft Juno made its 22nd closest approach of the planet Jupiter, its Juno cam caught a stunning image of a moon shadow passing over the planet's surface. This shadow is from the volcanic moon Io, which is not only Jupiter's closest moon, but arguably one of its most captivating. During the flyby, Juno got as close as 8,000 kilometers from the planet, nearly skimming the ceiling of Jupiter's clouds, traveling at speeds exceeding 70,000 kilometers an hour. It's a fairytale story of being at the right place at the right time. The odds of this are pretty low, but not improbable. Unlike our moon, which takes about 28 days to orbit Earth, Io orbits Jupiter in less than two days, which means solar eclipses happen far more frequently on Jupiter than on Earth, and since the Juno spacecraft does a close flyby of Jupiter about every 53 days, it's not a surprise that Juno captured such a spectacle. But beyond the beautiful photos it has everyone talking, this frequent solar eclipsing of Jupiter's atmosphere also poses a very real challenge in space weather. Here on Earth, when a solar eclipse occurs, it does more than create a beautiful spectacle. It causes huge disturbances in radio communications and GPS reception. During the recent eclipse back in 2017, scientists performed some eye-opening studies that demonstrated how much radio signals are disrupted as the moon's shadow passed overhead. They found that this unique kind of space weather disruption can last for hours even after the eclipse is over. So what is the takeaway from all of this? Studying eclipses on this planet are far more valuable than simply science for science's sake. As we begin to consider colonizing other worlds like Mars, radio communications becomes increasingly important. This means we will need to learn how to cope with the kind of space weather effects caused by solar eclipses. And by the looks of it, eclipses may be far more common on other worlds than on our own. For more details on this week's space weather, including when and where you can see Aurora, and how your emergency radio and GPS reception will fare, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. I know you're itching to know what's up with SpaceX at Boca in the Cape. There's a flurry of activity going on with Starship Mark 1, Crew Dragon, and Starlink as SpaceX is trying to wrap up 2019 by keeping themselves very, very busy. So let's go ahead and do a little recap. Starship is what you and I are chomping at the bit to learn about, which we will this Saturday, September 28th, and progress on the orbital prototypes is already underway at Boca Chica in the Cape. Fins and Raptors have been installed, along with further inclusion of structural parts. FCC filings indicate that test flights of Starship could actually begin in October. Of course, we're going to have to see if that's on real time or, more likely, Elon time. And of course, whatever Elon talks about this Saturday, we will be talking about that at the next Space News. Duh. Additionally, recent FCC filings indicate that Crew Dragon's in-flight abort test will occur at the Cape sometime in late November, as that filing goes active November 23rd. That's quite close to Thanksgiving here in the U.S., so get your dinitrogen tetroxide monomethylhydrazine leftovers ready. If all goes well with the in-flight abort test, SpaceX Demo-2 carrying astronauts, specifically Commander Douglas Hurley and Pilot Robert Behnken, will likely get the go-ahead, although expect that to occur in 2020. And SpaceX's president and resident badass, Gwen Shotwell, said at the World Satellite Business Week conference in Paris that SpaceX may launch up to four more Starlink satellite batches by the end of 2019, and expects up to 24 more to be sent up in 2020. Starlink is essential to SpaceX maintaining a constant revenue stream, which will enable SpaceX's Mars ambitions. So there's a lot of incentive for them in order to get Starlink in the constellation up and running as fast, but as safely as possible. And also, I want absurdly fast internet out in the middle of nowhere. That way I can tweet selfies of myself backpacking at the top of really tall mountains in real time. On this week's show, on September 28th at 1800 Universal Time, we're going to have Tony Darnell on to talk all things astronomy. You may also recognize Tony from the webcast that Tomorrow joined when New Horizons was doing its flyby of 2014 MU69 back in January. And let's face it, I don't often get to talk astronomy with folks on here, so you can imagine we're both going to nerd out on a level that you probably haven't ever seen before. So you're going to want to tune in because, oh my gosh, astronomy, I finally get to talk some astronomy. And of course, we want to thank all of our citizens of Tomorrow. Without you folks, we would not be able to make things like Space News or our live shows possible. You're the ones who help make this happen. So if you get something out of this and you'd like to give something back, you can head on over to patreon.com slash tmro or youtube.com slash tmro slash join. Or if you'd like to find other ways to do that, you can head on over to community.tmro.tv. It also helps to subscribe, thumbs up, hit that notification bell, because we've been having some very cool letting off steam shows. We don't announce those ahead of time, so you're going to probably want to know when those are happening. And that's it for this episode of Tomorrow's Space News. Until the next one, keep exploring. And it's on Mars. I'm getting rained on, I'm getting rained on quick. Okay, voice server, voice server, okay. Okay, I'm going to get electrical shocked. Ouch! I have to do two fingers to get this damn thing to stop recording. Argh!