{credit}NASA{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Alexandra Witze.

NASA is preparing one last blast for its expired Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft — a controlled crash into the Moon’s surface, probably on 21 April. But before it goes, LADEE will take a final shot at unravelling one of the main mysteries it went to the Moon to uncover.

A major goal of the mission was to understand a bizarre glow on the Moon’s horizon, spotted by Apollo astronauts just before sunrise. “So far we haven’t come up with an explanation for that,” project scientist Rick Elphic, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said at a media briefing on 3 April. One leading idea is that the Sun’s ultraviolet rays cause lunar dust particles to become electrically charged. That dust then lofts upwards, forming a cloud that caught the light and the astronauts’ eyes.

LADEE carries an instrument that measures the impact of individual dust particles, as well as the collective signal from smaller particles. Lunar scientists had expected a certain amount of tiny dust to explain what the Apollo astronauts saw. But LADEE didn’t find it. “We did measure a signal that indicates that the amount of lofted dust has to be at least two orders of magnitude below the expectations that were based on the Apollo reports,” says Mihály Horányi, the instrument’s principal investigator, who is at the University of Colorado. Perhaps the dust lofting happens only occasionally, he suggests, and the astronauts were in just the right place at the right time to see it.

LADEE will try one more time to unravel the horizon-glow mystery. As it gets closer and closer to the lunar surface, it will point its star tracker towards the Moon’s horizon to try to replicate the angle and conditions under which the astronauts saw the glow. The star tracker is not designed for high-resolution imaging, but Elphic says that it’s worth looking.

This weekend, mission managers will guide LADEE on a trajectory just 3 kilometres above the Apennine mountains on the Moon’s near side. The goal is to see what sort of dust LADEE can spot so close to the surface. Then it will move slightly higher for its remaining few weeks before plunging to its doom. It is destined to follow the natural decay of its orbit and vaporize itself on the lunar far side.

LADEE scientists have plenty of science to distract them from mourning. The spacecraft made the best measurements ever of the Moon’s dusty envelope, generated as tiny meteorites bombard its surface. The mission also discovered exotic atoms such as neon, magnesium and aluminium in the Moon’s outer atmosphere.

{credit}Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Ron Cowen.

NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft is in deep trouble. The craft, famous for blasting a projectile into the Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, lost contact with Earth sometime between 11 August and 14 August. Recent commands to put the craft in hibernation, or safe mode, were unsuccessful, and Deep Impact is now spinning out of control, says principal investigator Michael A’Hearn of the University of Maryland in College Park. The mission was renamed Epoxi when it was extended to observe comets and stars with transiting exoplanets.

Engineers have traced the problem to a software-communications glitch that reset the craft’s computer. They are now working on commands that could bring Deep Impact back into operation. They may try to communicate with the spacecraft this weekend, but the team first has to figure out its most likely orientation and whether to broadcast signals to the vehicle’s high-gain or low-gain antenna.

Mission scientists are racing against the clock because the craft’s batteries rely on power provided by Deep Impact’s solar panels. If the panels on the wayward craft happen to be pointing in a direction where they receive partial sunlight, the batteries could last for a few months. But if the panels are pointed away from the Sun, the batteries would die in just a few days. Once the batteries are gone, Deep Impact can no longer be revived, A’Hearn says.

One casualty of the mishap is that scientists have not received any of the expected images the craft was scheduled to take in August of Comet ISON, the icy space rock that could make a spectacle in the inner Solar System this fall before diving into the Sun, A’Hearn says.

{credit}Arianespace{/credit}

On Thursday Europe launched into orbit the most massive telecommunications satellite ever built on the continent. Managed by the European Space Agency and commercial operator Inmarsat, the 6.6-tonne Alphasat will relay data between different spots on the globe — using radio waves in the already crowded L-band frequency range. But it will also test out a laser communication device that could give a boost to space communications.

One piece of experimental equipment will broadcast at the higher and underused frequencies in the Q/V band. Higher frequencies encode more information, increasing the bandwidth available for transmissions. Sending such signals to the ground has been technically challenging because they are more easily disturbed by the atmosphere.

A second device will shoot and detect beams of laser light that have even higher frequencies and can carry even more information. Other satellites equipped with such terminals will be able to send information from low-Earth orbit up to Alphasat, which will relay the data to the ground from its high geosynchronous orbit. This will be the first step towards a network of laser-relay satellites intended to handle data from a planned fleet of European Earth-observing satellites.

An advanced star tracker particularly resistant to radiation will help these communications systems to aim their messages. Like a mariner out on the sea, it observes the stars to help the craft orient itself properly.

The Ariane 5 rocket that carried Alphasat also put into orbit INSAT-3D. This satellite will provide weather forecasting services to India.

{credit}via NASA TV{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Devin Powell.

On Sunday, the Antares rocket successfully completed its maiden test flight. Launched from a new pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the rocket is the largest vehicle to ever take off from the spaceport.

“It looks like it performed flawlessly throughout the day,” said NASA launch commentator Kyle Herring.

The flight puts NASA one step closer to having two US cargo carriers capable of resupplying the International Space Station. Funded in part by NASA subsidies and made from components built around the world, Antares was assembled by Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Virginia. The Frankensteinian vehicle put into orbit a 3,800-kilogram mock-up of Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft that will, during a future mission later this year, transport supplies to the space station.

The spacecraft simulator separated and went into orbit about 10 minutes after launch. It will take measurements using on-board instruments and deploy four small satellites. Three inexpensive PhoneSats built by NASA’s Ames lab in Moffett Field, California — named Alexander, Graham and Bell — will be controlled by the same computer chips used in smartphones. The fourth satellite, Dove-1, will snap photos of the planet from low-Earth orbit.

Today’s launch comes four days after the first attempt, scrubbed when a data cable disconnected prematurely from the fuelled rocket. Strong winds delayed a second countdown on Saturday.

Veteran space player Orbital may be finally catching up to its rival, SpaceX, founded by PayPal magnate Elon Musk. SpaceX is already well underway on its US$1.6-billion resupply contract, with three visits to the space station by its Dragon spacecraft to date. Plagued by delays — from setbacks in the construction of its launch pad to problems with Antares’ engines and valves — Orbital has yet to get started on its own $1.9-billion contract.

Posted on behalf of Chris Palmer.

Russia will give its Roscosmos space programme a whopping US$52-billion boost between now and 2020 in an effort to maintain its position as a leading space power.

The announcement came from Russian President Vladimir Putin as he told cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station on Friday that Russia will send up the first mission from its new Vostochny launch pad by 2015. Russia has been developing the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East as a way to reduce dependency on the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Putin added that the first manned missions would launch in 2018, with “super-heavy” rockets capable of missions to the Moon ready by 2020.

Experts think that Putin’s timeline is optimistic, but mostly achievable. “The fact that they’re putting money into it is good,” says Louis Friedman, former director of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. But money alone will not guarantee success, he adds. “They need to eliminate a lot of the waste and corruption that’s been endemic in their industry.”

George Abbey, senior fellow for space policy at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston, Texas, agrees that Russia has a long way to go to return to its former glory, given recent missteps such as the failure of its Phobos-Grunt Mars probe in 2011. However, he sees Friday’s announcement as a positive step. “Russia’s number one today,” says Abbey.

Although Abbey thinks that manned launches from Vostochny by 2018 are well within reach, he is less confident about Russia’s lunar goals. “I don’t know if they’re going to get to the Moon on that $50 billion,” he says.

John Logsdon, professor emeritus of space policy at George Washington University in Washington DC, is also sceptical of the lunar timeline, and says that building a new heavy-lift rocket in seven years is ambitious. “However, they are throwing a hell of a lot of money at it,” he says. Logsdon adds that space accomplishments are part of Russia’s national pride and the new plan is a “signal to the world that they are still an advanced country”.

Posted on behalf of Devin Powell.

UPDATE #2 (4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time): SpaceX says that a second set of thrusters is up and running. Dragon needs two to fly towards the station but won’t be able to dock without at least three. SpaceX engineers are working to bring the other two sets of thrusters online, but Saturday’s scheduled docking with station has been postponed.

UPDATE #1 (3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time): Owing to a problem with a propellant valve, only one of Dragon’s four thrusters fired. SpaceX deployed the spacecraft’s solar panels  and is working to get at least two thrusters  running before beginning maneuvers. Whether Dragon could hobble to the station on a single thruster remains unknown.

On Friday at 10:10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the fifth successful launch of this model by SpaceX. Riding the rocket was an unmanned Dragon capsule that detached about ten minutes after lift-off and entered orbit, heading towards the International Space Station (ISS).

But just before the spacecraft’s solar panels were set to deploy, SpaceX engineers reported a problem. What the problem was, and how it will impact Dragon’s visit to the ISS, scheduled for 2 March, remains unknown.

The ISS visit would be the space freighter’s third to date and the second of 12 resupply missions paid for by SpaceX’s US$1.6-billion NASA contract. Dragon’s pressurized pod contains 677 kilograms of packaged cargo. That includes food, clothing, equipment, a rock song called “Up in the Air,” and research experiments studying how plant cells, soot, and mixtures of liquid and solid behave in reduced gravity. For the first time, the spacecraft will also carry cargo in its unpressurized external trunk, bars that will be attached to the outside of the ISS.

During its previous resupply mission in October, Dragon successfully delivered its cargo. But a satellite carried by that Falcon 9 failed to reach its proper orbit after an engine failed in mid-flight. All nine engines appeared to function properly during Friday’s launch, giving a boost to SpaceX’s track record of reliability.

On 25 March, if all goes well, Dragon will detach from the space station and come back down, ultimately splashing into the Pacific Ocean. Retrofitted to prevent water leakage, which shorted out a freezer on board last time, the capsule will bring back 1,370 kilograms of cargo and samples from experiments including NASA’s human research program. By 2015 SpaceX hopes to be returning humans themselves in its first crewed Dragon.

Image: via Livestream