Jet propulsion

The Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future, and NASA is calling on private companies for backup

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, April 25, 2024
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A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble.

Key Points: 
  • A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble.
  • Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The habitability of Mars

  • But studies conducted over the past decade suggest that the planet may have been much warmer and wetter several billion years ago.
  • Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still active; its twin, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, will play a crucial role in the sample return mission.

Why astronomers want Mars samples

  • This meteorite is a piece of Mars that landed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984.
  • They’re free samples that fell to Earth, so while it might seem intuitive to study them, scientists can’t tell where on Mars these meteorites originated.
  • There’s no substitute for bringing back samples from a region known to have been hospitable to life in the past.

A compelling and complex mission

  • Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth is the most challenging mission NASA has ever attempted, and the first stage has already started.
  • The rover inserts the samples in containers the size of test tubes.
  • The complex choreography of this mission, which involves a rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter and the coordination of two space agencies, is unprecedented.

Sample return breaks the bank

  • Mars Sample Return has blown a hole in NASA’s budget, which threatens other missions that need funding.
  • It’s likely that Mars Sample Return’s budget partly caused the layoffs, but they also came down to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory having an overfull plate of planetary missions and suffering budget cuts.
  • Within the past year, an independent review board report and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General raised deep concerns about the viability of the sample return mission.

Thinking out of the box

  • Proposals are due by May 17, which is an extremely tight timeline for such a challenging design effort.
  • And it’ll be hard for private companies to improve on the plan that experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had over a decade to put together.
  • For the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will attempt to land humans on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
  • It’s not clear whether that rocket could return the samples that Perseverance has already gathered.
  • Sending astronauts also carries extra risk and cost, and a strategy of using people might end up more complicated than NASA’s current plan.
  • With all these pressures and constraints, NASA has chosen to see whether the private sector can come up with a winning solution.


Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

REFIK ANADOL, WORLD-RENOWNED MEDIA ARTIST, FIRST TO TRANSFORM SPHERE'S EXTERIOR INTO IMMERSIVE CANVAS

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 31, 2023
Museum of Modern Art, Hallucination, Refik Anadol, Senior, API, Light, Exosphere, Spacecraft, International Space Station, Static pressure, Movement, Wind, NYSE, LED, Centre Pompidou, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, Nature, Machine learning, Pure Jerry: Keystone Berkeley, September 1, 1974, Algorithm, Engineering, Commerce, Jet propulsion, SPHR, Hubble Space Telescope, Architecture, Materials International Space Station Experiment, Industrial design, Film industry, Entertainment, Sphere

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 31, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Sphere Entertainment Co. (NYSE: SPHR) today announced that on September 1, internationally renowned media artist Refik Anadol will become the first artist to utilize the Exosphere, the fully programmable LED exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, as an immersive canvas, debuting an AI Data Sculpture created exclusively for Sphere called Machine Hallucinations: Sphere.

Key Points: 
  • Refik Anadol is a visionary media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence.
  • He uses large collections of public data and machine learning algorithms to create mesmerizing, dynamic, and immersive art installations.
  • Anadol is the founder of Refik Anadol Studio, an award-winning technology-driven creative design studio based in Los Angeles.
  • Machine Hallucinations: Sphere, an immersive digital experience, celebrates Sphere's unique architecture by featuring dynamic visualizations using vast amounts of data to create abstract imagery of space and nature.

CAPSTONE Launches to Test New Orbit for NASA's Artemis Moon Missions

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
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"We're thrilled with a successful start to the mission and looking forward to what CAPSTONE will do once it arrives at the Moon."

Key Points: 
  • "We're thrilled with a successful start to the mission and looking forward to what CAPSTONE will do once it arrives at the Moon."
  • CAPSTONE is currently in low-Earth orbit, and it will take the spacecraft about four months to reach its targeted lunar orbit.
  • CAPSTONE is attached to Rocket Lab's Lunar Photon, an interplanetary third stage that will send CAPSTONE on its way to deep space.
  • At the Moon, CAPSTONE will enter an elongated orbit called a near rectilinear halo orbit, or NRHO.

ISAE-SUPAERO Achieves a Scientific First in the Exploration of Mars

Retrieved on: 
Friday, April 1, 2022
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He recorded for the first time the "sound environment" of the red planet thanks to the Martian microphone developed by ISAE-SUPAERO, on board the US-French instrument SuperCam.

Key Points: 
  • He recorded for the first time the "sound environment" of the red planet thanks to the Martian microphone developed by ISAE-SUPAERO, on board the US-French instrument SuperCam.
  • An international team publishes in Nature on April 1, 2022 the scientific analysis of these sounds.
  • The ISAE-SUPAERO "Space Systems in Planetology & Applications" research team has been convinced for years of the scientific interest of developing a microphone to better understand Mars.
  • For the next step, ISAE-SUPAERO, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CNES, is already working on the next solar system exploration missions.

Frequency Electronics, Inc. Announces Award of a Contract From the Office of Naval Research for the Development of a Mercury Ion Atomic Clock

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
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MITCHEL FIELD, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Frequency Electronics, Inc. (FEI or the Company) (NASDAQ-FEIM) today announces the award of a contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop a Mercury Ion atomic clock for application to various US Naval platforms.

Key Points: 
  • MITCHEL FIELD, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Frequency Electronics, Inc. (FEI or the Company) (NASDAQ-FEIM) today announces the award of a contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop a Mercury Ion atomic clock for application to various US Naval platforms.
  • The base period of the contract is two years with two additional options of two years and one year respectively.
  • FEI CEO Stan Sloane commented, We are extremely pleased to announce this award and an expanding relationship with ONR on advanced technology atomic clock development.
  • The baseline technology of the Mercury Ion atomic clock was first developed by a Jet Propulsion laboratory (JPL) and California Institute of Technology team, under the DARPA ACES program.