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Speaker Pelosi Welcomes His Excellency Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine
Join His Excellency President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine and me at the United States Capitol ahead of his address to a Joint Meeting of Congress.
https://youtu.be/fAqpg76Jpq0
NASA’s Perseverance Rover to Begin Building Martian Sample Depot
In the coming days, NASA’s Perseverance rover is expected to begin building the first sample depot on another world. This will mark a crucial milestone in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign, which aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study.
The depot-building process starts when the rover drops one of its titanium sample tubes carrying a chalk-size core of rock from its belly 2.9 feet (88.8 centimeters) onto the ground at an area within Jezero Crater nicknamed “Three Forks.” Over the course of 30 or so days, Perseverance will deposit a total of 10 tubes that carry samples representing the diversity of the rock record in Jezero Crater.
The rover has been taking a pair of samples from each of its rock targets. Half of every pair will be deposited at Three Forks as a backup set, and the other half will remain inside Perseverance, which will be the primary means to convey the collected samples to the Mars launch vehicle as part of the campaign.
“The samples for this depot – and the duplicates held aboard Perseverance – are an incredible set representative of the area explored during the prime mission,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, the Mars Sample Return program principal scientist from Arizona State University. “We not only have igneous and sedimentary rocks that record at least two and possibly four or even more distinct styles of aqueous alteration, but also regolith, atmosphere, and a witness tube.”
How to Build a Depot
One of the first requirements to build a sample depot on Mars is to find a level, rock-free stretch of terrain in Jezero Crater where there’s room for each tube to be deposited.
“Up to now, Mars missions required just one good landing zone; we need 11,” said Richard Cook, Mars Sample Return program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The first one is for the Sample Retrieval Lander, but then we need 10 more in the vicinity for our Sample Recovery Helicopters to perform takeoffs and landings, and driving too.”
After settling on a suitable site, the campaign’s next task was to figure out exactly where and how to deploy the tubes within that location. “You can’t simply drop them in a big pile because the recovery helicopters are designed to interact with only one tube at a time,” said Cook. The helicopters are intended to serve as a backup, just like the depot. To ensure a helicopter could retrieve samples without disturbing the rest of the depot or encountering any obstructions from the occasional rock or ripple, each tube-drop location will have an “area of operation” at least 18 feet (5.5 meters) in diameter. To that end, the tubes will be deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample 16 to 49 feet (5 to 15 meters) apart from one another.
The depot’s success will depend on accurate placement of the tubes – a process that will take over a month. Before and after Perseverance drops each tube, mission controllers will review a multitude of images from the rover. This assessment will also give the Mars Sample Return team the precise data necessary to locate the tubes in the event of the samples becoming covered by dust or sand before they are collected.
Perseverance’s Extended Mission
Perseverance’s prime mission will conclude on Jan. 6, 2023 – one Mars year (about 687 Earth days) after its Feb. 18, 2021, landing.
“We will still be working the sample depot deployment when our extended mission begins on Jan. 7, so nothing changes from that perspective,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance’s project manager at JPL. “However, once the table is set at Three Forks, we’ll head to the top of the delta. The science team wants to take a good look around up there.”
Called the Delta Top Campaign, this new science phase will begin when Perseverance finishes its ascent of the delta’s steep embankment and arrives at the expanse that forms the upper surface of the Jezero delta, probably sometime in February. During this approximately eight-month campaign, the science team will be on the lookout for boulders and other materials that were carried from elsewhere on Mars and deposited by the ancient river that formed this delta.
“The Delta Top Campaign is our opportunity to get a glimpse at the geological process beyond the walls of Jezero Crater,” said JPL’s Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance. “Billions of years ago a raging river carried debris and boulders from miles beyond the walls of Jezero. We are going to explore these ancient river deposits and obtain samples from their long-traveled boulders and rocks.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-rover-to-begin-building-martian-sample-depot
NASA Enables Future of Science Observation through Tri-band Antennas
NASA’s Near Space Network enables spacecraft exploring the solar system and Earth to send back essential science data for researchers and scientists to investigate and make profound discoveries.
Now, the network has integrated four new global antennas to further support science and exploration missions. In December 2022, antennas in Fairbanks, Alaska; Wallops Island, Virginia; Punta Arenas, Chile; and Svalbard, Norway went online to provide present and future missions with S-, X-, and Ka-band communications capabilities.
These new antennas were created to support missions capturing immense amounts of data. Just as scientists increase their instrument capabilities, NASA also advances its communications systems to enable missions near-Earth and in deep space.
This upgrade is bringing unprecedented flexibility to the Near Space Network and will enhance direct-to-Earth communications – the process by which a satellite takes a picture and then sends the image over radio waves to an antenna on Earth. This data is then processed and sent to scientists. The Near Space Network is managed by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program office, which oversees development and enhancement of NASA’s two primary communications networks: the Near Space and Deep Space networks.
The Near Space Network provides missions with communications services through a blend of government-owned and commercial assets. To develop these new antennas, the team worked with commercial partner Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), who created the Chile and Norway antennas, while NASA developed the other two in Virginia and Alaska.
Now operational, the four antennas are integrated into the network’s service catalog, advancing its capabilities to support science and exploration missions that use enhanced instrumentation. Now, missions using the network will be able to send back terabytes of data for processing and discovery.
An example is the upcoming Plankton, Aerosol, Clouds, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, which will help researchers better understand ocean ecosystems and carbon cycling and reveal how aerosols might fuel phytoplankton growth on the ocean’s surface.
“Missions like the PACE satellite incorporate high-resolution science instruments,” said Damaris Guevara, project lead for the networking upgrade. “These instruments require advanced space communications capabilities, like Ka-band, to get the entirety of their data back to Earth.”
The new antennas also will have new networking capabilities.
All four ground stations are incorporating Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN). DTN will empower missions with unparalleled connectivity by storing and forwarding data at points along the network to ensure critical information reaches its destination. DTN is an advanced communications capability being developed and tested by NASA’s SCaN and Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Additionally, to enhance mission teams’ access to data, the network incorporates cloud-based data storage services. Satellites like PACE will downlink their data to an antenna, and that data will go through the ground station’s high-rate data processors to a cloud-based storage and data access service that will allow mission teams to acquire their data faster and from almost anywhere. This reduces hardware needs and lowers overall storage costs.
Multiple missions will benefit from this new infrastructure and advanced capabilities, including the NASA-Indian Space Research Organization Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite. Launching in 2024, NISAR will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, ice masses, and more.
With four new antennas around the globe, the Near Space Network is advancing its capabilities to support science and exploration missions that use enhanced instrumentation. Now, missions using the network will be able to send back terabytes of data for processing and discovery.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-enables-future-of-science-observation-through-tri-band-antennas