TYB
Hurricane Helene’s Gravity Waves Revealed by NASA’s AWE
Nov 07, 2024
On Sept. 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene slammed into the Gulf Coast of Florida, inducing storm surges and widespread impacts on communities in its path.
At the same time, NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, recorded enormous swells in the atmosphere that the hurricane produced roughly 55 miles above the ground.
Such information helps us better understand how terrestrial weather can affect space weather, part of the research NASA does to understand how our space environment can disrupt satellites, communication signals, and other technology.
These massive ripples through the upper atmosphere, known as atmospheric gravity waves, appear in AWE’s images as concentric bands (artificially colored here in red, yellow, and blue) extending away from northern Florida.
“Like rings of water spreading from a drop in a pond, circular waves from Helene are seen billowing westward from Florida’s northwest coast,” said Ludger Scherliess, who is the AWE principal investigator at Utah State University in Logan.
Launched in November 2023 and mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, the AWE instrument looks down at Earth, scanning for atmospheric gravity waves, ripple-like patterns in the air generated by atmospheric disturbances such as violent thunderstorms, tornadoes, tsunamis, wind bursts over mountain ranges, and hurricanes.
It does this by looking for brightness fluctuations in colorful bands of light called airglow in Earth’s mesosphere.
AWE’s study of these gravity waves created by terrestrial weather helps NASA pinpoint how they affect space weather.
These views of gravity waves from Hurricane Helene are among the first publicly released images from AWE, confirming that the instrument has the sensitivity to reveal the impacts hurricanes have on Earth’s upper atmosphere.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/hurricane-helenes-gravity-waves-revealed-by-nasas-awe/
New Science Experiments Being Activated Aboard Station
November 7, 2024
The Expedition 72 crew began activating new experiments on Thursday following a day of unpacking the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, installing new science gear, and stowing fresh research samples aboard the International Space Station.
Veteran Flight Engineer Don Pettit spent his shift on DNA research first collecting station water samples to examine for microbes.
Next, he extracted DNA from the microbial samples and processed them for analysis and identification.
Flight Engineer Nick Hague set up biology hardware inside the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox to illuminate space-caused inflammation changes in organisms.
At the end of their shift, Pettit imaged Hague’s eyes using standard medical imaging hardware testing a hypothesis that a B Complex vitamin supplement may prevent space-caused vision issues.
NASA Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore worked in the Destiny laboratory module and installed new physics hardware in the Microgravity Science Glovebox that measures particle movements in fluids.
The investigation takes advantage of the microgravity environment to learn how to separate viruses from biological fluids for disease detection.
Commander Suni Williams activated mixing tubes containing proteins and bacteria for a set of student-designed NanoRacks Module-9 experiments promoting healthy crew members and encouraging future space researchers.
Williams also worked on a variety of science maintenance tasks while continuing to unpack the Dragon spacecraft.
The Canadarm2 robotic arm is in position on the Harmony module to extract experimental hardware to measure the solar wind from the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft’s trunk.
Robotic engineers on the ground will remotely command the Canadarm2 and its fine-tuned Dextre robotic hand to gently remove the solar measurement gear from Dragon on Saturday.
Then on Monday, the solar experiment will be installed on the port side of the orbital outpost’s Integrated Truss Structure where it will soon begin operations.
CODEX, or Coronal Diagnostic Experiment, will use a coronagraph to filter out the sun’s bright light to reveal its outer atmosphere, or corona, and examine how solar wind forms.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Ivan Vagner started his day servicing a 3D printer in the Nauka science module then completed his shift conducting photographic inspections of windows on the Zvezda service module.
Cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Aleksandr Gorbunov worked throughout Thursday maintaining Roscosmos electronics and life support systems.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2024/11/07/new-science-experiments-being-activated-aboard-station/
NASA to Transform In-Space Manufacturing with Laser Beam Welding Collaboration
Nov 07, 2024
As NASA plans for humans to return to the Moon and eventually explore Mars, a laser beam welding collaboration between NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and The Ohio State University in Columbus aims to stimulate in-space manufacturing.
The multi-year effort seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface, such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment.
The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which will inform humanity’s next giant leap of sending astronauts to Mars and beyond.
“For a long time, we’ve used fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to keep structures that we assemble together in space,” said Andrew O’Connor, a Marshall materials scientist who is helping coordinate the collaborative effort and is NASA’s technical lead for the project.
“But we’re starting to realize that if we really want strong joints and if we want structures to stay together when assembled on the lunar surface, we may need in-space welding.”
The ability to weld structures in space would also eliminate the need to transport rivets and other materials, reducing payloads for space travel. That means learning how welds will perform in space.
To turn the effort into reality, researchers are gathering data on welding under simulated space conditions, such as temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface.
“Once you leave Earth, it becomes more difficult to test how the weld performs, so we are leveraging both experiments and computer modeling to predict welding in space while we’re still on the ground,” said O’Connor.
In August 2024, a joint team from Ohio State’s Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall’s Materials & Processes Laboratory performed high-powered fiber laser beam welding aboard a commercial aircraft that simulated reduced gravity.
The aircraft performed parabolic flight maneuvers that began in level flight, pulled up to add 8,000 feet in altitude, and pushed over at the top of a parabolic arc, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of reduced gravity to the passengers and experiments.
While floating in this weightless environment, team members performed laser welding experiments in a simulated environment similar to that of both low Earth orbit and lunar gravity.
Analysis of data collected by a network of sensors during the tests will help researchers understand the effects of space environments on the welding process and welded material.
“During the flights we successfully completed 69 out of 70 welds in microgravity and lunar gravity conditions, realizing a fully successful flight campaign,” said Will McAuley, an Ohio State welding engineering student.
Funded in part by Marshall and spanning more than two years, the work involves undergraduate and graduate students and professors from Ohio State, and engineers across several NASA centers.
Marshall personnel trained alongside the university team, learning how to operate the flight hardware and sharing valuable lessons from previous parabolic flight experiments.
NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, developed a portable vacuum chamber to support testing efforts.
The last time NASA performed welding in space was during the Skylab mission in 1973. Other parabolic tests have since been performed, using low-powered lasers.
Practical welding and joining methods and allied processes, including additive manufacturing, will be required to develop the in-space economy.
These processes will repurpose and repair critical space infrastructure and could build structures too large to fit current launch payload volumes.
In-space welding could expedite building large habitats in low Earth orbit, spacecraft structures that keep astronauts safe on future missions, and more.
The work is also relevant to understanding how laser beam welding occurs on Earth. Industries could use data to inform welding processes, which are critical to a host of manufactured goods from cars and refrigerators to skyscrapers.
“We’re really excited about laser beam welding because it gives us the flexibility to operate in different environments,” O’Connor said.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/nasa-to-transform-in-space-manufacturing-with-laser-beam-welding-collaboration/
NASA-Funded Study Examines Tidal Effects on Planet and Moon Interiors
Nov 07, 2024
NASA-supported scientists have developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons.
Importantly, the new study looks at the effects of body tides on objects that don't have a perfectly spherical interior structure, which is an assumption of most previous models.
Body tides refer to the deformations experienced by celestial bodies when they gravitationally interact with other objects.
Think of how the powerful gravity of Jupiter tugs on its moon Europa. Because Europa's orbit isn't circular, the crushing squeeze of Jupiter's gravity on the moon varies as it travels along its orbit.
When Europa is at its closest to Jupiter, the planet's gravity is felt the most.
The energy of this deformation is what heats up Europa's interior, allowing an ocean of liquid water to exist beneath the moon's icy surface.
"The same is true for Saturn's moon Enceladus." says co-author Alexander Berne of CalTech in Pasadena and an affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
"Enceladus has an ice shell that is expected to be much more non-spherically symmetric than that of Europa."
The body tides experienced by celestial bodies can affect how the worlds evolve over time and, in cases like Europa and Enceladus, their potential habitability for life as we know it.
The new study provides a means to more accurately estimate how tidal forces affect planetary interiors.
The paper also discusses how the results of the study could help scientists interpret observations made by missions to a variety of different worlds, ranging from Mercury to the Moon to the outer planets of our solar system.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/astrobiology/studying-how-tides-affect-the-interiors-of-planets-and-moons/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad381f
Student-Built Capsules Endure Heat of Re-entry for NASA Science
Nov 07, 2024
In July 2024, five student-built capsules endured the scorching heat of re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere as part of the second Kentucky Re-Entry Probe Experiment (KREPE-2).
Scientists are now analyzing the data from the KREPE-2 experiments, which could advance the development of heat shields that protect spacecraft when they return to Earth.
The mission was designed to put a variety of heat shield prototypes to the test in authentic re-entry conditions to see how they would perform.
These experimental capsules, which were built by students at the University of Kentucky and funded by the NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) within NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, all survived more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit during descent.
The football-sized capsules also successfully transmitted valuable data via the Iridium satellite network along their fiery journey.
The trove of information they provided is currently being analyzed to consider in current and future spacecraft design, and to improve upon designs for future experiments.
“These data – and the instruments used to obtain the data – assist NASA with designing and assessing the performance of current and new spacecraft that transport crew and cargo to and from space,” said Stan Bouslog, thermal protection system senior discipline expert at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston who served as the agency’s technical monitor for the project.
Taking the Plunge: Communicating Through a Fiery Descent
“The only way to ‘test like you fly’ a thermal protection system is to expose it to actual hypersonic flight through an atmosphere,” Bouslog said.
The self-contained capsules launched aboard an uncrewed Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft in January 2024 along with other cargo bound for the International Space Station.
The cargo craft detached from the space station July 12 as the orbiting laboratory flew above the south Atlantic Ocean.
As the Cygnus spacecraft began its planned breakup during re-entry, the KREPE-2 capsules detected a signal – a temperature spike or acceleration – to start recording data and were released from the vehicle.
At that point, they were traveling at a velocity of about 16,000 miles per hour at an altitude of approximately 180,000 feet.
The University of Kentucky student team and advisors watched and waited to learn how the capsules had fared.
As the capsules descended through the atmosphere, one group watched from aboard an aircraft flying near the Cook Islands in the south Pacific Ocean, where they tracked the return of the Cygnus spacecraft.
The flight was arranged in partnership with the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, and the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany.
Alexandre Martin, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Kentucky and the principal investigator for the experiment, was on that flight.
“We flew in close to the re-entry path to take scientific measurements,” Martin said, adding that they used multiple cameras and spectrometers to observe re-entry.
“We now have a much better understanding of the break-up event of the Cygnus vehicle, and thus the release of the capsules.”
Meanwhile, members of the University of Kentucky’s Hypersonic Institute had gathered at the university to watch as KREPE-2 data arrived via email.
All five successfully communicated their flight conditions as they hurtled to Earth.
“It will take time to extract the data and analyze it,” Martin said. “But the big accomplishment was that every capsule sent data.”
Members of the University of Kentucky student team have begun analyzing the data to digitally reconstruct the flight environment at the time of transmission, providing key insights for future computer modeling and heat shield design.
The mission builds on the accomplishments of KREPE-1, which took place in December 2022.
In that experiment, two capsules recorded temperature measurements as they re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and relayed that data to the ground.
The extensive dataset collected during the KREPE-2 re-entry includes heat shield measurements, such as temperature, as well as flight data including pressure, acceleration, and angular velocity.
The team also successfully tested a spectrometer that provided spectral data of the shockwave in front of a capsule.
“KREPE-1 was really to show we could do it,” Martin said. “For KREPE-2, we wanted to fully instrument the capsules and really see what we could learn.”
KREPE-3 is currently set to take place in 2026.
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/student-built-capsules/
Czech Ministry of Transport Signs Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Vast to Partner on Engagement with Czech Space Industry
November 08, 2024 09:00 AM
The Czech Ministry of Transport has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Vast, the U.S.-based pioneer in space habitation technologies.
The Memorandum, signed as part of Czech Space Week, outlines a commitment by Vast and the Ministry of Transport to explore ways to partner on future human spaceflight projects, whether through private astronaut missions (PAM) to the International Space Station (ISS) before it is retired in 2030, or on missions to Vast’s own Haven space stations, and to engage with a growing Czech Space industry and start-up ecosystem.
Any future mission with Vast could see Aleš Svoboda, one of 12 reserve astronauts selected by the European Space Agency in November 2022, become the second Czech astronaut.
Svoboda has been a focal point for the Czech government’s efforts to stimulate growth in the Czech space industry and inspire the country’s young people to pursue STEM careers, crystallized by the launch of the Czech Journey to Space project in June 2024.
"We are thrilled to join forces with the Czech space mission and explore joint spaceflight opportunities to bring science, research, and technology from Czech industry to orbit, as well as potentially fly Aleš Svoboda to the International Space Station or Haven-1 aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft,” said Max Haot, Vast’s CEO.
Czech Minister of Transport Martin Kupka said: “We’re excited to partner with Vast, who shares our vision and commitment to pioneering advancements that shape the future of space exploration.
The Memorandum demonstrates our commitment to advancing the Czech space sector and ushering in a new era of Czech innovation and technology leadership.”
Andrew Feustel, Vast advisor and veteran NASA astronaut with over two decades of experience, underscored the significance of this MoU: “I’ve worked closely with the Czech space community for years and have long admired their innovation, commitment, and collaborative spirit as we push the boundaries of what’s possible in space.
Vast is well-positioned to further this mission by combining a bold vision with technical expertise, and together, we can build a future in space that will inspire future generations.”
In June 2024, Vast signed an MoU with the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore opportunities for European countries to access space through Vast space stations.
In addition, Vast recently unveiled its final design for Haven-1, its first habitable module, as well as plans for Haven-2, its proposed design to replace the International Space Station after its retirement in 2030, as part of NASA’s Commercial LEO Destination (CLD) program.
NASA is expected to release details of the next phase of CLD in 2025.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241108525992/en/Czech-Ministry-of-Transport-Signs-Memorandum-of-Understanding-MoU-with-Vast-to-Partner-on-Engagement-with-Czech-Space-Industry
Hawaii Air National Guard Activates Space Capabilities
Nov. 8, 2024
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii - The Hawaii Air National Guard activated two electromagnetic warfare squadrons across the Hawaiian Islands Nov. 1-2, ushering in a new era of offensive and defensive capabilities in the space domain.
The primary functions of the new units, the 109th and 150th Electronic Warfare Squadrons, are to monitor and disrupt enemy satellite communications, ensuring dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum and offering critical capabilities to modern military operations.
Hawaii Air National Guard leaders traveled to Kauai Nov. 1 to participate in the activation ceremony and witness the culmination of years spent building space capabilities.
As a geographically separated unit located at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), the 150th EWS was officially recognized, marking a significant milestone for the Hawaii ANG’s expansion into the space domain.
During the ceremony, Maj. Joseph Hale was handed the squadron guidon, formally appointing him as the 150th EWS’s new commander and first to take the lead after the squadron’s date of federal recognition.
This symbolic transfer of leadership was built upon the foundational work of its prior commander, Lt. Col. Chad Briggs, who oversaw the unit’s development the past three years.
“The responsibility of not only executing a very important mission but taking care of the folks that will end up executing that mission is something I take very seriously,” said Hale.
“To me, the most important part of being a commander is taking care of our people because they will be able to take care of the mission.”
The space mission in Kauai is inherently offensive, with capabilities to mobilize and deploy Airmen and equipment into austere locations.
Many of the unit’s part-time members live on neighboring islands and can maintain year-round training requirements on military aircraft for routine drill musters.
“In terms of PMRF advantages, we have a deeper connection with our host base in that we’re able to partner with them and contribute in ways to support emergency management and emergency response,” said Hale.
“In a unit like this, way out on the corner of Kauai on the PMRF, it’s a very remote feeling, yet there’s this feeling of connection with the community.”
The next day, on the island of Oahu, the 109th EWS held its activation ceremony on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Its electromagnetic warfare capabilities include the ability to disrupt, deceive or deny adversary space capabilities using electromagnetic means and protect one’s own space assets against similar threats.
Lt. Col. Jeremiah Hitchner served as the inaugural commander of the 109th EWS during its formative years, in Guam from 2021 to 2023. In October 2023, the squadron relocated to the 154th Wing campus at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
“My previous unit was dissolving, and without skipping a beat, Lt. Col. Briggs and the Hawaii Air National Guard stepped up and brought my family and my team over,” said Hitchner.
”It was the best experience to see another state pull us in. I think I found a home, an ‘ohana, and every day, I wake up grateful to be a part of the Hawaii Air National Guard.”
Together, the squadrons deliver defensive and offensive electronic combat effects and space awareness to rapidly achieve flexible and versatile effects in support of global and theater campaigns.
Electromagnetic warfare operations are crucial to maintaining control of space-based assets, such as satellites, essential for communication, navigation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Modern military operations rely on space assets for battlefield awareness and operational success.
Establishing the electronic warfare squadrons is pivotal to the 154th Wing’s recent restructure.
As the largest and most complex wing in the Air National Guard, the 154th Wing now includes these two specialized EWS units under the newly formed 154th Regional Support Group, enhancing its capabilities and mission reach in the space and electromagnetic domains.
The 154th RSG provides mission-essential capabilities to combatant commanders by providing signals intelligence, electromagnetic warfare, combat communications and aviation weather forecast capabilities.
It is the most geographically diverse group in the 154th Wing, with squadrons on four of the Hawaiian Islands.
https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article-View/Article/3960517/hawaii-air-national-guard-activates-space-capabilities/
Proba-3 will constantly measure Sun’s energy output
07/11/2024
Proba-3 is such an ambitious mission that it needs more than one single spacecraft to succeed.
In order for Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft observe the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, its disk-bearing Occulter spacecraft must block out the fiery solar disk.
This means Proba-3’s Occulter ends up facing the Sun continuously, making it a valuable platform for science in its own right.
The sunward side of the Occulter therefore hosts a dedicated instrument that will maintain a continuous measurement of the Sun’s total energy output, known as the total solar irradiance, which is a essential variable for climate studies.
The shoebox-sized Davos Absolute Radiometer, DARA, has been supplied to the mission by the Physical Meteorological Observatory Davos, PMOD, in Switzerland.
“Researchers used to talk about the ‘solar constant’ but in fact it is always changing slightly,” explains Wolfgang Finsterle, DARA Principal Investigator at PMOD.
“And it’s essential to keep track of the total solar irradiance, because it is the dominant energy input to the surface of the Earth.
It amounts to something like 99.978% of the energy available on Earth, including the conserved solar energy stored in coal and oil.
It drives all the dynamic processes of Earth’s climate, so even the tiniest variations are hugely significant.”
The mountain-based PMOD has been studying total solar irradiance for more than a century, initially with ground-based instruments and then from the 1970s deploying space-based radiometers to acquire a continuous dataset.
The World Meteorological Organization has mandated PMOD as the World Radiation Centre to calibrate radiation measurements across global UN monitoring programmes.
Wolfgang adds: “Total solar irradiance varies along with the 11-year cycle of solar activity, and one of the most obvious ways to look for long-term energy drift is to compare total solar irradiance between consecutive solar minimia.
“This requires a long time-series of data, ideally coming from multiple instruments because single radiometers will undergo degradation in sensitivity from the hard ultraviolet in the Sun’s rays they are continuously exposed to.
That said any degradation is very gradual: the radiometer aboard the ESA-NASA SOHO solar observatory for instance, which was launched in back 1995, is still working satisfactorily.”
DARA’s basic operating principle is simple. The radiometer possesses a 5-mm diameter cavity made from black-painted silver, possessing low temperature emissivity.
For 15 seconds at a time sunlight warms the interior of the cavity, then a shutter blade automatically closes at its entrance.
For the next 15 seconds electric heat maintains the cavity’s previous temperature – and the energy needed to maintain this temperature is extrapolated to the unit of total solar irradiance which is watts per metre squared.
This process continues for the entire lifetime of the instrument – the actuated shutter design employed in DARA has been tested for millions of opening and closings in PMOD’s vacuum chamber.
“DARA is an improvement on previous radiometer designs with an optimised cavity design to minimise unwanted straylight and a multi-channel measuring system for self-calibration,” adds Wolfgang.
“This generation of instrument also possesses a fully digital control loop, allowing the possibility of experimenting with higher frequency observations.
Two versions of this radiometer design have already flown, notes Werner Schmutz of PMOD, who oversaw its development:
“A compact version called CLARA flew on Noway’s NorSat-1 CubeSat in 2017, remaining operational to this day, while a previous DARA is serving aboard the Chinese FY-3E weather satellite, launched in 2021.
So we have high confidence in the design, which can operate whenever the Proba-3 Occulter is pointed at the Sun within half a degree of accuracy.”
The main difference between Proba-3’s DARA and previous radiometers will be its very elongated orbit, which will carry it 60 000 km above Earth’s surface.
DARA can automatically adjust to slight changes in the size of the solar disk based on how far it is away – which are also due to Earth’s yearly elliptical orbit around the Sun.
All the radiometer needs to know is its position in space and its data gathering compensates for the shift.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-3_will_constantly_measure_Sun_s_energy_output
Russia sends 53 satellites to orbit on record-breaking launch
November 7, 2024
Russia launched 53 small satellites into orbit on Monday (Nov. 4), a mix of Russian and international spacecraft.
A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat upper stage lifted off from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East at 6:18 p.m. EST on Monday (2318 GMT; or 2:18 a.m. on Nov. 5 local time).
"The hosted payload consisting of 49 Russian satellites, a Russian-Chinese satellite, a Russian-Zimbabwean satellite and two Iranian small satellites was delivered into the designated orbits and separated from the Fregat booster that was launched by a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Vostochny spaceport today," the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement, the Russian state-owned TASS news agency reported.
Roscosmos said that the 51 domestic satellites aboard the launch was a national record, according to TASS.
Other rockets have launched more payloads in a single go. The overall record belongs to SpaceX, which sent 143 satellites up on a single Falcon 9 rocket in January 2021.
Monday's Soyuz launch included a pair of Ionosfera-M satellites, which will form a system for monitoring Earth's ionosphere, Reuters reported.
Each has a mass of 948 pounds (430 kilograms). The two Iranian satellites were Kowsar, for high-resolution imaging, and Hodhod, a communications satellite.
The launch was Russia’s 13th of 2024. While Russia was the most active country in terms of launch 10 years ago, its launch rate has fallen since.
The United States, particularly through the SpaceX Falcon 9, and China have greatly increased their launch activity in recent years, leaving Russia a distant third in the global launch charts.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/russia-sends-53-satellites-to-orbit-on-record-breaking-launch-video
Moon RACER: Intuitive Machines takes lunar rover out for debut drive
November 7, 2024
Intuitive Machines' lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) is not your grandfather's moon buggy (assuming your grandfather was an Apollo astronaut).
The company's Moon RACER, or Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover, made its public debut on Thursday (Nov. 7), taking a spin in the parking lot at Space Center Houston.
The fully electric drivable demo unit, which was built for Intuitive Machines (IM) by the high-performance automotive company Roush, will be on display on Friday (Nov. 8) for the public and students taking part in National STEM Day activities at the visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center.
"We are extremely excited to show it to you today," said Trent Martin, senior vice president for space systems at Intuitive Machines, addressing the NASA officials, industry partners and press that came out for the reveal.
"In a week, we're taking it out to Meteor Crater in Arizona, and we're going to test it in the environment similar to what we would have on the moon."
As the Houston-based company that returned the United States to the moon's surface with its Odysseus Nova-C lander in February, IM was one of three firms selected to develop an LTV for NASA's Artemis program.
The $30 million contract tasks IM and its team of subcontractors with creating a feasibility roadmap to develop and deploy a LTV on the moon using IM's heavy cargo class lunar lander.
Working with Roush for the chassis and suspension system, Michelin for tires, Boeing as the design lead and Northrop Grumman for mission planning support (as well as five other aerospace companies), the IM-led team designed Moon RACER to be a cross between the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle and a souped-up golf cart, complete with communication antennas, an optional equipment trailer and a pair of longhorns as a hood ornament — the latter a strictly "remove before flight" feature.
"No, we're not going to fly 7-foot-long horns to the moon, but we thought that it would be kind of fun today, because this is the Texas rover," said Jack Fischer, a former NASA astronaut who is now Intuitive Machines' senior vice president for production and operations.
The 14-foot-long by 8.5-foot-tall by 12-foot-wide (4.3 by 2.6 by 3.7 meters) Moon RACER can tow a 108-foot-long (33 m) trailer. Alone, the LTV can reach speeds up to 9.3 mph (15 kph), about the same as its Apollo-era predecessor.
It can also traverse slopes up to about 20 degrees and clear obstacles up to a foot (30 centimeters) high — or about the size of a bowling ball.
Moon RACER is equipped with a hazard avoidance system for use when the crew is driving and an autonomous operation mode for robotic exploration.
"The astronauts drive it, but when they're not there, we will continue to operate that vehicle from here in Houston, from Australia, from the platforms that are on the moon such as the habitat module and from the Gateway that is going around the moon," said Martin.
"It's also an autonomous vehicle, so we can give it waypoints and say, 'I want to get over to that blue tower over there,' and it will make its way to the blue tower, hopefully without falling in a crater along the way."
In addition to serving as a communications hub between the astronauts, the LTV's antennas are capable of relaying data via satellite or direct-to-Earth transmissions.
NASA chose IM, as well as Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab, for this first phase of the LTV development program with the intention of selecting one of the three teams to deliver their rover to the lunar south pole and validate its performance and safety ahead of the Artemis 5 mission no earlier than the first quarter of 2030.
"We are in the process of developing our Nova-D lander. We have our Nova-C that we landed on the moon this past February.
So the Nova-D is basically seven of those put together, and then this [rover] would ride on top of it," Ken Salazar, Intuitive Machines' facilities operations manager, told collectSPACE, noting that Moon RACER does not need to fold up like the Apollo lunar rover for launch. "It is designed to fit inside the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy [rocket]."
NASA plans to issue additional task orders to provide rover capabilities as needed through 2039.
The LTV services contract has a maximum potential value of $4.6 billion for all awards. The U.S. companies' rovers will complement the Lunar Cruiser, a larger, pressurized rover being developed by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Toyota for delivery to the moon by 2031.
In addition to IM's mobile demo unit unveiled at Space Center Houston on Friday, a static mockup of Moon RACER has been delivered to NASA, which is undergoing "human-in-the-loop" testing at Johnson.
https://www.space.com/intuitive-machines-racer-lunar-terrain-vehicle-reveal