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Congratulations are due to NASA today. Yesterday at 3:55 p.m. ET the Perseverance rover (with the Ingenuity flying probe aboard) touched down in good order on the surface of Mars after a 470.7 million kilometer (292.5 million mile) journey. The spacecraft lifted off back last July and my somewhat wistful post about the launch from back then is a reminder of the trying nature of summer 2020 (but also serves as a useful overview of the larger Perseverance mission). Right now, in the aftermath of the bravura landing on an alluvial fan delta within the Jezero Crater, Perseverance and NASA are running diagnostics and preparing to explore the 49 km (30 miles) diameter crater. Ingenuity has not launched yet (although I am super excited to see what a 49 km (30 miles) crater on Mars looks like from the air). We do have one picture from the mission already (top), and although the low res view is partially obscured by a dust cover, it already hints at great things in the future (while also somehow reminding me of terrestrial nuggets of ice on my walks to the subway this week). We will keep you apprized from Mars as we learn more (and Ferrebeekeeper also extends its best wishes to the Chinese space agency whose own rover is scheduled to reach the red planet in May).
There have been some stories bouncing around the world media lately which are highly germane to past Ferrebeekeeper posts (and to some bigger topics too). We’ll get to them one at a time this week, but let’s start with the most exciting news: today (11/26/18) NASA’s InSight lander touched down successfully on Mars at 2:47 PM Eastern Time. The craft is the eighth human-made craft to successfully touch down on the red planet. It’s unwieldy name is a trademark agonizing NASA acronym which stands for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.” To put this in more comprehensible (yet less correct) terms, the lander is a geophysics probe which will examine the interior of the planet. Of course InSight isn’t really geophysics since it is not studying Earth, but saying “astrophysics” misleads one from the lander’s core mission of assessing Mars’ internal composition and structure.
The landing was a marvel of aerospace engineering since, in the span of about 6 and a half minutes, the craft was forced to slow from 17,300 kph (10,750 mph) to 8 kph (5 mph). Coincidentally, this was the first interplanetary mission to launch from California…from Vandenberg Air Force Base, where my paternal grandfather used to paint rockets back in the 1950s and 60s! Speaking of which, as always, I am taken aback by the extent to which our interplanetary probes resemble retro UFOs from 1950s science fiction.
The craft landed on Elysium Planitia an enormous featureless plain famous for its dullness. You may think “why didn’t they just send the poor thing to Kansas?” but since the craft is designed to examine the interior of Mars, its landing sight was not important (except to make sure the lander arrived in one piece).
Now that the probe has finally reached its destination, it will begin to utilize a sophisticated array of instruments including a seismic wave reader, a subterranean infrared reader to monitor heat escaping Mars, and a sophisticated radio array to monitor the planet’s core (among other tools).
It is easy to lose track of the many amazing Martian discoveries being made by robot explorers, but InSight strikes me as truly important since it offers to answer one of the most important question about Mars–how did it go from being a volcanically active world with oceans and an Earthlike atmosphere to being an inactive, desolate desert? We’ll keep you posted as discoveries (insights?) come rolling in, but, for now, congratulations NASA!
Space X launch facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Facility #40
One of the underlying principles of this blog is that we should spend a lot more money and resources on scientific research and exploration in general (and on space research and exploration specifically). Meanwhile, in the real world, the powers that be are busy chopping down the tree of knowledge by defunding all branches of blue sky research in general (and space research specifically). Market advocates in government assert that, if there is anything worthwhile in space, greedy companies will go there and take it for themselves without government assistance. I tend to take issue with this idea. Markets have a place in science…at the end of ideas when the true research is already well established and the path to making money-grubbing consumer dreck is extremely evident. Avaricious MBAs are unlikely to try anything really bold since they are trained not to move first but to let others take the risk and then come in and refine an already workable idea. The way I have framed this issue is politically expedient for getting my point across (MORE RESEARCH NOW), but it ignores the tangled relationship which government agencies already have with pre-anointed business monopolies and it also short-changes the bold and visionary entrepreneurs who are actually going ahead with wild and exciting space ventures at present.
A SpaceX booster rocket ALMOST lands on a drone barge…
Speaking of which, here is the footage from the latest SpaceX project. Elon Musk and co. were attempting to land the first stage of a commercial Falcon 9 rocket on an unmanned test barge in the ocean. The rocket blasted off to carry a payload to the International Space station. The first stage returned to earth in a controlled fashion. SpaceX planners hoped to land this booster softly on a barge so it could be reused. The idea did not work…yet, but the rocket came really close to landing properly and the footage is truly exciting—like something from the sixties. I wanted you to see this clip because it is spectacular and inspiring, but I also wanted to remind myself that even today—even in the private sector—there are thrilling projects afoot.
Illustration by Alex Schomburg
After several blog posts describing spaceplanes (like the sleek experimental British Skylon plane), it is time to write about one of the alternative proposals for reusable space-capable craft which are capable of both take-off and landing. In the old spaceman fantasies from the golden age of science fiction, human explorers flew their rockets to another world, dropped through the atmosphere and landed vertically. Their rocket set around while the astronauts had fantastical adventures. Then they rushed back aboard and blasted off!
The Grasshopper at a SpaceX facility in Texas
Last week (March 7th, 2013) an experimental rocket named Grasshopper flew a record 80 meters (263 feet) before landing perfectly on the launch pad where it started. Grasshopper was built by Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX, the private space transport company founded by PayPal billionaire, Elon Musk (who–based on his name and his legacy–may be a James Bond villain or an alien philanthropist). SpaceX is the first privately funded company to successfully launch a spacecraft into orbit and recover it and the budding company has also been first past numerous other milestones in the commercialization of space. Instead of giving everything Roman names like NASA, SpaceX gives its crafts and components Arthurian names such as Merlin, Kestrel, and Draco (I’m going to pretend there was a grasshopper at least somewhere in T. H. White).
The grasshopper blasts off–or maybe lands?
The reusable first stage tests of Grasshopper are breaking new ground in the fields of guidance and stability (which are required to land a Grasshopper). If all continues to go well the company plans on supersonic tests later this year. As these become more glorious and more dangerous it is unclear if they will seek to have their current Texas facility made into an official spaceport or if they will move out to the blazing glory of White Sands with the Airforce, NASA, and Virgin Galactic. Whatever the case I salute them for flying a smokestack around the countryside and then landing it on a basketball court. Perhaps I was too hasty to dismiss the possibilities of commercial spaceflight!
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