All Is Fair In Love & Lunar Landers
Intuitive Machines targets Valentine’s Day for its lunar-bound launch, NASA’s spending cuts create chaos, and China pulls off a Shackleton steal.
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
How many references to love are possible in a space newsletter? Read on to find out! And if you are looking for a space song to send that special someone on this upcoming Valentine’s Day then look no further…
We’ve got a lot to cover this news cycle, so let’s SpaceX and rendezvous (we hear that’s what the kids call it these days).
Top Headlines
House Of Mars – We all love a will-they-won’t-they, from Ross and Rachel to Mulder and Scully. So of course we love (and love to hate) the will-they-won’t-they of the space world – the Mars Sample Return, or MSR. While it’s rare to see the government fighting to spend money on anything other than the defense department science, on February 1st we witnessed the phenomenon. Led by three California representatives, over forty members of Congress wrote to the director of White House Office of Management and Budget, hoping to convince NASA in reversing MSR budget cutbacks. Of course, making cuts to a bold, decades-long effort was not ideal for NASA, but the agency is facing a nearly $650 million discrepancy between the House and Senate funding bills for the project. To reduce risk, NASA has slashed project spending, until it’s clear which number will be their “North Star” – the House’s generous $949.3 million or the Senate’s $300 million. However, the House is far less keen to concede, citing in their letter a potential loss of “billions of dollars in contracts as well as the termination of hundreds of highly skilled employees.” As prophesied, California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is experiencing the latter, laying off 100 contractors at the start of January and – unruffled by the House’s letter – 40 additional contractors plus 530 employees, as of February 6th. It’s certainly a devastating blow, but until the House can reach a final appropriations bill, the agency feels obligated to plan for the Senate’s offering. According to JPL’s director Laurie Leshin, cuts now will help them avoid worse cuts later, should they receive their worst-case 2024 funding. Here’s hoping for a House triumph, because more than anything, Perseverance needs a new friend. Stat.
Keeping PACE – Before MSR, the hottest will-they-won’t-they was NASA’s PACE, or Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem spacecraft. After possibilities of mission cancellation back in the days of the Trump administration – then teased by two pesky weather delays this week – NASA’s ocean observer finally launched into orbit in the wee hours of Thursday morning atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Instruments on board will be capable of capturing Earth’s oceans using ultraviolet and infrared light, as well as documenting atmospheric clouds and aerosols. One focus for this data will be the study of phytoplankton growth and algal bloom patterns, which could lead to mitigation methods for harmful events like Red Tides. The launch – and data to follow in 40-50 days – might just be a beacon of hope for missions like MSR, as it managed to survive four consecutive fiscal years of proposed cancellations and was ultimately saved by – you guessed it – Congress.
Better L(Ax-3)te Than Never – The PACE team weren’t the only ones waiting out the weather last week. Storms off the Florida coast also affected the ISS-bound Ax-3 crew, who had planned to begin their Earthly return on February 3rd, but had to standby until conditions improved. The crew spent nearly three weeks on the International Space Station conducting over 56 microgravity experiments – including a pasta taste test for Italian household name Barilla – before undocking Wednesday and splashing down in the Atlantic early this morning. The extra week on the station makes Ax-3 the longest private spaceflight for Axiom. This being the first experience in orbit for three of the four crewmembers – Walter Villadei, Alper Gezeravcı and Marcus Wandt – surely this borrowed space time was more of a prize than a drag.
Super Nova-C – Peregrine’s falter in January could be Intuitive Machine’s gain this month, with the company saying all is fair in love and war. Love being the key word, as the company is targeting Valentine’s Day for the launch of its lunar lander, Nova-C. According to SpaceX, who will be providing launch services with their trusty Falcon 9 rocket, the Intuitive Machines spacecraft had a scheduled wet dress rehearsal this past Wednesday, which we have to assume went well as NASA confirmed coverage for the February 14th launch date on Thursday. The Nova-C will be cozied up with six NASA payloads via the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. But that’s not all. The mission will also launch six commercial payloads to orbit, including Columbia’s trademark thermal-reflective technology – used to protect the lander from extreme conditions – and a cube filled with 125 miniature sculptures from artist Jeff Koons, which will, well, we don’t really know what it will do but it involves NFTs. Assuming the spacecraft sets off within the intended window of February 14th to 16th, it could reach the moon’s surface as early as February 22nd. Should the spacecraft achieve this (soft) touchdown, it will be the world’s first private lunar lander to do so, after a daunting trio of defeats – from Israel’s SpaceIL in 2019, Japan’s iSpace in 2023, and of course Astrobotic in 2024.
When Juno, Juno – In deep space news, NASA’s Juno spacecraft just conducted a second close flyby of Io, Jupiter’s third largest moon. And let us say, the images are spewing with detail! Saturday’s swing through – at a “mere” distance of 930 miles away – provided astronomers with astonishing detail of the volcanic world. In a new development since its first flyby in December, Juno captured what is potentially a double plume of volcanic compounds. This new imagery – along with previous data of the Jovian moon – gives this mission team a lot to unpack, as they effort to peer beneath the surface and determine the source of Io’s abundant volcanic activity.
I’ll Be Home For Christmas – There’s more good news for NASA’s deep space voyagers, with asteroid probe Lucy successfully beginning her journey back to Earth from the crowded main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The impressive maneuver, completed on February 3rd, involved firing the craft’s engines for 36 minutes in order to break away from its orbit, propelling Lucy to an impressive speed of 2,000 miles per hour. All that effort depleted Lucy’s fuel reserves by about half, but was an integral step towards the spacecraft’s ultimate objectives. Scheduled for December of this year, Lucy’s “return” to Earth will be strictly a pitstop – er, gravitational slingshot – on the way to the elusive Trojan asteroids outside of Jupiter.
The JWST Download
The Webb spins us right round (baby right round) with new imagery of 19 spiral galaxies located between 15 million and 60 million light-years from Earth. The stunning data – released by the team behind PHANGS, or Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS – builds on previous observations made by Hubble.
I see your Earth, and raise you a “super Earth,” said TESS, or the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which just discovered a potentially habitable exoplanet 137 light-years away. A true delegator, TESS will pass the project to the JWST to
alley-oop this onetake a closer look.The Webb – with plenty of bandwidth (smiling through the tears) – received the most research submissions in telescope history in its third proposal cycle. With 1,931 submissions, it’s likely that only one in nine will actually get access to the tempting telescope.
Not unlike your roommate’s psychic, the JWST gives us a glimpse into our future – post Sun explosion – with its recent study of two exoplanets orbiting dead stars.
A Global Space
China – This year has already been a busy one for China’s commercial launches, and yet a simple announcement regarding a future mission was perhaps its biggest move in 2024. Really adhering to you-snooze-you-lose rules, China recently published its target for Chang’e-7 – its 2026 robotic lunar mission – which happens to be one of the possible landing sites for NASA’s (recently delayed) Artemis 3 mission. Should Chang’e-7 achieve this landing along a ridge of the Shackleton Crater near the lunar south pole, it would likely render the area unavailable for Artemis 3 or future missions to land or establish a basecamp there. Surely, the moon is big enough for the both of ‘em, and in fact NASA has 13 total landing “candidate regions” for Artemis 3. However, what makes this particular target so attractive is its relatively good amount of illumination, for landing accuracy and power opportunities, while it simultaneously offers access to the permanently shadowed lunar regions. With Chang’e-7, China plans to not only examine lunar resources and seismic activity on the natural satellite, but also to set the stage for ILRS, the China-led International Lunar Research Base. It’s too soon to say for sure, but NASA’s recent delays for Artemis may open the door just wide enough for China to step in, with its crewed lunar mission scheduled for 2030. Short-term space race gains aside, the Chang’e missions have fostered significant growth in the nation’s science community, with the lunar sample return from 2020’s Chang’e-5 offering unique insight into the Moon’s volcanic history. The nation also looks forward to their own Mars sample return mission (Tianwen 3) and a mission headed to Jupiter (Tianwen 4), both currently scheduled for launch in 2030. And if that’s not enough, China intends to use the Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites – set to launch this year – to inform a future lunar satellite constellation, which would support missions on lunar regions where comms with Earth are currently tricky.
ESA – An oldie but a goodie returns to Earth in mid-February, as one of two European Remote Sensing satellites, the ERS-2, prepares for safe reentry as part of ESA’s debris mitigation efforts. Between 1995 and 2011, the Earth observation satellite delivered at the time unparalleled data on melting polar ice, sea-level changes and an evolution of atmospheric chemistry. The mission led to significant discoveries around climate change, paved the way for future European missions like Envisat and the Copernicus Sentinels, and will continue to be accessible for future research efforts through ESA’s Heritage Space Programme.
Russia – On Sunday, February 4th, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko officially surpassed the record for most days spent in orbit. In doing so, the nation has beat itself in its own game, as the previous record holder was Gennady Padalka, cosmonaut and colleague of Kononenko, who spent a total of 878 days on the ISS across five missions. And Kononenko is not stopping anytime soon; in fact, when his mission wraps up in September, he’ll have spent 1,100 cumulative days in space. That total will be more than double that held by a NASA astronaut, which currently stands with Jeffrey Williams at 534 days. It’s not likely a U.S. astronaut will catch up, either, as NASA sets limits on space time due to radiation exposure. But moving on swiftly from that fact, thanks to time dilation, Kononenko will be able to have an Interstellar moment when he returns in September, though he’ll likely be only a fraction of a second behind – not quite the closing the age gap between himself and his children a la Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain. Makes the radiation seem, uhm, worth it?
Japan – After its recent achievements – a successful soft-landing and unexpected return to operations despite a technical glitch – Japan’s SLIM moon lander settled into lunar night hibernation last week, but not before snapping this final shot of lunar dusk. Extreme temperatures over the course of the 14-day night will likely preclude the spacecraft from returning to action down the line; however, JAXA will attempt to rouse SLIM mid-month when the sun returns. Until then, rest easy, SLIM!
Iran – Covered in our last newsletter, Iran’s satellite launch on January 20th stirred uncertainty around the nation’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would likely use technology similar to that of satellite launch vehicles. However, the nation is doing anything but laying low. The very next week, Iran launched three new satellites via a different rocket, the Simorgh satellite carrier. The trio included two nano-satellites and one larger satellite, dubbed Kayhan-2, Hatef-1 and Mahda, respectively. While the extraordinarily high tensions in the Middle East may be contributing to the concerns around these launches – which Iran has defended as purely efforts to advance their aerospace technology – it remains a fact that the country’s ballistic missile program is no longer inhibited by UN sanctions, which expired in October.
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out for a new Saturday Space Reads in your inbox tomorrow as well as this coming Monday for MOONSHOT, our paid subscriber newsletter covering the commercial space sector. A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and for keeping up with the cosmos! We hope you enjoyed reading Continuum this week and will share it with your friends. And if you really, really like us, then consider putting a ring on it and becoming a paid subscriber or spreading the love and gifting a subscription.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum