Bennu & The Jets
An asteroid sample returns to Earth in a metal capsule just as a trio of astronauts find their way home after an unintended year on the ISS
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
This is your friendly public service announcement that For All Mankind returns for Season 4 on November 10th! If you’ve been sleeping on this show, we can’t be friends.
Just kidding (I think) …but in all seriousness, this is probably one of my all-time favorite shows and thanks to former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman (technical consultant for the Apple+ series), it is incredibly well-researched and thoughtfully developed.
Need to catch up on the prior three seasons in a flash? Well, deep-track Celestial Citizen fans will know that Bailey Burns, friend/engineer/analog astronaut, and I have been doing reaction videos to For All Mankind on our YouTube channel. We laugh, we cry, we occasionally drink wine and say things we probably shouldn’t …and with any luck, we’ll be doing it again for Season 4!
Here’s a favorite episode of mine from Season 3…and check out the full line-up here.
And now, here is the space beat you came here for…
Top Headlines
Asteroid Autumn – On Sunday, Sept 24th NASA completed its first successful asteroid sample retrieval, thanks to its Regolith Explorer known as OSIRIS-REx. While it may bear resemblance to those Postmates delivery robots that cruise around Los Angeles (or maybe that’s just us), the OSIRIS-REx delivery capsule that landed in the Utah desert last Sunday did not in fact hold a vegan samosa from Mendocino Farms, but instead a very important chunk of an asteroid known as Bennu. At 8.8 ounces, the Bennu sample is now the biggest asteroid sample to ever be delivered back to Earth, and the touchdown was no small feat. The OSIRIS-REx team has been working to get this mission off the ground (literally) since 2004, when they submitted their first proposal to NASA. It took until 2011 for the project to be selected, 2016 for the spacecraft to launch, and 2018 for the OSIRIS-REx to reach Bennu. Fast forward to today, where the space rock now resides in a clean room in Houston’s Johnson Space Center, offering scientists the opportunity to refine their understanding of planet formation and gain intel on a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid. Bennu has already perplexed its fans with its alarming unpredictability – once described as a “pit of plastic balls” held together by gravity. As opposed to a fallen meteorite heated by Earth’s atmosphere and contaminated by microbes, a protected sample will tell scientists a lot more about Bennu’s behavior. Plus, with the help of Japanese scientist Shogo Tachibana, they’ll be able to compare it to Ryugu, an asteroid from which JAXA retrieved a sample previously. While we look forward to learning more from this far-traveled astral nugget, we should note that the government shutdown could delay NASA’s plans to detail the sample’s composition in October. Speaking of asteroid delays, NASA’s billion dollar asteroid probe known as Psyche was set to launch at the top of October, though this week that date has slid to October 12th. After years of software issues putting Psyche behind schedule, this last “verification” of the spacecraft’s thrusters is hopefully the final audit before go-time.
Stranded Soyuz Crew Returns – After over one year in space, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin landed safely in Kazakhstan this past Wednesday. When the mission launched in September of 2022, the crew had anticipated working on the International Space Station for six months. Enter: the leaky Soyuz, who said “double it!” That’s right, the coolant leak on the crew’s return vehicle meant they would have to wait another six months for a replacement ride and nonconflicting departure window. While these unplanned 371 days in space took a mental and physical toll on the astronauts – Rubio citing the “constant hum of machinery” as the thing he’ll miss the least – the seemingly never-ending mission added the trio to a short list of year-long human stints in space. As NASA prepares for future missions to Mars – which will inevitably keep humans in space for several years – the agency will surely take a keen interest in Rubio’s recovery as he adapts back to Earth’s gravity. In any case, we hope that if the crew had any volleyball-shaped friends up there to keep them company, they didn’t lose them on the 4.5G ride back to Earth.
Space Force GOES For Weather Satellites – For the second time, the US Space Force has taken over a retired weather satellite from NOAA. Having served its purpose for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the GOES-15 weather watcher will now count clouds for the military, who will use this data to plan air and sea operations in the Indian Ocean region. Head of the Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Weather Systems for the US Space Command, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Maguadog announced the acquisition on September 22nd, noting that “the repurposing of GOES-15 and residual NOAA ground equipment” allows the agency to replace their worn out Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites “at a fraction of the procurement cost of a brand-new system.” NOAA will continue to operate the GOES-15 satellite on behalf of the Space Force.
Smaller NASA News – While the safe terrestrial arrivals of astronaut Rubio and asteroid Bennu stole most of the thunder this week, there are a few more NASA updates to highlight here. First, as of this week the SLS rocket that will carry the four Artemis II astronauts to lunar orbit now has all of its engines installed, thanks to the engineers at NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Boeing. With four RS-25 engines, the rocket’s core stage will be able to produce “more than 2 million pounds of thrust for eight minutes of flight,” according to the agency, enough for the Artemis astronauts to supersede LEO. Additionally, the US space agency assigned Charity Weeden to head their Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy this week. Weeden’s history shaping policy, managing government relations and leading sustainability efforts at Astroscale – not to mention her 23 years of service for the Royal Canadian Air Force – make her more than fit to lead this office for NASA. Lastly, now that the agency has ditched the Roscosmos Progress spacecraft as a contender for deorbiting the ISS at the end of the decade – citing a need for “more robust capabilities for responsible deorbit” – they’re putting out a call for new proposals from US companies.
Trouble on Mars – NASA’s Perseverance rover may be breaking speed records on the Red Planet, but all is not well with NASA’s Mars projects. A new independent report warns that the agency’s Mars Sample Return is, while clearly a “a deep-space exploration priority for NASA,” also deeply unrealistic when it comes to its budget and schedule. In fact, in order to launch the mission when intended in 2030, the MSR team would need $8 billion to $11 billion in total funding. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this tune, either; months ago, team members at NASA complained that the MSR’s constantly ballooning budget took away from other projects, like New Horizons, which had to suffer “for a flagship’s sins.” Certainly, sacrifices have to be made in the world of science, and the Mars Sample Return mission is clearly a priority for NASA, who now has until the second quarter of 2024 to officially respond to the review board’s report. The main advice of the report is to ensure everyone is on the same page, and that includes the public.
The JWST Download
Eureka! The JWST has confirmed the life-building element carbon to be present on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Also potentially habitable but much further away is exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b, where Webb was recently able to rule out a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
If you failed physics in high school, now may be your chance to redeem yourself – as recent JWST observations of a more rapidly expanding universe may prove that “new physics” are in our future.
A Global Space
ESA - Upon his departure this week, Russian cosmonaut and former ISS commander Sergey Prokopyev handed off the space station’s “key” to Andreas Mogensen, who will take over the position. Mogensen, representing Denmark and the European Space Agency, traveled to the station one month ago as part of ESA’s Huginn mission, with goals to explore orbital sleep, fitness and grease space lightning during his six month stay. Now, he adds a fourth responsibility to his mission: to manage and ensure the safety of the ISS crew as the sixth European ISS commander until he departs in early 2024. ESA not only celebrates Mogensen’s new role this week, but also a new program calling for “small missions to the Moon.” The call for proposals is part of the agency’s Terrae Novae exploration program, which hopes to “[close] technology gaps” surrounding the Moon and Mars.
India – Last Friday, the sun rose but the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover did not. While ISRO had hoped for some bonus time with the robotic duo – delivered valiantly to the lunar surface by the now legendary Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft – it looks like this could be the end of the mission’s road. The agency will continue to ping the lunar wanderers – perhaps until the next lunar sunset at the end of the month – but a permanent sleep state would not be surprising, as these spacecraft weren’t necessarily built to survive the sub-negative-100-degree temperatures endured over lunar night. Of course, this is no cause for doom and gloom; having spent approximately one week after its landing on August 23rd identifying soil temperatures and elements that will aid research into future lunar settlement, the Chandrayaan-3 can rest easy, “as India’s lunar ambassador.”
UAE – A long term commitment may be costly, but it can also provide unparalleled security. Just ask any wedding ring maker. Or, ask the United Arab Emirates, who just threw down over $5 billion for broadband services with Emirati operator Yahsat, in a contract that will go through 2043. And the government is not sprinkling this hefty sum thinly over the years; in fact, they’ll start Yahsat with $1 billion in 2024. The UAE’s commitment will allow Yahsat to expand in order to offer “broader, more diverse and cutting-edge solutions,” according to CEO Ali Al Hashemi in a press release around the government deal. While the company did not detail these new “solutions” in the release, Yahsat did allude to pursuing the direct-to-device market back in August. In any case, Yahsat’s next two satellites – manufactured by Airbus – will have twenty times the capacity of their current fleet combined, and half of the capacity of these two powerhouse satellites is reserved by the UAE. So, yeah, it pays to pay.
China - Galactic Energy and their Ceres-1 rocket seem to dominate the commercial Chinese launch market lately, but with the country’s vigorous commercial space plan, there may be a lot more where that came from. Following a national trend, Beijing’s government issued a notice in early September announcing an intention to incubate and support commercial aerospace and satellites, prioritizing crewed suborbital flight and reusable rockets especially. There is also a satellite section of the plan that highlights priorities like integrated satellite constellations and remote sensing. Many of the companies headquartered in Beijing are already working on these emergent technologies, like launch powerhouses Galactic Energy, Landscape, and iSpace as well as satellite experts GalaxySpace and HEAD Aerospace; however, a notice like this could mean that incentives are coming next to pick up the pace on development. Perhaps this drive for momentum is what spurred the US to want to set up a “hotline” with China, in hopes that a direct line of communication could deescalate future conflicts. Jury’s still out on whether or not China engages.
Space Reads!
With NASA’s Frank Rubio spending an accidental year in space, the physical strains of space travel seem to be on everyone’s mind right now. Read about an experimental drug that may combat bone loss, one of the side effects of long-term cosmic cruising.
Who has time to read anymore? Just kidding (please don’t leave us), but here is a great segment from WBUR on the power of lunar resources, coming off the recent Chandrayaan-3 success.
That being said, a new study suggests there may be less water ice on the moon than we thought. However, the more we can pinpoint the location of valuable lunar resources, the better we can guide our exploratory missions.
Though Hollywood and the Tech industry rightfully caution against the dangers of AI, one sociologist writes about the successful marriage of human and machine intelligence with NASA’s Mars rovers.
Learn how these mysterious flashes of light witnessed on Jupiter are so important to astronomers.
Sometimes, in an effort to respect and protect good journalism, authors need to be called out. Listen, we always welcome it here – if we’ve interpreted something incorrectly, let us know! This week, one of our favorite space publications Jatan’s Space talks about the New York Times’ misrepresentation of India’s space sector in a recent, widely distributed article.
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out 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 becoming a paid subscriber or gifting a subscription so we can keep putting out more space content.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
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