News From NASA There is a lot of news I would like to talk about today. The first thing which is so important to astronomers which has been delayed for years and is costing many more billions than first agreed to is the Webb telescope. The scope launch is now delayed to Christmas Eve as of the writing of this article. Let’s hope this will not be another series of delays. This is one of the most nerve racking launches ever made for hardware. It has to fly for thirty days and reach a point which is about one million miles away without anything going wrong. Once in position it must deploy perfectly because it is not near enough for astronauts to reach it being almost five times further than the moon. The reason for all this is it is being put into a spot called a Lagrange point where the pull from earth and moon are equal allowing the telescope to remain still. NASA has come out and said there are 300 ways the Webb telescope could fail. This will truly be a risky endeavor. NASA has begun to test robotics they developed which will be used to return samples from Mars which have been set aside on the planet. One of the things required is a new lander. The Perseverance rover has 43 sample tubes and so far, four have been filled with rock cores. Another one contains a sample of the atmosphere. The return vehicle will bring back tubes which have been selected for return to earth. Being able to examine these samples in a lab on earth is much more practical since many different test involving all different size instruments will be needed. The return of these samples will not be fast. It is estimated about 10 years will be needed and we all know it could take a lot longer and a lot more money than predicted. There was a first performed by NASA. As many of you already know, we have a probe circling the sun named the Parker Solar Probe. For the first time in human history the probe entered the atmosphere of the sun and survived. Scientists claim this gives them an incredible chance to touch the stuff which forms the sun and increases their knowledge about the sun. They rank this with the first time a human landed on the moon. I don’t know if I agree with that, but it was certainly very important. Some people may be wondering why the probe didn’t melt being inside that extremely hot atmosphere. One reason is the heat shield which is made of a carbon composite foam which is sandwiched between two carbon plates. The shield is also designed to push the heat away from the probe. I have also read speed has something to do with survival. We are starting to see private space missions. One example is Blue Origin sending passengers on sub orbital flights. The mission I want to talk about seems to be far more complicated. MIT is beginning a privately funded mission led by a scientist named Sara Seager and backed by Breakthrough Initiatives. A probe is to be launched to Venus to study whether the clouds on Venus can support life. There has been much talk lately about life in the clouds of Venus, but so far, no conclusive proof has been found. It is so hot on the surface of Venus lead would melt. Some scientists believe there is a very good chance of microscopic life existing in the atmosphere. So why do scientists think there is a good chance of this? Well, the idea was reinforced when in 2020 phosphine gases were detected. This gas is typically produced by bacteria which life in oxygen starved environments. Now that NASA is giving SpaceX more launches because of the failure of some of the legacy space companies falling behind schedule, look for this trend to continue. I am glad those companies are finally starting to feel the pinch even in a tiny way for not meeting their contract obligations. This also gives the smaller companies who are involved with smaller launches more business. We have finally figured out how to make communications in space faster using lasers. Don’t get me wrong it is still inadequate for deep space missions, but for closer ones in the solar system the lasers will be able to carry more data than a radio wave meaning more of a message will be delivered at once. To get meaningful long range communications we need a system not bound by the speed of the waves which can only travel at the speed of light. It is good to see the private sector getting in the development of space stations. NASA has funded three companies to develop them. It could mean NASA might be getting out of the space station business or at least the more or less commercial end of the business. There may still be secret military space stations and such. The three companies are Blue Origin, Nanoracks LLC and Northrop Grumman. Blue Origin is developing the Orbital Reef with Sierra Space, which is a free flying concept and has received 130 million dollars to help develop it. Nanoracks LLC has received 160 million dollars from NASA to develop Starlab and they are working with Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin. Lastly, Northrop Grumman was awarded 125.6 million dollars to develop a space station with Dynetics which has a modular concept. I think it is great the commercial end of space is beginning to take hold. Soon we may see missions to the moon by commercial enterprises.
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