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Space News Update — January 21, 2020 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

SpaceX Aces Final Major Test Before First Crew Mission

Story 2:

Building Blocks of Life Spotted on Rosetta’s Comet Hint at Composition of Its Birthplace

Story 3:

A Second Planet May Have been Found Orbiting Proxima Centauri! And it’s a Super Earth.

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. SpaceX Aces Final Major Test Before First Crew Mission

The Crew Dragon’s abort engines ignite atop the Falcon 9. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX performed a dramatic high-altitude test flight Sunday of the company’s Crew Dragon capsule over Florida’s

Space Coast, testing the human-rated ship’s ability to escape a rocket failure and save its crew before two NASA

astronauts strap in for a flight to the International Space Station as soon as this spring.

The unusual test flight included an intentional failure of the Crew Dragon’s Falcon 9 rocket about a minute-and-a-

half after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket, with a recycled first stage booster flown three previous

times, disintegrated in a fireball high over the Atlantic Ocean as the crew capsule sped away from the top of the

launcher with a powerful boost from eight SuperDraco engines.

The SuperDraco engines — mounted around the circumference of the gumdrop-shaped crew capsule — fired

around eight seconds to carry the spaceship a safe distance from the Falcon 9 rocket after the booster’s first stage

engines shut down, a standard part of the launch escape sequence.

The Crew Dragon arced on a ballistic trajectory to a top speed of about Mach 2.2 and a peak altitude of about

131,000 feet, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive. The capsule then deployed four main

parachutes for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the Kennedy Space

Center.

Musk, NASA officials and astronauts were pleased with the performance of the Crew Dragon’s launch escape

system. “I’m super fired up,” Musk said. “This is great … We’re looking forward to the next step.”

NASA has signed agreements with SpaceX valued at more than $3.1 billion since 2011 to fund the design,

development, construction and testing of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The next major step for the Crew Dragon program is the capsule’s first trip to space with astronauts. The Crew

Dragon’s in-flight abort test Sunday was the last major flight demonstration of a full-scale Crew Dragon spacecraft

before its first launch with humans on-board.

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Veteran NASA shuttle fliers Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are training for the mission — designated Demo-2 — to

fly the Crew Dragon to the International Space Station.

Musk said after Sunday’s in-flight abort test that the Demo-2 mission would likely launch in the second quarter of

this year — between the beginning of April and the end of June — although rocket and spacecraft hardware for the

Demo-2 flight could be in place at the Kennedy Space Center by the end of February or early March.

“The hardware necessary for first crewed launch, we believe, will be ready by the end of February,” Musk said.

“However, there’s still a lot of work once the hardware is ready to cross-check everything, triple-check, quadruple-

check, go over everything again so that every stone has been turned over three or four times.

“And there is also the schedule for getting to (the) space station because space station has a lot of things going to

it, so what’s the right timing for this?” Musk said. “The sort of collective wisdom at this point is we’re highly

confident the hardware will be ready in Quarter 1, most likely the end of February, but no later than March, and

that it and it would appear probable that the first crew launch would occur in the 2nd Quarter.”

In the meantime, SpaceX will collect all the data from the Crew Dragon abort test and analyze the results for any

potential problem areas. NASA is also reviewing numerous Crew Dragon data packages provided by SpaceX before

agreeing to fly Hurley and Behnken on SpaceX’s next crew capsule launch.

SpaceX plans at least two more atmospheric drop tests of the Crew Dragon parachute system to gain more

confidence in the capsule’s decelerators, which have been a problem area on the project after chute failures on a

cargo-carrying Dragon spacecraft and in Crew Dragon testing.

Engineers found that NASA was using wrong assumptions in models that predict how much force parachutes

experience on spacecraft returning to Earth. Data from testing showed the parachute risers, or suspension lines,

encountered more significant loads than expected, raising concerns about chutes across the agency’s human

spaceflight programs, including on the Starliner commercial crew capsule being developed by Boeing.

SpaceX and NASA agreed to switch to a new generation of Crew Dragon parachutes dubbed the Mark 3, and testing

of the new Mark 3 chutes — made by a company named Airborne Systems — has proceeded without failure since

late last year.

Sunday’s in-flight abort test provided the parachute engineers with another successful test of the Mark 3 chutes,

adding additional confidence about the system’s reliability.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called Sunday’s abort test “another amazing milestone” in the agency’s nearly

decade-long effort to resume crew launches to the space station from U.S. soil.

“Make no mistake, there’s a lot left to do,” Bridenstine said. “We have a number of parachute tests upcoming, and

of course, we’re going to get a lot of data from this particular test. So we’re not quite there yet, but by all accounts,

this was a very successful test.”

After a one-day delay due to rough seas in the splashdown zone — and a two-and-a-half-hour hold Sunday to wait

for improved winds — the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 10:30 a.m. EST

(1530 GMT) Sunday from pad 39A at Kennedy, the same launch pad once used by NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rockets

and space shuttles.

The 215-foot-tall (65-meter) rocket flew off the launch pad powered by nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines and

pitched on an easterly trajectory from the Florida spaceport.

The Falcon 9 surpassed the speed of sound in less than a minute, and the Crew Dragon’s pre-programmed escape

sequence initiated around 84 seconds after liftoff, when the rocket was at an altitude of roughly 62,000 feet (19

kilometers). The abort was triggered soon after the point in the launch sequence where the booster and capsule

experience the most extreme aerodynamic pressures.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. Building Blocks of Life Spotted on Rosetta’s Comet Hint at

Composition of Its Birthplace

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera. Credit: ESA

Observations from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft are shedding light on the mysterious make-up of Comet

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, revealing a mix of compounds thought to be essential precursors to life – including

salts of ammonium and a particular type of hydrocarbons.

These new studies suggest the comet gleaned this material from the pre-solar cloud where the Solar System

formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Comets have a nucleus consisting of ice and dust, from which material sublimates when warmed by sunlight to form

a gaseous enveloping ‘coma’. These comas contain a mix of molecules that largely match theoretical predictions,

with one outstanding exception: nitrogen gas, which is usually present in far smaller amounts than expected.

“The reason behind this nitrogen depletion has remained a major open question in cometary science,” says Kathrin

Altwegg of the University of Bern, Switzerland, principal investigator for the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion

and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument and lead author of a new study.

“Using ROSINA observations of Comet 67P, we discovered that this ‘missing’ nitrogen may in fact be tied up in

ammonium salts that are difficult to detect in space.”

Ammonia, a molecule comprising one nitrogen and three hydrogen atoms, is one of the main carriers of volatile

nitrogen, and readily combines with various acids found in both the space between stars and in cometary ice to

form salts. These ammonium salts are thought to be the starting point for far more complex compounds – such as

urea and glycine, the latter of which was also found on Rosetta’s comet – that are known to be precursors to life as

we know it on Earth.

“Finding ammonium salts on the comet is hugely exciting from an astrobiology perspective,” adds Kathrin. “This

discovery highlights just how much we can learn from these intriguing celestial objects.”

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Kathrin and colleagues used ROSINA data gathered during the final phase of the mission, from when Rosetta was

performing close flyovers of the comet in September 2016. These data were somewhat serendipitous: Rosetta

ventured closer to 67P than ever before, reaching just 1.9 km above the comet’s surface, and became completely

enshrouded by dust.

“Because of the dusty environment at the comet, and the rotation of Earth, we were not able to readily

communicate with Rosetta via our antennas at the time and had to wait until the next morning to reestablish our

communication link,” says Kathrin.

“None of us slept well that night! But both Rosetta and ROSINA ended up behaving perfectly, flawlessly measuring

the most abundant and most diverse mass spectra yet, and revealing many compounds we had never spotted on

67P before.”

Adding to this investigation of 67P, another recent study made use of a different instrument on Rosetta, the Visible

and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS), which operated until May 2015, to explore the properties of

the comet’s nucleus.

The researchers explored several million infrared spectra gathered with VIRTIS and discovered clear signs of

hydrogen and carbon chains known as organic aliphatic compounds – the first time such compounds have been

spotted on the surface of a cometary nucleus.

“Where – and when – these aliphatic compounds came from is hugely important, as they are thought to be

essential building blocks of life as we know it,” explains lead author Andrea Raponi of INAF, the National Institute

for Astrophysics in Italy. “The origin of material such as this found in comets is crucial to our understanding of not

only our Solar System, but planetary systems throughout the Universe.”

Comets are flung inwards towards the Sun from the outer reaches of the Solar System, and may deliver material to

the inner planets as they travel. This material is thought to have either come from the young, still-forming Sun, or

from the interstellar medium.

“We found that the nucleus of Comet 67P has a composition similar to the interstellar medium, indicating that the

comet contains unaltered presolar material,” says co-author Fabrizio Capaccioni, also of INAF and principal

investigator for VIRTIS.

“This composition is also shared by asteroids and some meteorites that we have found on Earth, suggesting that

these ancient, rocky bodies locked up various compounds from the primordial cloud that went on to form the Solar

System.”

“This may mean that at least a fraction of the organic compounds in the early Solar System came directly from the

wider interstellar medium – and thus that other planetary systems may also have access to these compounds,” adds

Raponi.

Rosetta explored Comet 67P for over two years, ending its mission by crash-landing on the comet on 30 September

2016. “Although Rosetta operations ended over three years ago, it is still offering us an incredible amount of new

science and remains a truly ground-breaking mission,” adds Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta Project Scientist.

“These studies tackled a couple of open questions in cometary science: why comets are depleted in nitrogen, and

where comets got their material from. Inspiring discoveries such as these help us to understand a great deal more

about not only comets themselves, but the history, characteristics and evolution of our entire cosmic

neighborhood.”

“Evidence of ammonium salts in comet 67P as explanation for the nitrogen depletion in cometary comae” by K.

Altwegg et al. and “Infrared detection of aliphatic organics on a cometary nucleus” by A. Raponi et al. are both

published in Nature Astronomy.

Source: European Space Agency Return to Contents

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3. A Second Planet May Have been Found Orbiting Proxima Centauri!

And it’s a Super Earth.

An artist’s rendering of the Proxima Centauri system shows the newly discovered exoplanet Proxima c (on the right),

which orbits its host star in about 5.2 years. The smaller Proxima b, shown on the left, was discovered in 2016. Proxima

Centauri is just 4.3 light-years from Earth.

Lorenzo Santinelli

Astronomers have discovered another candidate exoplanet orbiting our neighbor, Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light

years away. A paper announcing these results was just published in the journal Science Advances. If confirmed, it

will be the second exoplanet orbiting the star.

It was big news in 2016 when astronomers discovered a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri (PC,) the nearest star to

our Sun. That planet, named Proxima b, is potentially habitable, and at the time there was speculation that we

could send a robotic explorer there in only a few decades. The discovery of a second planet, even though it’s likely

too far away from its star for liquid water, is intensifying interest in the PC system.

The discoverers of this new planet, Proxima c, say that follow-up observations are needed to confirm it as a planet.

Changes in the stellar activity of Proxima Centauri indicated the presence of another planet. But they also say that

the data they have can’t be explained in terms of any stellar activity itself. Due to its proximity, and also its angular

separation from the star, it is a prime candidate for follow-up observations—and even imaging—with next

generation telescopes.

Proxima c’s mass is about half that of Neptune and its orbit is about 1.5 times that of Earth. Its temperature is

about -200 C, if it has no atmosphere. Proxima Centauri has undergone intense astronomical scrutiny in the last few

years, and that has ruled out the presence of any Jupiter-sized planets between 0.8 and 5+ astronomical units from

the star. But finding Proxima c is still surprising, because its presence challenges our models of how super-Earths

form and evolve.

The lead author of this study is Mario Damasso from the INAF Astrophysical Observatory of Turin, Italy. The study

is titled “A low-mass planet candidate orbiting Proxima Centauri at a distance of 1.5 AU.” It was published on

January 15th, 2020.

Hugh Jones, a Professor of Astrophysics at Hertfordshire University, was also involved in the study. In an article in

“The Conversation,” Jones pointed out how difficult it can be to separate data showing the presence of a planet,

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from data showing stellar activity at the host star. “Just like our sun, Proxima has spots caused by regions of

intense magnetic activity which are moving in and out of view, changing in intensity on a variety of timescales.

These features need to be considered when searching for any planetary signals.”

Even though stellar activity doesn’t match the data, the discoverers are being cautious until follow-up observations

can either confirm or deny the presence of Proxima c, and definitively rule out stellar activity.

The discovery of this new candidate exoplanet is contained in this new paper, but the history goes back a few

years. Multiple teams of scientists have scoured Proxima Centauri for exoplanets. Much of their work depended on

radial velocity data, notably from the ESO’s HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher.) Study by study,

astronomers have excluded the presence of certain mass-range planets within certain AU ranges from PC.

A 1999 study excluded the presence of any planets beyond 1700 AUs of PC, because PC itself orbits Alpha Centauri

AB. A 2019 study set an upper limit of 0.3 Jupiter masses for any planet within 10 AU of PC. That same study

excluded the presence of planets between 10 and 50 AU in the mass range 0.3 to 8 masses of Jupiter. Other

studies put on more constraints.

But astronomers also know that red dwarfs host more small planets than other types of stars. So they kept looking.

Due to its proximity, the Proxima Centauri system is an observable laboratory for understanding other solar

systems. And its presence and proximity might spur further technological development needed to study it and other

systems in more detail.

As Hugh Jones said in his article at The Conversation, “Ultimately, the discovery of multiple signals from the very

closest star shows that planets are more common than stars. Proxima represents an excellent location for

understanding the closest exoplanets and developing new technologies to better understand the universe we live

in.”

Proxima c’s existence is problematic, or at least significant, for our planet formation models. Among super-Earth

planets around low-mass stars detected by radial velocity, Proxima c would have both the longest period and the

lowest mass. It would also be the furthest distance from its parent star than the frost line in the original

protoplanetary disk. The frost line was probably at 0.15 AU.

The authors say that it’s unlikely that Proxima c was kicked out from its initial position closer to the star due to

some instability, “because its orbit is consistent with a circular one and because of the absence of more massive

planets on shorter orbital distance.”

In their paper, they say, “The formation of a super-Earth well beyond the snowline challenges formation models

according to which the snowline is a sweet spot for the accretion of super-Earths, due to the accumulation of icy

solids at that location.”

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

Like our Sun, Proxima Centauri has sunspots that can confound astronomers

searching for exoplanets. Sunspots are dark areas on the

surface of the Sun that are cooler than the surrounding

areas. They form where magnetic fields are particularly

strong. Image: NASA/SDO/AIA/HMI/Goddard

Space Flight Center

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The Night Sky

Thursday, Jan. 23

• Zero-magnitude Capella, very high in the east after dark, and zero-magnitude Rigel, in Orion's foot, have

almost the same right ascension. This means they cross your sky’s meridian at almost exactly the same time:

around 9 p.m. now, depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. (Capella goes exactly

through your zenith if you're at latitude 46°N.) So whenever Capella passes highest, Rigel always marks true

south over your landscape, and vice versa.

Friday, Jan. 24

• Right after dark face east and look very high for bright Capella, the Goat Star. To the right of it, by a couple

of finger-widths at arm's length, is a small, narrow triangle of 3rd and 4th magnitude stars known as "the

Kids." Though they're not exactly eye-grabbing, they form a never-forgotten asterism with Capella.

• New Moon (exact at 4:42 p.m. EST).

Saturday, Jan. 25

• After dark now the Great Square of Pegasus is declining low in the west, tipped onto one corner. It's far to

the upper right of Venus. Meanwhile the Big Dipper is creeping up in the north-northeast, tipped up on its handle.

Source: Sky and Telescope Return to Contents

Credit: Space.com

Tuesday, Jan. 21

• Sirius twinkles brightly below Orion in the

southeast after dinnertime. Around 8 p.m.,

depending on your location, Sirius shines precisely

below fiery Betelgeuse in Orion's shoulder. How

accurately can you time this event for your location,

perhaps using the vertical edge of a building? Of the

two, Sirius leads early in the evening; Betelgeuse

leads later.

• As dawn brightens on Wednesday morning, spot

the slim waning crescent Moon quite low in the

southeast. The bulge of its curve points lower left to

even-lower Jupiter, 6° or 7° from it (at dawn for

North America). The Moon occults Jupiter for New

Zealand and parts of Australia around 3h January

23rd UT.

Wednesday, Jan. 22

• The Gemini twins lie on their sides on January

evenings, left of Orion. Their head stars, Castor and

Pollux, are farthest from Orion, one over the other.

Castor is the top one. The Castor figure's feet are

just left of Orion's very dim Club.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Tue Jan 21, 6:57 PM 1 min 43° 25° above W 43° above NW

Wed Jan 22, 6:09 PM 3 min 74° 34° above WSW 21° above NE

Thu Jan 23, 6:58 PM 2 min 21° 14° above WNW 21° above NNW

Fri Jan 24, 6:10 PM 4 min 29° 21° above WNW 14° above NNE

Sat Jan 25, 7:00 PM 2 min 13° 10° above NW 13° above NNW

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone)

January 22, Wednesday

1 p.m. - The Universe in Infrared: The Legacy of the Spitzer Space Telescope (All Channels)

January 24, Friday

10:35 a.m. - International Space Station Expedition 61 In-Flight Educational Event with the International

School of Panama in Panama City, Panama and NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir (All

Channels)

11:30 a.m. – SpaceCast Weekly (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Jan 21 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BB Near-Earth Flyby (0.005 AU)

Jan 21 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BP Near-Earth Flyby (0.009 AU)

Jan 21 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BN Near-Earth Flyby (0.025 AU)

Jan 21 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BY Near-Earth Flyby (0.010 AU)

Jan 21 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BP1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.036 AU)

Jan 21 - Atira Asteroid 2017 YH Closest Approach To Earth (0.144 AU)

Jan 21 - Lecture: Exploring Titan with Cassini/Huygens and Dragonfly, London, United Kingdom

Jan 21 - Seminar: Simulations at the Dwarf Scale - From Violent Dwarfs at Cosmic Dawn and Cosmic Noon to Quiet Discs Today, Barcelona, Spain

Jan 21-22 - 12th European Space Conference, Brussels, Belgium

Jan 21-22 - Workshop: Sustaining Ocean Observations Phase 2, Washington DC

Jan 21-24 - Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Meeting, San Diego, California

Jan 22 -Amor Asteroid 2020 BU Near-Earth Flyby (0.050 AU)

Jan 22 - Colloquium: Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope, Greenbelt, Maryland

Jan 22 - Astrophysics Lecture, Preston, United Kingdom

Jan 22 - Lecture: The Music of the Stars, Preston, United Kingdom

Jan 22-24 - IAA-ISRO-ASI Symposium: Human Spaceflight and Exploration - Present Challenges and Future Trends, Bangalore, India

Jan 22-24 - Astro2020 Meeting: Panel on Particle Astrophysics and Gravitation, Washington DC

Jan 23 - Moon Occults Jupiter

Jan 23 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 BB1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.007 AU)

Jan 23 - Lecture: Spitzer - Final Voyage, Pasadena, California

Jan 23 - Seminar: Revealing the Structure of the Milky Way via Parallax Observations of Maser Sources, Barcelona, Spain

Jan 23-24 - Workshop: Remnants of the Big Bang, Tempe, Arizona

Jan 23-24 - Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) Meeting, Alexandria, Virginia

Jan 23-24 - Astro2020 Meeting: Panel on State of the Profession and Societal Impacts, Washington DC

Jan 23-25 - Massive Star Formation Workshop 2020, Yamaguchi, Japan

Jan 24 - Meridian-M Minotaur 1 Launch

Jan 24 - Aten Asteroid 2020 BF1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.020 AU)

Jan 24 - Apollo Asteroid 4450 Pan Closest Approach To Earth (0.748 AU)

Jan 24 - Lecture: Spitzer - Final Voyage, Pasadena, California

Jan 24 - Stargazing 101 Event, Enchanted Rock State Park, Fredericksburg, Texas

Jan 24 - Starrytelling, Copper's Break State Park, Quanah, Texas

Jan 25 - Chinese New Year

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

ESA Opens Oxygen Plant – Making Air Out Of Moondust

(Note: NASA has a similar project underway as covered in the Sept. 17, 2019 Space News Update)

ESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust.

A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European

Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, based in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.

“Having our own facility allows us to focus on oxygen production, measuring it with a mass spectrometer as it is

extracted from the regolith simulant,” Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow, whose PhD work is being supported

through ESA’s Networking and Partnering Initiative, harnessing advanced academic research for space applications.

“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar

settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel.”

ESA research fellow Alexandre Meurisse adds: “And now we have the facility in operation we can look into fine-

tuning it, for instance by reducing the operating temperature, eventually designing a version of this system that

could one day fly to the Moon to be operated there.”

Samples returned from the lunar surface confirm that lunar regolith is made up of 40–45% percent oxygen by

weight, its single most abundant element. But this oxygen is bound up chemically as oxides in the form of minerals

or glass, so is unavailable for immediate use.

ESTEC’s oxygen extraction is taking place using a method called molten salt electrolysis, involving placing regolith in

a metal basket with molten calcium chloride salt to serve as an electrolyte, heated to 950°C. At this temperature the

regolith remains solid. But passing a current through it causes the oxygen to be extracted from the regolith and

migrate across the salt to be collected at an anode. As a bonus this process also converts the regolith into usable

metal alloys.

In fact this molten salt electrolysis method was developed by the UK company Metalysis for commercial metal and

alloy production. Beth’s PhD involved working at the company to study the process before recreating it at ESTEC.

On the left side of this before and after

image is a pile of simulated lunar soil, or regolith; on the

right is the same pile after essentially all oxygen has been removed from it,

leaving a mixture of metal alloys. Credit:

ESA

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“At Metalysis, oxygen produced by the process is an unwanted by-product and is instead released as carbon dioxide

and carbon monoxide, which means the reactors are not designed to withstand oxygen gas itself,” explains Beth.

“So we had to redesign the ESTEC version to be able to have the oxygen available to measure. The lab team was

very helpful in getting it installed and operating safely.”

The oxygen plant runs silently, with the oxygen produced in the process is vented into an exhaust pipe for now, but

will be stored after future upgrades of the system.

“The production process leaves behind a tangle of different metals,” adds Alexandre, “and this is another useful line

of research, to see what are the most useful alloys that could be produced from them, and what kind of applications

could they be put to. Could they be 3D printed directly, for example, or would they require refining? The precise

combination of metals will depend on where on the Moon the regolith is acquired from – there would be significant

regional differences.”

The ultimate aim would be to design a ‘pilot plant’ that could operate sustainably on the Moon, with the first

technology demonstration targeted for the mid-2020s. “ESA and NASA are heading back to the Moon with crewed

missions, this time with a view towards staying,” says Tommaso Ghidini, Head of ESA’s Structures, Mechanisms and

Materials Division.

“Accordingly we’re shifting our engineering approach to a systematic use of lunar resources in-situ. We are working

with our colleagues in the Human and Robotics Exploration Directorate, European industry and academia to provide

top class scientific approaches and key enabling technologies like this one, towards a sustained human presence on

the Moon and maybe one day Mars.”

Source: European Space Agency Return to Contents

Moondust simulant undergoing oxygen

extraction Credit: ESA

Future Moon base Credit: ESA

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Space Image of the Week

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Has a Close Encounter with Jupiter Image Credit: Enhanced image by Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA) based on

images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Explanation: A multitude of swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval. This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th

close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles from the planet's cloud tops, at a latitude of

approximately 40 degrees north.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's

JunoCam imager.

Source: NASA Return to Contents