Copernical Team
Video: Bringing connectivity to the moon
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As international teams across the world forge plans to revisit the moon, ESA is elaborating how best to facilitate this exploration.
As part of its moonlight initiative, the agency is encouraging European space companies to put a constellation of telecommunications and navigation satellites around the moon.
To succeed, the proposed lunar missions will require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities. Building these independently would be costly, complex and inefficient.
If this work were outsourced to a consortium of space companies, each individual mission would become more cost-efficient.
Having one system dedicated to lunar telecommunications and navigation could reduce design complexity, liberating missions to concentrate on their core activities.
Because missions could rely on this dedicated telecommunications and navigation service, they would be lighter. This would make space for more scientific instruments or other cargo.
An accurate and reliable telecommunications and navigation service would enable missions to land wherever they wanted. Radio astronomers could set up observatories on the far side of the moon.
Rovers could trundle over the lunar surface more speedily. It could even enable the teleoperation of rovers and other equipment from Earth.
Talking to the moon: Europe pitches lunar satellites plan
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The European Space Agency presented a vision Thursday to put satellites in orbit around the moon that would facilitate future missions to Earth's closest neighbor.
Rare 4000-year comets can cause meteor showers on Earth
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Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether so that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the debris in the path of comets that pass close to Earth orbit and are known to return as infrequently as once every 4,000 years.
"This creates a situational awareness for potentially hazardous comets that were last near Earth orbit as far back as 2,000 BC," said meteor astronomer and lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute.
NASA AI technology could speed up fault diagnosis process in spacecraft
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New artificial intelligence technology could speed up physical fault diagnosis in spacecraft and spaceflight systems, improving mission efficiency by reducing down-time.
Research in artificial intelligence for spacecraft resilience (RAISR) is software developed by Pathways intern Evana Gizzi, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. With RAISR, artificial intelligence could diagnose faults real-time in spacecraft and spaceflight systems in general.
"The spacecraft reporting a fault is like a car with a check engine light on," Gizzi said. "You know there is an issue, but can't necessarily explain the cause. That's where the RAISR algorithm comes in, diagnosing the cause as a loose gas cap."
Right now, the ability to make inferences about what is happening that go beyond traditional 'if-then-else' fault trees is something only humans can do, Gizzi said.
Infographic: Moonlight - Navigation for the Moon
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Infographic: Infographic: Moonlight - Navigation for the Moon Deep space communication and navigation
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Deep space communication and navigation
Moonlight: bringing connectivity to the Moon
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Video:
00:01:56
As international teams across the world forge plans to revisit the Moon, ESA is elaborating how best to facilitate this exploration.
As part of its Moonlight initiative, the agency is encouraging European space companies to put a constellation of telecommunications and navigation satellites around the Moon.
To succeed, the proposed lunar missions will require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities. Building these independently would be costly, complex and inefficient.
If this work were outsourced to a consortium of space companies, each individual mission would become more cost-efficient.
Having one system dedicated to lunar telecommunications and navigation could reduce design complexity, liberating missions
China delays mission while NASA congratulates on Mars images
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Join ESA, NASA and JAXA for the Earth observation COVID-19 hackathon
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Do you have ideas on how Earth observation data can solve some of the challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic? If so, ESA, NASA and JAXA invite you to join a virtual Earth Observation Dashboard Hackathon taking place on 23-29 June. Registration for the hackathon opens today.
China delays supply mission to newly launched space station
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China has postponed the planned launch Thursday of a rocket carrying supplies for its new space station due to technical reasons, state media said.
The China Manned Space Agency gave no details on what the reasons were, and said only that a new launch time would be "determined later," the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The blast-off was to have taken place just days after China landed a rover on Mars, as it hustles ahead with its extraterrestrial ambitions.
Beijing has pumped billions into its space programme in a bid to make up ground on pioneers Russia and the United States, with ambitious projects in Earth orbit and the landing of uncrewed craft on the Moon and Mars.
But it was heavily reprimanded by the United States and many experts for a potentially dangerous breach of space etiquette for letting a massive rocket segment free-fall to Earth earlier this month after launching the core module of China's space station.