1. China’s
Mars orbiter snaps amazing selfies above Red Planet
China's Tianwen 1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year's surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet.
The new images published by the China National Space Administration show Tianwen 1 above Mars' north pole, with its solar arrays and antennas on display, as well as a partial closeup of the orbiter and a view of the Red Planet's northern ice cap.
The Mars shots were taken by a small camera device released by the orbiter which then took images and sent them to Tianwen 1 via WiFi.
2. Big
hunk of failed Russian rocket crashes to Earth as space junk
The Persei upper stage of a Russian Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket crashed back to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion today (Jan. 5), hitting the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at 4:08 p.m. EST (2108 GMT).
"Persei reentry confirmed: 2108 UTC over 121W 14S in the South [Pacific]," astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who's based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said via Twitter today.
That latitude/longitude location corresponds to an empty patch of sea east of French Polynesia.
The fall ended nine days aloft for Persei, which got stranded with a dummy payload during a test flight that launched on Dec. 27. Persei apparently dug its own grave, failing to restart as planned for a second engine burn that would have sent it from low Earth orbit to a much higher geostationary perch.
Persei was quite a large piece of space debris. At liftoff, it weighed about 21.5 tons (19.5 metric tons) here on Earth, but most of that was propellant. That fuel was likely vented during the stage's stay in orbit, so the chunk that fell back to Earth probably tipped the scales at around 3.5 tons (3.2 metric tons), according to Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com.
Most of the rocket body almost certainly burned up in Earth's atmosphere today, according to McDowell, who analyzes publicly available tracking data. So don't expect to find any giant, smoking craters (if any pieces came down over terra firma).
"Any damage from surviving debris will be minor (it might dent some poor person's roof, but it won't wipe out humanity)," McDowell wrote via Twitter on Tuesday (Jan. 4).
3. NASA’s
TESS exoplanet mission reveals mystery of strange signals from dusty object
In observations gathered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers stumbled on yet another mystery, and a dusty one at that. In new research, a team of scientists examines potential causes of strange signals emitted by an object dubbed TIC 400799224.
Based on what astronomers have seen so far, the researchers suggest that this object might be a binary star, or double star system, in which one of the stars is surrounded by a massive cloud of dust, the rubble of perhaps a large asteroid, according to a statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, home to one of the researchers on the team.
4.
SpaceX lifts 49 Staralink Internet Satellites to orbit in 1st Launch of 2022.
SpaceX successfully launched its first Falcon 9 rocket of the year Thursday (Jan. 6), sending a new stack of Starlink satellites into orbit from Florida, before nailing a landing at sea.
The previously flown Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 4:49 p.m. EST (2149 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here in Florida, carrying a stack of 49 Starlink satellites.
Approximately nine minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first stage returned to Earth and touched down on the deck of SpaceX's newest drone ship, "A Shortfall of Gravitas," marking the company's first successful launch and landing of the new year.
"Falcon 9 has successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, carrying our stack of 49 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit," SpaceX engineer Jessie Anderson said during the launch broadcast.
SpaceX confirmed the successful deployment of the 49 Starlink satellites via Twitter about 1 hour, 20 minutes after liftoff.
5. James
Webb Space Telescope has fully unfolded
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team fully deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, successfully completing the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for science operations.
A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency, the Webb mission will explore every phase of cosmic history – from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.
“Today, NASA achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making. While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The James Webb Space Telescope is an unprecedented mission that is on the precipice of seeing the light from the first galaxies and discovering the mysteries of our universe. Each feat already achieved and future accomplishment is a testament to the thousands of innovators who poured their life’s passion into this mission.”
The two wings of Webb’s primary mirror had been folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket prior to launch. After more than a week of other critical spacecraft deployments, the Webb team began remotely unfolding the hexagonal segments of the primary mirror, the largest ever launched into space. This was a multi-day process, with the first side deployed Jan. 7 and the second Jan. 8.
Mission Operations Center ground control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore began deploying the second side panel of the mirror at 8:53 a.m. EST. Once it extended and latched into position at 1:17 p.m. EST, the team declared all major deployments successfully completed.
The world’s largest and most complex space science telescope will now begin moving its 18 primary mirror segments to align the telescope optics. The ground team will command 126 actuators on the backsides of the segments to flex each mirror – an alignment that will take months to complete. Then the team will calibrate the science instruments prior to delivering Webb’s first images this summer.
“I am so proud of the team – spanning continents and decades – that delivered this first-of-its kind achievement,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate in NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Webb’s successful deployment exemplifies the best of what NASA has to offer: the willingness to attempt bold and challenging things in the name of discoveries still unknown.”
Soon, Webb will also undergo a third mid-course correction burn – one of three planned to place the telescope precisely in orbit around the second Lagrange point, commonly known as L2, nearly 1 million miles from Earth. This is Webb’s final orbital position, where its sunshield will protect it from light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon that could interfere with observations of infrared light. Webb is designed to peer back over 13.5 billion years to capture infrared light from celestial objects, with much higher resolution than ever before, and to study our own solar system as well as distant worlds.
“The successful completion of all of the Webb Space Telescope’s deployments is historic,” said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb program director at NASA Headquarters. “This is the first time a NASA-led mission has ever attempted to complete a complex sequence to unfold an observatory in space – a remarkable feat for our team, NASA, and the world.”
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate oversees the mission. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the project for the agency and oversees the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and others.
Webb is expected to begin science observations this summer.
6. Virgin Orbit lands in Times Square NYC to ring NASDAQ bell
Another kind of countdown hit New York City's Times Square Friday (Jan. 7) as a commercial spaceflight company celebrated joining the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Virgin Orbit, the satellite-launching company founded by Richard Branson, brought one of its 70-foot-long (21 meters) rocket, LauncherOne, to Times Square amid New York City's first sizeable snow of the year. Company leaders rang the opening bell of the NASDAQ exchange located nearby, commemorating that Virgin Orbit became publicly traded on the exchange on Dec. 30.
"It's been an incredible year for the company," CEO Dan Hart told Space.com in a phone interview. "Our launches in 2021 were picture perfect — you see it in the reflection of a customer's smile when they contact their spacecraft."
"Now going public and having a rocket at the same time in Mojave getting ready for another launch in the next few days, it just feels like the pace is picking up and we're in the right place."
LauncherOne, unlike many rockets, begins its journey on the tarmac rather than a launch pad. The vehicle is carried aloft by a customized Boeing 747 jet dubbed Cosmic Girl, which releases the rocket at an altitude of about 35,000 feet (11,000 m). The rocket falls for four seconds then its first stage fires, reaching speeds as high as 8,000 mph (13,0000 kph); a second stage facilitates payload deployment.
The NASDAQ celebration comes just days before the first launch opportunity for the company's third commercial flight, on Jan. 12. Hart said he expected the team would complete a Launch Readiness Review over the weekend.
"Every spaceflight has its own personality," Hart said. "It's a very intense time." The flight, nicknamed "Above the Clouds," will launch from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California and will carry seven satellites for three customers.
The flight will carry four payloads for the Department of Defense. Details about these payloads are scarce, but the U.S. Space Force has said that they involve "demonstrat[ing] advanced space technologies.
7. Amazon’s
Alexa and Cisco’s Webex are about to fly on Artemis I Moon Mission.
For Artemis I, SLS will launch an Orion crew capsule around the Moon on a weeks-long flight — the first time the two vehicles will fly to space together. This is a critical test launch, so no people will be flying inside Orion, save for a mannequin. However, the fake passenger will have some machine companions. Lockheed Martin teamed up with Amazon and Cisco to mount a “human-machine interface” in the spot where Orion’s control panel will be in the future. Called Callisto after the companion of Artemis in Greek mythology, the box will have a voice-activated Alexa speaker, with its iconic blue ring light, and an iPad that runs Webex.
8. The
NASA Perseverance rover closed out 2021 on Mars by filling up a fifth sample
tube full of precious material that may someday be sampled on Earth.
The machine is on an ambitious mission to find signs of ancient life on the Red Planet, and is tasked with picking up several dozen samples to deposit for a planned “sample-return” mission in the works by both NASA and ESA.
The rover has actually used its core sampling system seven times so far, but the first time was to control for contamination and the second attempt was not successful — likely due to crumbling of the rock during drilling. (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, always game to make the most of a sample attempt, repurposed it for atmospheric studies.)
But the next five times were successful, with Perseverance happily collecting cores of the regolith (soil) during its traverse even late into December 2021. The rover has 43 sample tubes in full, so assuming the seven already used there are still 36 more waiting for deployment. A few more will be used for sample contamination control, but most will hopefully contain caches of Martian stuff for pickup early in the 2030s.
9. Supercomputers
Predict Vibrations for Orion Launch Abort Scenarios 
Our Ames Research Center in California is using cutting-edge computational fluid dynamics software and supercomputers to better understand how vibration levels during various launch abort scenarios might affect the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system. The colors in the visualizations indicate different degrees of pressure. The launch abort system is designed to safely pull Orion and astronauts inside the spacecraft away from the Space Launch System rocket in a split-second if an emergency happens during launch.
10. Environmental
Assessment for Proposed New Launch Site
In response to an inquiry from SpaceX, NASA is preparing to conduct environmental assessments to develop Launch Complex 49, a proposed new launch site at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 175-acre site, located north of Launch Complex 39B, would support the launch and landing of the company’s Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle. NASA and SpaceX are moving forward with the initial environmental analysis before concluding a potential agreement to develop the property.
11. GTRE
is planning to conclude deal with either Safron or Rolls-Royce for AMCA Mk2
Jets
DRDO's GTRE is planning to conclude a deal with either Safran or Rolls-Royce for the development of a new 110kN Class thrust engine that can be used to power India's AMCA Mkil jets that goes into product on in 2035 by mid of this year that will be directly under e preview of the PM's Office and will be taken as a national project for which clearance of the project will likely take place soon.
idrw.org has been told that nearly 8 new engines will be manufactured after inking the deal within three years from the date of agreement that will be used as ground technology demonstrator engines to be used to test the engine in various configurations with or without afterburner section initially after which the project moves to fabrication of 6 more flying technology demonstrator engine that will be used on the Flying Test Bed aircraft prepared for the program.
12. The Indian Space Research Organisation Likely To Test
Ground Landing Of Reusable Launch Vehicle
ISRO is targeting March 2022 to Test the Ground Testing of Reusable Launch Vehicle
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