Small Fission Power System Feasibility Study Final Report
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/studies/22 … al-report/
NASA unveils nuclear-powered Cryobot mission concept to hunt alien life
https://interestingengineering.com/inno … alien-life
Rolls-Royce Unveils Groundbreaking Nuclear Space Micro-Reactor For Powering Moon Bases
https://www.mensjournal.com/gear/the-gu … moon-bases-
Is Juice coming back home?
https://twitter.com/ESA_JUICE/status/17 … 5318438319
It is, but only briefly
Using its main engine, ESAJuice has recently changed its orbit around the Sun to put itself on the correct trajectory for next summer’s Earth-Moon double gravity assist – the first of its kind.
Past and future: this timeline lays out the milestones in our journey to Jupiter and Europa
]]>8 alternative spaceflight concepts that could take us to the stars
https://interestingengineering.com/list … cept-stars
Using existing technologies, it would take 18,000 years to reach our nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
How the JUICE mission will look for habitability on Jupiter's moons
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg … ers-moons/
Clipper JPL NASA
Our spacecraft is nearly assembled!
https://twitter.com/europaclipper/statu … 9945917872
GW
quoted paragraph from news story released on PBS website:
India’s successful landing comes just days after Russia’s Luna-25, which was aiming for the same lunar region, spun into an uncontrolled orbit and crashed. It would have been the first successful Russian lunar landing after a gap of 47 years. Russia’s head of the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos attributed the failure to the lack of expertise due to the long break in lunar research that followed the last Soviet mission to the moon in 1976.
]]>GW
]]>There's an old adage that says "Rocket science ain't just science, it's only about 40% science, the stuff that was written down. It's about 50% art (the stuff never written down), and 10% blind dumb luck." I would add that that's for production work. For new developments, the art and luck percentages are much higher. And, it applies to engineering generally, not just rocket work.
The art was never written down because managers never wanted to pay for writing down any more than they had to in the final reports. The art was passed-on one-on-one on-the-job from the old hands nearing retirement to the newbies.
There's now only a single handful of people still alive (indeed, if any at all) who actually worked on nuclear thermal rocketry from the 1950's to the mid-1970's when it was all shut down. So where are the newbies at any contractor going to learn the art that was never passed-on or written down? With only the written science to help, the odds of success are quite low indeed.
GW
]]>More info from Clipper and Juice
Our mission will study Jupiter's ocean moon Europa from space. But future expeditions might directly explore the surface of icy worlds like Europa or Enceladus, and drill into their watery depths. How to prepare? Start on Earth! Welcome to Alaska’s Juneau Icefield
https://twitter.com/EuropaClipper/statu … 9980188672
Two more ESAJuice instruments are working in space and have delivered their first data
But the commissioning wasn't entirely plain sailing.
https://twitter.com/ESA_JUICE/status/16 … 5094959104
on the topic of Pluto
New Horizons is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
The one question about Pluto that just won’t die down
https://www.slashgear.com/the-one-quest … -10706464/
Some say Europa might be a better place than Mars to find life, it is a frozen, icy world world but many scientists are confident that below the frozen surface lies a salt-water ocean, moving lifeforms and a rocky seafloor. What is underneath, some state ice floating on an ocean of liquid water compared to rock floating on magma on the Earth there might be extremophiles or good conditions to host life.
Europa Jupiter System Mission
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/studies/51 … m-mission/
PDF mission download link
]]>The working version of the RIME instrument (Radar for Icy Moons Exploration), incorporating a 16-m long version of the straight ‘dipole’ boom seen here under the model spacecraft, will probe up to 9 km deep under the surfaces of the gas giant’s main ‘Galilean’ moons.
The testing took place in ESA’s Hertz (Hybrid European RF and Antenna Test Zone) chamber based at ESA’s ESTEC technical heart in the Netherlands.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag … er_s_moons
Metal walls screen outside radio signals, while spiky foam interior cladding absorbs radio signals internally to create conditions simulating the infinite void of space.
This chamber’s hybrid nature makes it unique: Hertz can assess radio signals from antennas either on a local ‘near-field’ basis or as if the signal has crossed thousands of kilometres of space, allowing it to serve all kinds of satellites and antenna systems.
RIME is the #JUICE ice-penetrating radar by Thales_Alenia_S
https://twitter.com/ESA_JUICE/status/14 … 6055701507
, sounding the icy surfaces down to a depth of 9 km with vertical resolution up to 50m, it is key to mission success for its ability to directly identify & map the internal structure of the ice layers.
Scientists Find Unexpected Trove of Life Forms Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelf
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/29/228 … -ice-shelf
Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica's floating ice shelves, the seaward extensions of the continent's glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It's a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms. The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology, identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice shelves of the frozen continent. After drilling two holes through the Weddell Sea's Ekstrom Ice Shelf, the researchers collected seabed specimens in 2018. They found the biodiversity on this patch of seafloor to be "richer than many open water samples found on the continental shelf where there is light and food sources," according to a press release from the British Antarctic Survey. Four of the species studied experienced yearly growth rates "comparable with similar animals" in open water habitats.
Known as Europa Clipper, the six metric ton (~13,300 lb) spacecraft will instead launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for less than $180M. Had Falcon Heavy not been ready or NASA shied away from the challenge of switching launch vehicles, sending the ~$4.25 billion orbiter to Jupiter could have easily added more than $3 billion to the mission’s total cost. Instead, Europa Clipper will be able to launch one or two years earlier than SLS would have been ready and at a cost that’s practically a rounding error relative to the alternative.
Since there is now another rocket for the crews to make use of rather than the SLS for under 70 metric ton payloads....
Measuring approximately 3100 km (~1940 mi) in diameter, Europa is approximately 10% smaller and 30% less massive than Earth’s Moon. Both are similar balls of rock with solid metallic cores. However, based on observations taken over decades by spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes, odds are good that Europa also has a vast liquid water ocean insulated by 10-30 km (6-20 mi) of ice so cold that it’s as hard as granite.
Scientists estimate that Europa’s saltwater ocean is dozens to 100+ km (~62 mi) deep, covers the moon’s entire surface, and holds more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. Signs of a liquid ocean under Europa’s crust (and the crust of numerous other outer solar system moons, as it would turn out) were especially surprising because of the implication that those moons possessed vast heat sources. In the case of Europa, it’s believed that Jupiter’s immense gravitational pull and the moon’s close orbit are balanced in such a way that Europa is heated as those tidal forces violently stretch and squeeze its interior.
In an orbit 30% lower than Europa, tidal heating is so aggressive that the moon Io is littered with titanic volcanoes and lava lakes more than 200 km (~120 mi) across – so large that waves have been spotted on its surface with Earth-based telescopes. In short, because Europa appears to be in the right place to have enough – but not too much – tidal heating, it’s believed to be one of the best potential harbors of extraterrestrial life and Europa Clipper’s primary purpose is to pursue that potential astrobiological treasure trove.
NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for the Europa Clipper Mission
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa … er-mission
The ESA mission under tests?
https://socci.esa.int/web/juice