Category: Robotics

A group of scientists from the USA, China and the Netherlands has calculated the launch of manned missions to Jupiter and Saturn.

The introductory data were the distances to these planets and the time to cover it. The manned mission to the remote parts of the Solar System will be the longest since the space race of the USSR and the USA in the last century.

Despite the rapid development of private space programs, all major space projects are paid for by governments. To assess the pace of progress, scientists analyzed the number of articles published annually on deep space exploration. This parameter is growing exponentially, now scientists publish about two thousand articles a year.

By calculating a combination of linear and exponential dependencies, the authors of the study derived an equation with variables such as the distance to Saturn (Jupiter), the time of the start of the space race and the first lunar mission, as well as the approximate time of landing on Mars. According to this model, people will be able to fly to Jupiter in 2103, and to Saturn in 2132.

The orientation system of the device began to give out frankly garbage telemetry that does not correspond to reality. At the same time, so far it performs its main function and keeps the antenna of the device pointed at the Ground (without this, communication with it will instantly stop). At the moment, it is unclear what is causing the problem and whether it can be fixed.

By the way, Voyager-1 is now located at a distance of 23.4 billion km from the Sun, in interstellar space, being the farthest man-made object from Earth. Its signal takes over 21.5 hours to reach our planet.

The probe was launched back in 1977.

The Chinese rover “Zhuzhong” has found evidence that water remained on Mars in liquid form much longer than previously thought. It is believed that Mars was wet at least 3 billion years ago — during the so—called Hesperian period, named after the Hesperides plateau – and later became dry and cold.

The data obtained by the rover suggests that there was water in the Utopia basin at a time when it should have already been dry and cold.

At the end of last week, the Ingenuity helicopter managed to restore communication with the Perseverance rover after a short-term disruption: its onboard computer turned off due to lack of power.

Ingenuity was put into a state of reduced power consumption because the charge of six lithium-ion batteries fell below a critical level. Now the heating will turn on at -40°C, previously it happened at -15 °C. The problem is probably related to the approach of winter. At this time, more dust appears in the Martian atmosphere, and temperatures drop lower. Dust blocks some of the sunlight falling on the solar panel of the helicopter, which charges its batteries.

Over the next 10 weeks, it will only get colder on Mars, so it’s hard to guess how long the helicopter will be able to heat its batteries. To date, Ingenuity has made 28 flights and we can only hope that the helicopter will be able to make a few more.

In terms of power, it surpasses the famous Hubble by 350 times.

The new heavy-duty telescope was named “Xuntian”. Experts expect that in 10 years of work he will explore 40% of the celestial surface.

As explained by Liu Jifeng, deputy director of the National Astronomical Observatory of China, in an interview with Xinhua, Hubble can observe a tiny territory of 1% of the size of a fingernail at arm’s length. Or, he sees only one sheep, while “Xuntian” captures thousands of them in the lens at once and all in high resolution.
This result was achieved through the use of a three-mirror anastigmatic approach. This gives advantages when conducting survey studies. The telescope is able to scan a huge part of the universe in a shorter time.

“Xuntian” is equipped with an 81 MP camera consisting of 30 detectors. It is capable of taking pictures in 17,500 square degrees of the sky in several ranges. The telescope, which is scheduled to launch at the end of next year, can observe exoplanets and conduct mapping.

Chandrayaan 3 will be India’s second attempt to land a rover on the lunar surface. The apparatus consists of a flight module and a descent platform with a lunar rover. The southern circumpolar region of the Moon was chosen as the landing site for the mission. The first attempt to land an Indian spacecraft on the Moon took place in September 2019. This task was assigned to the Vikram descent platform. She successfully separated from the Chandrayaan-2 orbital module and began to descend. But when the platform was at an altitude of only a few kilometers from the lunar surface, there was a failure in the braking engine. As a result, Vikram crashed. After this failure, the Indian Space Research Organization decided to retry the landing. Initially, Chandrayaan-3 was planned to be sent to the Moon back in 2020. But due to the pandemic, the launch eventually shifted by 2 years.

More than two weeks after the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, it has flown over 1,126,540 kilometers from Earth, more than three-quarters of its total path.

Prior to this, JWST had successfully deployed a secondary mirror, which is a key element of its working optics. The space telescope will then deploy the primary mirror segments.