The Land of Crimson Clouds

 

WASHINGTON — NASA is considering approving by next April up to two planetary science missions from four proposals under review, including one to Venus that scientists involved in the project said could help determine whether or not that planet harbors life.

An international research team on Monday described evidence of potential microbes residing in the harshly acidic Venusian clouds: traces of phosphine, a gas that on Earth is produced by bacteria inhabiting oxygen-free environments. It provided strong potential evidence of life beyond Earth.

The U.S. space agency in February shortlisted four proposed missions that are now being reviewed by a NASA panel, two of which would involve robotic probes to Venus. One of those, called DAVINCI+, would send a probe into the Venusian atmosphere.

“Davinci is the logical one to choose if you’re motivated in part by wanting to follow this up – because the way to follow this up is to actually go there and see what’s going on in the atmosphere,” David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist working on the DAVINCI+ proposal, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The three other proposals include: IVO, a mission to Jupiter’s volcanically active moon Io; Trident, a fly-by trek to map Neptune’s icy moon Triton; and VERITAS, the second of the proposed Venus missions that instead would focus on understanding the planet’s geological history. NASA has said it may choose one or two of the missions.

The search for life elsewhere in the solar system has until now not focused on Venus. In fact, NASA in July launched a next-generation rover to look for traces of potential past life on Mars.

In light of Monday’s findings, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that is “time to prioritize Venus.” In a statement, Bridenstine said the selection process for the new potential missions will be tough “but I know the process will be fair and unbiased.”

Grinspoon, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said the selection process should be responsive to recent scientific discoveries.

“If there was a mission to Triton as a finalist, and then somebody with a telescope observed, you know, a soccer stadium on Triton, then arguably yeah, we should send a mission there,” Grinspoon said.

 Financial Times

 

 

 Head of Russian Space Program says Venus is "Russian Planet".

Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin called Venus a “Russian planet” on Tuesday at an industry exhibition taking place in Moscow.

The unusual comment followed the recent high-profile discovery of significant sources of phosphine gas in the planet’s atmosphere, a possible sign of life.

“Our country was the first and only one to successfully land on Venus,” Rogozin said, as quoted by The Moscow Times, referring to the country’s successful explorations of Venus in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Roscosmos piled on, writing that the “enormous gap between the Soviet Union and its competitors in the investigation of Venus contributed to the fact that the United States called Venus a Soviet planet,” in a statement quoted by Euronews.

The Soviet Union launched a number of Venera spacecraft to the hostile planet, which completed a number of firsts including the first orbit and crash-landing. Venera 7 eventually became the first lander to make a successful landing on Venus, in 1970, sending data back to Earth for 23 minutes before it succumbed to the planet’s hellish conditions.

NASA, in contrast, has never focused on Venetian exploration — though it did send an orbiter and a probe to the planet in 1978.

Roscosmos has announced plans to launch an independent expedition to Venus. Such a mission would follow an already planned collaborative mission with the US called Venera-D.

But Rogozin pushed back against the recent findings that suggest that life could exist in the planet’s atmosphere.

“The [Russian] spacecraft gathered information about the planet — it is like hell over there,” Rogozin said.

 

 Following the study’s publication Monday, the Breakthrough Initiatives program funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced that it will fund a study “into the possibility of primitive life” in Venus’ clouds led by Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 The Moscow Times

 

Mars Vision

There is something about this day, I was writing about October 4. It holds true, even if this time something happened one week earlier. On September 27, 2016 Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, unveiled his plan of colonizing Mars at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The plan calls for flying 10,000 spaceships to create a one million people colony on Mars. Fascinating concept no doubt. Each spaceship should carry 100 passengers. To launch such a spaceship the size of the rocket which would be needed exceeds anything that has been built so far. To demonstrate the scale a comparison of rockets was shown.

Wonder why there is no Space Shuttle in the table? Perhaps to somebody's surprise, the answer is because the Space Shuttle is not actually a rocket. However, the table is missing one rocket which deserves inclusion at least because it would be the closest by performance to the proposed Mars rocket. Energia launch rocket which was a vehicle to carry to orbit Soviet space shuttle Buran. Unlike the US space shuttle however, Energia was a true rocket capable of delivering any payload to orbit, and not only a shuttle.

Among many other things in the presentation, particularly interesting to me was the concept of a cluster of engines which are controlled in such a fashion that they could counteract a failure of any separate engine. It reminded me of something which I was working on for a number of years. This concept was implemented on Energia launch rocket and successfully tested in flight. Unlike it, the US space shuttle was designed with only three main engines fed from the huge fuel tank, and two solid fuel boosters, with practically zero ability to react in case of a failure. Intentionally or not, SpaceX seems learned the lesson. Their jumbo rocket is planned to be equipped with 42 engines.  

Musk has long said that he founded SpaceX in 2002 chiefly to help humanity colonize Mars. Becoming a multiplanet species would serve as an insurance policy, minimizing the risk of humanity's extinction should something terrible happen on Earth, he has said.

Musk reiterated that argument during the IAC presentation Tuesday. But he also put forth another reason why settling Mars is worth the trouble and the risk.

 "It would be an incredible adventure; it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine," he said. "Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future, and be inspired and want to live."

Can't say better!

Another step on the way to learn about the origins of the Solar System

The NASA Juno spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

Confirmation of a successful orbit insertion was received from Juno tracking data monitored at the navigation facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as well as at the Lockheed Martin Juno operations center in Littleton, Colorado. The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia.

For the first time we will peer below the dense cover of clouds to answer questions about the giant  gas planet and the origins of our solar system.

Juno's primary goal is to reveal the story of Jupiter's formation and evolution. Using long-proven technologies on a spinning spacecraft placed in an elliptical polar orbit, Juno will observe Jupiter's gravity and magnetic fields, atmospheric dynamics and composition, and evolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpsQimYhNkA

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Approaches Ceres

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has returned new images captured on approach to its historic orbit insertion at the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn will be the first mission to successfully visit a dwarf planet when it enters orbit around Ceres on Friday, March 6.

Orion

On December 5, 2014, after a long hiatus NASA performed successful launch of its new spacecraft intended for human flight. After the two-orbit unmanned test flight the Orion capsule returned in the Apollo-style splashdown.

As a matter of fact, the Orion spacecraft is designed on the same concept and looks very much like the somewhat enlarged Apollo.

The principal difference is that while Apollo carried three astronauts to the Moon, the bigger Orion is supposed to carry four astronauts to Mars.

This first launch was performed on board of the Delta IV Heavy rocket. In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. It is expected to be more powerful than any rocket ever built, at least in its final configuration.

It is worth noting the Elon Musk's statement about his SpaceX new rocket expected to be launched in 2015: “Falcon Heavy will carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V moon rocket, which was decommissioned after the Apollo program". Mr. Musk has to study history of space flight better. While his Falcon Heavy should be able to carry 53 ton to low Earth orbit, Energia heavy lift launcher was able to carry up to 100 ton.