Zero Soil, Zero Daylight Veggies for Mars

Eden-ISS Greenhouse
(Image Credit: Eden-ISS)

A current and ongoing experiment at the Eden-ISS lab of Germany’s Neumayer Station III in Antarctica has successfully grown vegetables without dirt, daylight or pesticides. Certainly hydroponics have been a thing for many years, and this work borrows heavily from that discipline as a starting point, but they purposefully pushed the restrictions even further in order to simulate the harsh conditions which will need to be overcome when we first start trying to produce our food off-world.

These sorts of groundbreaking experiments and investigations, which are critical to our success as a space-faring people but not as ‘high profile’ as a rocket launch, are sure to be accelerating in the coming weeks and months. It is a testament to the focus and excitement again associated with the exploration of space, and making humanity multi-planetary, that institutions around the world are spinning up programs to facilitate our next steps into our larger destiny.

(Thanks to InterestingEngineering.com for the lead)

SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 First Launch! May 4th 4pm EDT

Falcon 9 Block 5 Under Construction
(Image Credit: NasaSpaceFlight.com)

SpaceX has been hard at work, collecting the lessons of rocket reusability and how to always improve. Those lessons are incorporated into the new Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 booster, the first of which is named B1046. The maiden voyage of the first Block 5 is scheduled for next week, May 4th at 4pm EDT from the hallowed pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Block 5 includes over 100 improvements, both large and small, according to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell, many of which are targeted towards making its reusability and rapid turn-around even more efficient than current models.

The pace of innovation keeps rolling with good speed, and it will be very important and exciting to see how the new version of what has become quite a workhorse and reliable rocket platform will be further improved.

NASA’s InSight Mars Lander Launch Preparations

NASA InSight Lander attaches to Atlas 5 Rocket

The InSight Mars Lander has been connected to the Atlas 5 rocket at Space Launch Complex 3-East Vandenberg Air Force Base, with a projected launch window of May 5th – June 8th. Regardless of when during that window the rocket flies, the lander is scheduled to arrive at Mars on November 26th. This close alignment of Earth and Mars which allows for a direct trip, only happens for this window of time once every 26 months.

The mission of the InSight lander (aka Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is to study the crust, mantle and core of the red planet to learn more about the early formation of planets in our solar system. This launch will also send two ‘CubeSat’s to space, where they will follow InSight to Mars and provide essential communication services.

Now that human spaceflight to Mars is seeming more and more realistic, it’s fun to closely observe a new launch like this, and to realize that while it’s still a long trip, it is not a year of travel. Before you even have a chance to get through your collected works of Shakespeare on your tablet or re-calibrate the hydroponics systems to optimize lettuce production, it will be time to buckle up for landing!

(Thanks to spaceflightnow.com for the excellent discussion of this new NASA lander)

Mars – Trace Gas Orbiter

Trace Gas Orbiter
(Paris Air Show, 2015)

The Trace Gas Orbiter, which is part of a joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has been orbiting Mars for over a year and is now in position to begin its research. These readings and results started to be gathered on April 21st and are now flowing back home for analysis and review.

Specifically, this probe is investigating the methane which is present in the Martian atmosphere, because it is very often associated with the former (or current!) presence of life. On Earth, an overwhelming percentage of the available methane is the result of biological processes. To add stakes to the game, current scientific understanding of the Martian atmosphere says that what is there should be destroyed by ongoing chemical reactions in several hundred years, though there it remains.

The orbiter has 2 main scientific instruments through which it will make this survey:
* the main spectrometer, NOMAD, operates in the infrared, ultraviolet and visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
* the color camera, CaSSIS, will build detailed 3D maps of the planet’s terrain.

The craft will eventually serve in a new capacity as a communications depot once the ExoMars Rover arrives in 2021, relaying signals from the ground based explorer back to mission control.

Falcon 9 Success – TESS Is Safely Deployed

TESS Orbits
(Image: NASA)

This week’s launch of the NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite was a smashing success, and we should be getting early results from the device this summer. On May 17th it will fly by the moon on it’s way to the intended highly elliptical orbit, and should reach that destination in mid-June. Then shortly there after we should expect to start getting initial data and results from this small but mighty craft!

With mankind finally taking bolder steps into the cosmos, this hunt for Earth-like neighbors couldn’t come at a better or more exciting time. Now if we can get Elon working on the faster-than-light drive we’ll be all set.

SpaceX – TESS Mission Rescheduled to Wednesday 4/18/2018

TESS Satellite
(Image Courtesy inverse.com)

The planned launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was scrubbed on Monday due to some last-minute rocket checks, and I for one am always happy to hear that they only will fly with every confidence of success. Fortunately there is another launch window available in a short time, and the launch has been rescheduled for Wednesday, April 18th, 2018 at 6:51pm Eastern time from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Remember, this is an exciting launch because they will attempt to land the Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship! Be sure to tune in to the live feed over at SpaceX, and enjoy the commentary and hopefully uninterrupted views of the entire launch.

SpaceX Falcon 9 TESS Mission Launch April 16, 6:32 PM EST

NASA TESS Mission
(Image Credit NASA)

Another SpaceX Falcon 9 launch is coming up soon, and this time they are again going to attempt a droneship landing of the Falcon booster. Something great to look forward to! The last two launches have seen them opt to expend that equipment into the briny deep because it had reached end-of-life, but this time around we will hopefully all see it make a perfect landing on the ‘Of Course I Still Love You’.

The mission is to deploy NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will greatly expand our ability to detect Earth-similar planets in orbit around distant stars. With a scope of over 200,000 stars as an initial aim of the mission, we can expect some truly exciting discoveries! If the comments of SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell today at the TED conference in Vancouver regarding the SpaceX ambition to not only reach Mars but to continue beyond our solar system hold merit, then such discoveries will be of great interest.

To learn more about the TESS mission, be sure to check out the informative NASA website dedicated to this new satellite and all of the discoveries it can enable!

Enhancing human radioresistance for deep space exploration and colonization

Human Radioresistance
Image from Futurism.com

Being able to write that headline in a non-ironic, non-fantastical context because we are finally living in ‘the future’ makes for a really wonderful evening. While the paper may be a stretch in places, it’s worth it for the 289 references alone. These footnotes cull together a dizzying array of bio and health and spacetech papers all seemingly converging on the ability to ‘enhance’ humans and make us more immune to the deleterious effects of off-Earth radiation.

The basic premise here, in this actual scientific paper which is published at oncotarget.com, is that tweaks can be made to the human body via gene therapy and other methods which will improve both resistance and repair to the damage caused by high-Linear transfer (high-LET) radiation. I think an excerpt from the abstract will say it best:

Herein, we lay the foundations of a roadmap toward enhancing human radioresistance for the purposes of deep space colonization and exploration. We outline future research directions toward the goal of enhancing human radioresistance, including upregulation of endogenous repair and radioprotective mechanisms, possible leeways into gene therapy in order to enhance radioresistance via the translation of exogenous and engineered DNA repair and radioprotective mechanisms, the substitution of organic molecules with fortified isoforms, and methods of slowing metabolic activity while preserving cognitive function.

Be sure to check out this exciting new paper, and enjoy the fact that we are living in a time where this sort of topic is not only seriously discussed, but about to be an important part of getting mankind to the stars.

(Thank you to Futurism.com for a their fantastic header image on this topic)

Marsbees

Marsbees

Marsbees

NASA has finally taken a page from the SpaceX playbook, and realizes how important marketing and branding is to this stage of the growth of spaceflight. Well, that’s not strictly fair since they were the original hypemen with the Apollo Program in the 1960s, they have just rediscovered their way.

I’m referring specifically to the fantastic new plan released by the agency to deploy a swarm of flying robots about the size of a bee, which can more effectively explore the variable surface of Mars without having to roll over top of it. This system would be paired with a new rover, which would act as a charging station for the marsbees as well as a communication hub to download their data and transmit it back to mission control.

What a fantastic plan! Now we are starting to think, and the leap in understanding of the martian surface and atmosphere will be tremendous when this system comes on line. Stay tuned to the Mars Gazette for all the updates!

(Thanks NASA !)

NASA’s Insight Lander Launch – May 5th

NASA Insight Lander
Image Credit: Alex Polimeni/Spaceflight Now

It is tempting to focus on the flash and success of SpaceX, owing to their masterful execution of new engineering triumphs and spot-on marketing efforts. However, it is also worth remembering that little to none of this would be possible without the granddaddy of them all – NASA – who is still working hard and producing valuable results in the Mars arena.

The new NASA Insight Lander is set to launch to the Red Planet on May 5th, which would give it an arrival date of November 26th 2018. Weighing in at 1,530 pounds, the primary mission of the lander is to study the planetary interior, attempting to detect tremors and studying heat which is coming from the mantle and core. “In essence, it will take the vital signs of Mars — its pulse, temperature and much more,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s science division. “We like to say it’s the first thorough checkup since the planet formed four-and-a-half billion years ago.”

For more details of this new Mars lander mission, please see the excellent article at spaceflightnow.com.