12/16/2023 0 Comments Corona weather summerAccording to a Tuesday mission update, the team is seeing “end-of-sol states of charge in our batteries of more than 90% - an unbelievable number just days earlier.” Curiosity Fires Up Its DrillĬuriosity, for its part, is about to begin drilling a new rock sample from the Dinira slab. However, Ingenuity is beginning to respond once more.Ī few weeks ago, Ingenuity reported that it was “sleeping warmly” again after 260 Lazarus cycles. Only a hardware loop called the Lazarus circuit kept the space copter alive by rebooting the disoriented spacecraft from its daily brownouts. When the onboard heaters failed, Mars’ unrelenting cold was freezing Ingenuity’s batteries fully to death every night. The short days and dust storms of winter were preventing Ingenuity from charging enough to keep itself warm overnight. That includes solar-powered Ingenuity, which has struggled to keep up with nuclear-powered Perseverance. Winter is dust season on Mars, and everything on the surface that uses solar power is at risk. Meanwhile, Ingenuity is showing signs of wear after a brutal Martian winter. The ten sample tubes, as seen by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm. The rover is now ascending the Three Forks delta, which we’ve only seen from above. A ninth one is a sample of Mars’ atmosphere, and the last is a “witness” tube. Eight are filled with rock and Martian regolith (broken rock and dust). Over more than a month of careful labor, the rover put down ten titanium sample tubes for later retrieval. Perseverance is still preening after setting up its first-of-a-kind Martian sample depot. Ingenuity Charging Again, Perseverance Climbs Delta Slope Mission updates from Mars abound this week - even Curiosity checked in again. They will fly to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, atop a Falcon 9 rocket. 26, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The mission is scheduled to launch in a window that opens at 2:07 a.m. ISRO officials credit careful study of the first flight for SSLV-D2’s success.įrom left: Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, Pilot Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Commander Stephen Bowen, and Mission Specialist Sultan Alneyadi. Six months ago, the SSLV’s inaugural flight ended in a “shortfall in velocity,” resulting in its payload satellites burning up in the atmosphere. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) started off the week by announcing a successful second flight by its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, dubbed SSLV-D2. ![]() Plus, a team analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a deep-sky object they hope will prove the Milky Way’s galactic ‘twin.’ India’s Smallsat Launcher Aces Second Flight We’ve got updates from several Mars missions, a look back at Chelyabinsk ten years later, and a wildly optimistic plan for electricity on the Moon. News from the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake is grim, but NASA life sign detectors are helping rescue and relief workers hold out a stubborn sliver of hope. There’s another coolant leak on a spacecraft docking with the International Space Station. Hello, readers, and welcome to your Friday morning digest of the most important space news from here to the big empty.
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