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Nasa to Fly Dragonfly a Drone-like Lander on Titan to Find the Traces of Life

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Our solar system and space beyond have always been the topic of interest for the humans. For a few years now, most of the big space agencies are exploring the Martian surface, and now, the American space organisation, NASA has decided to explore ‘Titan’, one of the 62 moons of Saturn.

Nasa has revealed that it will send a drone-like lander, named Dragonfly, on the surface of Titan, capable of flying 8 or 9 miles in an hour. The Dragonfly will be a 10-foot-long, and 10-foot-wide dual-quadcopter, similar to the size of the Mars rover and will be a look-alike of a giant drone.

Nas's drangonfly on Titan
Image Source: sciencemag.org

Since the Titan has the best environment for flying rather than walking or rolling over the surface, the drone is specifically designed to hop and fly over it. The gravity of Titan is equal to one-seventh of the Earth’s gravity and has a far thicker environment than that of the Earth, providing the suitable conditions for Dragonfly to fly in it.

According to Nasa, the drone will be exploring the surface of Titan and will discover places for landing over it. It will be collecting samples for research, observe the weather conditions and will notify the agency if it finds something unusual. The drone is equipped with drills and probes, to investigate the surface and has got cameras embedded to it, through which will it will be sending HD pictures of the objects found on Titan back to Nasa. Dragonfly will spend about 16 days at a single place and examine the environment. After 16 days, it will move further with the help of the eight rotors it possesses.

Elizabeth Zibi Turtle, the lead investigator of the mission, said during the announcement that Nasa will launch Dragonfly in 2026, which will land on the dune-filled equatorial region of Titan through a parachute. The drone will be back to Earth in 2034.

Nasa has already touched down the surface of Titan with the Huygens probe via the Cassini mission earlier, but according to Turtle, with Dragonfly, it will be a more in-depth mission and will discover major alien things on it.

“We know that Titan has rich organic material, very complex organic material on the surface. There’s energy in the form of sunlight, and we know there’s been water on the surface in the past. These ingredients, that we know, are necessary for the development of life, as we know it is sitting on the surface on Titan. They’ve been doing chemistry experiments, basically, for hundreds of millions of years, and Dragonfly is designed to go pick up the results of those experiments.” said Turtle.

With the rivers and other organic material found on Titan, it has always been considered as a prototype of Earth, before life on Earth. So the interest of the researchers has always been to find the traces of life over it.

SpaceX to Bring Free and Open Internet to All with the Launch of Starlink Project

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Last year, the aerospace transport agency SpaceX had launched the prototype satellite for its much-talked-about project, Starlink, a project that targets to provide internet to the whole planet through a network of the satellites. And now after a year-long wait, the company will finally be launching the first batch of satellites of Starlink’s “production” version with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 today at 10:30 PM EDT.

SpaceX Starlink project
Image Source: futurist.com

The company will launch 60 satellites with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launched from a launchpad based in Cape Canaveral. After the launch, the satellites will be arranged like a constellation to cover a part of the Earth like a blanket. Starlink project will be responsible to provide open, high speed and low-latency internet to anyone in the world.

The Starlink project revolves around the concept of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Once the satellites are positioned in the orbit, these will link to the small terminals on the surface of the earth. The satellites are able to easily make a connection with the ground terminals as the LEO satellites are positioned at a distance as close as 99 to 1,200 miles from the surface of the Earth. This way the internet speed will also be faster as compared to the conventional methods used to provide internet.

The 60 satellites have been placed like kernels on a corncob, and with the help of a spring, these will be sent to the orbit at a particular velocity.

The launch of those satellites is a challenge for the company, which if went favourably, will be a great achievement for the company. Otherwise, there are other rival companies of SpaceX too that are also looking forward to getting their hands on similar projects, including OneWeb and Amazon too.

But since the company had test-launched similar satellite TinTin A and TinTin B successfully in the month of February, there are higher possibilities of the success of the Starlink project. According to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX those 60 satellites are the “production design”, and in future, the company plans to launch as many as 12000 satellites to achieve that constellation network. If the experiment goes according to the plan, people will be able to access high speed and free internet by the mid of 2020.

Photon by Rocket Lab will Save Millions of Dollars of its Customers on Satellite Manufacturing

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The small satellite launcher Rocket Lab has unveiled ‘Photon’, a circular satellite platform, at the 35th Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs on Monday, which according to the company will help people reach to the orbit faster and save millions of money.

Rocket Lab is one of the private leaders in the launch and satellite services, and now the company is trying to get its hold on the complete satellite manufacturing solutions for its customers.

rocket lab photon
Image Source: climate.nasa.gov

With Photon, the company has brought a fully customizable satellite that can be modified according to the need of the client, and they do not have to build whole satellite hardware for their Low Earth Orbit missions, like technology demonstration or hosted payload. Photon will help create satellites that will be launched to the orbit on Rocket Lab’s upper stage of the Electron rocket.

In general, even if the satellite companies want to test or launch a satellite, or send delicate sensors or cameras to space, they have to create their own hardware spending millions of dollars, but now with Photon, the companies will get new option to cut the cost as well as reduce the risk.

Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, said in a statement, “Launch was the first bit that we needed to solve, but it always seemed crazy to me that the rocket builder did not also build the hardware for a satellite. Photon means satellite companies don’t need to invest millions of dollars in bringing together a team and manufacturing complex space hardware.”

Photon’s design is based on the successfully-flown kick stage, that was used in four out of five Electron launches. Photon has got the GPS support, a flight computer, a 3D-printed Curie engine and more. It has been equipped with propulsion, providing it with the capability of staying in the orbit for five years by adjusting with outer conditions like the altitude. The satellite can weigh up to 374 pounds (170 kilograms).

According to Beck, Photon is a complete satellite solution, that will help the customers to drop the coordination phase between different companies during the manufacturing of satellite, and Rocket Lab will be responsible for most of the work.

SpaceX Successfully Launched the 1st Security Space Mission For the US Military

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SpaceX, breaking its own previous records, launched the first national security space mission rocket on Sunday. The company had won the US Air Force’s National Security Space (NSS) contract, in 2016, and was planning to launch the rocket earlier last week. But, due to some bad weather conditions, the launch got delayed and finally, SpaceX’s 21st flight took off on Sunday.

The two-stage rocket, Falcon 9, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, along with the first GPS III satellite from the US Air Force. Lockheed Martin has built this $500 million GPS III satellite. The GPS has been given the nickname Vespucci. The GPS is owned by the U.S. military and operated by the Air Force.

gps3
Image Source: spacenews.com

The secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, said, “This next-generation GPS satellite is three times more accurate than previous versions and eight times better at anti-jamming. It’s the first in a series and nicknamed Vespucci after the 15th-century Italian explorer who calculated Earth’s circumference to within 50 miles (80 kilometres).”

The successful launch of the satellite can be considered as one of the victorious moment for Elon Musk as he had been trying hard to enter the market for military space launches dominated by Lockheed and Boeing Co, from years now.

In 2014, SpaceX had sued the US Air Force as it awarded the non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches, worth a multibillion-dollar, to United Launch Alliance. As a result, the Air Force agreed to open up competition for the next contract and in the next year, SpaceX won the $83 million contract for the GPS III after it demonstrated the reliability of Falcon 9 system and fulfilled all the certification requirements from the Air Force. The company dropped the lawsuit in 2015.

The GPS III contract will have a lifespan of 15 years. According to Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder, the satellite is the first to launch out of 32 in production by Lockheed under contracts.

The Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of the Launch Enterprise Systems Directorate at SMC, said, “This launch is a milestone for many reasons. For us, it marks the first competitively-awarded launch in over 10 years, the first national security space launch with SpaceX, and the first launch of a GPS III satellite. This really is an exciting time to be in the launch business.”

The other satellites in the series are still in the testing phase, and the next GPS III satellite may have its launch in the mid-2019.

India Successfully Launches GSLV-Mk III; Green Signal to Chandrayaan-2 & Manned Mission

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On Wednesday, the launch of India’s heaviest rocket, the GSLV-Mk III, carrying 3,423 kg communication satellite GSAT-29, from the ISRO’s Sriharikota centre (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), in Andhra Pradesh. The launch took place at 5.08 pm, carrying the GSAT-29 satellite, that has been set into the Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). With the help of the thrusters, the satellite will be placed in Earth’s Geostationary Orbit (GEO). The rocket has proven its ability by putting the satellite into the GTO just within sixteen minutes.

GSAT-29-lifts-off
Image Source: freepressjournal.in

The ISRO chairman K Sivan said, “Today India has achieved a significant milestone. The GSLV Mk III, India’s heaviest launcher, has launched GSAT 29. The launch completed the developmental flights of the rocket.”

The launch of GSLV Mk III is the second developmental flight of the rocket. It carried its first development flight on June 5, 2017, in which it successfully launched a 3,136 kg GSAT-19 satellite (the first heaviest satellite launched from India). ISRO has plans of sending the astronauts to space in the 2022 Gaganyaan mission with the help of the same rocket.

The rocket is 43.4 meters tall and weighs around 640 tonnes, having a capacity of carrying up to four tonnes of weight to space. It is a heavy-lift three-stage rocket. The first stage consists of two solid fuel strap-on engines, at the second stage it has a liquid propellant core, and the third stage is for a cryogenic engine. India is one of the six countries, including the US, Russia, France, Japan and China, to own the cryogenic engine technology.

The GSAT 29 satellite contains the communication transponders to provide communication in remote regions of India, specifically in Jammu Kashmir and the northeast, under the Digital India programme.

A spokesperson from ISRO said. “The GSAT 29 carries Ka/Ku-band high throughput communication transponders intended to meet the communication requirements of users including those in remote areas. In addition, several new technologies such as Q/V-band payload, data transmission through optical communication link will be demonstrated. This will help in realising future advanced satellites.’’

ISRO has been doing amazingly well in its space missions for the past few years, and now it intends to have ten more launches before the new year. And the successful launch of the GSLV Mk III rocket has confirmed the moon mission Chandrayaan 2, that will be carried out in January next year and India’s first human spaceflight programme scheduled for 2022.