Finding And Communicating With E.T.

Posted on May 29, 2022 by jacksmars

Today I get to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart-life on other planets and moons. I have no doubt that life existed on Mars and still exists underground today. I feel that advanced and intelligent life once existed on Mars. Why don’t we see ruins of cities from long ago? It is because this advanced life lived in caves and underground structures.

I also believe that a group of meteors from Mars launched life on our planet. Whatever life we find on Mars will have a lot of similarities to life on earth.

Intelligent life could have taken infinite possibilities when we go further out in our solar system and to planets in other galaxies. How do we recognize it and communicate with it?

Some astrophysicists have come up with some “think outside the box” ideas published in The Economist magazine this week. I will share these with you now:

How to improve the search for aliens

So far, people have sought Earthlike biology. That will change

May 25th 2022 (Updated May 26th 2022)

Give

For decades, astronomers searching for life beyond humanity’s home planet have had a simple strategy: follow the water. Water is the sine qua non of terrestrial life and as thousands of new planets have been discovered orbiting faraway stars, the greatest levels of excitement have usually been reserved for those in the “habitable zones” of their systems—in other words orbiting at a distance where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface.

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The next step has been to look for biosignatures—molecules which might betray the existence of biological processes. These could include oxygen or methane in a planet’s atmosphere. On Earth, those molecules persist only because living things constantly regenerate them.

The problem with both these approaches is obvious—they are restricted to finding life as currently known. But, as Natalie Grefenstette, an astrobiologist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, points out, “we don’t know if other forms of life would necessarily have the same signatures, if they would have the same metabolisms, if they would be based on the same genetic molecules or any of the same molecules at all.” Life on Earth could have evolved in the way that it has because the specific chemistry of the planet at crucial times gave rise to selective pressures which might not be present on other worlds. “And so we’ve been thinking—if life were different, how do you even look for that?”

Exotic beasts and how to find them

From May 16th-20th, at AbSciCon, a biennial astrobiology meeting organised by the American Geophysical Union and held this time around in Atlanta, Georgia, astrobiologists including Dr Grefenstette considered that question and discussed ways to expand their searches in the coming decades, so that they might stand a better chance of recognising more exotic forms of life than are currently being sought. To do this, they will need several strategies.

The first begins by imagining the various different chemistries which exotic forms of life might employ, and using those to devise a wider set of potential biosignatures. On Earth, the most important molecules of life almost all involve carbon atoms. These are particularly versatile because they can form chemical bonds with up to four other atoms, including other carbons, to create complex molecular structures. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe and the molecules it forms can survive for long periods in the sorts of temperatures and pressures found on Earth’s surface.

An exotic lifeform might plausibly, however, rely on silicon instead of carbon. Silicon sits just underneath carbon in the periodic table and thus shares with it the ability to bond with up to four other atoms. Familiar examples of the results are most of the huge diversity of minerals which make up rocks, for silicon is the second most common element in Earth’s crust. It is also the seventh most abundant in the universe, which means there is plenty of it available for potential silicon-based lifeforms to use.

Alien life might, though, have its roots in something yet more exotic. In the laboratory, metal oxides known as polyoxymetalates have shown some remarkably lifelike abilities, such as being able to form membranes (dubbed “inorganic chemical cells” by Lee Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow) and being able to assemble, with some chemical help, into complex structures reminiscent of dna.

Whatever its building blocks, though, life will need a solvent in which to function. On Earth, that solvent is water.

Water is a good solvent because it is a “polar” molecule, meaning its electrical charge is unevenly distributed. In a molecule of H2O the oxygen has a slightly negative charge and the two hydrogen atoms are, by way of counterbalance, slightly positive. This polarity causes water molecules to stick to similarly polar molecules, making them good at dissolving other chemicals—which, in turn, once thus in solution, can interact with each other. That enables water to support the myriad functions of life, and no other abundant chemical on Earth matches this versatility.

Other chemicals can, however, fulfil some of the roles water plays. Life elsewhere might, perhaps, have found a way to employ ammonia. This, like water, is polar, and therefore good at dissolving things. It is not quite as good at doing so as water, though, and it also stays liquid (at terrestrial atmospheric pressures, at least) only between -78°C and -33°C. But that would make it available in liquid form in frigid places such as Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Titan and Enceladus, moons of Saturn, where water itself would be frozen.

Possible solutions

Titan in particular is believed to host vast ammonia-rich underground lakes which might act as cradles for chemically exotic life. But other possibilities exist there, too. Dr Grefenstette says astrobiologists are also intrigued by the lakes of liquid methane that cover Titan’s surface (the average temperature of which is -179°C). Methane exists on the surface of Titan in much the same way that water does on Earth—in liquid, gaseous and solid forms.

Methane is not a perfect solvent for life. It is not polar and therefore not as versatile in that regard as water. And it remains liquid (again, at terrestrial atmospheric pressures) only between -182°C and -161°C. Since chemical reactions proceed more rapidly at higher temperatures, on Titan’s surface they would be pretty slow. But astrobiologists hypothesise that life composed of different materials to those on Earth—smaller hydrocarbons and nitrogen, for example—could feasibly eke out an existence there.

Perhaps the most promising general-purpose alternative to water is formamide, a colourless organic liquid composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (all elements common in the universe) that can dissolve many of the same chemicals as water—including proteins and dna. It can also stay liquid at up to 210°C, making possible a large range of chemical reactions on planets with more extreme surface temperatures than Earth’s. Formamide is such an intriguing alternative to water that some astrobiologists even argue that it might have been the main solvent used by the earliest forms of terrestrial life. This chemical has been located in vast clouds at the edge of the solar system and also in more distant nebulae where stars are forming, according to Claudio Codella, an astronomer at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence, Italy. Finding it definitively on another world would surely pique interest among those searching for exotic forms of life.

The units of life on Earth—cells—are contained within lipid membranes. These keep the chemical reactions which sustain life concentrated inside a cell, and the exterior world outside it. Such membranes would not be stable in a medium such as liquid methane. But exotic lifeforms on Titan might instead build membranes from structures called azotozomes. These are molecules, currently hypothetical, made from nitrogen-rich organic compounds, according to Paulette Clancy, a chemist at Cornell University who came up with the idea. They would, she thinks, be capable of operating in the ultra-low temperatures of a place like Titan.

Or perhaps there could be life without any membranes at all. Lifelike chemical reactions have been shown to occur on the surfaces of certain minerals, including pyrites and various clays. These often contain networks of pores and cavities that could serve the compartmentalising function of lipid-based cells. Or biological reactions might be contained within drops of liquid floating in planetary atmospheres.

Finally, life needs to store information about itself and pass that information on to its offspring. Terrestrial organisms do this using molecules called nucleic acids. These employ four different molecular units known as nucleotides to carry a code of instructions that can build 20 different amino acids, which then link up in various combinations to form proteins. But laboratory experiments and samples from meteorites show that many more nucleotides and amino acids than these exist. Though they have not been incorporated into life on Earth, they could form the basis of alternative systems of genetic information.

Identifying exotic life forms made from different materials is thus a matter of widening the search from Earthly biosignatures—oxygen, methane and so on—to include chemicals that might be made by various imagined biochemical systems. One tool for this search is the mass spectrometer, a device that ionises samples and then filters those ions by mass.

Mass action

Mass spectrometers have been the eyes and ears of decades of space exploration, said Luoth Chou, an astrobiologist at Georgetown University. Successive generations of these devices, flown into space, have permitted researchers to characterise chemicals everywhere from the surface of Mars, via the atmospheres of Venus and Titan, to the plumes of water ejected from geysers on Enceladus.

The next generation of mass spectrometers, though, will be smaller and yet more powerful. And they will be carried aboard a range of missions far and wide into the solar system. Dragonfly will hop around the surface of Titan in the mid-2030s and take a close-up look at the molecules there. davinci will orbit Venus in 2031. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer will explore the Jovian satellite system, starting in the early 2030s. And Europa Clipper’s mass spectrometer will provide a high-resolution characterisation of that body, beginning at the end of this decade.

If exotic life does exist, however, it could use chemistry that goes way beyond anything astrobiologists can currently imagine. To get around that means thinking of biosignatures which depend not on chemistry but rather on the patterns of behaviour associated with life.

There is no universal definition of life. But astrobiologists often default to nasa’s operational definition of “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”. Living things self-replicate and make large amounts of specific complex molecules (for example, proteins or dna). They also draw energy and consume resources from their environments to fuel their metabolisms. Based on these ideas, so-called agnostic biosignatures could include looking for excesses in certain elements or isotopes in an environment, or for specific patterns within groups of chemicals that cannot be explained by abiotic processes alone. Peter Girguis, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, told the AbSciCon meeting that this new class of biosignatures would be “indirect proxies for a living organism”.

One example would be to search for gradients in an environment—zones of sharp change in, for example, heat or electrical voltage or chemicals. According to Dr Girguis, “all living organisms that we know of establish gradients of one kind or another to maintain themselves at a kind of disequilibrium from the environment.”

Some of these gradients occur at cellular and microscopic scales, and can be incredibly sharp and therefore distinguishable from non-biological processes. Others are larger-scale. In marine sediments on Earth, for example, microbes work together to oxidise methane, a process tied to the chemical reduction of sulphate ions. “We see gradients in methane and sulphate concentration over centimetres, and they’re really pronounced,” says Dr Girguis. “This is a biological manifestation of their activity and yet this is detectable by simply making abiotic measurements.”

Another tactic would be to study the complexity of the molecules at a particular location. Biological molecules are selected and shaped by evolution to do specific jobs within an organism, such as assembling or disassembling other molecules, or signalling between cells. That often requires unusually energetic chemical processes, which in turn need the help of catalysts. On Earth, these catalysts are protein molecules called enzymes which are, themselves, the product of evolution. Finding complex molecules of any sort might thus be considered a potential biosignature.

A related concept is what Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at nasa Ames Research Centre, calls the “Lego principle”. The idea here is that life is recognisable by its use and reuse of a selected set of molecules. Abiotic samples scooped up from an alien world would be expected to contain a wide array of organic molecules, some of them in fairly small amounts. A biological sample, by contrast, would contain large numbers of just a few distinctive molecules. Molecules that are chemically similar (left-handed and right-handed versions of an amino acid, for example) might have markedly different concentrations if they came from a biological sample, whereas they would probably be present in near-equal numbers in a non-biological one. Spotting patterns like these would be independent of the specific biochemistry involved.

The past as a clue to the present

Such methods would widen the astrobiological search wherever it was possible to obtain a sample—in other words any world in the solar system to which researchers can send a probe—and apply to it tools such as miniaturised, space-hardened mass spectrometers. For planets going around other stars, though, things are obviously trickier. Few people think human beings or their machines will visit any of the rapidly expanding population of these exoplanets anytime soon. Astrobiologists are instead considering other ways to search for new agnostic biosignatures. Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, in Washington, dc, presented a technique that applies what is known as network science to data about exoplanets’ atmospheres. These data can be gathered using telescopes on, or orbiting, Earth.

Any chemical system, the chemicals within an atmosphere included, can be represented by a so-called network diagram, in which molecules that react with each other in some way are connected by lines. Dr Wong showed that, when compared with those of other planets in the solar system, Earth’s atmospheric network stands out like a sore thumb. In fact Earth’s network more closely resembles those of biological systems, such as marine food webs. This technique is a work in progress and Dr Wong said it would need a lot more development before astrobiologists could include it in their life-detection toolkit. But it is an intriguing approach.

Dr Girguis told the meeting that future searches for exotic life in the universe would do well to learn from mistakes made by explorers searching for life in Earth’s oceans in the 19th century. In one expedition, for example, Edward Forbes, a prominent naturalist from the Isle of Man, was dredging in the Aegean Sea. He noticed that the farther plants and animals were from the water’s surface, the less well they thrived. In 1843 he extrapolated his incomplete data to propose his azoic hypothesis, which stated that life would not exist at all below 550 metres.

It took several decades to prove him wrong, an effort that involved some of the first scientific endeavours designed to explore the deep ocean—such as the Challenger expedition that sailed from 1872 to 1876. These, said Dr Girguis, were some of humanity’s earliest life-detection missions. “Let’s not be too quick to extrapolate,” he warned his fellow astrobiologists. “And let’s never underestimate the capacity of living organisms.” ■

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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Life, but not as we know it”

Science & technology

May 27th 2022

A Review Of Space Forces

Posted on May 27, 2022 by jacksmars

Review: Space Forces

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 23, 2022

Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space
by Fred Scharmen
Verso, 2021
hardcover, 272 pp.
ISBN 978-1-78663
US$26.95

Later this week, space enthusiasts will gather in Crystal City, Virginia—a mystical name for a mundane neighborhood of commercial and residential high-rises near Washington’s Reagan National Airport—for the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference (ISDC), the first in-person edition of the conference since 2019. As in past years, this year’s ISDC will have a track on space settlement, along with a student space settlement competition and a new “Rothblatt Space Settlement in Our Lifetime Prize Business Plan Competition.” (The conference also includes tracks on space elevators and space solar power, completing the holy trinity of unrealized but unwavering dreams of space advocates.)

Much of those discussions will focus on the how of space settlement (farming is one particular focus area) but less about the why of space settlement: why do some people want to live in space, a far more hostile environment than even the most inhospitable places on Earth? That’s a question that Fred Scharmen grapples with in Space Forces, a book that offers a historical and philosophical view of various visions of humanity living beyond Earth.

“Whether or not the dream of successful permanent life in space is eventually assured, it seems inevitable that people will continue to try and make that future happen,” he concludes.

The visions of space colonies espoused by Gerard K. O’Neill a half-century ago, the start of a through line that extends to the ISDC space settlement sessions today, is one chapter of the book. Scharmen looks at other views of space settlement, such as in the fiction and non-fiction of Arthur C. Clarke and Wernher von Braun. He goes back even earlier, to writings by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky that was infused with the “cosmism” school of thought of the early 20th century that sought to optimize the universe for humanity, as well as J.D. Bernal, the British scientist who proposed space settlements in the 1920s.

The book’s final chapter looks at the present day and the two billionaires with their own different visions of space settlement: Jeff Bezos, who seeks to breathe new life into O’Neill’s vision of space settlements in free space; and Elon Musk, who continues to focus on settlements on Mars. Both visions motivate their employees and supporters, even if realizing them is still far in the future.

He offers an interesting comparison of the two: “Where Bezos takes apart whole industries and whole worlds, putting them back together in ways that suit his company’s needs—and sometimes with disruptive results in the world outside—Musk will simply make a version of the thing that is more efficient, more cost-effective, and cleaner—without requiring any massive change to lifestyles or the status quo.” While that may apply to other industries, it’s not clear it’s applicable to space. Bezos has, so far, done little to take apart the space industry, as Blue Origin moves as a glacial pace compared to Musk’s SpaceX. And while SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is, in some respects, a more cost-effective replacement to existing launch vehicles, that assessment overlooks the disruptive capabilities of rocket reusability, not to mention the industry-reshaping Starlink constellation and Starship vehicle.

Scharmen views all of these with a skeptical eye, unconvinced of their motivations, particularly those based on economic rationales: “If existing economic structures that maximize return on investment are extended into space, capitalism will need someone with desires and needs to exploit.” However, he doesn’t expect anything he writes to change that. “Whether or not the dream of successful permanent life in space is eventually assured, it seems inevitable that people will continue to try and make that future happen.”

There is not much organized opposition to space settlement. Scharmen mentions a 2019 conference in Seattle called the Salish Sea Anti-Space Symposium that the backers described as “a first of its kind event to say NO TO SPACE EXPLOITATION!” that he describes as an opportunity to critique not just Bezos and Musk “but the idea of space travel and space settlement altogether.” The event’s website, preserved since that 2019 event (first and only of its kind, perhaps), includes an illustration of a person stabbing an astronaut in the back of his helmet, air whooshing out, with the words “Don’t Let ’Em Leave”. Scharmen doesn’t mention this violent imagery or the topics discussed at event, including one speaker who gave a talk on “how A Conspiracy of Witches has been hidden in plain site, [sic] culminating in participation in the Apollo Mission, a sacred journey for practitioners of secret female technologies.” It’s hard to take such critics seriously, but perhaps movements get the critics they deserve.

This week’s ISDC won’t be just about space settlement and other long-term visions. There will be talks about nearer-term activities, including efforts to develop commercial space stations by the end of the decade to succeed the International Space Station—not exactly a O’Neillian settlement at L5, but something more realistic for the foreseeable future, if still challenging. Space advocates will continue to dream of crystal cities in space, but for now may have to settle for a studio apartment with a view.

Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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Barnstorming The Moon

Posted on May 27, 2022 by jacksmars

Barnstorming the Moon: the LEM Reconnaissance Module

by Philip Horzempa
Monday, May 23, 2022

The Recon LEM mission was designed to scout landing sites for Project Apollo. At that time, nothing was known of the small-scale characteristics of the Moon’s surface. We had no idea if there would be areas smooth enough to allow a landing by Apollo’s Lunar Module. Gaining that information was just as critical as building the machines that would land a pair of astronauts on the Moon. This was the first time that humanity needed to get serious about certifying landing zones on an alien world. But, how to do that?

In an effort to find out, NASA issued a request for proposals (RFP), specifically MSC-63-624P, titled “Reconnaissance System Study for Manned Lunar Missions.” In response, the Grumman Aircraft company in September 1963 put forth a proposal that would use their LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) for this task.[1] The modified craft, hereinafter referred to as the Recon LEM, would survey candidate sites with a suite of cameras packed in a dedicated module.

Another option for site verification was the Lunar Mapping & Survey System (LMSS) project (see “Project Upward: hauling the NRO’s GAMBIT to the Moon”, The Space Review, September 15, 2014). The LMSS was a joint project between NASA and the NRO with the classified name of Upward. It was designed to carry Kodak’s KH-7 camera either in the Apollo Service Module or in a modified Gambit satellite docked to the Command Module

By contrast, Grumman’s Recon LEM would become a free-flyer once it arrived in lunar orbit. The LEM was ideal for this mission, able to change its orbital altitude and inclination with ease. After undocking from the Apollo Command Module (CM), it would use its Descent Propulsion System (DPS) to enter an orbit that dipped as low as eight nautical miles (15 kilometers) above the lunar surface.

The key element in the Grumman proposal was the LEM and the suite of cameras that it would carry in a payload module attached to the Ascent Stage. Equally important, the Recon LEM would carry a bevy of landing probes. These craft would alight on the Moon’s surface, providing ground truth on the nature of candidate sites. The goal of the Recon LEM was obtaining the required reconnaissance data during a very compressed timeline. The longest proposed mission spanned two days in orbit, while the shortest completed its mission within five lunar orbits, or 10 hours. It was vital to get some amount of detailed data, even if all of the target sites could not be surveyed. Some information, on some sites, would be a gold mine compared with the utter lack of knowledge at that time.

A secondary goal was wide-area mapping of the Moon. The best resolution from Earth-based telescopes was on the order of several hundred feet (hundreds of meters). To better understand the Moon, maps with a resolution of tens of feet (several meters) were required. The cartographic camera onboard the Recon LEM could provide the photos needed to create those maps. The basic game plan was for the Recon LEM to undock from the CSM (Command and Service Modules) and transfer to lower-altitude orbits. This would enable the highest resolution for the photographic surveys.

Equally important as photography was the payload of Drop Probes. As it barnstormed the Moon, the Recon LEM would drop these small landers at potential Apollo sites. Several thousand kilograms of probes were attached to the LEM Descent Stage and they were designed to survive either a soft or hard landing. Their main mission was on-site certification of a landing area. The secondary function of the probes was their use as landing beacons for a LEM. It was felt that smooth, safe patches of terrain might be scarce. If a lander was able to certify a site, then its onboard beacon would guide the LEM to what could be a patch of ground only a few hundred feet (about a hundred meters) in diameter. A beacon would provide the guidance required to steer a descending LEM away from hazardous terrain.

The Recon LEM, in some ways, was more akin to a reconnaissance aircraft. The sporty, lightweight LEM was able to survey sites on the Moon from altitudes at which the U-2 flew over the Earth.

During this era, Grumman had proposed modifying the LEM for a variety of missions. Its design was inherently flexible, allowing it to serve as a lunar taxi, high Earth orbit relay satellite, or a lunar shelter. In the end, the only project to use a modified LEM was the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) project. However, even that effort was later dropped when the ATM design was modified to be launched as an integral part of the Skylab orbital workshop.

For the mission to survey the Moon, a payload bay carrying the survey cameras was attached to the top of the Lunar Excursion Module. This section was pressurized and could be accessed by opening the top hatch of the Ascent Stage. A new hatch was located in the top of the instrument module to allow normal docking with the Apollo CM.

In this view, the rendezvous radar antenna has been relocated atop the recon package. It is the smaller of the two antennas, with the larger one designed for radar scans of the Moon.

This diagram illustrates how the modified LEM could be accomodated within the existing SLA (Saturn LEM Adapter). The Recon Bay atop the LEM Ascent Stage would normally crowd the Service Module SPS engine bell. However, the omission of landing legs allowed the vehicle to be lowered succificiently to overcome that packaging problem.

A variety of cameras were carried in the Recon module. In this diagram, an astronaut is “standing” on the Ascent Engine cover while his upper body is inside the payload module. He is shown using the spotting telescope equipped with a camera. To quote the Grumman report: “The 48 in. camera and telescope combination would be the primary site verification instrument on board. With it, a crewman can inspect the terrain for interesting features during a low-altitude pass, zoom the eyepiece to higher power at particular points, and record the image with the camera.”

The array of cameras are indicated in this overhead view. The large circle to the left is the hatch that led to the Ascent Stage. Camera #1 is the spotting telescope. Device #2 is a large panoramic camera with a suggested focal length of 24 inches (60 centimeters). It could produce high-resolution photographs with a wide field of view. Device #6 is a wide-angle viewfinder, while #3 is a cartographic camera with a focal length of six inches (15 centimeters) and a nine-by-nine-inch (23-by-23-centimeter) film format.

The Recon LEM, in some ways, was more akin to a reconnaissance aircraft. The sporty, lightweight LEM was able to survey sites on the Moon from altitudes at which the U-2 flew over the Earth. The Grumman report mentions a 24-inch (60-centimeter) focal length camera, but provides no additional details. However, the reconnaissance camera onboard the U-2 spy plane may have been a candidate for that role. In fact, the outline in the Grumman report bears some resemblance to that used on the U-2.

At an altitude of 15 nautical miles (28 kilometers), the U-2 camera had a resolution of 2.5 feet (0.8 meters). At the Recon LEM’s closest approach of eight nautical miles (15 kilometers), this camera was close to providing Grumman’s resolution goal of one foot (30 centimeters) for the Apollo site survey.

Probes and beacons

The mission of the Recon LEM included deploying small landers at each candidate site. There were four types of probes, with weights ranging from 400 to 1,000 pounds (180 to 450 kilograms). The Grumman report provides few details of these devices and their payloads. It does list the two categories of data needed to verify a site, i.e., surface bearing strength and roughness of terrain.

This color-coded diagram highlights the various classes of Probe designs. There were 4 designs in total, and this illustrates how they would be attached to the LEM Descent Stage.

Probe 1: Soft Lander, 1,050 lbs. (475 kg)
Probe 2: Semi Soft Lander, 300 lbs. (135 kg)
Probe 3: Hard Lander, 850 lbs. (385 kg)
Probe 4: Hard Lander, 425 lbs. (190 kg)

The main goal of these probes was to verify, from the surface, the suitability of sites for Apollo landings. To quote the Grumman report: “Potential probe designs… can range from simple unguided hard-landers to sophisticated soft-landers with inertial platform guidance systems, with a corresponding increase in landing accuracy.” The report points out that the “actual number carried would be a function of the size and weight of the selected probe; however it appears that eight hard-landers can be easily accomodated.”

There are sparse details on the capabilities and design of these landing craft. The design of the small landers developed for the Ranger program may provide some insight. Outwardly, the Ranger landers resemble Probe 4 from the Recon LEM document. A small solid rocket motor (SRM) decelerates the probe, allowing it to survive a rough landing. After touchdown, its main task is a basic survey of the site, assessing its suitability for Apollo missions. Surveyor was designed to perform detailed measurements, but these simpler probes would serve as a backup for those more sophisticated soft landers.

Early in the Apollo program, NASA planned to land an automated LEM on the Moon equipped with a TV camera to image its landing site.

At this point in the Apollo program, there was an emphasis on the use of beacons to assist a Lunar Module. Since so little was known about the safety of the lunar surface, it seemed that the best plan would be to have landing aids emplaced on a certified site. When the LEM entered its final descent phase, it could home in on the signals generated by those devices. The circular error probability (CEP), i.e., targeting precision, of a descending LEM was a crucial factor in preparing for the first Apollo landing. The presence of a beacon would allow the Lunar Module to land within 100 feet (30 meters) of the center of a designated site.

The importance of beacons was evident at a meeting held to discuss landing aids that could be carried to the Moon by the Surveyor landers.[3] The subject was “the requirements and status of projects underway as they related to the landing aid problem.” A variety of options was discussed, including a Surveyor-deployed transponder. Active beacons as well as passive devices such as corner reflectors were also on the agenda. There was even consideration given to visual markers. These would be “visible during terminal phase and landing only; visible during terminal phase and landing as well as from lunar orbit; or visible during terminal phase and landing from lunar orbit as well as photographically from the unmanned Lunar Orbiter.”

The smallest probes carried by the Recon LEM may have had a very basic goal. The Grumman report stated “preliminary indications are that a relatively simple hard-lander with a beacon could perform an acceptable mission. The primary design problems would be in the areas of a survivable instrumentation and communication payload, and an adequate power supply for the beacon. However, these do not represent serious design problems, since hardware has already been developed in these areas (e.g., Ranger impact capsules and SNAP 3 plutonium radioisotope).” One option for a simple probe is seen in this illustration from a trade magazine of that era. It included an array of X-band antennas that would provide a radio beam detectable by the LEM rendezvous radar.

NASA interest in precursor probes continued up to 1965 when it studied the Lunar Survey Probe (LSP) concept. In response, Hughes Aircraft proposed using a modified Surveyor lander that could be deployed from an orbiting Apollo spacecraft.

Though not mentioned in the Grumman report, there were other ideas afloat at the time for non-imaging tasks for drop probes. In their Upward proposal to NASA, Eastman Kodak outlined what could be accomplished: “The crew can also take action of another sort; specifically, the placement of special devices on the lunar surface. Examples might be: explosive [charges], the effects of which could be photographed on impact with the surface or when radio controlled (detonation) was induced on a subsequent orbit, surface dyes whose rate of disappearance would be recorded, objects ejected from the satellite to mark the surface, or flares to illuminate polar valleys hidden from sunlight.”[2] Experiments of this type were to be deployed by a proposed series of advanced Lunar Orbiters.

There was one more effort that might have provided ground truth. Early in the Apollo program, NASA planned to land an automated LEM on the Moon equipped with a TV camera to image its landing site (Aviation Week and Space Technology; Jan. 10, 1966, p.36). This concept was also mentioned in the NRO’s history of the Upward project.

Barnstorming the Moon

The key to the Grumman proposal was the LEM’s ability to fly independently of the CSM. Its Descent Propulsion System (DPS) provided the necessary delta-V to adjust its orbit which, in turn, would allow a greater area of the Moon to be surveyed during a short stay in lunar orbit.

The main object of this precursor mission was to obtain site photographs as quickly as possible. When these missions were being formulated, there may have been an expectation that the hardware would not support missions that were longer than one week. Equally important as a mission objective was wide-area mapping of the near and far sides of the Moon. At that time, only the low-resolution photos from Luna 3 were available.

The main object of this precursor mission was to obtain site photographs as quickly as possible.

This excerpt from the Mission A game plan illustrates how each orbit was filled site reconnaissance, probe deployment, and orbital adjustments. The LEM (docked to the CSM) would first enter a circular, equatorial, 80-nautical-mile (148-kilometer) lunar orbit. After separating from the CSM, the Recon LEM’s mission would begin in earnest. To quote the Grumman report, “Proceeding step by step from here, elliptical (8-n. mi pericynthion) orbits are then interspersed with the mapping orbits for probe dropping and site-verification photography.” There were also large maneuvers to “crank” the orbit, i.e., change orbital inclination and line of nodes. That would allow the Recon LEM to survey a greater portion of the Moon’s surface during a short mission.

The six DPS burns designed to rotate the orbital inclination were significant maneuvers, with each involving a delta-V on the order of 500 feet per second (150 meters per second). By contrast, DPS burns to alter orbital altitude required a mere 25 feet per second (8 meters per second) of delta-V.

After five mapping orbits at 25 nautical miles (46 kilometers), the orbit was adjusted to begin photo surveys of candidate landing sites. During each low pass at eight nautical miles (15 kilometers), the Recon LEM would deploy one of the landing probes. After scouting Sites #1 and #2, the descent engine would again inject the LEM into a circular orbit of 25 nautical miles for more wide-area mapping of the Moon. Following that, it was back to a low-altitude orbit.

These maneuvers would burn a significant amount of fuel, an average of 2,500 pounds (1,130 kilograms) for each burn. By the end of its recon duties, the mass of the LEM would have decreased from an initial 25,500 pounds (11,600 kilograms) to a final 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) before it jettisoned the descent stage. The total delta-V was 4,000 feet per second (1,200 meters per second), about 80% that of a lunar landing. Eight probes were to be dropped, each with a weight of 500 pounds (225 kilograms), for a total of 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms). Mission A would be complete after 20 orbits of the Moon.

There were also two shorter mission plans for the Recon LEM. Option B devoted most of its time to wide-area mapping of the Moon over the course of six orbits. After dropping the pericynthion to eight nautical miles, the Recon LEM would survey several landing sites during two more orbits. It would also drop a total of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kilograms) of probes, though the report does not list the types that were carried.

Plan C was the simplest of all, with photography and probe deployments completed in six orbits. The LEM would remain docked to the CSM while conducting wide-area mapping. Also, while docked, the DPS would be fired several times to change the orbital inclination. The LEM would then undock, quickly surveying landing sites and dropping 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of probes in the span of only two orbits.

The LEM reconnaissance mission plan focused on four targets on the Moon in the equatorial Apollo zone. They are all located in the western sector of the near side, to be observed during the last quarter phase of the Moon. This timing was dictated by orbital dynamics as it would allow a daytime splashdown of the Command Module.

A few notes of interest. Site 4 became the target for the Surveyor 1 lander. Surveyors 2, 4, and 6 were all sent towards Site 1, with only Surveyor 6 succeeding. The area near that location became Apollo candidate site II-P-8 and was photographed by Lunar Orbiter 2. Those images give a good idea of the types of photographs that were to be returned by the LEM Recon mission.

A panoramic camera was part of the Recon LEM’s payload. It would have provided a view similar to that facing a crew as they approached their landing site. This Lunar Orbiter mosaic of Site II-P-8 illustrates how such images from the Recon LEM would have looked.

The LEM Recon never flew but NASA did go forward with the LMSS effort for several years. As mentioned, the LMSS utilized a modified Gambit satellite equipped with the classified KH-7 camera. This project, with the classified name of Upward, began in 1964 as a joint project between the NRO and NASA. It progressed to the point where two flight units were being prepped for vacuum tests. In the end, the robots came through and the LMSS was cancelled in July 1967.

History is now repeating itself as NASA plans for missions to land robot avatars on ice moons such as Europa and Enceladus.

The Apollo 10 mission resembled, in some small way, that of the Recon LEM. The Lunar Module Snoopy (LM-4) flew low over Site II-P-2 for a couple of orbits at an altitude of nine nautical miles (17 kilometers). Though brief, the orbital maneuvers of LM-4 demonstrated the agility of the craft, a key element of the Recon proposal.

History is now repeating itself as NASA plans for missions to land robot avatars on ice moons such as Europa and Enceladus. We have no idea of the small-scale nature of their surfaces and of the distribution of smooth terrain. High-resolution photo surveys and site certification probes, perhaps carrying beacons, seem to be logical precursors. I reviewed these options in a white paper for the most recent Planetary Decadal Survey, “Europa Exploration Philosophy.”

Sources

“Grumman Study of LEM for Lunar Orbital Reconnaissance”; September 1963; Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
“Preliminary Engineering Description of the Survey Camera for the Apollo Mapping and Survey System,” Volume 1; prepared by Eastman Kodak Company, Apparatus and Optical Division for Headquarters Space Systems Division (SAFSP)
“The Apollo Spacecraft – A Chronology”; NASA SP-4009; Brooks and Ertel; 1973; Volume III; entry for October 23, 1964

Philip Horzempa was a member of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) and can be contacted via The Space Review.

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The Starliner-Better Late Than Never

Posted on May 27, 2022 by jacksmars

For Starliner, better late than never

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 23, 2022

Two and a half year ago, Boeing and NASA were excited about the first uncrewed test flight of the company’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle. The company pulled out all the stops for the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) mission for media at the Kennedy Space Center, erecting a large tent at the press site for briefings and other events in the days leading up to the launch and even showing off its “AstroVan II” it developed with Airstream to transport astronauts to the launch pad for later crewed flights.

“We’re ready,” Wilmore said. “This spacecraft is ready. These teams are ready. Boeing is ready. ULA is ready… we’re excited.”

Last week, the excitement of OFT was replaced by something closer to ennui for OFT-2. Boeing kept a low profile at the event, with no media tent and no AstroVan II. NASA wasn’t very excited either, it seemed: it didn’t start its live coverage of the launch on NASA TV until less than an hour before liftoff, and a “leadership media briefing” the day before had, as the highest-ranking agency official, associate administrator Bob Cabana (a similar briefing before last month’s SpaceX Crew-4 launch of astronauts included administrator Bill Nelson.) Media in general preferred to cover the launch from a distance, rather than at KSC.

That low profile reflects the disappointment in the progress Starliner has made in the last two and a half years. Just before OFT, the vehicle seemed not far behind SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which flew its Demo-1 uncrewed mission to the station nine months earlier. With SpaceX subsequently losing that spacecraft in a ground test of its abort thrusters, there was still a shot that Boeing could get astronauts to the station ahead of SpaceX provided it had a clean test flight.

Boeing, of course, did not. An improperly set timer in the spacecraft caused the mission to go haywire immediately after being released from its Centaur upper stage. Starliner never made it to the space station on OFT, landing two days later (see “The year of commercial crew comes to an end, without crew,” The Space Review, December 23, 2019). Weeks later, NASA and Boeing disclosed they had to fix software on the spacecraft while it was in orbit to prevent the service module from bumping back into the crew capsule after separation, which could have jeopardized the capsule’s reentry.

Then came the first attempt to launch OFT-2 last summer, scrubbed just hours before liftoff when propellant valves in the service module failed to open (see “Starliner sidelined”, The Space Review, August 16, 2021). Engineers discovered that the valves had corroded shut, after nitrogen tetroxide seeped through Teflon seals of the valves and reacted with ambient moisture to create nitric acid. Boeing developed a series of short-term fixes—delaying the loading of nitrogen tetroxide and purging the valves with nitrogen gas to remove moisture—to keep it happening again, while not ruling out design changes to the valve itself down the road.

In the leadup to last week’s launch, Boeing officials said the believed they had fixed, at least for now, the valve problem and other issues with Starliner. Mark Nappi, vice president and commercial crew program manager at Boeing, noted that as part of the mitigations for the valve problem, controllers regularly cycled the valves to make sure they were moving as expected. “They’re working really well,” he said at one prelaunch briefing.

The NASA astronauts who have been training for years to fly on Starliner also exuded confidence. “We wouldn’t be here right now if we weren’t confident that this would be a successful mission,” said Butch Wilmore at a briefing the day before the launch, when asked how he felt about this launch attempt versus previous ones for Starliner.

“We’re ready,” he said. “This spacecraft is ready. These teams are ready. Boeing is ready. ULA is ready. The mission ops folks who will control the spacecraft in space are ready, and we’re excited.”

Helpfully, the weather was ready, too, and the Atlas 5 lifted off Thursday evening after a trouble-free countdown. A half-hour later, controllers confirmed that Starliner has performed its orbital insertion burn, suggesting that all was well as the spacecraft headed towards the ISS.

“This was a really critical demonstration mission,” said Lueders. “Seeing that vehicle docked now to the ISS is just phenomenal.”

Or, at least, mostly well. At a post-launch briefing a couple hours after liftoff, NASA and Boeing revealed that 2 of 12 aft-facing Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control (OMAC) thrusters shut down during the orbital insertion burn. Nappi said the first one shut down after just one second, and the spacecraft switched to a second thruster in the same pod, of “doghouse,” on the service module. That second thruster shut down 25 seconds later, but a third thruster in that pod took over for the remainder of the 40-second burn.

Other thrusters worked fine during the burn, and Nappi emphasized there was plenty of redundancy in the system to ensure both the success of that maneuver and others the thrusters would perform to bring the spacecraft into the vicinity of the station. “The system is designed to be redundant and it performed like it was supposed to,” he said. “Now the team is working the why, as to why we had those anomalies occur.”

NASA and Boeing then went silent for nearly 18 hours, providing no updates as Starliner approached the station. The lack of news led to speculation that perhaps something had gone wrong with the mission, that perhaps the OMAC thruster problem was more serious than originally reported. A Boeing spokesperson contacted Friday morning about the status of the mission promised an update “in a bit,” but it was more than three hours before the company had anything more to say about the mission.

Boeing and NASA, it seemed, just didn’t have much to say when they finally broke their silence Friday afternoon, about four hours before the scheduled docking. The spacecraft was working well and performing maneuvers with those OMAC thrusters as well as smaller reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, and other systems were working well, the company said.

There were a few minor glitches during Starliner’s final approach to the station, such a software that had problems identifying the approaching spacecraft and a docking ring on the spacecraft that needed to be retracted and re-extended, the equivalent of turning it off and back on again. At 8:28 pm EDT Friday—a little more than an hour behind schedule—Starliner docked at last with the ISS.

In a call with reporters shortly after the docking, NASA officials expressed relief that Starliner finally made it. “This was a really critical demonstration mission,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for space operations. “Seeing that vehicle docked now to the ISS is just phenomenal.”

Nappi said that Boeing was still studying the failure of the two OMAC thrusters, having found “three or so” plausible explanations. The two thrusters, he added, might have failed for different reasons despite both being in the same doghouse.

“We may never know what the real cause of what this is because we don’t get this vehicle back,” he said. The thrusters are in the service module, which is jettisoned and burns up on reentry.

“I had to wait a little longer for my birthday present,” said Stich. “I’m just thrilled to be here on my birthday welcoming the Starliner to the space station and watching that vehicle come in and dock.”

In addition to the OMAC thrusters, two small RCS thrusters also failed on approach to the station. “I don’t think we know quite yet what happened to those thrusters, but the vehicle has plenty of redundancy,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager. The RCS thrusters will be used for undocking and moving away from the station, while the OMAC thrusters will be used for the deorbit burn.

He was pleased, though, that Starliner made it to the ISS successfully. “I had to wait a little longer for my birthday present. It was well worth the wait to have Starliner dock to the International Space Station,” said Stich, who celebrated his 57th birthday Friday. “I’m just thrilled to be here on my birthday welcoming the Starliner to the space station and watching that vehicle come in and dock.”

The OFT-2 mission is still far from over. On Saturday, ISS astronauts entered Starliner for the first time, conducting tests and transferring cargo: more than 200 kilograms of food and supplies for the station, and nearly 300 kilograms of equipment that will be heading back to Earth. Those hatches will close again as soon as Tuesday for a Wednesday undocking, reentry, and landing at White Sands, New Mexico, the same site as the original OFT touched down 29 months earlier.

Both NASA and Boeing were looking ahead, even before launch, to the next test flight, the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission that will carry NASA astronauts for the first time. Nappi said the company believed it could have Starliner ready for that CFT mission by the end of the year, assuming no major issues on OFT-2.

NASA is not ready to commit to a date, or even a crew, for CFT. “We’re going to take this one step at a time,” Lueders said at a prelaunch briefing. That schedule, and the crew assignments, would depend on several factors, including the readiness of the spacecraft and the status of activities on the ISS.

She said she would coordinate with Reid Wiseman, NASA chief astronaut, on deciding who would fly CFT and how long that mission will last, as well as the timing for PCM-1, the first operational Starliner mission. “We’ll be looking at final CFT and PCM-1 timelines this summer, and then we’ll be making final crew selections for the [ISS] increments coming up and for CFT.”

“But we’ve got to get through this demo first,” she added.

Once Starliner is certified, NASA envisions alternating ISS missions with Crew Dragon, which is already on its fourth operational ISS mission and seventh overall crewed mission, counting Demo-2 and two private astronaut missions. That would mean flying Starliner once a year for NASA, stretching out its contract of six operational missions into the late 2020s.

The problem is that ULA is planning to retire the Atlas 5 before then as it transitions to the Vulcan Centaur. Some, including NASA’s own Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, raised concerns about that transition and human-rating the Vulcan.

“We’re focused first and foremost on getting safely back to flight and meeting our commitments to NASA, to our customer, and being able to bring this capability to NASA,” said Parker. “We expect there will be additional opportunities in the future.”

ULA says it plans to keep Atlas 5 in service for Boeing for the length of its current contract. “From a resource perspective, we have measures in place to protect the talent and to ensure we retain the critical skills to be able to fly an Atlas as late as we need to,” said Gary Wentz, vice president of government and commercial programs at ULA. “We’re in conversations with Boeing and other customers for that capability.”

It’s unclear how that might affect other commercial users of Starliner—if there are any. Boeing has not announced any firm contracts for Starliner outside its NASA agreement. Boeing, since the OFT mission, has taken nearly $600 million in charges against its earnings to cover the work needed for OFT-2.

“We’re focused first and foremost on getting safely back to flight and meeting our commitments to NASA, to our customer, and being able to bring this capability to NASA,” Michelle Parker, vice president and deputy general manager of space and launch at Boeing, said before the launch when asked about the business case for the spacecraft. She noted Starliner is one Boeing contribution to the Orbital Reef commercial space station project led by Blue Origin. “We expect there will be additional opportunities in the future.”

Those missions, though, will likely require certifying Vulcan or another rocket for Starliner, as would any additional ISS missions between the end of Boeing’s current contract and the retirement of the station in 2030. NASA’s Stich said the agency would support human-rating a new rocket for Starliner “when Boeing and ULA are ready.”

That’s still a long way off, particularly since OFT-2 is far from over. After all the delays, it’s easy to see why the overwhelming mood about the launch and docking has been one not of exuberance but of relief, of achieving a milestone that had been a millstone for so long.

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Plants Can Grow On The Moon

Posted on May 25, 2022 by jacksmars

Moon Blooms

Plants can grow on the moon but some tinkering is needed for vegetation to thrive, according to a new study on lunar soil.

University of Florida researchers recently grew small plants using lunar rock and soil samples taken from the Apollo missions decades ago, the Washington Post reported.

NASA provided the research team with 12 grams of soil – four each from the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions – which had never been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere or water.

The team tried to plant seeds of the fast-growing thale cress but found that the samples were extremely hydrophobic – they repelled water – and lacked nutrients. To resolve this, they combined the extraterrestrial soil with a nutrient solution.

The plants then germinated and began to sprout leaves even though some of them struggled: Plants planted in samples collected from the Apollo 11 mission had the toughest time growing, for example.

Even though they were edible, the researchers noted that the plants disliked lunar soil and their roots turned out “more bent and gnarly.”

Still, the authors concluded that while lunar soil is “not a benign growth substrate,” it could still be used by astronauts in the future to attempt plant production on the moon, even though it would require a lot of work due to its lack of numerous minerals found on earth.

“I think it’s amazing that the plant still grew,” co-author Robert Ferl said. “Right, it’s stressed, but it doesn’t die. It doesn’t fail to grow at all. It adapts.”

Is The Boeing Starliner Spacecraft “A Flying Coffin” For Astronauts?

Posted on May 24, 2022 by jacksmars

The Boeing Company started life in 1916 in Seattle. In World War II, my Uncle John Robert commanded a B-17. He survived his 26 combat missions over German. Crews of these planes marveled at the ruggedness and dependability of these planes.

After World War II, Boeing produced the B-47 bomber and B-52 bomber. The B-52 is still in service and could make 100 years of service. Boeing also produced incredible airliners that one could find in airlines all over the world.

Boeing was a company that was run by engineers. Then the company merged with McDonald Douglas. Finance executives started to replace engineers in senior management positions. What followed were nightmares like the 737 crashes and the failures associated with the Starliner manned spacecraft. Boeing was given a $400 million US contract to build this spacecraft. The spacecraft finally made it to the International Space Station. It will separate and make its reentry later today. You know that old saying about “a day late and a dollar short.” The Starliner had a systems failure on the way to the I.S.S. concerning thrusters. The Angry Astronaut is warning everyone that the spacecraft is not ready to carry astronauts. NASA is not listening to him.

When returning from New Orleans, I found myself seated next to a 56-year-old United Airlines senior captain named Dave. He was getting a free ride to his home in San Diego. He gave me a fascinating briefing on the various airlines that he had flown during his career spanning 17,000 hours in the air.

He gave me a startling revelation about the 737-software disaster. I commented that United was wise to buy 737s with two sensors whereas the airlines that bought 737s with one sensor experienced crashes. Dave told me that the perfect configuration was a 737 with three sensors. Then he surprised me. When the 737s got grounded, United showed up and bought over 100 of these troubled aircraft at “bargain-basement prices.” He characterized the whole problem of the aircraft as a massive training failure. Pilots should have disengaged all automatic systems and flown the planes “the old-fashioned way” when the trouble started. He also told me that the 737 had a small and cramped cockpit that became very uncomfortable on flights of 5 hours or more. I kidded him that the cockpit was designed for female pilots

Venera Lander That Failed In 1972

Posted on May 17, 2022 by jacksmars

Kosmos 482: questions around a failed Venera lander from 1972 still orbiting Earth (but not for long)

by Marco Langbroek
Monday, May 16, 2022

Fifty years ago, on March 31, 1972, just days after the launch of Venera 8, the Soviet Union made an attempt to launch yet another Venera probe. While it was meant to fly to Venus, something went wrong and it got stuck in Earth orbit instead. It subsequently was post-designated Kosmos 482 by the Soviets. Half a century later, one object associated to this launch is still on orbit, but it won’t be for long anymore. This object is 1972-023E, the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft, ostensibly the landing module of the Venera in its approximately one-meter protective shell.

Half a century later, one object associated to this launch is still on orbit, but it won’t be for long anymore.

The identity and real size of this object have recently been put to discussion, with some arguing it is not just the lander but includes a substantially larger part of the original Venera bus. I will present evidence, both observational and modelled, that this object is in fact the landing module only, not a substantially larger part of Venera hardware. I model it to reenter some three to four years from now, around 2025–2026. Being designed to pass through the atmosphere of Venus, it will likely survive its reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

An interplanetary launch that failed

Kosmos 482 launched from Baikonur only four days after the Venus probe Venera 8 was launched, and was likely of the same design. Unlike its successful sister ship, Kosmos 482 got stuck in a 206 x 9802 kilometer, 52-degree inclined highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. The upper stage of the Molniya 8K78M that should have propelled it into a heliocentric orbit to Venus shut down prematurely, apparently because of a wrongly set timer.

Initially, western military space tracking networks catalogued four objects connected to this launch. In addition to the Venera payload itself, these objects ostensibly were the Molniya Block L upper stage in a 206 x 9770 kilometer, 52-degree highly elliptical orbit; the Molniya second stage in a 206 x 326 kilometer, 51-degree low Earth orbit; and the Ullage platform in a 206 x 223 kilometer, 51.7-degree inclined low Earth orbit.

Table 1: objects related to the Kosmos 482 launch

NORAD	COSPAR	DESIGNATION	REENTRY	INITIAL ORBIT
6073	1972-023E	COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT	2025 – 2026 a	210 x 9710 km
5919	1972-023A	COSMOS 482 b	05-05-1981	206 x 9802 km
5923	1972-023D	SL-6 r/b (2) c	20-02-1983	206 x 9770 km
5920	1972-023B	SL-6 r/b (1) d	01-04-1972	206 x 326 km
5921	1972-023C	SL-6 PLAT e	02-04-1972	206 x 223 km

a: prognosis based on GMAT modelling by author
b: Venera main bus
c: upper (3rd) stage NVL Block L
d: 2nd stage Block I
e: Ullage platform

Payload separation into two objects

Sometime after the launch, the payload (1972-023A) separated into two objects. One of these kept the designation 1972-023A and was believed to be the Venera main bus. The second one got the designation 1972-023E (catalogue no. 6073) and is believed to be the Descent Craft, i.e. the actual landing module meant to be landed on Venus.

My analysis of the orbital elements of these two objects suggests that the separation happened in mid-June 1972, some 80–85 days after the launch. There is some evidence of a small discontinuity in the semi-major axis evolution of the 1972-023A object around June 21 of 1972, and a conjunction analysis suggests that the two objects were close near that same date. The separation was not necessarily the result of an explosion or otherwise violent breakup. After all, the main bus and descent craft are meant to separate at some point. From the difference in orbital altitude between both objects, I calculate the delta V involved in the separation to be around 8.5 meters per second. I have not been able to find information on the typical delta V with which a Venera lander is ejected from the main bus.

The ostensible main bus, 1972-023A, reentered on May 5, 1981, nine years after launch. The other object, the descent craft, 1972-023E, is the only object from this launch still in orbit today, and the main object of this study.

Orbital evolution

When the “Descent Craft” was first catalogued in July 1972, it was in a 210 x 9710 kilometer, 52.1 degree inclined orbit. Over the past 50 years the apogee altitude of this object has come down by more than 7,700 kilometers, and as of May 1, 2022, the object is in a 198 x 1957 kilometer orbit.

The image below shows the difference between the mid-1972 and mid-2022 orbits. The diagram shows the evolution of the apogee and perigee altitudes over 1972–2022.

Contention: is the “descent craft” only the descent craft?

Whether the Kosmos 482 “descent craft” is truly only the descend craft, i.e. the lander module contained in its approximately one-meter-diameter protective semi-spherical cover (see the image at the top of the article), has recently become a point of contention. In early 2019, a news item appeared on Space.com titled “Failed 1970s Venus Probe Could Crash to Earth This Year”. It was subsequently picked up by a number of news outlets, such as Newsweek and NBC News.

In these news items, two claims were made, both as it turns out unsubstantiated:

(1) that the object could reenter as early as that same year (2019);

(2) that the object is not just the lander module, but that it includes a substantial part of the Venera bus.

The claim of “strong brightness variations” is something that is not borne out by my own observations on this object.

Regarding the first claim about an “imminent” reentry of this object, both Jonathan McDowell in a solicited comment in the Space.com article, and myself in a solicited comment for Universe Today, pointed out that the orbital decay history of object 1972-023E was inconsistent with a reentry later that year and instead pointed to a reentry still several years in the future.

The two arguments given for the second claim, the claim that the object is not just the lander but includes a (considerable) part of the Venera bus, are:

(a) a reportedly “strong brightness variation” of the object;

(b) apparent detail and an “elongated shape” as seen on telescopic images of the object made by Dutch astrophotographer Ralf Vandebergh.

Brightness behavior

The claim of “strong brightness variations” is something that is not borne out by my own observations on this object. I have filmed it several times and never noticed a strong brightness variation. On the contrary, it is very stable in brightness.https://player.vimeo.com/video/707510470?h=16c7860913

Some Interesting Near Earth Objects

Posted on May 17, 2022 by jacksmars

All the myriad worlds

by Dwayne Day
Monday, May 16, 2022

The other day I was having dinner with a prominent planetary scientist when I mentioned that I had a list of my five favorite moons. You do? He asked, surprised. Sure. Don’t you? He studies Venus, and Venus, like Vulcan, has no moon, so he didn’t have his own list of favorite moons but asked me to name mine. As I explained, most of my choices are not based strictly on scientific merit, but on the stories they tell—and the history of how we have discovered, studied, and explored them. Here they are, and why they’re on my list.

Triton

Back in 1989, Voyager 2 flew past Neptune, the last target on its trip out of the solar system and into the great beyond. As it approached Neptune, I don’t think people expected much. Voyager 2’s earlier encounter with Uranus had not excited a lot of people, perhaps because Uranus was just a hazy bluish-green orb.

Triton could be the key to a new definition of where life can exist in the universe.

But Neptune proved to be different. As Voyager got closer the planet appeared to be bluer, and prettier than Uranus. In the media, reporters waxed poetic about the alluring azure of this ice giant on the edges of our solar system, clearly captivated by it.

Then Voyager detected “the great white spot,” a swirling cloud feature moving across Neptune’s surface that reminded people of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Voyager revealed Neptune to be a dynamic planet, not a dull orb. This was an early hint that our expectations about the outer solar system needed reexamination. Yes, it is cold and dark way out there at the corner of No and Where, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It does not mean that the planets and their moons are simply frigid, dead, featureless objects. More could be going on.

At the time, I was going to my local planetarium for a regular show about the Voyager encounter (see “One last, first time,” The Space Review, July 13, 2015.) This was in the pre-Internet age, so the ability of the public to obtain updates on a space mission only a few hours after the images reached the ground was still novel. The show featured the latest information from JPL about what they were seeing, and it was fascinating. I cannot remember if the Triton revelations came about at that time or a bit later, but they were eye-opening for me.

Triton is one of Neptune’s moons, the largest, and it is an oddball. It circles the planet backwards, retrograde, in the opposite direction of Neptune’s other moons. This indicates that it did not form with them, and was likely captured when it wandered in from the Kuiper Belt. Triton was discovered shortly after the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Triton is cold, with estimated temperatures of 38 K (âˆ’235 °C). That, and its origins, combine to make it very interesting, and intriguing.

When Voyager 2 imaged Triton, it revealed a relatively young surface, geographically speaking. Instead of ancient craters, it was smooth and covered with ice. Scientists did not expect that. Soon they spotted a greater surprise: dark smudges on the surface that seemed to flow in a certain direction. Planetary scientist Larry Soderblum speculated that these were the result of some kind of geothermal activity on Triton, perhaps geysers. And soon more images indicated that there were active geysers on Triton, with material spewing up from the surface and then taking a ninety-degree angle as it hit upper atmosphere winds. Geysers! And winds! On what should have been a cold dead rock!

This was when I fell in love with Triton. Both Neptune and Triton had surprised us. Much later I had the luck to work with Larry Soderblum and told him that I was impressed that he had discovered the geysers on Triton. He corrected me: he had not discovered the geysers, Voyager 2 discovered them, Larry had only explained what they were. And that was perhaps the Voyager missions’ greatest gift: the lesson that no matter where we go in the solar system, when we look at something new, we are likely to be surprised.

There are two prevailing theories about where those geysers come from. The first—and more mundane—is that sunlight is penetrating through the icy surface and heating up material below that bursts out through the ice as a geyser. The second theory has far greater implications. The theory is that Triton has a water ocean below its ice, like Europa, Enceladus, and possibly some other moons, and that internal heating is causing that water to burst out as geysers. That would mean liquid water, energy, and maybe minerals—the necessary ingredients required for life.

A few years ago, some scientists proposed a space mission named Trident that would fly past Triton. Their mission did not get selected by NASA, but it offered an intriguing idea: that if an ocean does exist under Triton’s ice, it could dramatically expand our definition of where life can form in the universe. Our current search for exoplanets is based on the theory that we want to detect planets in the “habitable zone” around other stars, defined as the zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. But now scientists are intrigued with the possibility that there could be life in oceans under the icy surfaces of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. If there could be water, and possibly life, under an icy surface of a captured Kuiper Belt object, that means that life could exist far from a star. It may not be detectable ever, but it could change our concepts of what “habitable” means for planets. Life could be anywhere and everywhere.

Triton could be the key to a new definition of where life can exist in the universe.

Phobos

Phobos, like its sister Martian moon Deimos, is a mystery moon for many reasons. It also has a great backstory. Both moons share many characteristics with certain types of asteroids. This has led to the theory that they are captured main belt asteroids. One problem with this theory—a big problem, actually—is that they have very circular orbits that lie almost exactly in Mars’ equatorial plane. If they were captured, there’s no good reason to believe they would end up exactly at the equator, and therefore this requires a complicated explanation to unravel the mystery of how they ended up where they are. Another theory is that Phobos and Deimos coalesced in orbit after Mars formed, possibly as the result of a giant collision with Mars. That theory also has problems.

A good sample returned from Phobos would answer the question of where it (and Deimos) comes from, whether it is a captured asteroid or a piece of the same stuff as Mars.

Planetary scientists have many theories about the origins of many different objects in our solar system. But one of the aggravating things about science is that definitive answers are difficult to come by. Even after bringing hundreds of kilograms of samples back from Earth’s moon there is still disagreement on how it formed. But Phobos is different. A good sample returned from Phobos would answer the question of where it (and Deimos) comes from, whether it is a captured asteroid or a piece of the same stuff as Mars. We already have meteorites from asteroids and even meteorites from Mars. It would not be difficult to compare a sample from Phobos to those other samples and answer that question, solving that mystery once and for all. Fortunately, the Japanese plan on doing exactly that. Their MMX mission, for Martian Moons eXploration, is planned to launch in 2024, land on Phobos in 2025, and bring back samples by 2028. So we should have an answer soon afterwards. The answer will inevitably lead to more questions—that’s how science works—but the big question of whether Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids or formed with Mars should finally be solved within a few years.

Phobos has proven to be a difficult target—several previous missions to the moon ended in failure. In July 1988, the Soviet Union launched Phobos 1 and 2 towards Mars. Phobos 1 was lost a few months later when it was accidentally shut off. Phobos 2 made it to Mars by January 1989. It returned some blurry images of Phobos, and then it stopped transmitting. In 2011, the Russian Space Agency launched Fobos-Grunt, a Phobos sample return mission. But the spacecraft, which had suffered numerous problems in development, immediately failed in Earth orbit. It’s almost as if Phobos is taunting us. MMX will now be the fourth dedicated mission to Phobos, and hopefully will be successful.

There have been many American proposals for robotic missions to Phobos over the years, with names like PANDORA, Aladdin, and HALL, but none were selected, so Japan’s decision to fly a mission has probably made a lot of American Phobos aficionados happy, even if they wish they were doing the mission themselves. (I am planning on writing an article about Phobos mission proposals and am interested in hearing about past concepts.)

In 2015, a NASA team at Johnson Space Center also studied how astronauts might explore Phobos if they were already in Mars orbit. The moon’s very low gravity makes human exploration tricky. The team determined that a spacecraft that could touch down on Phobos and enable astronauts to collect samples using robotic arms would be useful. Astronauts could also perform EVAs while still tethered to the spacecraft and using maneuvering units.

Phobos has featured a number of times in fiction. The 1966 book Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones, spawned the 1970 movie Colossus: The Forbin Project, about a supercomputer that takes over the world. The book had two sequels. In The Fall of Colossus, humans manage to shut down the Colossus computer, but when they do, they learn that the two moons of Mars are suddenly heading towards Earth, and are apparently alive. In the third book, Colossus and the Crab, humans discover that Phobos and Deimos are sentient machines, like Colossus, and they enslave humanity.

A Different Method Of Writing NASA Contracts

Posted on May 17, 2022 by jacksmars

“Times are changing”: NASA looks to move beyond the traditional contract

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 16, 2022

When NASA administrator Bill Nelson appeared before Senate appropriators May 3 to discuss the agency’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, most expected him to explain and defend the agency’s request for nearly $26 billion released in late March. That request included nearly $1.5 billion for the Human Landing System program, days after the agency announced its intent to hold a competition to select a second company to develop a lander alongside the existing award to SpaceX (see “A second chance at the Moon”, The Space Review, April 18, 2022).

“There is no excuse for cost overruns, but the old way of doing business was cost-plus,” Nelson said. “Because of the competition we’ve been talking about, we have been moving to fixed-price where we can under procurement law.”

“Then we would have two landers somewhere in the 2027 time frame, both having already landed,” he said. Artemis 3, using the SpaceX lander, is scheduled to launch in 2025, while the second lander could carry astronauts on the Artemis 5 mission, tentatively set for 2027. (Artemis 4 will not land on the Moon but instead deliver a module for the lunar Gateway.) After that, NASA intends to buy lunar landing services from the two companies competitively.

“I believe that that is the plan that can bring us all the value of competition, and get it done with that competitive spirit,” Nelson said, before taking a surprising turn. “You get it done cheaper, and that allows us to move away from what has been a plague on us in the past, which is a cost-plus contract.”

To have the head of NASA call cost-plus contracts, where contractors are reimbursed for their costs plus a fee, a “plague” is remarkable. NASA has, for decades, relied on such contracts for major development programs, including the Space Launch System and Orion. Nelson made clear later in the hearing he did not misspeak when he criticized cost-plus contracts.

“There is no excuse for cost overruns, but the old way of doing business was cost-plus,” Nelson said when asked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), chair of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, about cost and schedule overruns cited in Government Accountability Office reports. “Because of the competition we’ve been talking about, we have been moving to fixed-price where we can under procurement law.”

He brought up one example, a contract awarded to Bechtel to build a second mobile launch platform for the SLS, one designed to accommodate the larger Block 1B version of SLS. NASA awarded a cost-plus contract to the company in 2019 to build Mobile Launcher 2 for $383 million.

However, that program is facing overruns that prompted “letters of concern” to the company by NASA, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel noted at a meeting earlier this year. The company has declined to comment on the contract, but at the Senate hearing Nelson alleged the company “underbid” to win the contract.

“Because Bechtel underbid on a cost-plus contract in order to, what appears, to get it,” he said, “they couldn’t perform. And NASA is stuck.”

NASA has not said by how much Bechtel is overrunning on the original contract. At a briefing two days later, Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA, said the agency was working with Bechtel “all the way up their management chain” about the project. “We’re working with Bechtel to get an update to their cost and schedule in the late May time frame,” he said.

Those discussions have included meeting between Nelson and Brendan Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel, but the administrator sounded pessimistic at the Senate hearing that it would result in cost savings for NASA. “There’s no way, under the contract, since it’s a cost-plus contract, that we can do anything but eat it,” he said. “And that’s not right. Times are changing.”

NASA at a crossroads

Even before Nelson’s unprompted criticism of cost-plus contracts as a “plague” on NASA, it was clear that times were changing at the agency. The success of commercial cargo and crew transportation to the International Space Station illustrated what industry could do with fixed-price contracts, public-private partnerships, and competition. It’s led NASA to consider that approach for HLS, commercial successors to the ISS, and even spacesuits for the Artemis lunar missions.

“What does your system look like when you have no mass constraint, no volume constraint?” Matthews asked. “Our NASA community, our payload community, should really think about this new capability that’s coming online.”

That shift, and how both NASA and industry can navigate it, was at the heart of last month’s AIAA ASCENDx Texas conference, which took place a few minutes’ drive from the Johnson Space Center. An agency, and a center, long used to traditional contractor relationship was grappling with how to best work with an increasingly capable industry in this new era.

NASA “is at a crossroads,” said Bhavya Lal, associate administrator for NASA’s office of technology, policy, and strategy, in a keynote at the day-and-a-half event. “We are learning that, given the pace of innovation in the space sector and its diversity, governments may not always be the owner of the most innovative technology approach or architecture.”

She cited as examples of this HLS and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of robotic lunar lander missions, with NASA adopting commercial capabilities and technologies it might not have considered under traditional approaches. “Instead of seeing ourselves as a sole actor in space, with all other entities as followers, we need to see ourselves as a catalyst rather than as a performer,” she said of the agency. “We need to seed innovation, whether it’s in-house or outside, grow the space economy, and then leverage outcomes to meet our objectives.”

Much of the conference looked at how those new approaches were working on specific efforts, including CLPS, HLS, and commercial space stations. Part of it was discussing how JSC in particular was adapting its approaches to better partner with industry.

“I think the entire leadership team at the center recognizes that the way we do business has to change, and fundamental to that is how we communicate with other stakeholders,” said Monte Goforth, assistant director of the engineering directorate at JSC.

He and other JSC officials on one panel discussed ways they were trying to better communicate with industry, including educating civil servants on when they can talk with industry during a procurement cycle. “If we can’t have a meaningful conversation, we’re never going to build the trusted relationships we need,” said Sam Gunderson, partnership development lead at JSC.

One theme from conference discussions was the desire by industry for NASA not to be prescriptive in setting technical requirements. “One of the things that we’ve seen, especially after a decade of Dragon development that we’ve been able to work on successfully, is that when NASA specifies their capabilities in a really pure sense, rather than being very prescriptive about what the design solution looks like,” said Aarti Matthews, Starship HLS program manager at SpaceX, “it’s really critical to allowing industry to come on board.”

Starship is perhaps the best example of that, looking nothing like a traditional lunar lander or concepts proposed by other HLS competitors, but offering significantly greater capabilities at a lower price. That should encourage others to rethink how they’ll take advantage of that capability, she argued.

“Starship can land 100 tons on the lunar surface. It’s really hard to think about what that means in a tangible way,” she said. “What does your system look like when you have no mass constraint, no volume constraint? Our NASA community, our payload community, should really think about this new capability that’s coming online.”

But agency officials acknowledged that it can be hard to embrace those new ways of working with industry. “It’s really hard for NASA to let go,” said Lara Kearney, manager of the extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program office at JSC, responsible for efforts such as developing new Artemis spacesuits and lunar rovers.

“We like to be in the middle of everything. We like to think we have all of the answers a lot of the time,” she continued. “We have to help retrain our folks, retrain our culture.”

Kearney cited the example of trying to strike that balance in the ongoing procurement of spacesuits NASA astronauts will wear on Artemis missions. NASA offered its expertise to competitors in the forum of documents outlining years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars of past NASA funding on spacesuit development.

“Let’s not write off the government quite yet,” Lal said. “The government plays a major role in developing innovations.”

“This whole service idea is kind of new, but we’re seeing it work. I know in my program we are definitely taking that to heart and trying to move forward with that type of mentality,” she said. “I don’t know, honestly, that we’re going to ever go back to what I would call a heritage way of contracting at this point.”

Some worry that shifting more to commercial mechanisms, and shifting work from the agency to companies, could lead to an erosion of expertise within the agency. “NASA is going towards a direction where it’s a customer, which is awesome, but after a while you lose the skill to know for sure what is going on,” said Kirk Shireman, a former NASA ISS program manager who is now vice president of Lockheed Martin’s lunar exploration campaign.

“How do you maintain that skill?” he asked. “That’s a tough problem, I think, for NASA.”

NASA, to be clear, is not shifting entirely to commercial partnerships over traditional government-led contracting approaches. “Let’s not write off the government quite yet,” Lal said. “The government plays a major role in developing innovations.”

One example, she said, is where there is risk of “market failure,” such as when technology development takes too long or is too high-risk. “Commercial entities tend to underestimate the complexity of technology development and sometimes exaggerate the market size and revenue potential,” she said, citing the brief rise and faster fall of asteroid mining companies several years ago. “In situ resource utilization will almost certainly be required for any sustainable human presence of humanity in space. However, the trillionaires aren’t coming for a while.”

Another role for government leadership is for “system-wide thinking,” such as planning for the Artemis Base Camp, NASA’s vision for a sustainable lunar presence. That includes roles for international cooperation and competitiveness. “NASA absolutely needs to play this visioning role, developing the overarching vision for what we do on and around the Moon, so commercial entities and our international partners can see their place and jumpstart their own activities,” Lal said.

Much of the discussion at AIAA ASCENDx Texas focused on NASA human spaceflight and exploration programs, and it remains to be seen how it will, or can, be applied, to other agency efforts. Lal cited the James Webb Space Telescope as an example of innovation that was led, and could only be done by, the government, and while that mission has been successful so far as it near the start of science operations, it also was far behind schedule and over budget.

NASA officials have, in some recent presentations, argued that they have learned the lessons of JWST and are making progress in cost and schedule performance on science missions by doing more analysis up front to obtain better estimates. Twenty-nine science missions started after establishing those procedures have cumulatively underrun their budgets by 2.3%. (When JWST is added, the portfolio is 3.7% over budget, to give a sense of the magnitude of its overrun.) Yet, increasing costs for two flagship missions in development, Mars Sample Return and Europa Clipper, prompted NASA in its fiscal year 2023 budget request to push back work on NEO Surveyor, a space telescope to track near Earth asteroids, despite broad support for that mission and its endorsement weeks later in the planetary science decadal survey.

Lal said both government and industry have roles in the future of space exploration, with different capabilities and resources. “We need to work together to change the paradigm of space,” she said. “Well-designed public-private partnerships combine the strengths of the government and the private sector.”

Chinese Military Thinking Of Orbits Beyond GEO

Posted on May 17, 2022May 17, 2022 by jacksmars

Chinese military thinking on orbits beyond GEO

by Kristin Burke
Monday, May 16, 2022

“We already regard space, out to at least GEO, as part of our legitimate military theater of operations. Strategic vision compels us to continually expand our perspective. We will soon need to consider all of cislunar space, and we should begin to think about operations throughout the inner solar system.[1]”
–The Fairchild Papers, USAF, 2002
“A base on the Moon can fulfil not only scientific and military tasks. Since science and physics are developing rapidly, new goals appear and we can only contemplate them today… a base can be used for constant monitoring of the Earth’s surface.”[2]
–Russian Academician Boris Chertok, 2007

It is impossible to unlink the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) military perspective on orbits beyond the geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) from the US and former USSR’s Cold War plans for military Moon bases. More recent statements like those above indicating that similar ambitions may persist, even after the Cold War, make it harder. Since the Chinese Communist Party founded the PRC at the opening of the Cold War, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) academic institutions writing on space were and continue to be directly responding to the US and Russia’s statements and activities. Additionally, as Japan emerged in the 1990s as a lunar actor, the PRC’s even deeper historical grievances were an equally strong driver to be prepared for military, economic, and diplomatic competition beyond GEO. Indeed, a Chinese history book covering Beijing’s early planning for the lunar program directly states that the successful launch of Japan’s lunar orbiter led Chinese technical experts to propose what would become Chang’e 1, more than a decade later.[3]

Below is an assessment of PRC military academic writings to include books designed for training military personnel written in Mandarin, and technical research papers published in English and Mandarin. This report analyzes what these documents say about orbits beyond GEO through the lens of what other nations have done. This is an integral perspective to remember. For example, the American authors of the above quote later became, and continue to be, top US leaders, highly likely leading the average Chinese analyst to determine that the US must be serious about expanding the theater of military operations to beyond GEO, and possibly the rest of the solar system, based on the authors’ later promotions.

Key findings

PRC military literature describes a PLA fear since at least 2003 that the United States intends to expand its military operations beyond GEO in order to control access to cislunar and other regions of space, a fear most likely originally based on American and Russian leaders’ statements at the time. PRC military academics’ definitions of the useful space for military operations have expanded and contracted over time. However, in the most recent iteration of the Science of Military Strategy (SMS), Chinese authors have returned to a more expansive definition, referring not just to “higher orbits” but also “adjacent space and deep space” as the future region useful for military space operations. Together with the first ever SMS reference to the Apollo program having had a mission to “capture Soviet satellites,” this is a very troubling trend, potentially indicating the window for tailoring messaging on the US Space Force’s intentions in the space beyond GEO for the non-Allied audience is closing.

Importantly, PRC defense-affiliated technical experts writing on beyond GEO orbits, as early as 2021, have not yet started referencing “dual use applications” or “weapons” in their studies, indicating that there may still be an opportunity to adjust US messaging. If they do, these references could indicate that PLA leaders have asked for more concrete ways to respond from their technical experts. This report finds it is significant that defense space technologists are not yet referring to military applications beyond GEO; these references are relatively easy to find in articles describing orbits below 40,000 kilometers, i.e., below the graveyard orbit.

Chinese researchers studying orbits beyond GEO have consistently maintained three general goals in their studies, listed here in no particular order: support China’s follow-on exploration missions, identify worthy global firsts to achieve, and improve precise orbit determination and spacecraft efficiency. The main difference between defense-affiliated and non-affiliated researchers’ articles is that the former are more likely to discuss considerations for crewed missions, such as improved radiation safety, because the PLA continues to manage the human spaceflight program in China.

Chinese technical reports often use foreign mission designs as reference cases, their analysis of which provide useful insights into what space watchers should expect from future Chinese missions beyond GEO. These examples also represent what the PRC likely perceives to be globally acceptable. Of note are the examples where past non-Chinese studies have recommended flying out to beyond GEO to later return to Earth orbit, either to GEO or retrograde GEO. Also of note are former non-Chinese plans to fly through medium Earth orbit (MEO) from cislunar space to use Earth’s gravity to redirect the spacecraft to asteroids or comets. All of these strategies have been recommended to increase fuel efficiency.

PRC military academic’s strategic thinking on orbits beyond GEO

PLA academic strategists have repeatedly articulated a fear that the US would limit Chinese access to the Moon. One of the first available references in PRC military books is from the PLA National Defense University (PLA NDU) in 2003, which briefly noted that “developed nations” plan for Moon bases.[4] Later, in a 2007 article, authors from the Academy of Equipment Command and Technology, responsible for training China’s senior engineers and technical officers for the PLA’s space organizations, articulated a fear that, “The U.S. also intends to close off … the space region between the Earth and the Moon.”[5,6] A different publisher repeated this fear in a 2010 military training book saying, “According to this [U.S.] plan, near Earth orbits – including the broad space from the Earth to the Moon – will be under the administration of the Americans.”[7] It may be significant that a fear first noted by Chinese military space technologists was later published in a book from a national level military publisher. Follow-on research on the specific authors and their careers since 2007 may be instructive.

After 2010, references to potential US control of cislunar space largely disappeared from the available Chinese high level military academic literature. However, it may be reemerging as PLA NDU’s most recent 2020 Science of Military Strategy (SMS) referred to a US plan for the Apollo astronauts to “capture Soviet satellites,” which is probably a PRC interpretation of the US Manned Orbiting Lab concept, documents about which were declassified in late 2015.[8,9] In the other above-mentioned books, authors had referred to the Apollo program as an example of societal interest in space exploration, and focused their contention instead on the Space Shuttle program, which is widely known to have flown defense and intelligence agency systems.[10] The PLA NDU’s 2020 SMS reference is the first time the US military astronauts’ role in US lunar exploration has been called out, based on this research.

In addition to general references to other nation’s military space ambitions, Chinese military academic literature has also referred to the space beyond GEO when defining regions best suited for different military activities. For example, up until 2003, PLA NDU books parroted Soviet and early Russian military thought by defining “the space battlefield” to be below 930,000 kilometers, which is where the Earth’s gravity is no longer dominant compared to other celestial bodies.[11,12] However, ten years later, in 2013, a non-NDU affiliated military book more operations focused revised the section and noted that military use of space is primarily below 40,000 kilometers, i.e. inclusive of everything below the graveyard orbit.[13] (Based on Chinese military academic writings, China has since at least 2002 worried that satellites were hiding in the graveyard orbit, which is a topic for a different paper.) This book removed the reference to 930,000 kilometers and instead made a general distinction between the region up to 384,000 kilometers, which is roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and then beyond 384,000 kilometers.

Interestingly, also in 2013, the Academy of Military Science’s SMS did not include any reference to 384,000 kilometers and instead focused on the 40,000 kilometers and below regime as well.[14] It may be important that in the same year, two different high-level military publications defined the military relevant space beyond GEO in different ways: the academics using a one, more expansive definition and the space operators using a narrower definition. Useful follow-on research could include finding which book published first and the biographies of the various authors.

The more recent SMS books reveal military academic thinking on the definition of military-useful orbits is still under discussion in the PRC. The 2017 PLA NDU SMS removed any reference to beyond GEO distances and only noted military activity takes place in “higher orbits,” which is probably still a reference to the graveyard orbit, not anything around 384,000 kilometers, based on the way other reports use the reference to “higher orbits.”[15] However, the most recent 2020 SMS reintroduces a more expanded space domain for the PLA, to include not just higher orbits but “adjacent space and deep space” and “diversified orbits,” but with no specific references to distances.[16] In this context, the Apollo reference may be telling of a focus back on 384,000 kilometers, though this report did not examine this specific question thoroughly. It is also difficult to know if the 2020 expanded definition is the result of internal PRC policy debates or more simply a different editorial chain at PLA NDU.

The reader is advised against interpreting these military academics’ references to space beyond GEO as evidence that PRC leaders would approve a mission to hide anti-satellite weapons in the hard to track cislunar space. Instead, the historical lens is very instructive; the Soviets in 1959 launched a “cosmic rocket” beyond 930,000 kilometers, the upper stage of which orbits the Sun, and is probably a reason why the Soviets and early Russian military thought specifies this distance.[17] China’s close relationship with the Soviets in the early days of the Cold War, in particular regarding the space program, is the most likely reason this distance appears in early PLA academic writings. More recent academic strategic thinking could also justifiably include beyond GEO distances not only because of the 2002 quote from the current deputy commander of the US Space Command and former director of NASA Ames Research Center, but also because even NASA in 2010 considered sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in preparation for a Mars mission, which could have implied within 930,000 kilometers.[18]

The above publications are largely reflective of the PRC military’s perceived threats and their academic strategic thinking on other countries’ activities, in an effort to support broad PLA strategies towards achieving comprehensive national power, specific to military interests. These documents are less reflective of the PRC leadership’s plans and intentions. One way to scratch the surface of higher level, concrete proposed plans is to review Chinese academic articles from institutions fully or partially funded by the PLA. The review of such articles below focuses on those written by researchers at China’s NDU or universities which have labs working on defense projects, as well as personnel working at China’s national space tracking facilities which are thought to be primarily managed by the PLA, though the employed personnel may be civilian cadre or even civilian contractors.

PRC defense affiliated technical writing on orbits beyond GEO

A review of Chinese defense affiliated researchers’ technical articles over the past ten years reveals some notable trends, which are apparent in both defense affiliated and non-affiliated authors’ articles. Researchers studying orbits beyond GEO have justified the significance of their findings as meeting one or several of the following goals: supporting China’s follow-on exploration missions, identifying global firsts to achieve, and/or improving precise orbit determination and spacecraft efficiency. Notable in this review was no explicit reference to “dual-use technology” or “weapons,” which is relatively easy to find in articles about space systems below 40,000 kilometers. This review did find several references to using a lunar swing-by to place a Chinese GSSAP-like “debris monitor” in retrograde GEO, a circular orbit crossing the northern and southern poles rather than following the equator. These articles cited numerous foreign studies on the same type of retrograde GEO satellite insertion, and have used the single demonstration of trans-lunar insertion into GEO, conducted by the US Hughes Corporation in 1998 for AsiaSat 3, as a reference case.[19,20] ,

Other notable findings are that the only difference between the Mandarin and English language articles was the level of detail; there were no differences in stated intent or research topics. For example, the above-referenced article on GSSAP was the same in the Mandarin and English versions.[21] In the cases where there was more detail, it could be because the authors intended not to share with a western audience or because it was easier to translate a less complex story. Defense researchers are also more likely than other academics to research orbits especially suited for crewed missions, as the human spaceflight program in China continues to be managed by the military.

The publications are largely reflective of the PRC military’s perceived threats and their academic strategic thinking on other countries’ activities, in an effort to support broad PLA strategies towards achieving comprehensive national power, specific to military interests. These documents are less reflective of the PRC leadership’s plans and intentions.

Reentry into Earth’s orbit from beyond GEO has also been used by international space agencies multiple times, missions which are often used as reference cases for past, present and future Chinese missions. In particular, the defense-affiliated technical articles on the mission extensions of Chang’e 2 (2010), Chang’e 5T1 (2014), and Chang’e 5 (2020) illustrate how defense researchers evaluate what foreign experts have done, or have considered, and apply the lessons learned to China’s pursuit for worthy global firsts. Included below are brief introductions to the non-Chinese missions for the purpose of contextualizing PRC activities. These non-Chinese missions also illustrate the types of maneuvers that the Chinese would likely judge to be internationally acceptable and without cause for a high-level public announcement.

In preparation to launch Chang’e 2 in 2010, researchers heavily relied on prior foreign mission designs, one of which was the US International Sun Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3). ISEE-3 was first launched in 1978 and, with its multiple mission extensions, achieved global firsts as the first spacecraft to visit a Lagrange Point (Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 2, or E-S L2) and the first to fly past a comet.[22] It is one of the most frequently referenced foreign missions in the available Chinese technical articles. PLA NDU affiliated authors published an English language article in 2009 detailing their analysis of the ISEE-3, and specifically stated how it helped support future Chinese exploration missions.[23] Chang’e 2 was launched in 2010 and, after successfully completing its primary mission in 2013, it headed off to E-S L2, making China the third country/organization behind the US and the European Space Agency (ESA) to visit this Lagrange point. Chinese researchers readily point out that while only the third to visit E-S L2, they were the first to do so from lunar orbit.[24] The Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), the second main telemetry, tracking and control center in China, further detailed the mission extension in 2013, also in English.[25]

In preparation for the 2014 launch of Chang’e 5T1, researchers leveraged their studies on Japan’s 1990 Hiten and the joint NASA-University of California Berkeley’s 2010 Acceleration, Reconnections, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun missions (ARTEMIS P1 and P2). A discussion of the Hiten mission is reserved for later. ARTEMIS P1 and P2 was an extension of two of the original five spacecraft from the THEMIS mission, which was in a highly elliptical Earth orbit. ARTEMIS P1 was the first spacecraft to orbit Earth-Moon (E-M) L2, and P2 was the first spacecraft to orbit E-M L1, visits after which they traveled to orbit the Moon in opposite directions.[26] China’s Chang’e 5T1, after delivering the test return capsule to Earth’s orbit, braked like the Hiten mission and headed back out to pass the Moon, leveraging a Lissajous orbit at E-M L2 like ARTEMIS P1. In 2015, Chang’e 5T1 entered lunar orbit, where it continues to operate normally. When China launched its lunar relay satellite for the Chang’e 4 lunar farside mission in 2018, it used the E-M L2 again, but in a halo orbit rather than a Lissajous orbit.[27]

As early as 2015, Chinese defense affiliated researchers were publishing on Chang’e 5T1 and mostly in English. Some examples include a 2015 English Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications Technology, BACC, and Chinese Academy of Sciences paper on China’s first test of a GNSS receiver for better orbit determination and automation beyond GEO.[28] In 2016, PLA NDU, and later the BACC in 2018, both published in English different and detailed reviews of other scenarios China considered for the Chang’e 5T1 mission.[29,30] One scheme included a detailed method for visiting five Lagrange points in succession. In 2017, PLA NDU compared the efficiency between orbits used in Chang’e 2 and Chang’e 5T1 in English.[31]

To prepare for part of Chang’e 5’s mission extension to E-S L1 in late 2020, researchers regularly consulted the ESA-led Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s Genesis. ESA launched SOHO in 1995 as part of a large multinational effort of multiple spacecraft to study the Sun and was one of three spacecraft sent to E-S L1, and one of two using a Lissajous orbit. While only speculation, the SOHO mission might have gotten more Chinese attention compared with the other spacecraft using a Lissajous orbit for a couple of reasons: first, ESA overcame several challenges with the spacecraft, resolutions of which are publicly available, and two, China and ESA have a close working relationship on solar probes (however, the planned late 2024 launch of their joint solar probe will be into Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth, not E-S L1.)[32] NASA’s Genesis launched in 2001 and was the first spacecraft to bring back samples from beyond lunar orbit, capturing solar wind particles from E-S L1 and returning them to Earth, mostly successful despite a parachute failure. As the most recent US space sample return mission, this had additional relevance for Chang’e 5.

Chinese researchers refer to several other foreign missions as reference cases for missions they are likely considering.

According to a 2021 Mandarin article describing Chang’e 5’s stint at E-S L1 from the Beijing Space Vehicle General Design Department and Shanghai Institute of Aerospace Systems Engineering, China selected the Lissajous orbit over the halo orbit because the former would be more fuel-efficient.[33] Another Mandarin article in 2021 but from the Beijing Space Vehicle General Design Department and Beijing Institute of Technology described the usefulness of halo and distant retrograde orbits in the Earth-Moon system for future crewed Martian and asteroid missions.[34] The publication of more articles in English is expected.

Foreign missions discussed but not yet tried

Chinese researchers refer to several other foreign missions as reference cases for missions they are likely considering. For example, the 1990 Japanese Hiten mission simulated a trajectory for a joint Japan-NASA spacecraft (Geotail), which used a highly elliptical Earth orbit that intersected with the Moon’s orbit. In one lunar pass, Hiten released a lunar orbiter called Hagoromo. After completing its primary mission, Hiten performed the first demonstration of aerobraking when reentering Earth orbit, after which it executed a novel entry into lunar orbit, and then looped past E-M L4 and L5 to finally return to lunar orbit. In 1993, Hiten implemented a controlled deorbit into the lunar surface.[35] Such multi-LP missions have been referenced in Chinese articles, such as the one mentioned above regarding alternative scenarios for Chang’e 5T1.

Chinese defense affiliated technical experts have also referenced the 1994 US joint Department of Defense (DOD) and NASA Clementine mission, also known as the Deep Space Program Science Experiment, though much less often based on this study.[36] Clementine was a technology demonstration mission for the DOD’s Brilliant Pebbles program of the Strategic Defense Initiative.[37] It launched into an elliptical polar lunar orbit. After providing the first images of the lunar poles, the US intended Clementine to depart lunar orbit, fly by the Earth to within 19,134 kilometers. That is within MEO, an orbit most often used today for navigation satellites, though it has also been used for missile warning.[38,39,40] The distance of 19,134 kilometers is closer than the first Earth flyby executed by ESA’s Giotto mission launched in 1985. Giotto first flew by Comet Halley and then used the first-ever Earth flyby at 22,000 kilometers to redirect Giotto to another comet in 1991.[41]

Non-technical but defense affiliated research in 2021 reviewing NASA and ESA’s DART and Hera kinetic asteroid redirect mission, which launched in late 2021, noted that many asteroid redirect missions have dual-use technology applications, but also uniquely enable international collaboration.[42] This author recommended pursuing an asteroid redirect mission to join the international community, including the UN experts working group on planetary defense, to work collaboratively. A different non-technical researcher argued the opposite, saying that the US will highly likely not let anyone cooperate with China on planetary defense because of the technology’s dual use applications.[43]

Endnotes

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Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.

Kristin Burke is the Senior Space and Counterspace Researcher at the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI), under the Air Force’s Air University. Prior to joining CASI she was a Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Space at the Office for the Director of National Intelligence and a China Science and Technology Analyst at the Department of State. She speaks and reads Mandarin.

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