The Week in Space - #2
China lands on the Moon, Arceibo collapses, and the clean-up of space begins
China continued their ambitious space program by landing a probe on the Moon. Chang'e 5 lifted off from China's Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre on November 23 and reached the Lunar surface a few days later. Once on the Moon, the probe drilled for rock sample, which were then placed into an ascent module and launched back into orbit around the Moon. China's space agency expect the samples to arrive back on Earth on December 16. If successful, these will be the first Moon rocks brought back to Earth since the Soviet and American missions in the 1970s.
The Arecibo Observatory, a world-class radio telescope, collapsed in Puerto Rico. The observatory, which had been underfunded for years, suffered serious damage in August this year. Engineers found that fraying cables were undermining the structure, and recommended the observatory be closed and dismantled. Sadly, before that work could start, cables holding the instrument platform snapped, sending it crashing into the dish below. The damage to the antenna is catastrophic, and brings a sad end to a much loved dish.
VirginOrbit will likely attempt a flight of their LauncherOne vehicle sometime between December 18 and 21. This will be the company's second launch attempt. The first, conducted back in May, failed when the engine shutdown seconds after release. LauncherOne, unlike most other rockets, is first carried aloft by an aircraft. Once airborne, the aircraft releases the rocket, which then ignites and carries its payload to orbit. This approach offers several advantages for small satellites, allowing great flexibility in the launch location and avoiding most weather related problems.
ESA signed a contract to fund the first mission to actively remove a piece of space debris from orbit. The mission, ClearSpace-1, will capture the upper stage of a Vega rocket left in space since 2013 and bring it down into the atmosphere so that it burns up. ClearSpace-1 is being developed by ClearSpace, a Swiss start-up spun out of EPFL.
Astronomers released the latest and most detailed dataset from the Gaia space telescope. The data reveals the location and velocities of a billion stars in the Milky Way, allowing astronomers to construct precise maps of the present and future galaxy. A more detailed dataset will be released in 2022, perhaps revealing the location of thousands of exoplanets. Gaia has enough fuel to keep making observations until 2025.
This week's featured image shows how scientists expect the night sky to evolve over the next few hundred thousand years. The image is based on Gaia's most recent data release. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Acknowledgement: A. Brown, S. Jordan, T. Roegiers, X. Luria, E. Masana, T. Prusti and A. Moitinho