China to Launch Lunar Sample Return Mission in Late 2020

China is aiming to launch its complex Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission in late 2020, following launch vehicle-related delays.

The ambitious mission is now scheduled to launch atop the fifth Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket. The mission will launch from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center situated on Hainan island.

Chang’e-5 will attempt to collect and return around two kilograms of lunar samples from a site close to Mons Rümker, a volcanic formation situated in the Oceanus Procellarum region of western edge of the near side of the moon.

The mission will involve the first robotic lunar orbit rendezvous. After the lander collects samples, an ascent vehicle will liftoff and dock with an orbiter module above the moon. A return capsule will then perform a ‘skip reentry’ following separation from the orbiter close to Earth. The return capsule will deliver the samples to the same site as where the country’s Shenzhou crewed missions land.

The complexity of the mission is considered by observers to be related future crewed lunar landing ambitions. The last lunar sample return, the Soviet Union’s 1976 Luna 24 mission, utilised a much simpler direct return approach.

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NASA has Mounted the First Rocket Engine to the SLS for the First Artemis Mission

Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally mated the first of four RS-25 engines to the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will help power the first Artemis mission to the Moon.

Integration of the RS-25 engines to the recently completed core stage structure is a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the RS-25 engines lead contractor. To complete the installation, the technicians will now integrate the propulsion and electrical systems.

The installation process will be repeated for each of the four RS-25 engines. The four RS-25 engines used for Artemis I were delivered to Michoud from Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in June.

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NASA is Paying for Sufficient SLS Rockets for 10 Artemis Missions

NASA has taken the next steps toward building Space Launch System (SLS) rocket core stages to support as many as 10 Artemis missions, including the mission that will carry the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024.

NASA finished assembling the main structural components for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket core stage on Sept. 19. Engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans fully integrated the last piece of the 212-foot-tall core stage by adding the engine section to the rest of the previously assembled structure.Credits: NASA/Steven SeipelView Image Feature

The agency intends to work with Boeing, the current lead contractor for the core stages of the rockets that will fly on the first two Artemis missions, for the production of SLS rockets through the next decade. The core stage is the center part of the rocket that contains the two giant liquid fuel tanks. Towering 212 feet with a diameter of 27.6 feet, it will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and all the systems that will feed the stage’s four RS-25 engines. It also houses the flight computers and much of the avionics needed to control the rocket’s flight.

NASA has provided initial funding and authorization to Boeing to begin work toward the production of the third core stage and to order targeted long-lead materials and cost-efficient bulk purchases to support future builds of core stages. This action allows Boeing to manufacture the third core stage in time for the 2024 mission, Artemis III, while NASA and Boeing work on negotiations to finalize the details of the full contract within the next year. The full contract is expected to support up to 10 core stages and up to eight Exploration Upper Stages (EUS).

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NASA Will use a Cubesat to Test Gateway Station's Orbit

NASA hopes to put humans back on the moon by 2024, starting with an orbiting space station dubbed Lunar Gateway. And the space agency is already showing signs of prepping for the upcoming missions. Recently, the organization announced it will partner with Advance Space, an aerospace company from Colorado, to develop a small CubeSat mission to answer questions before the upcoming missions.

The CubeSat, named CAPSTONE, will be a tiny satellite with the same orbital path that Gateway could eventually take. This path will rotate together with the moon as it orbits Earth, brining it as close to the moon’s surface as 1,000 miles. CAPSTONE could launch as early as December 2020, and with it, could demonstrate how to enter and operate in this lunar orbit before the much larger spacecraft for Gateway are ready.

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China's Space Ambitions may be Facing Delays

China’s major space missions including a lunar sample return, Mars orbiter and rover and a modular space station could be facing delays due to an apparent issue affecting rockets required for launches.

The Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket is China’s most powerful launch vehicle and was designed to launch large spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits and planetary bodies. It was being prepared for a third flight in July, Yang Baohua, vice president of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s main space contractor and developer of the Long March 5, announced in a Jan. 29 news conference in Beijing.

The mission would come two years after the failure of the second launch. However that schedule appears to have slipped as the launch vehicle has yet to be delivered to the launch site, with knock-on effects possible for China’s major space plans.

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NASA Awards Contract for First Component of Gateway Station

In a talk at the Florida Institute of Technology on Thursday, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that Maxar Technologies will build the first stage of NASA’s planned Lunar Gateway.

The Gateway, part of NASA’s larger Artemis program to return to the moon, is meant to be a waystation of sorts placed in a long orbit around the moon. It will provide a habitat for astronauts while they prepare to embark on longer missions, including moon landings, and serve as a place to assemble the components of rockets and other equipment in space.

The first element to be built and tested is a propulsion system, to move it between orbits and make sure it doesn’t drift away. Maxar (a new company formed from several veteran space industry players) is being awarded up to $375 million to build the system, which will convert solar power to electrical energy to power the Gateway, as well as provide propulsion, communication, and docking capabilities.

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Maxar won because of the cost different (almost $200M) and willingness to accept NASA T&Cs on the contract without further negotiation on the matter.

Does China aim for a Lunar South Pole Base by 2029?

China aims to build a scientific research station in the south polar region of the moon and realize manned lunar exploration mission in about ten years, said a senior space official on Wednesday.

Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, made the remarks at the opening ceremony of China's Space Day in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province.

China will launch the Chang'e-5 lunar probe to collect and return lunar samples back to Earth at the end of 2019, Zhang said.

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To The MOOOON!

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency’s approach to moving up a human lunar landing from 2028 to 2024 will focus first on speed and then on sustainability.

In a plenary speech at the 35th Space Symposium here April 9, Bridenstine said the new approach the agency is developing in response to the goal of a human lunar landing in five years announced by Vice President Mike Pence two weeks ago will involve many of the same elements of NASA’s original plans, but in a revised order.

“All of those elements that were necessary to getting humans to the surface of the moon in 2028, all those elements still exist. The plan is still the same,” he said. That includes, he said, development of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, a lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon, and lunar landers.

What will change, he said, is the schedule for developing some of those elements, which will be split into two phases. “The first phase is speed. We want to get those boots on the moon as soon as possible,” he said. “Anything that is a distraction from making that happen we’re getting rid of.”

That emphasis on speed includes launching Exploration Mission (EM) 1, an uncrewed Orion test flight, on the first flight of the SLS in 2020, to be followed by the first crewed Orion mission, EM-2, “as soon as possible thereafter.”

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NASA published the presoliciation for the lunar ascent system.

The NASA Administrator appointed Sirangelo to oversee the lunar plans.

NASA started testing the Gateway station hab modules.

NASA and Boeing hope to have the first stage core for the SLS done by the end of the year.

ESA has started designing the Gateway's deepspace airlock.

NASA has Started Development of a Manned Lunar Lander

Last week, NASA had an industry day for its recently released Human Landing System Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). The space agency is seeking private participation in the development of a landing system capable of delivering astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2028.

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Russian Lunar Program Delayed to 2040

Russia's Moon exploration program will be implemented in several stages by 2040, the press service of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday.

The Russian Academy of Sciences' (RAS) Council earlier held a session with Roscosmos head Rogozin and RAS President Alexander Sergeyev to discuss the Moon exploration program.

"The goal of Moon exploration programs is to protect national interests on the new space frontier. The humanity's interest in Moon exploration is first of all linked with the fact that unique areas were found there that have favorable conditions for building lunar bases. The Moon exploration program will be implemented in several stages by 2040," the press service said.

Sergeyev noted the importance of exploring the Moon. "The issues of Moon exploration are on top of the agenda for today's session of the Council on Space Research. We understand that our resources are limited and that the geopolitical situation does not facilitate attracting more resources. This is why it is very important to choose the right strategy," he said.

Sergeyev said there are different opinions on what is the best moving forces - projects that may bring people people and the scientific community together, or something groundbreaking from the scientific point of view. "The Moon can become a very important project that includes both," he noted.

It was earlier reported that Russian cosmonauts will for the first time touch the Moon’s surface after 2030. Their mission will last 14 days.

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Russia Claims it Will Land a Probe on the Moon Next Year

The launch of Russia’s Luna-25 lunar landing station is scheduled for 2019, with no delays in the timeframe of the mission’s commencement, the Lavochkin Research and Production Association (the lander’s manufacturer) told TASS on Thursday.

"Under the schedule, the launch of the Luna-25 mission is planned for 2019," the Lavochkin Research and Production Association said.

Some media outlets reported on Thursday that the launch of the Luna-25 lander had allegedly been rescheduled for 2020.

As was reported earlier, Russia plans to dispatch the Lunar-25 research landing module to the Earth’s natural satellite in 2019, the Luna-26 orbiter in 2021 and the Luna-27 lander in 2022.

The Luna-25 project aims to launch an automatic probe for research in the Moon’s South Pole. The module is expected to land in the Boguslavsky crater to analyze the composition of regolith, the lunar dust, carry out stereo-photography for preparing the surface’s 3D map and identify the lander’s coordinates with millimeter accuracy using a laser angled reflector.

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India Preparing for March 2018 Chandrayaan-2 Lunar Mission

The launch of the next Moon mission could be just four months away. India plans to return to the Moon in a big way with the ambitious Chandrayaan-2, which includes an orbiter, lander, and a small rover. If it all succeeds, it will be India's first soft landing on another world, and only the second such landing since the end of the Apollo and Luna era. For India, landing success would be "a stepping stone for future exploration missions to other planets," according to Indian Space Research Organisation Satellite Centre (ISAC) director M. Annadurai.

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New Evidence Bolsters Theia Impact Forming Earth's Moon

The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a "planetary embryo" called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, UCLA geochemists and colleagues report.

Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, but many thought the Earth collided with Theia (pronounced THAY-eh) at an angle of 45 degrees or more -- a powerful side-swipe. New evidence reported Jan. 29 in the journal Science substantially strengthens the case for a head-on assault.

The researchers analyzed seven rocks brought to the Earth from the moon by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions, as well as six volcanic rocks from the Earth's mantle -- five from Hawaii and one from Arizona.

The key to reconstructing the giant impact was a chemical signature revealed in the rocks' oxygen atoms. (Oxygen makes up 90 percent of rocks' volume and 50 percent of their weight.) More than 99.9 percent of Earth's oxygen is O-16, so called because each atom contains eight protons and eight neutrons. But there also are small quantities of heavier oxygen isotopes: O-17, which have one extra neutron, and O-18, which have two extra neutrons. Earth, Mars and other planetary bodies in our solar system each has a unique ratio of O-17 to O-16 -- each one a distinctive "fingerprint."

In 2014, a team of German scientists reported in Science that the moon also has its own unique ratio of oxygen isotopes, different from Earth's. The new research finds that is not the case.

"We don't see any difference between the Earth's and the moon's oxygen isotopes; they're indistinguishable," said Edward Young, lead author of the new study and a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry.

Young's research team used state-of-the-art technology and techniques to make extraordinarily precise and careful measurements, and verified them with UCLA's new mass spectrometer.

The fact that oxygen in rocks on the Earth and our moon share chemical signatures was very telling, Young said. Had Earth and Theia collided in a glancing side blow, the vast majority of the moon would have been made mainly of Theia, and the Earth and moon should have different oxygen isotopes. A head-on collision, however, likely would have resulted in similar chemical composition of both Earth and the moon.

"Theia was thoroughly mixed into both the Earth and the moon, and evenly dispersed between them," Young said. "This explains why we don't see a different signature of Theia in the moon versus the Earth."

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Will ESA or Won't ESA? Should we be Skeptical of ESA's ANnounced Lunar Plans by 2030

The European Space Agency on Jan. 7 issued a video describing, over eight minutes, the multiple arguments for lunar exploration and saying flatly: “Our next destination on this [space exploration] journey is the Moon.”

But for now, Europe’s lunar exploration plan remains decidedly one of “all hat, no cattle,” as ESA’s national governments remain silent in the face of the enthusiastic backing of ESA Director-General Johann-Dietrich Woerner of an international lunar exploration effort.

It’s not the first time Woerner has sought to stir interest in a lunar mission. Before arriving at ESA last July, he was executive chairman of the German Aerospace Center, DLR.

DLR in 2007 had tentatively approved what began as a German-only lunar mission focusing on robotic lunar resource exploitation. At some 500 million euros ($600 million then), it proved to large a commitment for DLR alone.

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ESA Planning Lunar Exploration Campaign Starting in 2020

For a while, the European Space Agency has been talking about the possibility of creating a base on the moon, using 3D printing for a large part of its construction. So far it’s been a lot of speculation, but this month the ESA reaffirmed that they are very serious about the plan – they intend to have a lunar base by the 2030s. At a recent symposium entitled “Moon 2020-2030: A New Era of Coordinated and Robotic Exploration,” the agency laid out plans for a series of missions, starting in the early 2020s, that will hopefully culminate in a human-occupied moon base.

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China's Chang'e-3 Lunar Mission Provides a new Ground Truth About the Moon

In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth.

It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who is a participant in an educational collaboration that helped analyze Chang'e-3 mission data. The lander touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain next to a relatively fresh impact crater (now officially named the Zi Wei crater) that had conveniently excavated bedrock from below the regolith for the Yutu rover to study.

Since the Apollo program ended, American lunar exploration has been conducted mainly from orbit. But orbital sensors primarily detect the regolith (the ground-up surface layer of fragmented rock) that blankets the Moon, and the regolith is typically mixed and difficult to interpret.

Because Chang'e-3 landed on a comparatively young lava flow, the regolith layer was thin and not mixed with debris from elsewhere. Thus it closely resembled the composition of the underlying volcanic bedrock. This characteristic made the landing site an ideal location to compare in situ analysis with compositional information detected by orbiting satellites.

"We now have 'ground truth' for our remote sensing, a well-characterized sample in a key location," Jolliff said. "We see the same signal from orbit in other places, so we now know that those other places probably have similar basalts."

The basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site also turned out to be unlike any returned by the Apollo and Luna sample return missions.

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What Chang'e-3 Saw Beneath the Lunar Regolith With its Radar

Structural analysis of lunar subsurface with Chang׳E-3 lunar penetrating radar

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Lai et al

Abstract:

Geological structure of the subsurface of the Moon provides valuable information on lunar evolution. Recently, Chang׳E-3 has utilized lunar penetrating radar (LPR), which is equipped on the lunar rover named as Yutu, to detect the lunar geological structure in Northern Imbrium (44.1260N, 19.5014W) for the first time. As an in situ detector, Chang׳E-3 LPR has relative higher horizontal and vertical resolution and less clutter impact compared to spaceborne radars and earth-based radars.

In this work, we analyze the LPR data at 500 MHz transmission frequency to obtain the shallow subsurface structure of the landing area of Chang׳E-3 in Mare Imbrium. Filter method and amplitude recovery algorithms are utilized to alleviate the adverse effects of environment and system noises and compensate the amplitude losses during signal propagation. Based on the processed radar image, we observe numerous diffraction hyperbolae, which may be caused by discrete reflectors beneath the lunar surface. Hyperbolae fitting method is utilized to reverse the average dielectric constant to certain depth (View the MathML sourceε¯). Overall, the estimated View the MathML sourceε¯ increases with the depth and View the MathML sourceε¯ could be classified into three categories. Average View the MathML sourceε¯ of each category is 2.47, 3.40 and 6.16, respectively. Because of the large gap between the values of View the MathML sourceε¯ of neighboring categories, we speculate a three-layered structure of the shallow surface of LPR exploration region.

One possible geological picture of the speculated three-layered structure is presented as follows. The top layer is weathered layer of ejecta blanket with its average thickness and bound on error is 0.95±0.02 m. The second layer is the ejecta blanket of the nearby impact crater, and the corresponding average thickness is about 2.30±0.07 m, which is in good agreement with the two primary models of ejecta blanket thickness as a function of distance from the crater center. The third layer is regarded as a mixture of stones and soil. The echoes below the third layer are in the same magnitude as the noises, which may indicate that the fourth layer, if it exists, is uniform (no clear reflector) and its thickness is beyond the detection limit of LPR. Hence, we infer the fourth layer is a basalt layer.

Science From China's Lunar Rover Yutu: The Volcanic Activity of the Imbrium basin

Volcanic history of the Imbrium basin: A close-up view from the lunar rover Yutu

Authors:

Zhang et al

Abstract:

We report the surface exploration by the lunar rover Yutu that landed on the young lava flow in the northeastern part of the Mare Imbrium, which is the largest basin on the nearside of the Moon and is filled with several basalt units estimated to date from 3.5 to 2.0 Ga. The onboard lunar penetrating radar conducted a 114-m-long profile, which measured a thickness of ∼5 m of the lunar regolith layer and detected three underlying basalt units at depths of 195, 215, and 345 m. The radar measurements suggest underestimation of the global lunar regolith thickness by other methods and reveal a vast volume of the last volcano eruption. The in situ spectral reflectance and elemental analysis of the lunar soil at the landing site suggest that the young basalt could be derived from an ilmenite-rich mantle reservoir and then assimilated by 10–20% of the last residual melt of the lunar magma ocean.

Report: Japan Considering Landing a Rover on the Moon in 2018

Japan’s space agency announced this week that the country would put an unmanned rover on the surface of the moon by 2018, joining an elite club of nations who have explored Earth’s satellite.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), divulged the plan to an expert panel, including members of the cabinet and the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry last week.

“This is an initial step and a lot of procedures are still ahead before the plan is formally approved,” a JAXA spokesperson told reporters.

If it is approved, the agency will reportedly use its Epsilon solid-fuel rocket technology to carry and deploy a SLIM probe — the acronym stands for “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon” — on the surface of the celestial body.

Japanese media estimates that the mission will cost in the region of $83.4 million to $125 million. JAXA spokesperson Chihito Onda said that this estimate is realistic.

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Chinese Spacecraft Service Module Enters Lunar Orbit

A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth.

The service module from China's circumlunar test flight arrived in orbit around the moon this week, according to Chinese state media reports. The spacecraft is currently flying in an eight-hour orbit that carries it within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point, and out to a range of 3,293 miles (5,300 km) at its highest point.

According to chief engineer Zhou Jianlian of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center the module will make its second and third braking in the early hours of today (Jan. 12) and tomorrow, Beijing time. Doing so will enable the module to enter a 127-minute orbit around the moon, Zhou said.

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