#EnVision (ESA mission)

[pothosgrowing]

There actually is a sequel mission planned! The Russian space program has said the Venera-D mission (D standing for dolgozhivuschaya meaning long lasting) will launch in 2029!

It will include another lander that will be built to last over 3 hours!!! It plans to investigate stuff like the chemical composition of Venusian soil and even whether there’s lightning on Venus. There was even going to be NASA involvement! (See the mission patch here)

but then Russia invaded Ukraine the US placed sanctions on Russia as a result and any possible collaboration ended.

It’s also just a lot harder to be excited about it which is a shame because it’s gonna do a lot of cool science

The Soviets kicked our ass in the space race its so dope "Oh you went to the Moon, yeah thats cool I guess, we got pictures of fucking Venus, you ever been to Venus? No the fuck you did not."

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

DAVINCI mission's many 'firsts' aim to unlock Venus's hidden secrets

NASA's DAVINCI—Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging—mission embodies the spirit of innovation and exploration that its namesake, Leonardo da Vinci, was famous for.

Scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, DAVINCI will explore Venus with both a spacecraft and a descent probe. DAVINCI's probe will be the first in the 21st century to brave Venus's atmosphere as it descends from above the planet's clouds down to its surface. Two other missions, NASA's VERITAS and ESA's (European Space Agency) Envision, will also explore Venus in the 2030s from the planet's orbit.

The DAVINCI spacecraft will study Venus's clouds and highlands during two flybys. It also will release a spherical probe, about 3 feet wide, that will plunge through the planet's thick atmosphere and corrosive clouds, taking measurements and capturing high-resolution images of the Venusian surface as it descends below the clouds.

Exploring solar system's one-of-a-kind terrain

The DAVINCI mission will be the first to closely explore Alpha Regio, a region known as a "tessera." So far found only on Venus, where they make up about 8% of the surface, tesserae are highland regions similar in appearance to rugged mountains on Earth. Previous missions discovered these features using radar instruments, but of the many international spacecraft that dove through Venus's atmosphere between 1966 and 1985, none studied or photographed tesserae.

Thought to be ancient continents, tesserae like Alpha Regio may be among the oldest surfaces on the planet, offering scientists access to rocks that are billions of years old.

By studying these rocks from above Alpha Regio, DAVINCI scientists may learn whether ancient Venus had continents and oceans, and how water may have influenced the surface.

IMAGE: An artist's visualization of DAVINCI's descent probe lying on the surface of Venus. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

[universalcovers]

THE LEADER UC & TS Top in Class Selection ▶ Elon Musk

Mars Vision Snapshot

A crewed mission to Mars could happen in 2029, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hints.

A tweet on Monday comparing the moon landing to a future Mars landing attached a photo of the moon landing dated 1969, on top of an image of an envisioned Mars landing, labeled "20 --." The tweet, from Space_Hub, an account that posts about space and astronomy, read "What's your guess" and tagged Musk.

Two days after the tweet, Musk replied "2029."

Musk has long seen a visit to Mars as a goal. In 2016, he said he wanted to build a rocket capable of taking people to Mars and supporting a permanent city on the planet.

"It's something we can do in our lifetimes," he told an audience of 100,000 watchers at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. "You could go."

But Musk's older predictions don't necessarily match up with his latest. In 2016, he told the Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, that getting a "meaningful number of people" on Mars was possible "in about 10 years, maybe sooner, maybe nine years."

Meanwhile, a joint Europe-Russia mission to Mars, called ExoMars, was suspended on Thursday due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. This rover mission, which is part of a two-part series, was set to launch in 2022.

The two-part mission was designed to investigate whether there is or ever was life on Mars.

"While recognising the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States," the intergovernmental organization said in a release.

Source: Npr/Image: Pinterest

Know Elon's Spectacle More Closely

[jcmarchi]

Milestones in Space Exploration: LISA and EnVision Clear Another Hurdle - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/milestones-in-space-exploration-lisa-and-envision-clear-another-hurdle-technology-org/

Milestones in Space Exploration: LISA and EnVision Clear Another Hurdle - Technology Org

On 25 January 2024, the L-class Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) flagship mission and the M-class EnVision mission cleared another important hurdle in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Science Programme.

Venus is Earth’s inner neighbouring planet. It orbits the Sun at a distance of just over 100 million kilometres. The planet has a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide, which generates more than 90 times the pressure on the surface than on Earth, which is roughly equivalent to the water pressure at a depth of 900 metres on Earth. At altitudes between around 30 and 60 kilometres, there are layers of haze and clouds of sulphuric acid that make it impossible to see the surface of the planet directly. Investigating the composition and dynamics of Venus’ atmosphere is one of the focal points of ESA’s EnVision mission (artist’s impression). Image credit: ESA/VR2Planets/Damia Bouic

ESA’s Science Programme Committee has formally transferred the LISA observatory for detecting gravitational waves and the EnVision mission to explore Venus into their implementation phases by means of ‘mission adoptions’. This means that the detailed design, construction and, later, the extensive testing of the spacecraft, payloads and ground infrastructure can begin in full.

The German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is the largest contributor to ESA’s science programme and, therefore, provides significant financial support to the LISA mission and parts of EnVision.

This means that important parts of these two major European space projects are being realised in Germany. DLR in Berlin is significantly involved in one of the main instruments for EnVision. The DLR Institute of Planetary Research is responsible for managing and coordinating the entire VenSpec suite.

The DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems is developing and constructing this multispectral camera to search for active volcanoes and map the surface mineralogy.

LISA – Detecting oscillations in spacetime: The LISA observatory will detect low-frequency gravitational waves from space and determine the nature of their sources with great accuracy once it goes into operation at the end of 2035. Gravitational waves — oscillations in space-time — are caused by the rapid acceleration of incredibly massive objects, such as the merging of two stellar-mass or supermassive black holes. The tiny amplitudes of a gravitational wave can only be detected by highly sensitive laser interferometry. In LISA, this laser interferometer is created by three identical probes that form an almost equilateral triangle with sides measuring around 2.5 million kilometres. This will make LISA by far the largest observatory ever built. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech / NASA / ESA / CXC / STScl / GSFCSVS / S.Barke (CC BY 4.0)

LISA – detecting waves in spacetime

LISA was selected as one of the three major flagship missions in ESA’s Science Programme back in 2017. Since then, intensive work has been carried out on the technical concept and its implementation. The scientific preparations that have been underway since the 1990s, including the extremely complex data processing and analysis, have also been intensively continued by a global consortium of more than 1500 researchers.

ESA, as well as the participating national institutions from various European countries and NASA in the USA and their industrial contractors, will now significantly increase the size of their teams in order to carry out the extensive development work that is still required before the planned launch of the mission in mid-2035.

Once it is operational in space from the end of 2035, LISA will detect low-frequency gravitational waves and accurately determine the nature of their sources. Gravitational waves — oscillations in spacetime — are caused by the rapid acceleration of incredibly massive objects, such as the merging of two stellar-mass or supermassive black holes.

The tiny amplitudes of a gravitational wave can only be detected by highly sensitive laser interferometry. In LISA, this laser interferometer is created by three spacecraft that form an almost equilateral triangle with sides that are approximately 2.5 million kilometres in length. This will make LISA by far the largest observatory ever constructed.

LISA – the largest observatory is being developed and built with a significant German contribution

LISA is being developed and built as part of ESA’s Science Programme with the participation of NASA and with contributions to the payload from more than ten European countries, including Germany. ESA’s industrial prime contractor for the overall mission will be selected in 2025 among a German and a German-Italian industrial consortium – Airbus in Friedrichshafen and OHB in Bremen and Oberpfaffenhofen together with Thales-Alenia in Italy.

A scientific consortium is substantially involved in the development of LISA and is also setting up the mission’s data processing and archiving. The German contribution to the mission is of decisive and mission-critical importance. This extensive contribution to LISA is largely attributable to the leading role of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics / Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Hanover in the development of the Interferometric Detection System (IDS), the components of which are provided by various partners in Europe.

The core of the IDS, developed by the AEI, is the central ‘phase meter’ of the mission alongside the optical system, which is to be supplied by a partner from the UK. There is close cooperation with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Copenhagen. In addition, the institute in Hanover will supply a vital mechanism for the payload in collaboration with Dutch partners.

The AEI is also supporting the mission and ESA with many system design issues, drawing on its extensive experience from the development and operation of the LISA Pathfinder technology demonstrator. This precursor mission successfully tested the key measurement principles for LISA in space from 2015 to 2017.

Together with the German space industry, the AEI also played a leading role in this mission. The entire participation of the AEI in LISA, one of whose personnel is also the scientific lead (Principal Investigator) of the gravitational wave mission, is significantly supported by grants from the German Space Agency at DLR with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).

EnVision – a multifaceted mission to Venus

EnVision was selected in June 2021 as the fifth M-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme and has now also been approved for implementation. In the course of 2024, the project will select an industrial contractor in Europe so that work on finalising the design and building the spacecraft can begin. EnVision is scheduled for launch in 2031 on an Ariane 6 rocket.

The mission will study Venus from its inner core to its upper atmosphere and provide important new insights into the planet’s evolution, geological activity and climate. EnVision aims to answer many long-standing questions about Venus, in particular how and when Earth’s twin became so inhospitable. DLR in Berlin will help to answer these questions, as both the DLR Institute of Planetary Research and the DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems are significantly involved in one of the mission’s four major instruments.

EnVision – DLR to map mineralogy and search for active volcanoes

Even though the atmosphere of Venus, with its clouds of sulphuric acid that are impenetrable to visible light, does not allow a direct view of the planet’s surface, there are still indirect ways of ‘imaging’ it. This is done on the one hand with radar, which penetrates the clouds as it does for aircraft on Earth, and on the other hand, at certain wavelengths, particularly in the near infrared, by observing through what are referred to as ‘atmospheric windows’.

However, it is not possible to understand the surface of Venus without also understanding the atmosphere. A spectrometer suite consisting of three sub-instruments is being developed for EnVision to achieve this. It is named VenSpec and has the components VenSpec-U for analysing the upper atmosphere, VenSpec-H for measurements in the near-surface atmosphere and the VenSpec-M, being developed by DLR, for measuring the thermal radiation and spectral properties of the surface.

The entire VenSpec suite is being managed and coordinated by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research. By combining the results from all three channels, deeper insights can be gained into the close ‘coupling’ between the surface and the atmosphere of Venus.

For example, VenSpec-M might discover an active volcanic eruption by detecting the hot lava, while VenSpec-H would simultaneously measure how much water vapour the volcano is releasing into the atmosphere and VenSpec-U would record the distribution of sulphur dioxide from the volcanic eruption in the upper atmosphere.

VenSpec-M will not only be able to measure the thermal signature of a hot, active volcano; the instrument will also map the mineralogical composition of the surface globally for the first time.

VenSpec-M is being developed and built under the leadership of the DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems, while the DLR Institute of Planetary Research is responsible for the scientific management of the experiment on EnVision. Both institutes are located at the DLR site in Berlin-Adlershof. In addition to DLR, other scientific institutes in Germany are involved in the EnVision mission.

Source: DLR

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[planetarywanderer]

YES! The Venera program was amazing. First soft (i.e. not-crash) landing on the surface of another planet!

Because the surface of Venus is so hot, the landers couldn't survive long (Venera 13 managed 2 hours but all the others were less than that). Every action was pre-programmed - not like the Mars rovers where we can look at what happened yesterday and then send up the commands for tomorrow; with Venera there was not going to be a tomorrow so the lander had to work quickly. Pop the lens caps off the camera, take pictures, deploy the arm with the poking device to study the surface materials in one spot, send data back before you die.

The upside of this strategy is that we have data from the surface of Venus. The downside of this strategy is that Venera 14's arm deployed exactly over the discarded camera lens cap and returned data on the compressibility of a heavily-engineered lens cap.

There are other missions since Venera that have studied Venus, including Magellan (NASA), Venus Express (ESA), and Akatsuki (JAXA), and more in development (DaVinci, VERITAS, and Envision), but no actual landers are on the books.

It’s been 39 years since we’ve sent a spacecraft to the surface of Venus.

[thxnews]

NASA Expedition 71: Pioneering Space Research

Astronauts Set to Explore Brain Health, Plant Growth, and Fluid Shifts

NASA's Expedition 71 is gearing up for an extraordinary journey to the International Space Station (ISS), with astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and Tracy C. Dyson at the helm. Scheduled for launch in the upcoming months of February and March, this mission aims to delve into groundbreaking scientific investigations in the unique microgravity environment of space. Moreover, among the key studies are explorations into neurological organoids, plant growth responses, and the management of fluid shifts in the human body.  

Advancements in Neurological Research

Unraveling the Mysteries of Neuroinflammation The Human Brain Organoid Models for Neurodegenerative Disease & Drug Discovery (HBOND) project stands at the forefront of neurological research aboard the ISS. Additionally, by studying neuroinflammation, which is prevalent in disorders like Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s, researchers hope to accelerate drug discovery and therapeutic target identification. Utilizing patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), this investigation could pave the way for improved diagnostics, offer insights into aging, and support the development of countermeasures for brain health during extended space missions.  

Plant Life in Space

Understanding Plant Stress Responses The Study on Plant Responses Against the Stresses of Microgravity and High Ultraviolet Radiation in Space (Plant UV-B) aims to understand how plants adapt to the stressors of space, including microgravity and UV radiation. Furthermore, this research is crucial for developing sustainable life-support systems for future lunar and Martian missions. Additionally, as plants are envisioned to play a key role in providing food and oxygen for astronauts on long-duration journeys, gaining insights from this study is imperative.  

Mitigating Health Risks in Microgravity

Exploring Solutions for Fluid Shifts The Mitigating Headward Fluid Shifts with Veno-constrictive Thigh Cuffs During Spaceflight (Thigh Cuff) experiment investigates the potential of thigh pressure cuffs in countering the upward shift of body fluids in microgravity. This condition, known as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS), poses significant health risks to astronauts. Findings from this study could not only protect space travelers but also offer therapeutic insights for Earth-bound patients experiencing similar fluid accumulation issues.  

Harnessing the Power of Algae

Spirulina as a Space Superfood In collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), the Arthrospira-C (Art-C) investigation examines the behavior of the cyanobacterium Limnospira, commonly known as Spirulina, under spaceflight conditions. Furthermore, this study assesses Spirulina's potential to support life in space by producing oxygen, removing carbon dioxide, and serving as a nutritional supplement, thanks to its radioprotective properties.   Sources: THX News & NASA. Read the full article

[martin-james2121]

Europe is set to launch EnVision Mission in 2031, focused on studying Venus and its inner core

The European Space Agency (ESA) has given the official green light to the EnVision mission, which assures to offer groundbreaking insights into Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor.

Scheduled for liftoff in 2031 aboard an Ariane 6 rocket, EnVision will undertake a thorough examination of Venus, delving into its fiery inner core and exploring its dynamic outer atmosphere. This ambitious endeavor seeks to unravel the planet’s intricate history, geological processes, and extraordinary climate conditions.

“EnVision is all set to revolutionize our comprehension of Venus,” remarked Thomas Voirin, ESA EnVision study manager. “With the mission blueprint firmly established, we’re enthusiastic about transitioning from planning to construction. Our objective is to unravel the mysteries surrounding what may be the most enigmatic terrestrial planet in the Solar System.”

EnVision’s array of advanced instruments will unravel the mysteries of Venus. It will mark the inaugural mission to directly investigate the planet’s subsurface features using a radar sounder, offering insights into its geological dynamics. Additionally, VenSAR, an advanced radar tool, will furnish intricate surface maps, uncovering the planet’s terrain with precision up to 10 meters.

To Read More Click here...

[spacetodaypt]

We're heading for Venus: ESA approves EnVision

ESA’s next mission to Venus was officially ‘adopted’ today by the Agency’s Science Programme Committee. EnVision will study Venus from its inner core to its outer atmosphere, giving important new insight into the planet’s history, geological activity and climate.Being adopted means that the study phase is complete and ESA commits to implementing the mission. Following selection of the European…

[spacenutspod]

ESA’s next mission to Venus was officially ‘adopted’ today by the Agency’s Science Programme Committee. EnVision will study Venus from its inner core to its outer atmosphere, giving important new insight into the planet's history, geological activity and climate.

[aldocerandaz]

NASA will collaborate with the new mission to Venus of the European Space Agency

NASA will collaborate with the new mission to Venus of the European Space Agency, EnVision will carry out detailed observations of Venus to understand its history, and especially to understand the connections between the atmosphere and geological processe

La NASA colaborará con la nueva misión a Venus de la Agencia Espacial Europea El 10 de junio de 2021, la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA por sus siglas en inglés) anunció la selección de EnVision como su nueva misión científica de clase media.  EnVision llevará a cabo observaciones detalladas de Venus para entender su historia y, especialmente, comprender las conexiones entre la atmósfera y los…

[spaceexp]

Milky Way Raids Intergalactic 'Bank Accounts,' Hubble Study Finds

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. Oct. 10, 2019 Our Milky Way is a frugal galaxy. Supernovas and violent stellar winds blow gas out of the galactic disk, but that gas falls back onto the galaxy to form new generations of stars. In an ambitious effort to conduct a full accounting of this recycling process, astronomers were surprised to find a surplus of incoming gas. "We expected to find the Milky Way's books balanced, with an equilibrium of gas inflow and outflow, but 10 years of Hubble ultraviolet data has shown there is more coming in than going out," said astronomer Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, lead author of the study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. Fox said that, for now, the source of the excess inflowing gas remains a mystery.

Image above: This illustration envisions the Milky Way galaxy's gas recycling above and below its stellar disk. Hubble observes the invisible gas clouds rising and falling with its sensitive Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) instrument. The spectroscopic signature of the light from background quasars shining through the clouds gives information about their motion. Quasar light is redshifted in clouds shooting up and away from the galactic plane, while quasar light passing through gas falling back down appears blueshifted. This differentiation allows Hubble to conduct an accurate audit of the outflowing and inflowing gas in the Milky Way's busy halo — revealing an unexpected and so-far unexplained surplus of inflowing gas. Image Credits: NASA, ESA and D. Player (STScI). One possible explanation is that new gas could be coming from the intergalactic medium. But Fox suspects the Milky Way is also raiding the gas "bank accounts" of its small satellite galaxies, using its considerably greater gravitational pull to siphon away their resources. Additionally, this survey, while galaxy-wide, looked only at cool gas, and hotter gas could play a role, too. The new study reports the best measurements yet for how fast gas flows in and out of the Milky Way. Prior to this study, astronomers knew that the galactic gas reserves are replenished by inflow and depleted by outflow, but they did not know the relative amounts of gas coming in compared to going out. The balance between these two processes is important because it regulates the formation of new generations of stars and planets. Astronomers accomplished this survey by collecting archival observations from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), which was installed on the telescope by astronauts in 2009 during its last servicing mission. Researchers combed through the Hubble archives, analyzing 200 past ultraviolet observations of the diffuse halo that surrounds the disk of our galaxy. The decade's worth of detailed ultraviolet data provided an unprecedented look at gas flow across the galaxy and allowed for the first galaxy-wide inventory. The gas clouds of the galactic halo are only detectable in ultraviolet light, and Hubble is specialized to collect detailed data about the ultraviolet universe. "The original Hubble COS observations were taken to study the universe far beyond our galaxy, but we went back to them and analyzed the Milky Way gas in the foreground. It's a credit to the Hubble archive that we can use the same observations to study both the near and the more distant universe. Hubble's resolution allows us to simultaneously study local and remote celestial objects," noted Rongmon Bordoloi of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, a co-author on the paper.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Animation Credits: NASA/ESA

Because the galaxy's gas clouds are invisible, Fox's team used light from background quasars to detect these clouds and their motion. Quasars, the cores of active galaxies powered by well-fed black holes, shine like brilliant beacons across billions of light-years. When the quasar's light reaches the Milky Way, it passes through the invisible clouds. The gas in the clouds absorbs certain frequencies of light, leaving telltale fingerprints in the quasar light. Fox singled out the fingerprint of silicon and used it to trace the gas around the Milky Way. Outflowing and inflowing gas clouds were distinguished by the Doppler shift of the light passing through them — approaching clouds are bluer, and receding clouds are redder. Currently, the Milky Way is the only galaxy for which we have enough data to provide such a full accounting of gas inflow and outflow. "Studying our own galaxy in detail provides the basis for understanding galaxies across the universe, and we have realized that our galaxy is more complicated than we imagined," said Philipp Richter of the University of Potsdam in Germany, another co-author on the study. Future studies will explore the source of the inflowing gas surplus, as well as whether other large galaxies behave similarly. Fox noted that there are now enough COS observations to conduct an audit of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA (the European Space Agency) and NASA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. Related links: The Astrophysical Journal: http://apj.aas.org/ Galaxies: https://www.nasa.gov/subject/6894/galaxies Hubble Space Telescope (HST): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rob Garner/Goddard Space Flight Center/Claire Andreoli/Space Telescope Science Institute/Leah Ramsay/Ray Villard/Andrew Fox. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

[sciencespies]

Smallsat specialist OrbAstro busy building downstream dreams

https://sciencespies.com/space/smallsat-specialist-orbastro-busy-building-downstream-dreams/

Smallsat specialist OrbAstro busy building downstream dreams

Contract with propulsion startup Aliena powers September 2022 launch of OrbAstro’s first 12U microsat

WASHINGTON — OrbAstro, a space-as-a-service startup with visions of flying “tiny satellites in large flocks,” is ready to launch its first half-dozen smallsats in 2022

With a January launch lined up in India, spots reserved on upcoming SpaceX rideshare missions and a launch agreement with an undisclosed third provider, OrbAstro says it has five commercial satellites plus a pilot satellite for an in-house project all scheduled to launch next year. The UK and New Zealand-based company expects to add one or two more missions to its 2022 roster in the coming months.

OrbAstro’s ORB-3 nanosatellite platform is the size of three 10-centimeter cubesats placed end to end. Credit: OrbitAstro

OrbAstro says it has taken deposits for a dozen more satellites slated for launch in 2023-2024. “Many of these are pilot missions for large nanosat [and] microsat constellations,” OrbAstro CEO and co-founder Ash Dove-Jay said in an interview this week.

The 12-person company, which was founded in 2018 by two of the three original employees of Oxford Space Systems, announced Sept. 23 a contract with Singapore-based satellite propulsion provider Aliena PTE Ltd. to fly its all-electric attitude and orbit control system onboard OrbAstro’s first microsatellite scheduled for launch a year from now.

Like Oxford Space Systems, the deployable antenna and space structures company that helped put the UK’s Harwell Space Cluster on the map, OrbAstro has been renting facilities on the sprawling research park near Oxford University to build and test cubesat-based nanosatellites.

Dove-Jay and his two co-founders, CTO Vinoth Gurusamy and head of electronics Kalhana Colombage, have been keeping a low profile as they bootstrap their space-as-as-service venture by building, testing and selling cubesat-based nanosatellites and smallsat subsystems designed in house.

Although OrbAstro has a website that describes its satellite and subsystem offerings, it doesn’t list the company’s leadership team, address or clients. The UK Space Agency, Innovate UK, the European Space Agency, and the ESA Business Incubator Centre UK are named as supporters.

“We secured 4 million pounds, roughly, in government and space agency grants and contracts, [plus] some personal investment as well,” Dove-Jay said. “That’s allowed us to work quietly in the shadows for a while to the point where we are now.”

From contracts to countdowns

Where they are, according to Dove-Jay, is ready to start announcing some of the commercial contracts they’ve been busy nailing down.

OrbAstro’s customers, Dove-Jay said, are a “mishmash” of “one-off academic payloads” and commercial ventures “looking to get flight heritage on their subsystems” or are “piloting a service using our platforms.”

Aliena is combining its MUlti-Staged Ignition Compact (MUSIC) Hall-effect thruster (shown) with Aurora’s attitude control module to provide an all-electric propulsion solution for smallsats. Credit: Aliena PTE

The just-announced contract with Aliena calls for flying the propulsion provider’s hardware in September 2022 on an ORB-12 microsatellite (so named because it’s the size of a stack 12 cubesats, each measuring 10 centimeters on a side). 

Dove-Jay said OrbAstro is not at liberty to disclose the launch provider it lined up for the first flight of ORB-12.

The mission will give Aliena flight heritage for its so-called Aliena-Aurora multimodal all-electric AOCS propulsion system that it developed in partnership with Finland-based Aurora Propulsion Technologies. The system consists of an Aliena-designed MUSIC Hall-effect thruster and an Aurora resistojet attitude control module.

The ORB-12 mission will also be used to test a variety of internally developed OrbAstro subsystems, including an optical transceiver, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload, a compact optical imaging system, an onboard artificial intelligence processing unit, and thermal management and electrical power systems. 

While the ORB-12 mission is the first of several planned announcements, it’s not expected to be OrbAstro’s first launch. 

The company has a variety of 3U- and 6U-class nanosatellites scheduled for launch in 2022, starting with a 3U nanosat that OrbAstro had expected to launch this year  to put its cubesat-derived ORB-3 platform and subsystems through their paces.  That first satellite is expected to launch in January as a secondary payload on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Oceansat 3. Dove-Jay said OrbAstro made arrangements for the PSLV launch after plans fell through to launch with SpaceX this year as part of Momentus’ still-delayed Vigoride space tug mission.

Dove-Jay said OrbAstro has three SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare missions lined up next year for its 6U-class nanosatellites, the ORB-6.

Downstream dreams

While OrbAstro is keeping busy building nanosatellites, it does not primarily see itself as a smallsat manufacturer. “It’s not the end goal for the company. It’s more of a means to an end,” Dove-Jay said. “We eventually want to become our own customers with these platforms and pursue our own downstream applications.” One of those downstream applications is the Guardian Network, an envisioned 18-nanosatellite constellation designed as in-orbit infrastructure for OrbAstro’s space-as-a-service venture.

Dove-Jay says the Guardian Network will provide two key services for OrbAstro’s customers: in-orbit data relay and semi-autonomous spacecraft management.

Another downstream application involves a smallsat constellation merging optical imaging with high-resolution 3D mapping. Some of the enabling technologies will be hosted on OrbAstro’s ORB-12 mission with Aliena.

“It’s more longer term,” Dove-Jay said of the envisioned imaging constellation, “but it will allow us to de-risk some of these technologies.”

Dove-Jay described the envisioned constellation as “a semiactive, multi-static SAR.”

“It’s effectively one microsat with a cluster of typically a dozen nanosats around it. The microsat transmits and the nanosats receive,” Dove-Jay said. “Because of the different olocations of nanosats from the transmitter, you can effectively create a three-dimensional image of what you’re looking at. The more satellites you’ve got, the [more] power you’ve got, the higher resolution you can get to. And we think within the next four to five years, it’s perfectly viable for us to hit 10-centimeter resolution in Ka-band.”

Banking on growth

In the meantime, OrbAstro has enough satellites to build that it is thinking about larger facilities. “We can, at a push, get a couple satellites through a month right now,” Dove-Jay said. “Over the next year, we should be able to scale that to five or six a month, maybe 10 if we’re lucky.”

Although the Harwell campus affords on-site access to vibration testing and other shared facilities, OrbAstro is setting its sights beyond the research park. “We may shift to Scotland. We’re thinking about New Zealand as well,” he said. 

“We will probably in the next year or two set up a U.S. presence just to open up the U.S. market to us a bit more.”

Although OrbAstro has so far avoided outside financing, that might soon change. In the year ahead, Dove-Jay said, OrbAstro will be looking to raise 2-3 million pounds, preferably in the form of a loan.

“We’re at a point now where demand is outstripping what we can provide,” he said. “So it’s a case of do we limp along for a couple of years until we organically grow to what the market needs, or do we scale up quickly?”

#Space

[spacetodaypt]

ESA’s EnVision Mission Doesn’t Have a lot of Fuel, so it’s Going to Aerobrake in the Atmosphere of Venus

ESA’s EnVision Mission Doesn’t Have a lot of Fuel, so it’s Going to Aerobrake in the Atmosphere of Venus

Venus has almost been “the forgotten planet,” with only one space mission going there in the past 30 years. But the recent resurgence of interest in Earth’s closest neighbor has NASA and ESA committing to three new missions to Venus, all due to launch by the early 2030s.ESA’s EnVision mission Venus is slated to take high-resolution optical, spectral and radar images of the planet’s surface. But…

[environmental-architecture]

From Earth observation to Venus observation...

EnVision: Understanding why Earth's closest neighbour is so different:

“A key question in planetary science is why, despite being roughly the same size and composition, our next-door neighbour in the inner Solar System experienced such a dramatic climate change: instead of being a habitable world like Earth, it has a toxic atmosphere and is enshrouded with thick sulphuric acid-rich clouds. What history did Venus experience to arrive at this state and does this foretell Earth’s fate should it, too, undergo a catastrophic greenhouse effect? Is Venus still geologically active? Could it have once hosted an ocean and even sustained life? What lessons can be learned about the evolution of terrestrial planets in general, as we discover more Earth-like exoplanets?”

source: ESA selects revolutionary Venus mission EnVision