Thursday, November 30, 2023
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Europe Is Starting To Get Competitive WIth New Launchers
 An Ariane 6 test model during a static-fire test November 23. ESA member states agreed earlier in the month to support that rocket while opening the door to future competition. (credit: ESA/M. Pedoussaut) |
Europe turns to competition to improve its launch industry’s competitiveness
by Jeff Foust
Monday, November 27, 2023
European officials have acknowledged for months that the continent is in a “launcher crisis” caused by problems with new rockets like the Ariane 6 and Vega C (see “A crisis and an opportunity for European space access”, The Space Review July 10, 2023). But sometimes it seems like any mode of transportation in Europe is fraught with difficulty.
“I traveled by Deutsche Bahn. I was not sure that I could make it,” quipped Walther Pelzer, director general of the German Space Agency at DLR, in a keynote at Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen, Germany, earlier this month, referring to the German rail operator.
He was followed by his French counterpart, Philippe Baptiste, CEO of the French space agency CNES. “I did not come by Deutsche Bahn. I came by Air France,” he said. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
| “We have to change how we procure the launchers of the future,” Aschbacher said at the briefing, embracing a launch services approach like that used in the United States. |
Both, though, did make it to Bremen, just as European officials traveled a week earlier to Seville, Spain, for a second European Space Summit involving member states of the European Space Agency and European Union. It was in Seville where ESA members agreed to a new launch strategy that would provide near-term support for Ariane 6 and Vega C while enabling far bigger changes to the long-term European launch landscape.
At the end of the ESA portion of the Space Summit November 6, agency officials announced an agreement to address current problems with Europe’s access to space. ESA will back what the agency called “stabilized exploitation” of Ariane 6 and Vega C, providing up to 340 million euros ($370 million) annually for Ariane 6 and 21 million euros ($23 million) annually for Vega C. That will go towards production of a set of 27 Ariane 6 and 17 Vega C rockets.
“This is very good news because we have a stable future for launchers in Europe of medium and large sizes,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, at a press conference after the summit. “This is a big relief, I can tell you, because a few days ago we did not have this situation yet.”
That decision affirmed the importance, in the near term, of both rockets despite their ongoing challenges. Ariane 6 was set to debut in 2020 but its first launch has been pushed back to some time in 2024 (an announcement about a more specific launch date could come as soon as this Thursday, after a successful long-duration static-fire test last week.) Vega C has been grounded since a December 2022 launch failure and is not expected to return to service before the fourth quarter of 2024.
However, ESA members also decided at the summit to open the door to other launch vehicles. They agreed to a competition or “challenge” program that would allow other launch providers to compete for an unspecified set of government missions starting later in the decade, rather than assigning them to either Ariane 6 or Vega C.
“We have to change how we procure the launchers of the future,” Aschbacher said at the briefing, embracing a launch services approach like that used in the United States. He called it a “paradigm shift,” a phrase repeated by many other European officials in the days and weeks after the summit.
| Competition, said CNES’s Baptiste, is “the only option for Europe to regain its position as a global space power.” |
However, ESA offered few details at the summit about how the competition would work: what companies would be eligible and what missions would be competed, among other details. An ESA spokesperson said last week that details about the proposed competition will be developed next year, with a goal of presenting a program that ESA members would fund at the next triennial ministerial conference in 2025. The potential missions, the spokesperson said, would be identified by ESA along with the European Commission, weather satellite operator Eumetsat, and national governments.
At Space Tech Expo Europe a week after the Space Summit, industry and government officials supported that new launch competition strategy despite a lack of details. “Competition will be the method of choice in the launcher sector in the future,” said Pelzer, noting that Germany advocated for a launcher challenge at an ESA meeting earlier in the year. “Monopolies imply a lot of risks.”
“We collectively agreed that the new model, resting on competition and service procurement, will frame Europe’s launcher and, most likely, low orbit landscape in the future,” said CNES’s Baptiste. “It’s the only option for Europe to regain its position as a global space power.”
Some European launch startups at the conference also backed the concept of a competition. “The Space Summit was an inflection point for the space industry in Europe,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, executive president of PLD Space. That Spanish company that performed a successful suborbital launch of its Miura 1 rocket in October and is working on the Miura 5 small launch vehicle, set to begin launches as soon as 2025.
“Our perception is that it is a clear opportunity for small launchers,” he said. “It’s very good news.”
 Spanish launch startup PLD Space launched its Miura 1 suborbital rocket in October as a test for its larger Miura 5 orbital launch vehicle. (credit: PLD Space) |
He appeared on a panel with Alan Thompson, head of government affairs for Skyrora, a UK-based small launch vehicle developer. Asked about the Space Summit, he curiously did not mention the launch competition plans announced there, taking a more pessimistic view. “We as a company have tempered our ambitions in terms of number of launches,” he said. The company has projected preforming up a dozen launches a year, “but looking at whether that is realistic, the answer is probably not.”
Others at the conference had other concerns about the competition, including exactly what missions would be included and how many. European launch startups have focused on small launch vehicles, placing up to a ton in low Earth orbit, but some have plans to grow to larger vehicles that might compete more directly with Vega C or even Ariane 6.
The demand for larger vehicles, though, is limited in Europe given the small number of government missions. The agreement at the Space Summit also committed European governments to buying at least four Ariane 6 and three Vega C launches a year.
“We can play with that, at least for small launchers,” Baptiste said of competition. “If we are talking about heavy launchers, I think it will be much more difficult.”
| “It cannot be that you have part of the industry having to run 100 meters with a 20-kilo backpack and others which have nothing,” said ArianeGroup’s Godart. |
The limited government demand would hinder any competition for larger rockets, noted Marco Fuchs, CEO of OHB, the German aerospace company that is backing small launch vehicle startup Rocket Factory Augsburg. “If you only have four institutional missions, you don’t need ten large rockets in Europe. That’s pretty obvious.”
ArianeGroup, the prime contractor for the Ariane 6, has its own concerns about the proposed competition. “Europe needs to get sorted on how it organizes this competition,” said Pierre Godart, CEO of ArianeGroup Germany. “We have a little bit of time, but not too much.”
He suggested that Europe not simply copy the launch competitions used by the U.S. government. “It’s never successful when we make a one-to-one copy,” he said. “We will have to find our European way forward, which is different from what we had in the past.” He didn’t elaborate, though, on what that “European way” would look like.
Whatever competition that does emerge, he said, needs to treat both incumbents and newcomers the same. “It cannot be that you have part of the industry having to run 100 meters with a 20-kilo backpack and others which have nothing,” he said.
That could include revisiting one of the central tenets of ESA contracting, the concept of geographic return or georeturn. Under georeturn, member states that subscribe to programs are guaranteed contracts in proportion to their contributions.
That approach, critics argue, makes it difficult for current European launch vehicles to be cost competitive, and would be even more difficult to implement in a future launch competition where there are no guarantees what vehicles from what countries would win government contracts for launchers.
“We have to reduce costs. We are ready to simplify as much as possible the complex system in which we live,” said Baptiste, who said that some Ariane 6 suppliers, guaranteed work because of georeturn policies, have increased their prices by up to 60%. “We can get rid of some part of the georeturn, at least for the exploitation of the Ariane 6.”
“I cannot choose my supplier. It is decided,” Godart said, referring to georeturn. “Even if I have suppliers who are not performing, I cannot change them.”
However, there seemed little appetite at the conference for broader changes in georeturn policies, with some officials expressing concerns that, without it, many countries might be reticent to subscribe to ESA programs. “If we want to crash ESA, getting rid of georeturn would be the best way,” said DLR’s Pelzer.
Géraldine Naja, ESA’s director of commercialization, industry, and procurement, acknowledged in a presentation at Space Tech Expo Europe the concerns about georeturn and how it might be applied to future launch competitions, saying only that the agency was looking is how it might “evolve” that policy. “It must be in the direction of good competition and good competitiveness,” she said.
Even with all the uncertainties about how a launch competition might be organized, there was general support for the concept because of the need to revitalize a launch industry that, in Europe, is lagging counterparts in America and China.
“I think Seville has been a great success,” said Sabine von der Recke, a member of the board of OHB who also is on the management team for the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance, a venture developing a sea-based platform for small launch vehicles. She cited both the support for Ariane 6—for which OHB is a major supplier—as well as the proposed future competition.
“Seville was not only a decision on launchers. It will change also the rest of space, because it’s the hardest decision and the most political,” she said.
Meanwhile, many of those who remained through the end of the three-day Space Tech Expo Europe conference found their travel plans from Bremen upended by disruptions to Deutsche Bahn’s schedule caused by a strike. Perhaps space will be an easier transportation challenge to solve.
Oxygen On Mars
 Terraformed Mars being greened with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. (credit: Kevin Gill) |
Oxygen for Mars
by John K. Strickland
Monday, November 27, 2023
There is a lot of attention in our community on creating a backup location for humanity and, along with pressurized in-space settlements, Mars is one of the best locations for that. But along with the human race and its civilization, we should also include the important requirement that we need a backup for life itself. Right now the only place known where life exists, and can survive and grow, is Earth, just one tiny planet. Our lives are enabled and enriched by the incredible variety of animals and plants that live on Earth, on land and in the seas. We would be immensely impoverished if all we had kept alive in space were the most critical plant species that we grow for food. So we need to think more about how to keep a whole biosphere alive.
In a 2015 article, Don Barker made one of the best statements in support of Mars settlement I have seen, and he mentioned a “backup for life on Earth”:
“The settlement of Mars is probably the most viable endeavor that would create a backup for life on Earth, in effect a global-mitosis. Mars is the only destination whose environment and accessible natural resources efficiently enable permanent and sustainable human habitation off Earth.” — “The Mars Imperative”, Barker, Donald C., Volume 107, Acta Astronautica 3-2015.
What is really needed is to create a habitat that is very large, one that has the physical land surface area equivalent to the outdoors on Earth instead of just pressurized habitats. To match some level of open space for significant numbers (breeding populations) of even a few thousands species would require dozens or hundreds of very large, dedicated artificial habitats in space. I hope such habitats can be built, and such habitats can serve as interim refuges, but having a fully terraformed planet where the animals and plants can live in the vastly larger space outside of habitats is very important. That requires terraforming Mars, the only planet in our solar system where terraforming will be practical without “magic physics.”
| For practical terraforming efforts of almost any kind, there are two basic requirements: large scale access to space and the destinations in it, and some form of fusion energy for power and propulsion. |
Some people criticize discussions of terraforming as “grandiose” or a “display of hubris” and being at an “industrial-scale,” faintly echoing the “Small is Beautiful” movement of 40 years ago. If you are trying to modify an entire planet’s atmosphere, the scale is by necessity “grandiose.” These anti-tech attitudes remind me of the desperate attempts by radicals to stop the California Condor captive breeding program. It seemed as if the radicals would rather have had the condors go extinct than allow a practical human effort to save a species to succeed. That program has resulted in a huge increase from 22 condors in 1982 to 540 in 2023, an almost 25-fold increase in just 41 years.
The same kind of values are being pitted against each other here, but on a vastly larger scale: the preservation of a major part of the vast diversity of life itself versus keeping the status quo for dead rocks on what currently is probably a lifeless and desolate planet. Even if there were living microbes deep under the surface of Mars, the value of millions of multicellular species would surely outweigh the value of microbes.
I have already covered the issue of how to provide the bulk of air pressure needed to terraform Mars (see “Rethinking the Mars terraforming debate”, The Space Review August 20, 2018). That article describes how huge amounts of solid nitrogen can be moved from Pluto or other locations and dumped into the Martian atmosphere with no cratering. This would allow rain to fall and liquid water to flow on Mars. Several people have suggested Venus as a closer source of nitrogen, but it is at the bottom of a deep gravity well, and would have to be skimmed off the top of the atmosphere, separated from the carbon dioxide and liquefied for shipment to Mars with a significant delta-V value. Pluto has a shallow gravity well and the nitrogen is already in solid form, and thus much easier to mine and ship in bulk.
The two things we need for full terraforming of Mars are nitrogen pressure and some oxygen pressure. Only anaerobic bacteria could live on Mars without oxygen. Therefore, Mars also needs oxygen.
For practical terraforming efforts of almost any kind, there are two basic requirements: large scale access to space and the destinations in it, and some form of fusion energy for power and propulsion. We should soon have the first, and things are looking promising to have the second. Without fusion, both terraforming and interstellar travel would be almost impossible. Since fusion occurs in nature inside every star, it is not magic physics. The huge amounts of fusion energy needed to transport the nitrogen to Mars and create the oxygen on Mars are comparable.
Wanted: 880 trillion tons of oxygen gas to support plant and animal Earth life on Mars. This amount would provide an average of three pounds per square inch (psi) of partial oxygen pressure for the whole planet. This is the normal sea level amount of oxygen we breathe, since most of the rest of the 14.7 psi we breathe on Earth is nitrogen. About the highest people can function is at about 5,200 meters (17,000 feet), where the oxygen pressure is about 40% of sea level, or about 1.2 psi, and those people are very highly adapted. Some people get altitude sickness at only 2,700 meters (9,000 feet), where the oxygen pressure is 70% of sea level or 2.1 psi partial pressure.
How do we know how much oxygen it would take to oxygenate a whole planet? Mars has 144.8 million square kilometers of surface, and each square kilometer covers one million square meters. The nitrogen pressure must always be several times higher than the oxygen pressure to prevent a runaway oxygen fire.
There are at least three ways to measure the amount of oxygen needed on Mars: pressure per square inch, pressure per square meter, or mass per square meter (which means all of the oxygen in the “air column” directly above each square meter, measured from the surface to the top of the atmosphere.) To provide 3 psi of oxygen air pressure on Mars, with its lower gravity, takes about 2.1 (Mars) tons of oxygen pressure per square meter or 2.1 million tons per square kilometer. But since Mars gravity is about 0.376 of a G, you would need 2.66 times more oxygen to get the needed pressure, or about 5.59 actual tons above each square meter of surface. The 2.1 tons per square meter is also the amount of oxygen pressure you would get on Mars. If Mars had the same gravity as Earth, you would need only 304 trillion tons of oxygen. So if each square kilometer needs 5.59 million tons of oxygen, Mars needs 5.59 million tons times 144.8 million square kilometers, which equals about 810 trillion tons of oxygen.
In nature, oxygen is a strongly reactive element like fluorine and “wants” to combine with other elements to create compounds like water. Thus there are no oxygen mines in nature, unless you want to rob Earth’s biologically-created atmosphere of a significant part of its oxygen. So the oxygen must be chemically created from an oxygen compound like water.
In fact, Mars has many thousands of cubic kilometers of water ice, each containing one billion tons or one billion cubic meters of water ice. If we have on Mars at least one million cubic kilometers of water ice, a volume of ice regolith or glacier 1,000 by 1,000 by 1 kilometer deep, that amount would contain 1,000 trillion tons or 1 quadrillion tons of ice. If this is pure ice, it would be under an area of one million square kilometers. (Mars actually has about 145 surface areas this large.) The 1,000 trillion tons of ice can be converted to 880 trillion tons of oxygen and 120 trillion tons of hydrogen via hydrolysis, exceeding the desired amount of oxygen by about 10%.
If there turns out to be less than the needed amount of water ice on Mars, massive amounts can also be imported from the abundant “iceteroids” (asteroids mostly made of ice.) Once we have fusion power, we should be able to provide energy in the extremely large amounts needed to provide Mars with the needed oxygen. Along with the imported nitrogen, this will allow full terraforming of Mars.
Water electrolysis (using the alkaline electrolysis method) has an effective electrical efficiency of 70–80% and produces one kilogram of hydrogen and about nine kilograms of oxygen from ten kilograms of water ice. This requires 50,000–55,000 watt-hours (180–200 megajoules) of electricity. Using the same method, it takes five megawatt-hours to electrolyze one metric ton of water.
| Mars has many thousands of cubic kilometers of water ice, each containing one billion tons or one billion cubic meters of water ice. |
To electrolyze that one metric ton of water takes 6,300,000 watt-hours using the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) method as used on the International Space Station (based on information from the Hydrogen Based Energy Conversion Handbook). This is a difference of almost 20%. (Note that I am using the higher PEM value here.) Since the ratio, by mass, of hydrogen to oxygen is 2:16, then oxygen is 16/18 = 8/9ths of a given unit mass of water. Therefore ,there are about 888 kilograms of oxygen and about 112 kilogram of hydrogen in 1 metric ton of water.
The Mars water ice input requirement to generate 3 psi of oxygen is 1,000 trillion tons or 1 quadrillion metric tons. The required ice volume would be about 1,000 by 1,000 by 1 kilometer deep. The hydrolysis plant is assumed to have an efficiency of about 71%. Production numbers are based on the use of about 6,300 kilowatt-hours or 6.3 megawatt-hours to electrolyze one metric ton of water as above. Condensing the vast bulk of the resulting gas into cryogenic liquids is not needed, but I will assume that the plant would use 7.0 megawatt-hours for each ton of water to allow about an 11% margin.
Here is a scale-up table showing energy use and mass for hydrolysis of different amounts of water ice. Each line or row has 1,000 times (three orders of magnitude) more of mass and energy use than the last. Most people are not even familiar with the names of amounts of energy this large.
| Energy use (amounts) | Water ice mass | Oxygen Mass | Hydrogen Mass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 watt-hours | 1 gram | 0.88 grams | 0.12 g |
| 7 kilowatt-hours | 1 kilogram | 0.88 kg | 0.12 kg |
| 7 megawatt-hours | 1 metric ton | 0.88 tons | 0.12 ton |
| 7 gigawatt-hours | 1 thousand tons | 880 tons | 120 tons |
| 7 terawatt-hours | 1 million tons | 880,000 tons | 120,000 tons |
| 7 petawatt-hours | 1 billion tons | 880 million tons | 120 million tons |
| 7 exawatt-hours | 1 trillion tons | 880 billion tons | 120 billion tons |
| 7 zettawatt-hours | 1 quadrillion tons | 880 trillion tons | 120 trillion tons |
The last row in italics shows the quantities we actually need to deal with.
The extra 8–10% (80 trillion tons) of oxygen would possibly be absorbed by the surface rocks and regolith after billions of years of exposure to a near vacuum had reduced the oxygen pressure and molecular rock surface saturation levels to effectively zero.
So, over what time scale is it reasonable to expend the seven zettawatt-hours of energy? To split this up into manageable sized components, we could start arbitrarily with 7,000 plants, each one of which would expend “‘only” 1 exawatt-hour during the operational period. This large set of installations could be named the Edgar Rice Burroughs Oxygen Production System or ERB-OPS, since he described a huge “atmosphere plant” existing on Mars in his famous Barsoom stories written about a century ago. This plan assumes we can eventually build very large fusion power plants.
So, over what time scale is it reasonable for each plant to each expend its 1 exawatt-hour of energy? The larger portion of the full, breathable air pressure on Mars should be able to be recreated in about 150–200 years via the simultaneous import of nitrogen from the outer solar system. If we set the operational E.R. Burroughs oxygen plant project period at 200 years, each plant would need to expend five petawatt-hours per Earth year. (one exawatt-hours / 200 = five petawatt-hours). The exact time period is not terribly critical and would be based on future decisions about the cost and very large scale of the terraforming operation.
Since each Earth year has 8,766 hours, the energy at each plant needs to be expended at a rate of 5,000,000,000,000,000 / 8766 = ~570,400,000,000 watt-hours or 570.4 gigawatt-hours per hour, or a power level or rate of 570.4 gigawatts. During full-scale operation of the Burroughs installation, all 7,000 plants, running at 570.4 gigawatts per hour, would be expending just about 4,000 terawatts or four petawatts. (Due to the high range of magnitudes in the calculation, the single plant rate should be between 570.4 and 571.5 gigawatts).
If all humanity is currently using about 20 terawatts or 20,000 gigawatts, the level of power from one Burroughs plant would be at the same level as about 1/35th of all current human energy production (570 / 20,000 = 0.0285), while the total Burroughs system power level would about 200 times larger than all of current human energy production and use (4,000 /20 = 200). For another comparison, the Earth receives, as a constant rate, 174,000 terawatts of solar energy on is sunward side. About 122,000 terawatts of this (122 petawatts per hour) reaches the surface and lower atmosphere. For every 24 hours, the Earth thus receives 2,923,000 terawatt-hours from the Sun. So the Burroughs system would be generating and using power equivalent to about 3% of the sunlight the entire sunlit side of the Earth gets.
In the table below, all measurements are in either terawatts (1,000 gigawatts) or terawatt-hours. For example, North America uses an electrical power rate of several terawatts. So each plant would be producing power at a rate about 1/10th of that or about 500 times more than a typical one-gigawatt power plant. Each plant of course can exist as a set of ten, 50 gigawatt plants close together.
| System: | Sun to Earth | Burroughs system | 1 Burroughs plant | Mankind 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power Level | 122,000 terawatts | 4,000 terawatts | 0.570 terawatts | ~20 terawatts |
| Amount/Day | 2,923,000 TWH | 96,000 TWH | 13,680 TWH | 480 TWH |
| Amount/Year | 1,069,000,000 TWH | 35,634,000 TWH | 5000 TWH | 175,320 TWH |
| Amt /200 Yrs | 213,890,000,000 TWH | 7,012,800,000 TWH | 1,000,000 TWH | 35,064,000 TWH |
You would think this might overheat the whole planet, but an area on Mars only gets half of the sunlight Earth gets, so even if the heat was distributed over the whole planet evenly, Mars would not cook. To even be as warm as the Earth is without added greenhouse gases, it would need to get about 26,000 terawatts of sunlight on its quarter-Earth-size sunward face, while it currently gets only about 18,000 terawatts. The areas being mined for water ice and supporting the plants would amount to about 1/145 of the surface, or one million square kilometers out of 144.8 million square kilometers. In practice, the equipment to build the plants would build them serially, moving from site to site, so that they would all come on-line over a period of decades.
Such high levels of energy use could only be practically supplied by fusion power. We also assume that these fusion plants will be able to be scaled up from a single city size (one to five gigawatts) to produce the most efficient size of fusion reactor, so that the power from one or several reactors can be distributed to the multiple hydrolysis plants surrounding each reactor using the least amount of power cable and associated mass. It is hoped that a form of aneutronic (no neutrons) fusion, such as boron-hydrogen fusion, will be available when the plants are designed.
| The time period for reaching a breathable oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere on Mars can be less than it took for some Gothic cathedrals to be built. |
Efficient design of the fusion plants and hydrolysis plants can also reduce the amount of heat released. Early work is currently ongoing to try to generate power directly from the fusion process itself, so that there would not have to be a standard heat engine with turbine generating power at each plant. In addition, the electrolysis process used here as the main example may be able to be improved massively, not simply by improving liquid hydrolysis, but possibly using super-critical temperature electrolysis, steam electrolysis, catalytic electrolysis, or other advanced methods. So the total power requirement may be much less than the values given here for the scale-up of a standard system. There are also different methods used for liquid hydrolysis. Some use proton exchange membranes and others use added electrolytes such as sodium and sulfur to allow the electric current to move through the water from one electrode to another. Mars has plenty of both sodium and sulfur. Unfortunately, there are few sources that can give us a clue on how much the future energy savings might be. In a future of abundant energy, the design effort would not be to just reduce energy use, but to reduce the amount of materials used and potentially to reduce the scale of the effort.
Assume that the ice layer areas are being mined to an average of about one kilometer deep at plant locations, with one billion metric tons of ice under each square kilometer. If the ice layer is not pure ice, the final excavation layer would be deeper or larger. The operational mode would probably be similar to that for a surface mine for copper or iron, looking like a concentric set of circles, and preventing too steep a slope in the work area during mining operations. With shallower ice deposits or those with layers of gravel, the total area would be wider. The fusion and hydrolysis plants would be located on nearby areas that are not mined, preferably those with little or no ice under them. Crew quarters would be almost entirely underground for thermal and radiation protection. Crews would have access to the plants via pressurized tunnels and control rooms. The oxygen produced would be released directly into the atmosphere, and would possibly be able to carry some or most of any waste heat quickly up and away from the industrial sites. Significant amounts of the hydrogen from plants closer to settlements would go through pipelines to be used as rocket propellant or as feedstock for making methane.
Of the total of one million cubic kilometers of water ice, each of the 7,000 fusion and hydrolysis plants would process a total of about 143 cubic kilometers of ice, or a total of 0.715 cubic kilometer (715 million tons of ice) per year. Such a mining system would cover about 1/145th of the total area of Mars (which is 144.8 million square kilometers), probably spread around the sub-polar areas in a circle so we do not disturb the layered ice deposits there right away. At the end of the operational electrolysis period, the hydrolysis plants, covering a small fraction of each process area, would be converted to other uses and the land area freed up. If the ancient Borealic Ocean is replaced eventually, the excavated areas would have deeper water and there should also be some deep basins around the South Pole.
If both nitrogen transfer and oxygen generation start to take place, we need to understand how life would slowly start to take hold on the surface of Mars. Currently, with no liquid water possible on the surface due to the very low pressure, (effectively a physiological vacuum), with constant cosmic radiation and ultraviolet radiation and with virtually all the water on Mars frozen, there are probably no active life processes occurring on or near the surface.
If we assume that Mars has been warmed enough by terraforming efforts to sublime the remaining 25 trillion tons of dry ice at the south pole of Mars, doubling the amount in the atmosphere to 50 trillion tons, this alone would raise the boiling point of water to about 7 degrees Celsius., allowing liquid water in small areas at lower elevations. It would also raise the carbon dioxide pressure level to about 1.2 millibars average from the current 0.7 millibars. Current carbon dioxide levels on Earth are about half a millibar or 0.42 parts per thousand. For breathing, carbon dioxide should be no more than about one part per thousand or one millibar in an atmosphere, but the 20% extra carbon dioxide pressure should cause no problems.
By the time we have added ten times this amount of nitrogen or 500 trillion tons, water could be a liquid at many elevations, allowing clouds to form and rain would probably fall. With some rain, the dust would slowly be washed out of the air, and streams and rivers would start flowing. The sky would gradually turn from creamy-tan to a very dark blue. The rain would start to wash the perchlorates out of the regolith and eventually into the Borealic Ocean. Since the amounts of perchlorates in the regolith could be as high as 1%, this could take a while. Until the bacteria species that can digest the perchlorates (such as some in the genera Dechloromonas and Azospira), are introduced into each stream or river, cyanobacteria would not be able to grow there. Spores of bacteria may be able to be widely introduced by the wind, so that the headwaters of most streams would receive some of them. If the species that can metabolize perchlorates do not form spores, we may be able to give them that capability via genetic engineering by the time terraforming starts.
Currently free oxygen is present in only tiny trace amounts on Mars. Oxygen-fed fires of any kind cannot even burn at partial pressure levels below about 2.25 psi or (71% of Earth partial oxygen pressure). Until oxygen is added, only anaerobic organisms like the botulism bacteria could grow. Also, blue-green algae (or cyanobacteria) would start growing right away in any bodies of water in any that have been cleared of perchlorates as they do not need oxygen to survive. (Most of these organisms would be aquatic.)
Once you can add some significant amounts of oxygen, some kinds of low-oxygen organisms could also grow. The more you add, the more kinds of organisms could grow. Initially, most of these would be aerobic bacteria and single cell eukaryotic algae, as each individual cell is in direct contact with the oxygen dissolved in the water. The minimum level is at least 10% of current oxygen levels or about 0.3 psi in the air. Multicellular animals would probably need at least one-third of current levels or about one psi of oxygen. For small aquatic animals with circulatory systems you might need at least two psi of oxygen, since the animals cells are not in direct contact with the ocean water. For larger animals like fish and amphibians, you would probably need at least 2.5 psi. Animals and fish would not be introduced until there was sufficient plant or algae growth to sustain them.
Most of the early Earth animal models studied for tolerance to low oxygen levels were aquatic, so it is harder to determine the needed levels for land animals. Since many animals live out of water, their lungs would have direct access to the oxygen in the air even though their cells depend on the circulation of blood. All of these obviously have circulatory systems, so any active animals would probably need at least 2.0 psi of oxygen.
Green plants probably require at least 50% of current oxygen levels or about 1.5 psi of oxygen partial pressure compared to today’s sea level oxygen partial pressure of 3.0 psi. Advanced plant roots get less oxygen underground so vascular plants might need 2.0 psi. So the visible greening of Mars would initially be a slow process, speeding up after oxygen levels reached 2.0 psi.
Before anyone should consider starting such a large-scale process, there are a number of provisos and conditions that should be met:
- The human economy in the Solar System and/or on Mars must be large enough to support the effort.
- The cost over the construction period would need to be accurately estimated.
- There must be some level of public or private support.
- Construction of the equipment can take place over a multi-decade period of time.
- Replicator systems would greatly reduce cost for the system, so the timing of the start of the operation is important.
- Sources and levels of heat emission at the fusion and hydrolysis sites need to be identified.
- Possible damage to equipment from heating could require more active heat control and dispersal systems.
- The most efficient hydrolysis system adaptable to such a large project should be selected.
- There should be a priority on reduction in hydrolysis plant mass and wiring mass by good design.
- Non-heat engine type fusion power conversion methods should be investigated before starting the design process.
- The North and South Polar layered (water) ice deposits should have a guarantee of protection until sufficient ice coring (and proper storage of the ice cores) is done by climate experts for sufficient past Mars climate information recovery. The minimum or necessary amount of coring will be disputed by climatologists and developers.
- Once this is done, the polar ice deposits could then be mined directly for the water ice in them if needed. Nitrogen air pressure and oxygen generation come first, large bodies of open water can wait.
The time period for reaching a breathable oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere on Mars can thus be less than it took for some Gothic cathedrals to be built. This major step will eventually allow both microbes and complex, multicellular, eukaryotic life to exist outdoors and in the water on Mars, with no human maintenance needed.
Biological References
Minimum levels of atmospheric oxygen from fossil tree roots imply new plant−oxygen feedback, Fredrik Sønderholm and Christian J. Bjerrum, Geobiology. 2021 May; 19(3): 250–260. Published online 2021 Feb 19. doi: 10.1111/gbi.12435.
Oxygen requirements of the earliest animals, Daniel B. Mills et al., PNAS, February 18, 2014,111 (11) 4168-4172/
Mars Agriculture - Knowledge Gaps for Regolith Preparation Alex Tolley and Doug Loss, Centauri Dreams,11-10-2023.
Searching For Water On Mars
 India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander detected sulfur at its landing site, which could provide clues for the origins of water ice at the lunar poles. (credit: ISRO) |
Searching for the ice hidden on the Moon
by Paul Hayne
Monday, November 27, 2023
Building a space station on the Moon might seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but each new lunar mission is bringing that idea closer to reality. Scientists are homing in on potential lunar ice reservoirs in permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs. These are key to setting up any sort of sustainable lunar infrastructure.
| For planetary scientists like me, measurements from instruments onboard Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and its small, six-wheeled rover Pragyan provide a tantalizing up-close glimpse of the parts of the Moon most likely to contain ice. |
In late August 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the lunar surface in the south polar region, which scientists suspect may harbor ice. This landing marked a significant milestone not only for India but for the scientific community at large.
For planetary scientists like me, measurements from instruments onboard Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and its small, six-wheeled rover Pragyan provide a tantalizing up-close glimpse of the parts of the Moon most likely to contain ice. Earlier observations have shown ice is present in some permanently shadowed regions, but estimates vary widely regarding the amount, form and distribution of these ice deposits.
Polar ice deposits
My team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has a goal of understanding where water on the Moon came from. Comets or asteroids crashing into the Moon are options, as are volcanic activity and solar wind.
Each of these events leaves behind a distinctive chemical fingerprint, so if we can see those fingerprints, we might be able to trace them to the source of water. For example, sulfur is expected in higher amounts in lunar ice deposits if volcanic activity rather than comets created the ice.
Like water, sulfur is a “volatile” element on the Moon, because on the lunar surface it’s not very stable. It’s easily vaporized and lost to space. Given its temperamental nature, sulfur is expected to accumulate only in the colder parts of the Moon.
While the Vikram lander didn’t land in a permanently shadowed region, it measured the temperature at a high southern latitude of 69.37°S and was able to identify sulfur in soil grains on the lunar surface. The sulfur measurement is intriguing because sulfur may point toward the source of the Moon’s water.
So, scientists can use temperature as a way of finding where volatiles like these may end up. Temperature measurements from Chandrayaan-3 could allow scientists to test models of volatile stability and figure out how recently the sulfur may have accumulated at the landing site.
Tools for discovery
Vikram and Pragyan are the newest in a series of spacecraft that have helped scientists study water on the Moon. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2009 and has spent the past several years observing the Moon from orbit. I’m a co-investigator on LRO, and I use its data to study the distribution, form, and abundance of water on the lunar poles.
| With its sulfur detections, the Vikram lander has now taken the first tentative steps as part of a larger exploration program. |
Both India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter and LRO have allowed my colleagues and me to use ultraviolet and near-infrared observations to identify ice in the permanently shadowed regions by measuring the chemical fingerprints of water. We’ve definitively detected water ice in some of these regions inside the coldest shadows at the lunar poles, but we’re still not sure why the ice isn’t more widespread.
On Mercury, by contrast, the permanently shadowed regions are practically overflowing with ice. For several years, scientists have recognized the need to get down on the surface and make more detailed measurements of lunar volatiles. With its sulfur detections, the Vikram lander has now taken the first tentative steps as part of a larger exploration program.
Future lunar missions
NASA has its sights set on the lunar south pole. Leading up to the Artemis 3 mission to deploy astronauts to investigate ice on the surface, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program will send multiple landers and rovers to search for ice starting late this year.
While uncertainty surrounds the timeline of Artemis launches, the first crewed mission, Artemis 2, is on track for a late 2024 or early 2025 launch, with a looping trajectory passing behind the Moon’s far side and back to Earth.
The Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System, of which I’m the principal investigator, is an infrared camera that will take temperature measurements and study the surface composition of the Moon. Dubbed L-CIRiS, this camera recently underwent its final review before delivery to NASA, and the completed flight instrument will be prepared to launch on a commercial lander in late 2026.
Prior to L-CIRiS, the VIPER rover mission is planned to launch in late 2024 to the lunar south polar region, where it will carry instruments to search for ice in micro-cold traps. These tiny shadows, some no larger than a penny, are hypothesized to contain a significant amount of water and are more accessible than the larger PSRs.
One long-term goal of L-CIRiS and NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is to find a suitable place for a long-term, sustainable lunar station. Astronauts could stay at this station, potentially similar to the one at McMurdo station in Antarctica, but it would need to be somewhat self-sufficient to be economically viable. Water is extremely expensive to ship to the Moon, hence locating the station near ice reservoirs is a must.
During the Artemis 3 mission, NASA astronauts will use the information gathered by the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and other missions, including Chandrayaan-3, to assess the best locations to collect samples. Chandrayaan-3 and L-CIRiS’s measurements of temperature and composition are like those that will be needed for Artemis to succeed. Cooperation among space agencies young and old is thus becoming a key feature of a long-term, sustainable human presence on the Moon.
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Monday, November 27, 2023
Sunday, November 26, 2023
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Friday, November 24, 2023
Thursday, November 23, 2023
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
The Oldest Black Hole
DISCOVERIES
The Primordial
Astronomers recently discovered that a massive black hole in a galaxy far away is the oldest ever recorded, the Washington Post reported.
The “supermassive” object has roughly the same mass as all the stars in that galaxy – known as UHZ1 – combined, and is believed to be more than 13 billion years old.
To put it into cosmic perspective, the Big Bang happened around 13.7 billion years ago.
For their study, researchers relied on data gathered from two NASA space telescopes: The Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Data showed that light from UHZ1 was emitted 13.2 billion years ago, while its large size suggests that it began life as a “heavy seed.”
There are two competing theories about the origin of supermassive black holes, known as light seed and heavy seed.
In the light seed theory, stars collapse into stellar mass black holes, gradually growing into supermassive objects. In contrast, the heavy seed theory posits that a large gas cloud, rather than a single star, undergoes gravitational collapse, forming a supermassive black hole without an intermediate phase.
“In this case, we can say with certainty that the black hole came from a heavy seed,” said lead author Akos Bogdan. “It is a pretty big deal.”
While this is only one galaxy, the finding can help scientists better understand how the universe was shaped in its current state, as well as solve the mystery of how these black holes came to be soon after the Big Bang.
Russia's Spy Satellite Spying On Commercial Satellites
 A Proton-M rocket stands poised to launch the Luch/Olimp satellite from Baikonur in September 2014. (credit: Roscosmos) |
Olimp and Yenisei-2: Russia’s secretive eavesdropping satellites (part 1)
by Bart Hendrickx
Monday, November 20, 2023
On March 12 this year, a Proton-M rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, punching its way through a dense layer of fog that only thickened the veil of secrecy surrounding the launch. Although Baikonur is now a civilian launch site that is no longer used for military launches, Roscosmos did not stream the launch live and afterwards reported only that a satellite named Luch-5X had been placed into orbit to test “advanced relay and communication technology.” Its mission is reminiscent of that of another Russian satellite launched in September 2014. Announced simply as Luch, it has spent the past nine years traversing the geostationary belt and regularly parking itself close to commercial communications satellites with the apparent goal of eavesdropping on them.
The travels of Luch/Olimp
The name Luch (“beam”) had originally been applied to a series of geostationary data relay satellites launched in the 1980s and 1990s. Equivalent to NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, they had been used among other things to relay data from Russia’s Mir space station. A new generation of such satellites dubbed Luch-5 was introduced early last decade, with three (Luch-5A, 5B, and 5V) going into orbit in 2011, 2012, and 2014. These were known to be the only planned satellites in the series, a clear sign that the satellite launched in September 2014 was flying under a cover name.
| Luch has parked near more than two dozen commercial communications satellites for periods ranging from weeks to months. This is very unusual behavior for a GEO satellite. |
Some clues about the mysterious satellite had been given in March 2014 in an article published by the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Quoting an anonymous “highly-placed source” in the Russian space agency, it identified the satellite as Olimp (the Russian word for Mount Olympus in Greece, often incorrectly transliterated as Olymp) and its manufacturer as Information Satellite Systems (ISS) Reshetnev in Zheleznogorsk (Siberia), Russia’s leading developer of communications and navigation satellites. It would be used for both signals intelligence and communications and had been ordered by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main descendant of the Soviet-era KGB. According to Kommersant, the satellite was so secret that only one of Roscosmos’ deputy directors was privy to the details of the mission and his further career reportedly hinged on its outcome. Kommersant also reported that the launch had been delayed from 2013 and was then expected to occur in late May.[1] The satellite had earlier appeared under the name Olimp-K in annual reports of several companies that supplied parts for it. The earliest reference to it was in 2008.
After it finally went into orbit on September 27, 2014 (September 28 local time), Luch first drifted to 54.0°E and remained there for three months, seemingly undergoing in-orbit checkouts. It then began moving across the geostationary belt, regularly stopping close to other satellites, something it continues to do nine years after launch. The first satellites it visited were the Russian communications satellites Express-AM22 and Express-AM33, the only Russian satellites it ever approached. Since then it has parked near more than two dozen commercial communications satellites for periods ranging from weeks to months. This is very unusual behavior for a geostationary (GEO) satellite, which usually spends years sitting at the same spot and relocates only sporadically, if ever at all. In addition to that, it has typically parked approximately 0.1 degree (roughly 70 kilometers) away from its target, much closer than the distance that is usually maintained between neighboring GEO satellites.[2]
 Satellites visited by Luch since its launch in 2014. (larger version) (credit: COMSPOC) |
 Dutch satellite watcher Marco Langbroek captured this view of Luch/Olimp parked next to Eutelsat 8 West in March 2021. Source |
Luch’s mission profile is very similar to that of two classified American satellites named PAN and CLIO, launched in 2009 and 2014. Some details on PAN emerged from secret documents leaked early last decade by Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor for the National Security Agency who fled to Russia in 2013. The documents revealed that PAN is part of a project named NEMESIS, the purpose of which was described as “Foreign Satellite (FORNSAT) collection from space”, more specifically “targeting commercial satellite uplinks not normally accessible via conventional means.” As stated in the documents, PAN would “provide the Office of FORNSAT ‘a site in the sky’ when denied a site on the ground for collection”.
FORNSAT is a branch of signals intelligence aimed at intercepting signals from foreign communications satellites. This task can usually be accomplished by eavesdropping stations on the ground if they are within range of an uplink terminal. Other National Security Agency documents in the Snowden archive revealed that it operated dozens such stations all over the globe. NEMESIS was apparently deemed necessary to fill the gaps in ground coverage, moving sufficiently close to satellites of interest to intercept whatever was transmitted to them in all the traditional frequency bands (C, Ku, and Ka). What also transpired from the Snowden files was that the US had used two of its ORION signals intelligence satellites to eavesdrop on the Thuraya-2 satellite, which relays mobile telephone calls from and to countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and parts of Asia.[3]
 America’s NEMESIS satellite. (Credit: The Intercept) |
Judging from its maneuvers in orbit, there can be little doubt that Luch is on an identical mission. The typical 0.1-degree distance between it and its target is close enough for it to be within the ground uplink beam of the terminal communicating with the neighboring satellite. This is also as close as it got to the two Russian satellites that it visited early in its mission, which most likely served as testbeds to see how close it needed to approach them to intercept the uplink signal.
Currently, Luch is loitering near Intelsat-37e, which it has been shadowing since the summer of last year, longer than any satellite it has visited before. Its recent movements have been closely tracked by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, a US firm which operates a global network of antennas capable of pinpointing satellite locations to within 100 meters. [4] A graph released by the company shows that Luch is not “parked” in the literal sense of the word since the physics of orbital dynamics dictate a constant motion relative to the other spacecraft. The distances between the two satellites continuously change, with Luch coming as close as 4 kilometers to the Intelsat satellite on October 31, 2022.
 The “orbital dance” between Olimp and Intelsat-37e in October-November 2022. Source |
Despite such close approaches, only two satellite operators have openly expressed concern about Luch’s maneuvers. In October 2015, Intelsat criticized Russia for Luch’s “abnormal behavior” after it had maneuvered to within about 10 kilometers of two of its satellites earlier that year. It did underline that no attempts had been made to interfere with the satellites’ services.[5] In September 2018, French Defense Minister Florence Parly accused Russia of having performed an “act of espionage” by flying Luch very close to the French-Italian military communications satellite Athena-Fidus the year before. Closer analysis showed that Luch’s actual target during that particular period had been Paksat-1R, to which it came as close as 1.7 kilometers on November 27, 2017, the closest encounter reported for it so far.[6]
Kratos claimed that by coming so close to Intelsat-37e last October, the Russians disregarded conventions of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which sets tolerances for orbital slots in GEO at or above 0.1 degrees (70 kilometers). However, Luch is not unique in this respect. Also passing this threshold on a regular basis are America’s Geostationary Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites. Unlike NEMESIS, GSSAP satellites use optical cameras to take close-up pictures of objects in GEO. According to tracking data collected by the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON), which is managed by the Russian Academy of Sciences, GSSAP satellites have come as close as 10 kilometers to other satellites. Interestingly, the target of one such close encounter on September 14, 2017 was a satellite listed as Luch.
 GEO satellites visited by US GSSAP satellites between 2016 and 2022. Source |
Assuming the following two satellites in the list were visited by the same GSSAP satellite, the Luch satellite in question must have been Olimp and not any of the three Luch-5 data relay satellites. Luch was in the same general neighborhood and itself went on to visit Paksat-1R and Nigcomsat-1R in the following weeks and months. From a range of just ten kilometers, GSSAP must have been able to take fairly detailed pictures of Luch, possibly giving analysts a fairly good idea of its capabilities.
Olimp design features
While GSSAP may have furnished the US intelligence community with sharp closeup images of Luch/Olimp, there are no pictures or drawings of the satellite in the public domain. A search of Russian online sources turns up only a handful of design details. Obviously, the extensive maneuvers made by Olimp in the past nine years can only have been performed with electric thrusters. Two press reports in 2014 and 2017 (which don’t mention the satellite by name) make it possible to identify those thrusters as KM-60, a new type of Hall-effect thruster built for the satellite by the Keldysh Research Center in Moscow.[7] This is confirmed in an article published by the Keldysh Center which links the thruster to an unnamed ISS Reshetnev satellite launched in 2014.[8]
| From a range of just ten kilometers, GSSAP must have been able to take fairly detailed pictures of Luch, possibly giving analysts a fairly good idea of its capabilities. |
The KM-60 is a 930-watt thruster with a thrust of 42 millinewtons and an average specific impulse (over its entire lifetime) of 1,860 seconds. A unique feature is said to be its discharge voltage of 500 volts, which makes it up to 25% more fuel-efficient than similar thrusters. It is designed to operate for more than 4,000 hours and to be ignited up to 8,250 times. The 3.1-kilogram thruster is integrated with a power processing unit, a flow control unit, a feeding unit, and a tank (MVSK50) containing 71 kilograms of xenon. The engine underwent a 9.5-year development period that saw it work for a total of 4,120 hours during 8,357 burns. It is not known exactly how many of the thrusters and xenon tanks are on board Olimp.
 The KM-60 Hall thruster and its flow control unit. Source |
The KM-60 thrusters were ordered by ISS Reshetnev for a satellite platform known as Express-1000. This comes in several versions with masses ranging from about 1,200 to 2,300 kilograms and has a design lifetime of 15 years. According to a brochure published by the Keldysh Center in 2011, the KM-60 was intended for satellites with a mass of “up to 1,500 kg” and when the thruster was put on display during an exhibition in 2022, it was reported to be compatible with “lightweight geostationary satellites.”[9]
In a 2017 presentation of ISS Reshetnev, an unnamed satellite that is almost certainly Olimp was identified as being of the Express-1000H type, which has a maximum mass of around two tons (the values given by ISS Reshetnev differ).[10] Other satellites using this particular bus do have SPD-100V electric thrusters of the OKB Fakel design bureau. Olimp, the only satellite known to have the KM-60 thrusters, may therefore employ a unique version of the bus that is not seen in technical literature. Possibly, it has been adapted to enable the satellite to carry out more maneuvers than traditional communications satellites, for instance by reducing the mass of the payload or increasing the propellant mass. When equipped with the SPD-100V thrusters, the Express-1000H platform can carry a maximum of four MVSK50 xenon tanks, which translates into a total xenon mass of around 300 kilograms.
 ISS Reshetnev’s Express-1000H satellite bus. Source |
An unknown Express-1000 type satellite is seen in a 2016 presentation of ISS Reshetnev. Three satellites shown here are said to belong to the orbital constellation of “RTRR” and “RP” satellites. The first abbreviation possibly stands for “radio-technical and radio reconnaissance” (the Russian terms for electronic and communications intelligence) and the second for “radio interception” (radioperekhvat in Russian), which is exactly what Olimp does. The satellite in the upper part of the slide can be identified as Repei, a new generation of signals intelligence satellites designed to pick up ground-based radio transmissions. The one on the left is an Express-1000 platform with two parabolic antennas. It is not seen in other publications and could be Olimp.[11]
 The satellite in the lower left is an unidentified Express-1000 type satellite that may be Olimp. (Credit: ISS Reshetnev) |
If Olimp weighs less than two tons, it was a relatively light payload for the Proton-M/Briz-M combination, which is capable of placing up to 3.5 tons into GEO. In fact, all the other Express-1000H type satellites have been launched along with other payloads. The secrecy surrounding Olimp may well be one of the reasons why it did not share a ride with a “regular” communications satellite. A special partition was reportedly erected around Olimp during its pre-launch processing at Baikonur to prevent unauthorized personnel (including foreign engineers working on other Proton payloads) from catching a glimpse of it.[12]
Also on board the satellite are so-called thermal catalytic thrusters (K50-10.5) of OKB Fakel. [13] These are monopropellant hydrazine thrusters commonly flown on ISS Reshetnev communications satellites in combination with electric thrusters. The electric thrusters are used for orbit corrections (both changes in altitude and longitude) and the chemical thrusters for attitude control.
Another novelty introduced by Luch/Olimp was a new type of lithium-ion battery (LIGP-50) developed by PAO Saturn in Krasnodar.[14] Also flown for the first time was a pair of fiber optic gyroscopes for the satellite’s inertial navigation system. Called VOBIS-1 and 2, they were developed by NPK Optolink in Zelenograd near Moscow, which is the hub of Russia’s microelectronics industry (sometimes called “Russia’s Silicon Valley”).[15]
 Olimp’s VOBIS fiber optics gyroscope. Source |
Other known subcontractors are NPP Kvant for gallium arsenide solar panels and NPP Geofizika-Kosmos for optical sensors needed by the satellite’s attitude control system. [16]
Very little is known about the payload(s) of Olimp. As can be determined from an online procurement document published in 2012, the company in charge of the payload, or at least part of it, is the Radio Research and Development Institute (NII Radio or NIIR) in Moscow.[17] NII Radio is an organization that builds both ground-based satellite dish antennas and payloads for communications satellites. It is also the prime contractor for a project named Sledopyt (“pathfinder”), a network of four ground-based signals intelligence sites that are intended to pick up signals from foreign satellites flying over Russia.[18] In that respect, its assignment to a project for in situ foreign satellite intelligence in GEO makes sense.
Little else can be learned from the 2012 document except that it appears to be related to a payload operating in the L-band of the radio spectrum. Another payload considered for Olimp was a 2.2-mеter Ku-band antenna made of carbon fiber composites and aluminum honeycombs and weighing no more than 14 kilograms. This was mentioned in 2016 in a presentation of the Baltic State Technical University in St.-Petersburg, where it reportedly finished preliminary qualification tests in 2011 [19]. The development period is given as 2008–2012. The only other publication where the antenna is seen is a PhD dissertation published in 2014, some results of which were applied in the Olimp project.[20] Whether the antenna is actually on board Olimp is not known.
 Ku-band antenna for Olimp developed between 2008 and 2012. Source |
 The same Ku-band antenna during various stages of production. Source |
| Whatever the eavesdropping payload of Olimp exactly is, it probably doesn’t look out of the ordinary. |
ISS Reshetnev’s former general director Nikolai Testoyedov wrote in a 2016 report that a “Luch type satellite” launched in 2014 had made it possible to perform flight tests of “a large-size 12 m unfurlable antenna for personal communications.” He could not have been referring to the Luch-5V data relay satellite launched in April 2014, because that only has much smaller antennas, leaving Luch/Olimp as the only other candidate. Still, that information was almost certainly inaccurate. The relatively light Express-1000H platform is most likely incompatible with such a large antenna. Ð 12-meter antenna for personal mobile communications had been supposed to fly as an additional payload on the Luch-4 data relay satellite, which was to use the heavier Express-2000 platform. After the cancelation of Luch-4 early last decade, Roscosmos came up with plans for a dedicated experimental mobile communications satellite called Yenisei-A1, which would carry a somewhat larger antenna and employ the even heavier Express-4000 platform. In a 2021 article, Testoyedov claimed that a 12-m antenna would fly in 2023, but it looks like this is intended for a military communications satellite called Sfera.[21] There is no evidence that an antenna of that size has already flown on a Russian satellite.
Whatever the eavesdropping payload of Olimp exactly is, it probably doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Even though Olimp is essentially a signals intelligence satellite, it does not need to carry the huge antennas that traditional SIGINT satellites have to pick up faint transmissions from the ground. All it has to do is tune its equipment to match the channels in use, record the signals for as long as is needed and then relay them to the ground like an ordinary communications satellite. Similarly, America’s NEMESIS satellites are built on the basis of a standard communications satellite platform (Lockheed’s A2100 bus) and have relatively small antennas.
It has been speculated by some that Olimp may also carry one or more cameras to take close-up images of the satellites that it visits. While that possibility cannot be excluded, there is no evidence for the presence of imaging systems aboard the satellite. Since all the satellites visited by Olimp are commercial communications satellites, any pictures taken by Olimp would probably add little to what is already publicly known about them.
With a 15-year design lifetime, Luch/Olimp should have at least six years ahead of it. However, the fact that it has not changed position since the summer of 2022 is a possible indication that it doesn’t have much propellant left for further maneuvers. Another reason may be that its mission is being taken over by a new satellite launched earlier this year.
The launch of Luch-5X
The first sign that another mysterious Luch satellite was being prepared for launch came in February 2020, when the general director of the Khrunichev Center (the manufacturer of the Proton-M rocket) told a visiting delegation that the launch of what he called a “Luch-5 satellite in the interests of ISS Reshetnev” was scheduled for launch in 2021.[22] By the time the satellite’s Proton-M rocket was shipped to Baikonur in March 2021, the launch had slipped to 2022. In its press release on the shipment, Khrunichev initially identified the payload as “Luch-5X” only to delete that information shortly afterwards. Since the next Luch-5 data relay satellite (a modified version called Luch-5VM) was not due for launch until the mid-2020s, it was obvious to observers that Luch-5X was a cover name for a possible successor to Luch/Olimp.
After several more launch delays, the Proton-M finally lifted off late on March 12, 2023 (March 13 local time). In a very terse launch announcement, Roscosmos reported that Luch-5X had been inserted into the planned orbit and would test “advanced relay and communication technology.”[23] The TASS news agency misleadingly called it another Luch data relay satellite “to exchange data between the ISS Russian segment and mission control.” When Russia officially registered the launch with the United Nations several weeks later, it described the satellite’s function as “relay of information.” The Roscosmos press release was accompanied by a picture purportedly showing the Proton’s nighttime launch, but this later turned out to be a file photo of an earlier launch. As can be seen in a webcast of the launch that later appeared on YouTube, the fog at Baikonur was so thick that even cameras close to the pad could barely see the rocket.
 The Proton-M rocket with the Luch-5X satellite undergoing final launch preparations at Baikonur. Source |
After launch, Luch-5X slowly drifted to 78.7°E and then began moving backwards, finally coming to a stop at 58.0°E. This is where it appears to have undergone its initial orbital checkout, maintaining a normal distance of 0.5° with neighboring satellites. After about a month, Luch-5X resumed its westward trek. Unlike Luch/Olimp, it did not stop by any Russian satellites first and on May 22 it settled at 8.9°E, right next to two satellites, Viasat’s KA-SAT (formerly known as Eutelsat KA-SAT 9A) and Eutelsat-9B. This eliminated any remaining doubt that Luch-5X is on a mission similar to that of Olimp. The two satellites share a spot at 9.0°E, which is not uncommon for satellites owned by the same operator (KA-SAT was already at that location before it was purchased from Eutelsat by Viasat in 2020). Based on orbit analysis, only KA-SAT was a target for Luch-5X.
Luch-5X parted company with the two satellites on September 27 and one week later arrived at 3.2°E, right next to Eutelsat-3B at 3.1°E. All this undoubtedly is just the beginning of a long voyage through the geostationary belt that will see Luch-5X visit multiple satellites over the coming years. It is being closely monitored in the West, among others by two American startups (Slingshot Aerospace and DigitalArsenal) that are using advanced software and artificial intelligence to track the satellite’s movements and predict future targets. [24]
 Marco Langbroek photographed Luch-5X parked next to KA-SAT (referred to here as Eutelsat KA 9A) and Eutelsat 9B on August 22. Source |
Yenisei-2
There are only two traces of a follow-up Olimp satellite in online procurement documentation. In early 2014, NII Radio, the company involved in building the payload for the first Olimp, awarded a contract for the development of so-called “pattern forming equipment” (DOA) for the project under the name Olimp-1 DOA. This was several months before the launch of the first Olimp satellite in September 2014, but the work was to take place in several stages and was not expected to be completed until 2019, meaning it was related to a second satellite. [25]
In late 2017, ISS Reshetnev ordered parts for a high-pressure xenon tank (KBVD) to be flown on an Olimp satellite. This is one sign that the second satellite is not a carbon copy of its predecessor. Whereas KBVD is a tank built in-house by ISS Reshetnev, Luch/Olimp carried one or more xenon tanks supplied by another company (the MVSK50 tank of NIIMash). The KBVD tanks come in several versions and are designed to fly on all of ISS Reshetnev’s Express platforms (Express-1000, 2000, and 4000), making it impossible to say whether the second satellite uses a different bus than the first one.
The first version (with a capacity of 350 kilograms versus the 71 kilograms offered by the MVSK50 tank) was flown on the Express-AM6 communications satellite, an Express-2000 type satellite launched in October 2014. Slightly improved versions were installed on two Express-1000H type satellites orbited in July 2020 (Express-80 and 103) and a much-upgraded model with a capacity of 500 kilograms or more was supposed to go up on the so far unflown Express-4000 platform. The KBVD tanks flown to date have been used to feed SPD-100V electric thrusters of OKB Fakel. Since the components that were ordered for Olimp’s KBVD tank in 2017 were to be delivered by OKB Fakel, the satellite may very well have those thrusters rather than the Keldysh Center’s KM-60 engines that are on board Luch/Olimp.[26]
The KBVD tank was designed mainly to give satellites enough xenon reserves in case they are not directly inserted into GEO by the Proton rocket and need to maneuver to their final orbit by themselves. However, unlike Express-AM6, 80, and 103, Luch-5X followed a direct-insertion launch profile. If it indeed carries the KBVD tank, it can use its full capacity for the extensive maneuvers that it is expected to make in GEO.
 ISS Reshetnev’s KBVD high-pressure xenon tank. Its dimensions are given as 115.5 by 70 cm. Source |
Confusingly, there is also evidence for an ISS Reshetnev satellite that is clearly closely related to Olimp, but goes under a different name, namely Yenisei-2. (Yenisei is a river in Siberia.) It has turned up only in a handful of online procurement and court documents as well as in two short biographies of ISS Reshetnev specialists. [27] The dearth of information on the satellite is a sure sign that ISS Reshetnev wants to keep it out of the public eye. There is most likely no relation with the experimental mobile communications satellite Yenisei-A1, which has probably been canceled.
| The available information suggests that Yenisei-2 is a satellite using some of the same payload components as Olimp, but is not identical to it. |
The most valuable information on Yenisei-2 can be gleaned from a series of procurement documents placed online in 2014. From these it can be learned that Yenisei-2 is a GEO satellite with a design lifetime of 15 years. Despite the secretive nature of the satellite, there are no indications in the documents that Yenisei-2 is a military project. They do not reveal when and by which organization ISS Reshetnev was ordered to build the satellite. What is disclosed is that on February 1, 2014, ISS Reshetnev awarded two separate contracts for the satellite’s payload to NII Radio. NII Radio in turn signed several contracts for the delivery of payload components with the Izhevsk Radio Factory (IRZ). For the manufacturing and testing of some of these, IRZ was to make use of “stocks, technical documentation and equipment produced in the framework of the Olimp project.”[28]
Most of these components are subsystems that reveal little about the exact nature of the payload. Among the documents are contracts for three receivers, one transmitter, and four frequency converters, all of which are either identical to or derived from those flown on Olimp. One instrument mentioned in the documentation is called MAGD-O and intended to receive and process L-band signals between 1.5 and 2.5 gigahertz. Weighing around 14 kilograms, it consists of several so-called “group demodulation units”, each of which can receive two L-band signals and generate a digital output stream at a constant speed of 250 megabits per second (Mbps). Although Luch/Olimp also appears to have an L-band payload, MAGD-O is not linked in the documents to Olimp, which means it may be unique to Yenisei-2.
One of NII Radio’s subcontractors (the Special Design Bureau of the Kotelnikov Institute of Radio-Engineering and Electronics (SKB IRE)) provided an L-band switching system, presumably needed to route L-band signals from the satellite’s receiver to its transmitter. Another component not linked to Olimp in the documents is designated MPS and designed for “the receipt of information streams, their multiplexing and the formation of two streams with a speed of 320 Mbps”. In addition to that, it has to “mask the technical characteristics of the streams” by scrambling them. [29] Possible uses of these payloads will be discussed in part 2 of this article.
There are at least two indications that Yenisei-2 may have multiple payloads. First, NII Radio received two separate contracts from ISS Reshetnev for the project in February 2014. Second, one abbreviation seen in the documents is “BSK-2”, which stands for “On-board special complex 2”. BSK is a term applied to a set of instruments that together constitute a payload, so BSK-2 suggests there are at least two.
Virtually nothing can be deduced from the documentation about Yenisei’s 2 bus, except that it is equipped with electric thrusters. The 15-year design lifetime given for Yenisei-2 is typical of all ISS Reshetnev satellites being manufactured now, not only the Express-1000 bus, but also the heavier Express-2000 and 4000 platforms.
In short, the available information suggests that Yenisei-2 is a satellite using some of the same payload components as Olimp, but is not identical to it. The two also seem to have different internal project numbers at ISS Reshetnev. Some of the Yenisei-2 documents mention Project 763, wheras the serial number of Luch/Olimp (762V N°79448211) indicates it is part of Project 762 [30].
Evidence that the satellite launched as Luch-5X belongs to Project 763 comes from a study that assessed the environmental impact of the Proton launch that placed the satellite into orbit. The study was carried out by a team at Moscow State University (MGU) under the contract number 763-24/20/Luch/MGU.[31] It is quite common for project numbers to appear in such contract names. The same number is also seen in a contract for structural tests of the KBVD high-pressure xenon tank conducted for ISS Reshetnev by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Computing Technology (IVT SO RAN) in 2019. [32] This is most likely the very same tank that was linked to an Olimp satellite in the procurement documentation released by ISS Reshetnev in 2017.
The conclusion is that Luch-5X is a sister satellite of Luch/Olimp, but has undergone enough changes to both its bus and payload to be given a new internal project number at ISS Reshetnev (763) as well as a new name (Yenisei-2). The names Olimp-2 and Olimp-K-2 seen in some online publications emanate only from Western sources. The earliest known contracts for the satellite were signed in February 2014, meaning that its development got underway well before the launch of Luch/Olimp in September 2014.
The launch of Luch-5X seems to have been delayed by at least two years. One reason for that may have been the need to incorporate changes into the spacecraft on the basis of the Luch/Olimp mission. Another could well be problems with the supply of foreign-built electronic components due to sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries. Although Russia does not readily admit that the sanctions are having a major impact on the space industry, there are plenty of signs that this is indeed the case. Occasionally, the frustration over the delays resulting from the sanctions spills out into the open. For instance, during parliamentary hearings in June 2021, the then-chief of the Russian space agency, Dmitriy Rogozin, complained that nearly fully assembled satellites were grounded due to a lack of electronic components. “We have plenty of rockets, but nothing to place into orbit”, he said.[33]
Still, sanctions have clearly not stopped the Russians from ordering Western electronics for the eavesdropping satellites. Some of the Yenisei-2 documents placed online in 2014 stated that foreign-built electronic parts for the satellite’s payload could be selected from the “NASA Core Suppliers List,” a list of manufacturers that NASA considers preferred suppliers of microcircuits, transistors and diodes. Another online document published in 2020 gives a list of Western-built microcircuits purchased for a component of Yenisei-2’s payload named M-761A.
Western-built electronic parts purchased for Yenisei-2’s payload. Source
| Supplier | Component name |
|---|---|
| Firadec (France) | CTC 21 |
| 3D-Plus (France) | 3DEE1M08CS1193MS |
| STM (France) | RHFL4913ESY2505V, RHFL4913ESY3305V |
| Temex (France) | TE100EB21111M059 |
| MicroSpire (France) | CMC15 52K 2WR, SESI9.1 M10 2WR |
| Intersil (US) | IS9-705RH-Q, HS9-139RH-Q, HS9-26CLV31RH-Q, HS9-26CLV32RH-Q |
| Xilinx (US) | XQR17V16CC44V, XQVR600-4CB228V |
| International Rectifier (US) | ARE10005S/CKC, ARE10005S/EM |
| Glenair (US) | M83513/22-A 03NW-429C, M83513/22-B 03NW-429C, M83513/25-A 03NW-429C, M83513/25-B 03NW-429C |
| Spectrum Control (US) | 52-970-205-FA3, 52-970-205-HA1, 52-970-208-FB0, 52-970-216-FC1, 52-970-218-FC0, 52-970-208-FB1 |
| Harwin (US) | 221T22F22H, 221T04F22H, D308 6-99 |
| C&K (US) | 340100101BDEM9PNMB1A9N |
| TYCO Electronics | 5-1437514-9, 6-1437514-8 |
Such parts are not purchased directly by ISS Reshetnev or its main subcontractors, but by Russian intermediaries that act as go-betweens between the Russian space industry and foreign suppliers. For instance, a company named NPTs Shtandart acquired foreign-built electronic parts for Yenisei-2’s payload and then delivered them to another company (NPTs Eltest) for acceptance testing before they were supplied to NII Radio, the payload manufacturer. Delays in the delivery of such electronic parts were the subject of two court cases between these companies, but they seem to have resulted from bureaucratic issues rather than import restrictions.[34]
The target satellites
Like America’s NEMESIS satellites, Luch and Luch-5X have eavesdropped only on commercial communications satellites. The bulk of these belong to Intelsat and Eutelsat. The others are owned by smaller private operators (Yahsat, SES, ABS and Viasat) and by national operators (Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Nigeria). Three of the satellites (Intelsat-10-02, Intelsat-33e, and NSS-12) have received two visits. The vast majority of the satellites operate solely in the C- and Ku-bands and only some also have high-throughput Ka-band payloads. Coincidentally or not, four out of five satellites visited since early 2022 have Ka-band capacity. These are Intelsat-33e and -37e, both targets of Luch, and Viasat KA-SAT and Eutelsat-3B, the first two satellites visited by Luch-5X.
| Luch changed its mission profile in the months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Since then it has visited only Intelsat satellites, spending more time in their vicinity than generally seen before. |
Exactly what kind of information Russia (and the US, for that matter) is trying to extract from the intercepted signals is a matter of speculation. One can assume that the main interest lies in data and voice traffic, possibly with the aim of carrying out economic and industrial espionage (economic espionage is one of the goals of US SIGINT satellites explicitly mentioned in documents leaked by Edward Snowden.) Moreover, many of these satellites provide services not only to private, but also government and military customers. For instance, the US and European militaries lease significant bandwidth on Intelsat and Eutelsat satellites, using them for a variety of traffic, from unmanned aircraft video feeds to mobile ground communications.
Some observers have drawn attention to the fact that Luch changed its mission profile in the months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Since then it has visited only Intelsat satellites, spending more time in their vicinity than generally seen before. The Intelsats in question (33e, 39, and 37e) transmit Ku- and C-band frequencies over Ukraine. These are often used for secure military communications.[35] Intelsat-33e and 37e, both belonging to the Epic series, provide both government and military users with high-powered Ku-band spot beams that enable bandwidth applications such as high-definition full-motion video using compact antennas for ground and maritime users. It is unclear though if they support any military operations in Ukraine.
It is also worth noting that Viasat’s KA-SAT fixed broadband network fell victim to a major cyberattack just hours before the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022. While the attack was not aimed against the satellite itself, it rendered inoperable thousands of Viasat KA-SAT satellite broadband modems in Ukraine, including those used by military and government agencies. It also impacted tens of thousands of Viasat customers across Europe. KA-SAT was a target for Luch-5X between May and September 2023, well after the attack took place. Although the satellite is unlikely to have any electronic warfare capabilities, it could potentially have gathered data on KA-SAT that might facilitate further cyberattacks. A report in Aviation Week last May claimed that attacks against the Viasat network were still ongoing at the time. [36]
References
- Article published in Kommersant, March 24, 2014. The journalist who wrote the article (Ivan Sarfonov) is now serving a 22-year prison sentence after having been arrested by that very same FSB in 2020 on (unrelated) charges of state treason.
- Olimp’s orbital behavior is discussed in detail in a 30-minute video released by ComSpOC in 2019.
- М. Langbroek, A NEMESIS in the sky, The Space Review, October 31, 2016.
- M. Clonts, Espionage in orbit : satellite or spy?, Kratos, April 17, 2023.
- M. Gruss, Russian satellite maneuvers, silence worry Intelsat, SpaceNews, October 9, 2015.
- T. Roberts, Luch (Olymp) / Athena-Fidus, Satellite Dashboard, December 14, 2020.
- Press release by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, October 23, 2014 ; Report by the TASS news agency, September 25, 2017.
- Article published by the Keldysh Research Center in 2020. A description of the thruster in English can be found here: V. Vorontsov et al, Development of KM-60 based orbit control propulsion subsystem for geostationary satellite , Procedia Engineering, 2017.
- Russian press article, August 15, 2022. This has a picture of an exhibition model of the KM-60 with accompanying data. It is confirmed that the thruster has been used on an Express-1000 type satellite since 2014.
- Presentation on ISS Reshetnev satellites published in 2017 (see p. 12). The “H” in Express-1000H appears to be a Latin “H” rather than a Cyrillic “H” (which is rendered as “N”). The platform is also spelled Express-1000H in English-language literature of ISS Reshetnev intended for foreign customers. The “H” presumably stands for “heavy” (this being a heavier version of the Express-1000 platform).
- The 2016 presentation of ISS Reshetnev is no longer online. The satellite in the lower right is identified by another source as Gonets-M1, a low-orbiting communications satellite. In the latest proposals, it looks significantly different. It is not clear why it is shown here together with Repei and what may well be Olimp.
- A. Zak, Proton successfully returns to flight delivering a secret Olymp satellite, RussianSpaceWeb.com (last updated 2015).
- This is the thermal catalytic thruster given for Luch on an old version of OKB Fakel’s website. The satellite’s Hall thruster was wrongly identified as the KM-5.
- Press release by ISS Reshetnev in September 2019, posted on a Russian space forum ; Presentation by PAO Saturn in 2019 (no longer available online).
- Y. Korkishko et al, Fiber optic gyro for space applications. Results of R&D and flight tests, paper presented during the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Inertial Sensors and Systems ; Paper presented by ISS Reshetnev and NPK Optolink during a 2017 space conference in Tarusa (p. 174-186).
- Annual reports of NPP Kvant (2010) and NPP Geofizika-Kosmos (2009, 2011, 2013).
- Procurement documentation published in November 2012.
- B. Hendrickx, Russia gears up for electronic warfare in space (part 2), The Space Review, November 2, 2020.
- Presentation by the Baltic State Technical University, 2016.
- PhD dissertation published in 2014.
- Article by N. Testoyedov published in 2021 (p. 1080–1081).
- Report by the TASS news agency, February 12, 2020.
- The “X” in Luch-5X (spelled Луч-5Х in Russian) is a Latin “X” and not a Cyrillic “X” (which is pronounced differently and transliterated as “Kh”). It is pronounced as a Latin “X” in the Russian webcast of the launch (placed online after the launch) and the satellite was officially registered with the United Nations as Luch-5X in several languages.
- Luch-5X blog of Slingshot Aerospace ; Computer-simulated videos of Luch-5X’s movements near Eutelsat KA-SAT 9A and Eutelsat-3B, posted by DigitalArsenal CEO TJ Koury.
- Procurement documentation published in May 2014.
- Procurement documentation for Olimp’s KBVD tank published in October 2017. Ехаctly the same components were ordered for the KBVD tanks of Express-80 and 103, which both have OKB Fakel’s SPD-100V thrusters. See procurement documentation published in September 2017.
- Biographies of Yuri Oberemok and Andrei Leonenkov.
- Yenisei-2 first appeared in procurement documentation published in May 2014. Other examples of procurement documentation related to Yenisei-2 can be found here.
- Procurement documentation published in late 2014 for MAGD-O, the L-band switching system and the MPS system.
- The serial number of Luch/Olimp is given on the Kosmonavtika website.
- The contract number for MGU’s environmental impact study is seen here.
- The contract number for IVT SO RAN’s structural tests is seen here.
- Report by the TASS news agency, June 7, 2021.
- Court documentation published in 2021 (1, 2).
- Space Threat Assessment 2023, Center for Strategic & International Studies, p. 19-20.
- Viasat KA-SAT satellite in Europe still under attack in 2023, Aviation Week, May 16, 2023 (paywalled article).