India Shoots Down A Satellite

INDIA

Space Race

India shot down one of its own low-orbit satellites in a successful test of an anti-satellite missile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Wednesday.

The “historic feat” shows India has become a “global space power,” the prime minister said in a national address that was tailor-made for election season, CNN reported. Parliamentary elections will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19.

The US, Russia and China are the only other countries to have demonstrated similar capabilities, so the test is likely to be viewed as provocative by Beijing and Islamabad despite India’s foreign ministry’s statement that New Delhi has “no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space.”

Capable of blinding or disrupting the communications of enemies by destroying their satellites, such weapons will likely be of increasing importance in the future, and also provide a technology base for intercepting ballistic missiles, Reuters noted.

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Robert Zubrin: "Give 'em Hell Harry!!!"

Zubrin Responds to New Pence-NASA Lunar Initiative  In response to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's NASA announcement yesterday in Huntsville, Alabama, Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin commented: Vice President Pence's declaration of intent to land Americans on the Moon by 2024 was a welcome statement of resolve, vitally necessary to give the nation a human space flight program that is actually going somewhere. His call to put the base at the lunar South Pole is also welcome since that is where ice reserves can be found which could be used to refuel spacecraft used to explore the Moon or return to Earth. However the goal will not be achieved if NASA is allowed to continue to misdirect its efforts to build an orbiting Lunar Orbit Gateway or Tollbooth as it is should more accurately be termed. This legacy project will cost a fortune to build, a fortune to maintain and add to the propulsion and timing requirements of any lunar mission forced use it. The uselessness of the Tollbooth can readily be seen by noting that any lunar excursion vehicle (LEV) capable of doing the 6 km/s delta-V round trip flight from the lunar base to the Tollbooth could just as easily fly one-way from the lunar base to low Earth orbit (LEO). So while the Tollbooth plan would require using an SLS or alternative heavy lift capability to deliver astronauts to meet the LEV at the Tollbooth, without such an expensive installation we could just deliver astronauts in a Dragon launched by an inexpensive Falcon 9 to meet the LEV in LEO, along with enough propellant to send the LEV back to the Moon. By not having to use the Tollbooth, we could conduct lunar missions using a launch vehicle with less than 1/10th the cost and more than ten times the flight frequency as would be required with the Tollbooth. Such a more advantageous flight plan, known as Moon Direct, is described in detail in my recent article in New Atlantis (https://bit.ly/2FBR5Rs). The broader point here is this: NASA needs a purpose-driven human spaceflight program, not a vendor-driven program. A purpose-driven program spends money to do things. A vendor-driven program does things in order to spend money. If we are to reach the Moon, our human spaceflight program needs to act with purpose. The Vice President has made the necessary statement of purpose. Now it is time to act on it. Dr. Robert Zubrin, President & Founder, The Mars Society Art work by Bryan Versteeg Facebook Twitter Website YouTube Share Tweet The Mars Society 11111 West 8th Avenue, unit A Lakewood, CO 80215 U.S.A. www.marssociety.org https://www.facebook.com/TheMarsSociety @TheMarsSociety Copyright (c) 2018 The Mars Society All rights reserved.

The Space Review: Review: Come Fly with Us

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Stuck Mars InSight lander to conduct short burst of hammering in search of answers

The first selfie on Mars of the InSight lander, which has run into a problem (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Digging into the surface of another planet for the first time is going to bring some surprises, you'd just hope that those surprises don't include your digging being brought to a halt before things have even begun. This is the problem scientists working on the Mars InSight mission have been forced to contend with, though they are now moving ahead with new plans to shed light on the blockage.

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The digging operations of the Mars InSight lander are hoped to greatly improve our understanding of the Red Planet. By burrowing into the planet's surface further than any scientific instrument before it, its drilling device will measure thermal conductivity and subsurface materials in the soil, adding to our understanding of how rocky planets like Mars were formed.

But soon after commencing its digging operations in late February, the lander's drilling device, known as "the mole" ground to a halt during the hammering phase, only making it around three quarters of the way out of its housing structure before stopping altogether. The team resumed hammering two days later, but without success.

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The data indicated that the mole was healthy and functioning properly, though it was resting at a 15-degree tilt. The operation was then paused while the team investigated the issue, suspecting that some hard rock or gravel beneath the surface is what stopped the device in its tracks.

The mole forms part of a larger instrument called the Heat and Physical Properties Package (HP3), which was built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Engineers there and at NASA will work with replicas of the HP3 in the lab to better understand the problem, and are planning a short hammering test on Mars to try and uncover new clues.

This test will take place over 10 to 15 minutes later in the month, and InSight's seismometer will be used to "listen" in on the hammering to try and help determine the source of the blockage. A camera mounted on the lander's robotic arm, meanwhile, will snap images of the support structure to capture any motion that might be triggered throughout.

"With a special filter applied to the short period data directly onboard the SEIS instrument, we will get a much better time resolution of the signals and should be able to diagnose whether or not the mole is stuck or even slowly moving forward or is rebounding," writes DLR's Tilman Spohn, instrument lead. "Knowing this will help us greatly in designing our
strategy."

Source: NASA