Three astronauts and cosmonauts need rescuing from the ISS. Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP)
Last year, there was some drama aboard the International Space Station as Russian cosmonauts were forced to abandon a spacewalk after a leak was found in a Soyuz capsule connected to the ISS. The leak, it transpired, was caused by a tiny meteoroid that hit the crew’s return ship and put the craft out of action, leaving three crew members stranded aboard, in need of rescue.
The leak aboard Soyuz capsule MS-22, which astronauts use for their return trip to Earth, was discovered in early December. It resulted in an increased cabin temperature and experts deemed the capsule “unfit” to use. With no return craft, a rescue flight is finally being planned to bring the space travelers home.
If you’re anything like me, Aerosmith is probably playing in your head as you imagine NASA assembling a team of the brightest and best to launch two rockets into space simultaneously to save the world and bring these brave heroes home.
The Soyuz capsule was struck by a meteor and sprung a leak. Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP)
Sadly, that isn’t quite what’s happening. Instead, The Guardian reports that Russia will launch a craft into space next month to rescue the stricken astronauts from the ISS. The Guardian reports:
“After deliberations, Roscosmos said it has decided to bring forward a planned March launch of the Soyuz MS-23 to 20 February so it can be used to transport the Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and the US astronaut Francisco Rubio back to Earth.
“If a ‘particularly critical’ situation arose on the ISS in the weeks before then, Roscosmos said, the possibility of using the damaged Soyuz MS-22 to rescue the crew would be considered.”
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Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio are part of a seven-strong crew onboard the ISS. The four other team members will be brought back to Earth on a Space X capsule currently docked with the station. Once the Space X craft leaves the ISS, this will free up the second of two docking stations on the space base. Then, Roscosmos will be able to fly a spare Soyuz craft up to the ISS to dock with the station and bring the crew members home.
Right – left: Frank Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP)
The rescue flight, Soyuz MS-23, was originally scheduled to fly a new crew up to the ISS. But, the flight will be empty when it launches into orbit on its rescue mission. Once it docks with the space station, the damaged MS-22 craft will return to Earth empty.
Russia is prepping a ‘rescue’ mission following a coolant leak on a Soyuz capsule docked with the International Space Station. NASA said in a media briefing that Russia’s Roscosmos agency will send an empty Soyuz to the station on February 20th as a replacement for the damaged spacecraft. The vehicle was originally supposed to launch in March.
The leaking capsule is expected to return to Earth without a crew sometime in March. It will still carry experiments and other cargo. Cosmonauts Dmitriy Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, will now remain in orbit for several months longer rather than departing in March as planned.
The affected craft started spraying particles December 14th. The ISS team quickly noticed that an external radiator cooling loop was to blame, and investigators later determined that a micrometeoroid struck the radiator. Roscosmos soon decided the Soyuz was too dangerous to use for a standard crew return. Temperatures would have climbed past 100F on reentry, threatening both occupants and computer equipment. An in-space repair would be impractical as the procedure would be too difficult, according to the agency’s Sergei Krikalev.
The ISS crew is still prepared to use the broken Soyuz to evacuate in an emergency. However, that’s not ideal when three of the seven people aboard the ISS would likely have to accept elevated risks to come home. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is also docked, but it normally only takes four occupants. NASA’s ISS program head Joel Montalbano said at the briefing that there had been talks with SpaceX to see if one of the Soyuz passengers could travel aboard the Crew Dragon if necessary.
Relations between NASA and Roscomos are strained following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia said last summer that it would leave the ISS after 2024 to work on its own space station, and the US has been preparing for a possible Russian withdrawal since 2021. However, the capsule leak has effectively forced the two to work closely together — if only briefly.
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BREVARD, Fla. — NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin are faced with extending their stay aboard the International Space Station by several months and will require a new ride home after their Russian MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft sprang a leak last month.
The trio was supposed to use that spacecraft to return to Earth in March. Wednesday, NASA and Russian space officials unveiled a plan to launch an empty Soyuz capsule to the ISS to ferry them back instead. That means the three men will spend several more months at the ISS.
During a briefing with reporters, NASA’s Joel Montalbano, manager of the International Space Station program, said that NASA is not considering the move-up in the MS-23 Soyuz launch a rescue mission. “We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz,” said Montalbano. “Right now, the crew is safe onboard the space station.”
“I’m calling it a replacement Soyuz,” he said. “There’s no immediate need for the crew to come home today.”
Extended space stay
Initially set to fly the next rotation of Russian cosmonauts to the station in mid-March, the MS-23 Soyuz spacecraft is now being repurposed to launch as an empty lifeboat to ferry the MS-22 crew home later this year. The empty spacecraft is set to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Feb. 20.
Flying the MS-23 crew up as previously planned would have left the ISS in the same situation, with more people on board than available seats on functioning spacecraft to evacuate back to Earth in the unlikely event of a catastrophe.
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That means that Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin will need to extend their space stay until September or until Roscosmos can build another Soyuz spacecraft to launch its next rotation of crew members, which are now stuck grounded for longer than anticipated.
According to Montalbano, the space station remains safe, and the crew members are healthy enough to remain in space while this plan plays out.
“They’re prepared to stay until the September launch date, if that’s the case,” said Montalbano. “If that launch date moves up earlier, then they’re prepared to come home earlier.”
Jokingly, he said: “I may have to find some more ice cream to reward them.”
“The awesome thing about our crews are they’re willing to help wherever we ask,” he said. “They are ready to go with whatever decision that we give them.”
Expedition 68 crew members Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos, top, Frank Rubio of NASA, and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, bottom, wave farewell prior to boarding the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft for launch, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
A Russian space leak
The MS-22 Russian Soyuz spacecraft that transported Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin to the station back in September sprang a leak on Dec. 14. Coolant from an external coolant loop and radiator on the spacecraft spewed into space for hours just as Prokopyev and Petelin were preparing to conduct a spacewalk. Out of an abundance of caution to prevent any exposure to the leaking substance, the spacewalk was canceled.
On Dec. 18, NASA used the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to provide images and conduct an additional external inspection of the damaged spacecraft.
After a joint investigation conducted by NASA and Roscosmos, the space agencies are confident that the damage was caused by a micrometeoroid impact that resulted in a hole of about one millimeter in diameter in the coolant loop.
While it was determined that the leak posed no immediate threat to the station or crew, it left the MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft incapable of returning the trio of astronauts home safely.
The damaged coolant loop meant that the temperature and humidity inside the cabin of the Soyuz spacecraft could skyrocket, making for a very uncomfortable and claustrophobic return trip home, typically taking about six hours to complete.
The Russian Soyuz MS-22 crew ship is pictured on Oct. 8, 2022, in the foreground docked to the Rassvet module as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above Europe.
The path forward
Instead of returning crew as expected, roughly two weeks after the replacement MS-23 Soyuz docks at the station, the damaged MS-22 spacecraft will be outfitted as a cargo transport ship. NASA and Roscosmos intend to collect data about the conditions inside the cabin as the spacecraft makes its trip back for a landing in Kazakhstan in mid-to-late March.
“On the returning Soyuz, we’ll be taking some temperature measurements to measure how the vehicle does in this scenario such that if we ever had a need in the future, we have some additional data,” said Montalbano. “We’re going to fully use this vehicle all the way till it lands back on Earth.”
Also speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Sergei Krikalev, Roscosmos director of human space flight, said, “At this point, we have calculations and thermal scenarios, but we want to prove this calculation with the result (in) real-time.”
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Going forward, this will most likely impact the busy schedule of crew and cargo missions to the station for the rest of this year. How it impacts specific mission launch dates, such as NASA’s next crewed mission, SpaceX’s Crew-6, which was to launch from Kennedy Space Center in mid-February, has yet to be fully determined.
“We’re going to take the next couple of weeks to kind of lay out the plan,” said Montalbano. The shift is expected to impact at least four crewed missions and two cargo resupply missions to the station through at least September.
“Laying everything out is what we’re going to plan now. We just need a couple more weeks to lay all that out,” Montalbano said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Astronaut crew needs new Russian spacecraft to come home after damage
The Soyuz MS-22 crew ship is pictured docked to the Rassvet module. In the background, the Prichal docking module is attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Credit: NASA
International Space Station Configuration on January 9, 2023. Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the Cygnus space freighter, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance, and Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 crew ship and the Progress 81 and 82 resupply ships. Credit: NASA
Meanwhile, NASA and SpaceX are prepared to launch the Crew-6 mission soon after Soyuz MS-23, incorporating the manifest changes previously mentioned. NASA still plans on having a direct handover between the Crew-5 and Crew-6 missions.
On December 14, 2022, ground teams noticed significant leaking of external coolant from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the space station. The Soyuz spacecraft carried Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 21.
Spacesuits, eye scans, and cargo transfers were the dominant activities aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The seven Expedition 68 crew members also had time for space gardening and scientific hardware maintenance.
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, and Frank Rubio joined each other cleaning cooling loops, checking water, and installing batteries inside a pair of Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), also known as spacesuits, throughout the day. Mann later joined Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (
NASA has started unpacking the Orion spacecraft after its epic moon mission.
Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have opened Orion’s hatch and begun removing payloads that flew to the moon and back aboard the capsule on the Artemis 1 mission. This work will take quite a bit of time.
“This week, technicians will extract nine avionics boxes from the Orion, which will subsequently be refurbished for Artemis 2, the first mission with astronauts,” NASA officials wrote in an update (opens in new tab) on Tuesday (Jan. 10).
“In the coming months, technicians will remove hazardous commodities that remain on board. Once complete, the spacecraft will journey to NASA Glenn’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility [in Ohio] for abort-level acoustic vibration and other environmental testing,” they added.
Related: The 10 greatest images from NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission
Artemis 1 launched on Nov. 16 from KSC atop a Space Launch System rocket, sending the uncrewed Orion on a shakeout cruise to lunar orbit. The mission, the first of NASA’s Artemis program of moon exploration, wrapped up when Orion splashed down off the coast of Baja California on Dec. 11.
The capsule then traveled by truck across the country, arriving back at KSC on Dec. 30. Ever since, workers have been inspecting Orion and its various systems, assessing how they performed during the nearly 26-day Artemis 1 mission.
The capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide (5 meters) heat shield — the largest of its type ever flown — is receiving particular attention, given the extreme conditions it experienced. During Orion’s reentry through Earth’s atmosphere on Dec. 11, the heat shield endured temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius), about half as hot as the surface of the sun.
Technicians inspect the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft’s heat shield at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo released Jan. 6, 2023. (Image credit: NASA/Skip Williams)
These ongoing inspections will inform preparations for the Artemis 2 mission, which is scheduled to launch astronauts around the moon in 2024.
If all goes well with that flight, NASA can start gearing up for Artemis 3, which will land crewmembers near the moon’s south pole, where the agency plans to build a research outpost by the end of the decade. Artemis 3 is targeted to lift off in 2025 or 2026.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
An illustration of the lunar gateway in orbit around the Moon.Illustration: NASA
Architects designing the living space for the upcoming lunar Gateway did their best to make it comfortable for astronauts, but technical constraints forced them to create a tiny, noisy corridor with no windows and barely enough room to stand upright.
The European-built international habitat, or I-Hab, is meant to provide living quarters for astronauts on board the Lunar Gateway, a future outpost that will orbit the Moon. The purpose of Gateway, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and other international partners, is to provide a place for astronauts to conduct science in lunar orbit and to transfer from one spacecraft to another, such as a lunar lander. But an architect involved in I-Hab’s design recently revealed the claustrophobic conditions for the orbital habitat that’s supposed to house up to four astronauts for around 90 days at a time.
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During the Czech Space Week conference in Brno, Czechia (the country formerly known as the Czech Republic), René Waclavicek, a space architect and design researcher at Austria-based LIQUIFER Space Systems, stated that the Lunar Gateway will be roughly one-sixth of the size of the International Space Station (ISS), Space.com reported. Waclavicek, who was involved in I-Hab’s design, said that the architects behind the lunar living quarters were constrained by the amount of material that can be transported to the Moon, requiring them to make some sacrifices.
I-Hab “will have habitable space of about 8 cubic meters [280 cubic feet] and you will have to share it with three others,” Waclavicek said during the conference. “In other words, that would be a room 2 by 2 by 2 meters [6.6 by 6.6 by 6.6 feet], and you are locked in there.”
By comparison, the ISS stretches for about 357 feet (108 meters) from end-to-end, and is essentially a five-bedroom orbital complex complete with a gym, two bathrooms, and a 360-degree window with an enviable view of our home planet.
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A view of the Moon wouldn’t be bad either, except I-Hab won’t be equipped with the same luxury. “We always get asked ‘where is the window?’,” Waclavicek said. “The moon is a thousand times farther away [than the ISS] and each window is a disturbance in the continuity of the structure. Also, glass is very heavy so a window is the first thing that gets canceled.” The Gateway will have windows, although not in the living quarters. Instead, the refueling module ESPRIT will have small windows, according to Waclavicek.
With an extremely curtailed view of the surrounding cosmos, the astronauts will have a hard time relaxing during their downtime—especially as they’re being serenaded by the robotic hum of onboard machinery. “Actually, you are living in a machine room,” Waclavicek said. “The life-support systems make noise, they have a lot of fans, and you have [a tiny amount] of private space where you can close the door and tame the noise.”
The architect admits that they began with a design for larger living quarters but had to shrink it down due to mass restrictions for the lunar outpost. As a result, astronauts will be cramped inside a tiny tube for the duration of their mission around the Moon. “[The I-Hab] really is just a cylinder with a hatch on each end and two hatches at the sides and a corridor going through the length axis,” he said. “Even if you want to pass one another, it’s already quite difficult, you have to interrupt whatever you are doing in the moment to let the other [person] pass by you.” It will be a cramped environment, no doubt, but it’s important to remember that a capsule, namely NASA’s Orion spacecraft, will be attached to the Gateway station during these missions, which will allow for some added elbow room. Lunar landers, such as SpaceX’s upcoming Starship, will also dock to Gateway.
NASA’s Artemis program is officially underway, having kicking off in November 2022 with the launch of Artemis 1. Unlike Apollo, Artemis is designed to establish a sustainable presence of astronauts on and around the Moon, with the Lunar Gateway being an essential part of the mission objective.
The first components of the Lunar Gateway could reach orbit as early as 2024, but I-Hab isn’t expected to make it up there until 2027. The living quarters may not sound like it would provide for a pleasant experience on board, but it will likely contribute some valuable science on Earth’s natural satellite and beyond.
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Orion at at NASA’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility in Florida.
The Artemis 1 demonstration mission ended with a Pacific Ocean splash on December 11, but the task of evaluating the returned capsule, including its heat shield and internal payloads, has only begun.
Orion survived its historic 1.4-million-mile journey to the Moon and back, but it now needs to survive an entirely different test: the scrutiny of NASA engineers. The uncrewed capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in mid-December and was transported to Naval Base San Diego following its recovery. A truck delivered the capsule to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on December 30, where it’s now being de-serviced at NASA’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility.
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A NASA photo taken on January 2 shows the capsule in the inspection bay, with several engineers crawling beneath the spacecraft to take a closer look at its heat shield. This was done in preparation for removing the heat shield entirely and transporting it to a different facility for detailed inspections, NASA explained in a statement.
The heat shield took the brunt as it protected the capsule from 5,000-degree temperatures during reentry. Orion made history as being the fastest human-rated spacecraft to return from the Moon, hitting the atmosphere at speeds reaching 24,600 miles per hour (39,590 kilometers per hour). The performance and integrity of the heat shield is critical to the Orion system and the Artemis program as a whole, which seeks to return humans to the lunar surface later this decade. The Artemis 1 demonstration mission tested both the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, as NASA now sets its sights on Artemis 2—a repeat of Artemis 1 but with astronauts aboard.
NASA technicians also removed external avionics boxes and are in the process of inspecting the capsule’s windows and the thermally protected back shell panels, which cover the spacecraft. Five airbags, now deflated, can still be seen atop the capsule. Those airbags kept Orion floating right-side-up after splashdown.
An important next step will be to extract air samples from within the capsule. Orion will then be fitted into a service stand that will allow technicians to access the interior. After opening the hatch for the very first time, technicians will remove internal avionics boxes and internal payloads, including the three manikins—Campos, Helga, and Zohar—who came along for the journey. NASA plans to reuse the avionics boxes for the Artemis 2 mission.
The de-servicing and inspecting of Orion will take months to complete, with other next steps including the removal of hazardous commodities and running acoustic vibrations tests at at NASA Glenn’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Orion will eventually get its report card, allowing NASA to make any necessary changes in preparation for the crewed Artemis 2 mission, which won’t happen any earlier than late 2024.
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The Chinese rover snapped this selfie of itself on Mars shortly after landing on the Red Planet.Image: China News Service
China’s Zhurong rover went into hibernation mode in May 2022 to avoid the harsh winter season on Mars, but communication issues, both with the rover and orbiter, suggest something’s now very wrong with the mission.
The six-wheeled Martian rover was scheduled to wake up in late December, but it hasn’t been heard from since entering into its scheduled hibernation mode, unnamed sources told the South China Morning Post, as first reported by SpaceNews.
Zhurong landed on Mars on May 14, 2021 as China’s first Martian mission. The rover was sent to Mars with the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which relays data between the rover and ground controllers on Earth. About a year after roaming and investigating the Red Planet, the rover entered hibernation—a kind of low power safe mode—in anticipation of the Martian winter, when temperatures reach around -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) during the day and -148 F (-100 C) at night. The winter season on Mars also includes sand and dust storms, which block the rover’s solar panels and prevent it from collecting sunlight to generate power. For its own protection, Zhurong hunkered down in a dormant state for those chilly, dusty months on Mars.
By late December, which marks the beginning of Martian spring, the rover was supposed to autonomously resume its activities. However, the China National Space Administration has yet to send out any updates regarding the rover, in what is an ominous sign. The rover’s solar panels could be covered by dust, reducing its ability to generate power and preventing it from turning back on, according to the SCMP’s sources. It’s worth noting that NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are able to power through Mars’s winter season using a radioisotope power system.
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And it may not just be the rover that’s in trouble. The mission’s Tianwen-1 orbiter has also reportedly gone silent. Scott Tilley, professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, noted on Twitter that the radio signals between the ground station and Tianwen-1 indicate that mission controllers may have stopped trying to communicate with the orbiter after failing to achieve contact. This is unfortunate, as China planned to perform aerobraking tests in 2023 with Tianwen-1 in anticipation of a future Mars sample return mission.
It’s possible that the problem with the orbiter is related to the problem with Zhurong, but we’ll have to wait for China to finally say something official on the matter. In the event we don’t hear back from the rover and its orbital companion, China’s mission to Mars will still be deemed a success, as it was initially designed to last for three months on the Red Planet but managed to live on for over a year.
More: China’s Zhurong Rover Captures Remarkable Sights and Sounds on Mars
An illustration of LunaH-Map in orbit around the Moon.Illustration: Arizona State University
A mission to measure lunar water-ice on the Moon is in jeopardy after the cubesat failed to fire its engines shortly after launch. Time is now running out, as the team has until mid-January to fix the spacecraft’s thrusters and give it a second chance to enter lunar orbit.
NASA’s LunaH-Map, manufactured by Arizona State University, was one of 10 cubesats launched on November 16, 2022 as secondary payloads aboard the Artemis 1 mission. The tiny probe was one of six cubesats cable of sending radio signal to ground teams, in what was an upsetting rate of attrition.
Things were looking good for LunaH-Map until the following day, when mission controllers tried to engage the cubesat’s propulsion system and execute a crucial course correction maneuver. Despite several attempts, the spacecraft failed to fire its engines, preventing it from performing its intended lunar flyby on November 21. LunaH-Map was supposed to use this propulsive maneuver to direct it towards its orbit around the Moon.
Engineers are hoping to fire LunaH-Map’s thrusters in the coming weeks such that the spacecraft can take an alternate route to the Moon, Craig Hardgrove, principal investigator for LunaH-Map at Arizona State University, said during a presentation about the mission at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, SpaceNews reported. The team has until mid-January to do so, otherwise the probe will never reach any kind of orbit around the Moon.
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Data collected so far suggests that a valve within the spacecraft’s thrusters is partially stuck. Engineers are attempting to use heaters in the propulsion system to free the valve. Should the spacecraft miss its second shot at entering lunar orbit, the mission team will consider sending LunaH-Map towards a near-Earth asteroid, according to Hardgrove.
While NASA’s Artemis 1 mission was a success, its secondary payload has not been so lucky, with the majority of cubesats packed for the lunar mission failing at some point after launch. The mission suffered several delays and engineers were only able to recharge four out of 10 cubesats already packed inside the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. NASA was worried that its LunaH-Map cubesat would not have enough power to endure the journey to the Moon and complete its mission of measuring water-ice in the shadowed regions of the lunar surface, but this proved to not be a problem. The jammed valve is another story.
It won’t be long before we find out LunaH-Map’s fate once and for all, but hopefully this tiny probe can make it all the way to the Moon.
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An illustration of the Gama Alpha mission in orbit. Illustration: Gama
A new spacecraft could soon be soaring through Earth’s orbit while gently being pushed by photons emitted from the Sun.
French aerospace company Gama launched its Gama Alpha solar sail mission to test out photonic propulsion technology, which keeps spacecraft in orbit without the need for fuel. The Gama Alpha cubesat was loaded on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and lifted off on Tuesday morning from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Gama Alpha – Solar Sail Mission
As the company’s first solar sail mission, Gama Alpha is an initial test of its technology. The cubesat is roughly the size of a shoebox, while its large solar sail is about the size of a tennis court. The plan is for the sail to unfurl in Earth orbit at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers), according to a statement by Gama. “The first phase will be commissioning the satellite, establishing communications and checking all the vital signs are good,” Jordan Culeux, Gama lead system engineer, said in the statement. “The second phase will be the sail deployment.”
Solar sails collect photons from the Sun, causing small bursts of momentum that propel the spacecraft. As the photons hit the sails, the spacecraft is pushed farther away from the Sun. If a spacecraft is able to surpass the drag from Earth’s atmosphere, it could potentially reach very high altitudes.
“In space, the Sun’s radiative pressure allows constant acceleration. The result? Missions that are 10 to 20 times less expensive and no longer limited by a fuel budget,” Andrew Nutter, Gama co-founder, said in the statement. “A solar sail is poetic, inherently sustainable, and dramatically lowers the cost of access to deep space or unstable orbits.”
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The satellite will enter into a slow rotation once its solar sail is deployed. The main purpose of the Gama Alpha mission is to demonstrate that a large sail can be deployed and controlled by a small cubesat, in addition to collecting flight data to improve simulations of the solar sail technology, according to Gama.
Gama Alpha reached its orbit less than two months after LightSail 2, a pioneering solar sail mission, burnt up in Earth’s atmosphere to end its three-and-a-half year mission. LightSail 2 launched in 2019 to test controlled solar sailing in Earth orbit, inspiring a new generation of soaring spacecraft to follow.
There are several other solar sail missions currently in the works, including NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System to test out sail boom material in Earth orbit (scheduled for launch sometime this year) and NASA’s Solar Cruiser (scheduled for a 2025 launch). NASA’s NEA Scout solar sail mission launched aboard Artemis 1 in November 2022, but the team behind the mission has been unable to communicate with it ever since.
Gama Alpha will also be followed by a successor mission aptly named Gama Beta. For the follow-up mission, the main objective will be to demonstrate sustained navigation from an altitude twice as high as its predecessor. Should its solar sail missions prove successful, the Gama company is hoping to become a pioneer in the field with this unique, low-cost technology.
“We are building the space transportation infrastructure of tomorrow,” Louis de Goüyon Matignon, Gama co-founder, said in the statement. “While companies today are focused on low Earth orbit, we have decided to look further afield and prepare for the space operations of the future.”
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