The launch of the ExoMars mission, featuring a rover named Rosalind Franklin, has been postponed from 2020 to 2022. (credit: ESA)
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 16, 2020
This year was supposed to be one of the biggest ever for the exploration of Mars. Four missions by four different space agencies were scheduled for launch this summer, arriving at Mars in early 2021. The missions ranged from an orbiter by an up-and-coming space power to a rover that is the beginning of a decade-long effort to collect samples of the Red Planet and return them to Earth.
“This is a very tough decision, but it’s I’m sure the right one,” said Wörner.
One of those four, though, won’t make it this year. The European Space Agency announced last Thursday that, in cooperation with the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, it was delaying the launch of the ExoMars mission that had been scheduled for July on a Proton rocket. The mission will carry to the surface a lander, called Rosalind Franklin, whose missions includes the search for evidence of past or present life on the planet.
Technical issues, ESA leadership said, meant that the spacecraft could not be completed and fully tested in time to meet the narrow launch window this summer. “This is a very tough decision, but it’s I’m sure the right one,” Jan Wörner, director general of ESA, said in a media teleconference.
Among those technical problems was a long-standing concern with the spacecraft’s parachutes, which include parachutes 15 and 35 meters in diameter with accompanying drogue chutes. In one high-altitude deployment test in May in Sweden, both the 15- and 35-meter parachutes were damaged. In a second test in August, also in Sweden, the 35-meter parachute was damaged.
An investigation into the problems found that the parachutes were being torn while being extracted from their containers. ESA turned to NASA for help in redesigning that system and performing a series of ground tests at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That was to be followed by a pair of high-altitude deployment tests, this time in Oregon.
Those tests had been scheduled to be completed by now, but have been delayed. “There are some competing priorities over there” at that US test site, Wörner said, “so this will be a little bit later than we hoped.” He later said the tests would be postponed by weeks, rather than months.
In past briefings and interviews, ESA officials were optimistic that the parachute problem had been solved and that the testing could be completed in time for a 2020 launch. “My information is that we are now on a good side. This is not any obstacle for the flight in the summer of this year,” Wörner said at a January 15 press briefing.
One reason for that was that the parachutes could be installed on the spacecraft late in the overall integration process. “As long as we have proven that the parachute works, it can be integrated very late in the assembly sequence,” David Parker, ESA’s head of human and robotic exploration, said in an interview last October during the International Astronautical Congress in Washington.
In addition to the parachutes, Wörner said there were problems with four electronics boxes on the spacecraft that required them to be replaced, although he did not elaborate on the specific problems they suffered.
Those problems, in turn, delayed the completion and testing of software for ExoMars. “There is not enough time left to fully test it before a 2020 launch and gain the confidence we need,” he said. “We could launch, but that would mean we are not doing all the tests and, from the experience we had with Beagle and Schiaparelli, and the clear messages we got, I got as director general, was a very harsh, clear message: do all the tests before you launch.”
“We’ve been keeping pushing up to, let’s say, one month ago,” said Francois Spoto, ExoMars team leader.
Beagle is a reference to Beagle 2, a British-built Mars lander flown with ESA’s Mars Express mission in 2003 that failed to make contact after landing. Imagery taken of the landing site suggests the spacecraft did land, but could not deploy its solar panels and thus never made contact. Schiaparelli was an experimental spacecraft flown with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission in 2016, which crashed when a software problem caused the lander’s computer to shut off its thrusters while still several kilometers above the surface.
“We cannot really cut corners,” Wörner said. “Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests.”
“The learning curve should be at the maximum” by the time ExoMars arrives at Mars, he said later. “We would like to be as sure as possible, as certain as possible, when we go to Mars that we at least have done all the tests to show that it is possible to land on Mars. It really is a hard thing.”
The announcement confirmed growing speculation that the mission would be delayed, and ESA officials acknowledged that, despite the optimistic talk as recently as January, they shortly thereafter realized that the 2020 launch could not take place. “We’ve been keeping pushing up to, let’s say, one month ago,” said Francois Spoto, ExoMars team leader.
Once the parachute tests, electronics work, and software testing are all completed, the spacecraft will go into storage until the next launch window, between August and October of 2022. ESA hasn’t determined the cost of the delay, Parker said in last week’s teleconference, but noted there is a “risk mitigation budget” for the mission as part of the broader Mars exploration program funded at last year’s ministerial meeting (see “Funding Europe’s space ambitions”, The Space Review, December 2, 2019).
There was another complicating factor in the decision to delay ExoMars: the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic last Wednesday. In ESA’s press release about the launch delay, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, cited “force majeure circumstances related to exacerbation of the epidemiological situation in Europe which left our experts practically no possibility to proceed with travels to partner industries.”
Wörner said in the media teleconference that the pandemic had affected launch preparations, but wasn’t the main reason for the delay. “To say the coronavirus is the one and only reason would not at all be fair, but in this situation we see that the coronavirus has also an impact on the preparations” because of travel restrictions, he said. “I would not like to say the coronavirus is the one and only reason.” (It did have an effect on the briefing, which was originally scheduled to be a joint ESA-Roscosmos press conference in Moscow. Instead, it was held as a video teleconference at ESA headquarters in Paris, with reporters emailing their questions.)
He declined to speculate whether, had everything else with ExoMars been going well, the launch would have been delayed anyway because of the pandemic. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s ridiculous to look back at history. Let’s look forward.”
It’s not a hypothetical concern, though, for the other three missions being prepared for launch to Mars this summer. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, with a rover recently named Perseverance, is undergoing preparations at the Kennedy Space Center for a launch on an Atlas 5 in July.
An illustration of Perseverance, the Mars 2020 rover, still on schedule for launch in July. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
“We are green across the board,” Jim Watzin, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said of Mars 2020 at a March 9 meeting of NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee. “The team is working hard and they’re on schedule, and we’re still carrying significant schedule reserve to our launch date on July 17.”
“If we can no longer travel across the United States, if basically people need to be isolated, how do we prioritize the mission work that needs to be done? What are the things that are absolutely urgent that need to go forward?” said Zurbuchen.
However, uncertainty about the length and severity of the pandemic, and its effect on various industries, weighs on all of NASA’s programs. Two of the agency’s centers, Ames in California and Marshall in Alabama, have moved to “mandatory telework” after employees were diagnosed with COVID-19, although “mission-essential” personnel can still work on site. NASA is encouraging telework at other centers, and it may be only a matter of time—days, perhaps—before other centers adopt similar mandatory telework requirements to combat the spread of the disease.
“At this moment in time, I would say that is the biggest risk, how the impact of that affects some of these missions,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said of the pandemic during a virtual meeting last Thursday of the NASA Advisory Council’s science committee. He said teams at JPL and KSC were planning various scenarios “to make sure that we can, in fact, keep this on track.”
“We have a lot of ambiguity at this moment” about the effects of the pandemic, he said later in the meeting. “If we can no longer travel across the United States, if basically people need to be isolated, how do we prioritize the mission work that needs to be done? What are the things that are absolutely urgent that need to go forward?”
He said missions like Mars 2020 that have narrow launch windows would likely be prioritized. That would also include Lucy, an asteroid mission with a complex trajectory that requires a launch in October 2021, and Psyche, another asteroid mission in 2022. That would be followed missions in advanced stages of integration and testing, including the James Webb Space Telescope and Landsat-9.
There’s less information about the status of two other Mars missions. China’s space program, like the rest of the country, has been slowed by the coronavirus outbreak that started there. The Xinhua news service reported last week that the Beijing Aerospace Control Center completed a test to confirm that mission control could communicate with and operate its Mars mission, which includes an orbiter, lander, and rover.
“According to the center, the test has not been affected by the novel coronavirus epidemic, and the technical staff is working hard to ensure the success of the mission,” Xinhua reported. That mission is scheduled for launch on a Long March 5 rocket—which returned to flight last December nearly two and a half years after a launch failure—this summer. (That could be in jeopardy after the failure, as this article was being prepared for publication, of a Long March 7A rocket, which shares some components with the Long March 5.)
The United Arab Emirates Space Agency has provided few recent updates on its Hope Mars mission. That spacecraft is an orbiter built in the UAE and recently tested in Colorado. It is scheduled for launch in July on an H-2 rocket in Japan, a date the agency confirmed in a March 16 tweet.
Travel restrictions in response to the pandemic could make it difficult for the spacecraft and personnel to get to Japan for the launch this summer. However, the UAE would like to see the mission launch this summer so it can arrive in early 2021, the 50th anniversary of the UAE’s founding. And, right now, the world could use a little hope.
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
