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The Orbital Index

Issue No. 292 | Oct 30, 2024


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China’s long-term space science roadmap includes some surprises. A roadmap for Chinese space science missions up through 2050 was released on the 15th. It includes missions focusing on the extreme universe, the nature of matter, searching for habitable exoplanets, heliophysics, and human space exploration. These include programs we’ve talked about targeting this decade, like a crewed lunar landing by 2030 (c.f. Issue № 288); the Xuntian space telescope (cf. Issue № 236), which will co-orbit with the CSS; a space-based gravitational wave detection pathfinder; solar and cosmology research missions; the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission; and, an exoplanet telescope (c.f. Issue № 283). Further out (2028–2035) are the Tianwen-4 Jupiter and Uranus mission, a solar system boundary mission, the development of the International Lunar Research Station (c.f. Issue № 275), and a newly announced Venus atmospheric sample return mission. That last one is a particularly exciting surprise, but few details have been released at this point. Finally, the 2036–2050 part of the roadmap lists “global leadership in space science with 5-6 large-scale missions and diverse smaller projects,” which, given China’s recent track record, we’re inclined to believe.

A depiction of the Xuntian space telescope, a Hubble-class telescope with a 2-meter primary mirror, 2.5 gigapixel camera, and a field of view 300-350x that of Hubble with a primary goal of sky mapping. It is intended to orbit near the Chinese space station for periodic docking, maintenance, and upgrades.

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A pizza slice depiction of the hypothesized diamond layer between the outer core and silicate mantle of Mercury.

News in brief. After delays due to weather and extended handover tasks from Starliner, Crew-8 returned to Earth after 235 days, a new record for longest time in orbit for an American crewed spacecraft and 25 days past the NASA-certified lifetime (which will now likely be extended) One Crew-8 member was hospitalized directly after splashdown, for undisclosed reasons, and was later released Blue Origin conducted the first (uncrewed) flight of their upgraded second generation human-rated New Shepard vehicle—NS-27 included new payload capacity on the booster itself and a new GNC system, which will also be used on New Glenn Relatedly, Chinese startup Deep Blue Aerospace hopes to start providing suborbital tourism flights in 2027 with a similar-looking vehicle The struggling, now private Astra received a DOD contract with a maximum value of $44M for continued development of their Launch System 2 Astroforge received a deep space communications license from the FCC (the first ever granted to a commercial company) for their Odin asteroid imaging mission AST SpaceMobile deployed its expansive 64-square-meter communications arrays on their first five direct-to-smartphone BlueBird satellites The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX all nine of its Phase 1 launch contracts, outcompeting ULA Boeing might sell their space business, likely just the part that includes the ISS-related programs and Starliner (but who will want it?) SpaceX static fired Super Heavy Booster 13, just 11 days after catching Booster 12 The Republic of Cyprus and Chile signed on to the Artemis Accords, bringing the accords to 47 signatories All seven first stage BE-4 engines have been installed on the first New Glenn rocket—maybe still launching by the end of 2024? 

Blue Origin’s first New Glenn flight article, featuring seven freshly installed BE-4 engines

Etc.

The North American Aurora Borealis, as seen during a severe geomagnetic storm several weeks ago, by NOAA-20’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument. (Related: here’s a video of a solar eruption taken by the new Compact Coronagraph imager on GOES-19, launched on June 25th.) Credit: CSU/CIRA & NOAA