# The Orbital Index

Issue No. 117 | May 19, 2021

🚀 🌍 🛰
 ¶China successfully touched down on Mars. Almost completely unannounced, Tianwen-1’s lander and rover separated from the orbiter and entered Mars’ thin atmosphere using a protective aeroshell, followed by a supersonic parachute, and finally, a retro-propulsive landing (animation of the landing). Amateur Radio enthusiasts were able to note its separation and deorbit, with earlier observations pushing the CNSA to confirm the eventual landing window. The Tianwen-1 orbiter remains in orbit, equipped with a high-resolution camera, magnetometer, spectrometer, and subsurface radar. The lander touched down in Utopia Planitia (where Viking-2 landed), a massive impact basin that may have once contained an ocean and is thought to have buried ice. The landing platform will soon release the 240 kg Zhurong rover, equipped with fold-out solar panels and a mast camera, looking like a slightly larger version of Spirit/Opportunity. The rover has the first magnetometer on the surface of Mars, as well as cameras, weather sensors, and its own subsurface radar. We wrote about the mission’s sophisticated use of both rover & orbiter radar in Issue 104. Until now, the only successful landings on Mars have been by NASA (and very briefly by the Soviet Mars 3 mission, which only functioned long enough to transmit a single photo). We’re thrilled that another country has successfully landed on Mars! Related: A video of Tianwen-1 entering orbit in Feb.
 Artist rendition of Zhurong after landing. It might take a little while before we get images back from the rover since Zhurong uses its orbiter for data relay, while NASA rovers additionally support direct-to-Earth communications.
 ¶The true start of space tourism is nigh. With Blue Origin flying their first paying passenger to suborbital space in July (and Virgin Galactic hopefully following shortly thereafter), expensive suborbital sightseeing tours finally appear about to become somewhat commonplace. But why go suborbital when you can go full orbital? A series of recent announcements highlight the coming wave of orbital wealthy (and/or philanthropic) tourist missions. Axiom recently purchased a four-person private astronaut flight for early next year to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, now Axiom VP, will command the mission to take three wealthy tourists from the US, Canada, and Israel to the ISS. The bill? Approximately $55 million a seat to SpaceX, plus approximately$15 million total to NASA for mission support, food, and astronaut time—NASA (probably rightly) just significantly updated their commercial pricing for ISS use to reflect the true cost of operation. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Inspiration4 is scheduled to take four people on a three-day LEO sightseeing tour in September; a Russian actress and film director will shoot scenes for a movie called “Challenge” on the ISS in October; and, two months later, Yusaku Maezawa, of 2023’s circumlunar Starship dearMoon fame, will fly to the ISS on a Soyuz so that he can go “to the ISS before the Moon.” A Tom Cruise movie is also still planned to be filmed on the ISS sometime soon. With Axiom working on commercial ISS modules and the availability of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, we expect to see tourism funding more and more missions in the coming few years.