¶Phase I NIACs 2025: Part Deux. Continuing last week’s rundown of this year’s NIAC Phase I awards… - LEAP: Legged Exploration Across the Plume proposes a Salto-based jumping robot for sampling Enceladus's plumes, capable of 90m vertical/170m horizontal hops in local gravity. 🦿
- MitoMars: Targeted mitochondrial replacement therapy to combat radiation-induced cell damage in astronauts by transplanting undamaged mitochondria extracted pre-exposure. 🧬
- PULSAR: A spacecraft constellation with large and reconfigurable detector baselines for sensing planetary coupling effects in a body’s lithosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere, atmosphere, and plasmasphere across multiple frequencies, providing something akin to monitoring a planet’s vitals. Lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere coupling (LAIC) is fascinating, as it potentially allows the detection of earthquakes. 📡
- SUPREME-QG: A mission that tests quantum gravity theories through ultra-precise measurements using quantum entanglement and Schrödinger Cat state atom interferometers, which put groups of atoms into multiple simultaneous states to perform ultra-sensitive measurements. 🔬
- The Ribbon: A structure-free diffractive solar sail utilizing surface-normal photons from the sun to generate simplified propulsion and enable high-efficiency polar observation missions around the Sun. ⛵
- Hydrogen Hybrid Power: A novel air-breathing hybrid fuel cell/gas turbine architecture for sustainable aircraft propulsion, using electrically-driven compression and mechanical uncoupling of the compressor and turbine to enable high performance in multiple mission environments. ✈️
- Fusion-Enabled Comprehensive Exploration: Helicity Space proposes a constellation powered by the Helicity Drive, a compact fusion propulsion system enabling rapid multi-directional heliosphere exploration missions with unprecedented specific impulse capabilities. All you need is fusion. ⚛️
- Accretion Explorer: A multi-spacecraft X-ray interferometer to image the most energetic regions near supermassive black holes at resolutions up to 6 orders of magnitude better than Chandra. 🌌
|
|
 | LEAP could jump through Enceladus's plumes, sampling them as it goes. |
|
The Orbital Index is made possible through generous sponsorship by:
  |
|
¶ESA’s LUMIO. A CubeSat mission designed to observe flashes of light from meteoroid strikes on the Moon’s farside was approved by ESA last summer. After it launches NET 2027, Lunar Meteoroid Impacts Observer (LUMIO) should help us to better determine the meteoroid flux and its distribution in cislunar space, useful for both scientific models and to estimate how quickly space infrastructure will degrade due to impacts. LUMIO will use a lunar halo orbit, which allows it to see both the lunar farside and the Earth at all times, enabling real-time monitoring. |
|
Support Us› Orbital Index is made possible by readers like you. If you appreciate our writing, please support us with a monthly membership! |
|
¶Tianwen interplanetary missions to dig deep and go far. China’s National Space Administration has continued to develop a series of deep space missions under its Tianwen “Questions to Heaven” program. In 2021, this program accomplished the first Chinese Mars mission, Tianwen-1. It consisted of an orbiter, a landing platform, the Zhurong rover, two deployable camera sub-satellites, a selfie stick remote camera, and 14 science instruments. The next mission in the series, Tianwen-2, is scheduled to launch on a LM-3B in May or June to gather samples from Earth’s quasi-satellite, asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, an “oscillating celestial object.” Kamo‘oalewa is now thought to have originated from the impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon’s far side. Approximately 100 grams are planned to be harvested from Kamoʻoalewa via anchoring-drilling and touch-and-go techniques. These samples will be returned to Earth about 2.5 years after launch. The main spacecraft of Tianwen-2 will then continue on (for seven years!) to enter the Main Asteroid Belt to study comet 311P/PANSTARRS for an additional year, capturing and analyzing dust from the comet. Following this mission, the next Tianwen will be the ambitious Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission, which will require two Long March 5 launches in 2028 within 40 days of one another—first for the lander and ascent vehicle, and second for the orbiter and the Mars Sample Return capsule. This sequence is different from the Chang’E lunar sample return missions, which had a four-spacecraft stack (service module, lander, re-entry capsule, and ascent vehicle) on a single rocket. Tianwen-3, which is also planned to include a sample-collecting surface robot and/or a helicopter, will land at a site at Amazonis Planitia, Utopia Planitia, or Chryse Planitia. About 600 grams of rock and soil are to be collected from the surface using a robotic arm and a drill, reaching a maximum depth of two meters. The samples would return to Earth by July 2031 if the mission doesn’t slip. Tianwen-4 could potentially launch as early as September-October 2029 for a Jupiter-Callisto rendezvous in December 2035. Before reaching Jupiter, a sub-probe will separate from the main orbiter for a 2045 Uranus flyby. The main craft would enter Callisto’s orbit around 2038 and release an impactor. Observations of the impact and any potential ejecta may reveal clues about Callisto’s composition, physical properties, history, and exosphere. When CNSA approval is granted, the proposed Tianwen-5 mission could become the first-ever mission to orbit an ice giant by either visiting Uranus with a 2035 launch or Neptune, launching in 2040. Presumably, Tianwen-6 would then be directed toward the Kuiper Belt and interstellar space, continuing China’s far-reaching deep-space exploration program. 🌌 |
|
 | | Tianwen-2 CONOPS (google translated version). Original here. |
|
| ¶News in brief. Finland joined the Artemis Accords ● General Atomics successfully tested their nuclear thermal propulsion reactor fuel at high temperatures, demonstrating that it can handle realistic thermal and hydrogen plasma environments for cislunar and deep space missions ● Redwire acquired drone company Edge Autonomy for $925M ● Voyager Technologies (post rebrand from Voyager Space) confidentially filed for an IPO ● South Korea’s National Space Agency will invest $562.5M into R&D, a 43.3% increase from last year ● Spaceium, an in-orbit refueling startup, raised a $6.3M seed round to build a network of on-orbit gas stations with fuel tanks and advanced robotic arms for refueling ● OrbitAID, a Chennai-based startup, raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding to develop on-orbit fueling systems in order to extend the lives of satellites ● China launched a fourth batch of 18 satellites for their Thousand Sails mega constellation ● AST SpaceMobile raised $400M through convertible debt to ramp up manufacturing for its direct-to-smartphone constellation ● China launched Satellite-14, a classified communication technology experiment, to GEO ● JAXA and Japanese tech company NEC demonstrated an optical inter-satellite data relay at a 40,000 km distance between LEO and GEO ● The National Space Council may get cut by the Trump administration (possibly due to SpaceX lobbying) ● NASA’s acting director shut down the agency’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility offices to comply with an executive order ● ispace’s Hakuto-R turned on a radiation monitoring payload from the National Central University of Taiwan, the island’s first instrument in deep space ● Firefly’s Blue Ghost Moon lander completed its first main engine burn, and the joint US-Italian LuGRE payload aboard it calculated a GPS solution at 331,000 km from Earth, a record distance for Earth-Moon signal resolution. |
|
 | Blue Ghost captured our blue Earth while in a high Earth orbit of approximately 6,700 km. Credit: Firefly Aerospace |
|
¶Etc.- Andrew’s co-founder Marc pointed out a fun fact about the Galileo atmospheric probe after watching an excellent, recent Scott Manley video. Marc calculates that, at peak deceleration, the atmospheric probe was dissipating 20GW as heat, or roughly 0.5% of the current average electricity generation of the human race… from an object 1.25m across. The 337 kg probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere at 47 km/s, decelerated at 228G, and experienced peak surface temperatures of 16,000 °C, almost 3x the temperature of the surface of the Sun. It survived the deceleration, falling for 61 minutes before failing at 180 km into the Jovian atmosphere, where the gas giant’s atmosphere was 22.7x Earth’s atmospheric pressure.
- China Space Monitor reviews 2024 in China’s commercial space industry, highlighting progress but also persistent launch vehicle reliability and satellite deployment issues. The section on overcapacity is particularly interesting.
- How are the heaviest elements of all made? All about stellar nucleosynthesis.
- An eBook of the memoirs of Russian Boris Chertok in NASA’s archives: “Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoirs of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap.”
|
|
|
