¶That Mars potential biosignature announcement. In July 2024, while exploring rocks on either side of Neretva Vallis, a 400-meter-wide ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater, Perseverance found relatively young sedimentary deposits of clay and silt, rich in life-essential organic carbon, sulfur, iron oxide, and phosphorus. One rock, now dubbed ‘Cheyava Falls,’ contained colorful ‘leopard spots’ with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned cores, which, under magnification, showed submillimetre-scale nodules and millimetre-scale mineral reaction fronts. We discussed these leopard spots last year because, on Earth, these kinds of formations are associated with life. While abiotic explanations are also possible, after further research (and a new Nature publication), the scientists still feel that these remain a potential biosignature. “The spots carried the signature of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide). Vivianite is frequently found on Earth in sediments, peat bogs, and around decaying organic matter. Similarly, certain forms of microbial life on Earth can produce greigite. The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron-transfer [redox] reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a potential fingerprint for microbial life, which would use these reactions to produce energy for growth.” Abiotic processes that could produce these spots are thought to require high temperatures and acidic conditions, but the rocks studied do not show evidence of having experienced either. There are many more hurdles of proof necessary to begin to call this evidence of past life (c.f. the CoLD scale), but it is tantalizing. We likely won’t know more without a sample return mission (which may be, in some part, why this is getting so loudly announced right now), so Perseverance took a sample, ready for pickup, whenever that happens. |
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 | ‘Leopard spots’ with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned cores in sedimentary rocks rich in organic carbon, sulfur, rust, and phosphorus, on Mars. Credit: NASA |
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¶Planetary Defense from China? China recently outlined its first end-to-end planetary-defense architecture: an integrated space and ground near-Earth object (NEO) sensing network paired with a two-spacecraft kinetic-impact demonstration using a “fly-along–impact–fly-along” profile (similar to DART+Hera in a single mission). Announced at the 3rd International Deep Space Exploration Conference in Hefei, the plan calls for an observer craft to characterize the target’s mass, shape, spin state, and surface before an impactor strikes; both the observer spacecraft and sensing network then measure momentum transfer and trajectory change (this concept is not new, and is likely the same as this previously proposed mission to 2015 XF261). The architecture intends to allow for the intercept of NEOs up to ~10 million km from Earth with a resulting deflection sufficient to prevent the target from approaching near Earth again for several decades and a century. This is plausible: NASA’s DART impactor shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by 32 min (c.f. Issue № 187) and will be further refined by ESA’s Hera when it gets to the Didymos system next fall. The Chinese NEO sensing network would operate within the UN COPUOS framework and would produce routine warnings and data-sharing through IAWN (International Asteroid Warning Network) and SMPAG (Space Mission Planning Advisory Group). Strategically, China's plan is intended to be dual-purpose: hazard mitigation as well as a pathfinder for asteroid resource utilization and the “deep-space economy” (although how it does the latter, other than increased NEO observation missions, is a bit unclear), building on the country’s small-body heritage with Tianwen-2. If the promised near-term mission is executed—launch in 2027 and impact about two years later—it would make China the second nation to perform a controlled kinetic deflection, expanding humanity’s ability to be resilient to small to mid-size NEOs (if we see them coming). |
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 | A diagram of China’s proposed asteroid intercept plan (paper). . |
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¶News in brief. Dragonfly (c.f. Issue 19, Issue 243) is making technical progress, with components and payloads being built and tested, and is still expected to meet its 2028 launch date, despite cost and schedule overruns that will further delay and strain the next New Frontiers mission ● Apex Space raised a $200M Series D (valuing the company at over $1B) to boost production of their satellite buses ● Amidst political tension, NASA locked Chinese nationals (mostly students and contractors who hold valid U.S. visas) out of software and buildings, preventing their continued work on space programs ● Astroscale has chosen to launch their ISSA-J1 mission on India’s PSLV rocket in 2027 ● London-based startup Space DOTS raised $1.5M in seed funding to bring real-time orbital environment intelligence (SSA + something?) to satellite operators ● Finnish startup ReOrbit raised a $51.8M Series A round to manufacture communications and intelligence technology ● Messium, a UK-based hyperspectral startup, raised a $4.49M seed round to expand their ML-based, agriculture-focused data products ● MIT spinout startup Rendezvous Robotics emerged with $3M in pre-seed funding to build reconfigurable space structures called ‘Tesserae’, which consist of flat-packed modular tiles that free fly and then magnetically latch to each other ● Russia launched a Glonass-K navigation satellite ● French company Cailabs, builder of optical ground stations, raised $66.9M to ramp up production ● Italian startup Astradyne raised a $2.35M seed round to accelerate the development of their ultralight solar panels ● The US SDA launched its first 21 Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites on a Falcon 9, part of the DOD’s PWSA, a new proliferated data and sensor satellite network—the full Tranche 1 constellation will contain 126 data relay satellites and 28 missile warning and tracking satellites (along with four missile defense demonstration sats) ● Progress M-32 docked with the ISS, and the first new, larger Cygnus XL cargo craft launched to the ISS. |
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 | Russia’s Progress 93 spacecraft, approaching the ISS ahead of docking, marking the 300th launch of an assembly, crew, or cargo mission to the ISS since 1998. |
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¶Etc.- SpaceX’s lesson from last Starship flight? “We need to seal the tiles.” …with crunch wrap.
- Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist project passed its Critical Design Review (CDR) as part of their $34.7M NASA Tipping Point award in 2023. Blue Alchemist uses molten salt electrolysis to separate pure silicon (for solar panels), oxygen (for breathing and oxidizing fuel), and metals from simulated space-sourced material. It sounds like Blue is investing fairly heavily in ISRU, with 65 employees working at “Blue Origin’s Space Resources Center of Excellence (SRCE), the world’s largest dedicated facility for space resources prospecting and utilization”.
- We were reminded recently of Erik Wernquist’s beautiful short film Wanderers, which features an eloquent exposition on human wanderlust from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space: “For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds. Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: ‘I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas . . .’
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This striking pattern, as captured by JWST’s MIRI instrument, is formed by at least 17 shells of dust created during the interactions of massive binary stars in the Wolf-Rayet 140 system, expanding at some 9 million km/hr (paper). The stellar duo makes a close approach every eight years, and almost like tree rings, the resulting dust tells a history of their dynamics. |  |
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