China Sends an Astronaut on a Year-Long Mission: This Week in Space

Three Moon Launches By the End of the Year

NASA, the United States space agency, unveiled updated plans last week for establishing a base near the Moon’s south pole. Among other things, it announced plans to launch three more uncrewed missions by private spacecraft as early as this year: Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander; Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, which will also deliver an autonomous rover built by Astrolab; and a Nova-C lander from Intuitive Machines. All three missions are expected to land in the Moon’s south polar region and conduct NASA experiments in preparation for a crewed landing on the lunar surface, currently planned for 2028.

The agency also announced the selection of two companies to develop unpressurized rovers that astronauts will be able to drive on the Moon. Astrolab and Lunar Outpost will each receive about 220 million dollars from NASA to develop and supply the vehicles. Each rover will have a mass of up to one metric ton and is expected to travel at least 200 kilometers across the lunar surface. The vehicles are required to reach speeds of 10 kilometers per hour and safely climb and descend slopes of up to 20 degrees. Blue Origin won NASA’s contract to deliver the first rovers to the Moon aboard its Blue Moon lander, and will receive more than $200 million for the mission. The rovers are designed to carry two astronauts, and NASA hopes to land them on the Moon even before astronauts return there. They are also expected to be capable of autonomous, remotely operated driving.

NASA also announced that it had selected Firefly Aerospace to carry out the MoonFall mission, which will deliver four rocket-powered drones to the Moon. The drones, developed under the leadership of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, are expected to make several flights over the lunar surface, with a maximum range of five kilometers. They will help map the region accurately, capture high-resolution images of the surface, document areas that are difficult to reach from the ground, and assist in selecting landing sites. According to NASA, the planned base will cover hundreds of square miles, within which suitable zones will be chosen for different activities.

NASA had also launched a new website outlining the three stages of its plan to establish a permanent base on the Moon. In the first stage, through 2029, 21 spacecraft will land on the Moon, delivering four tons of cargo, including the rovers and rocket-powered drones. In the second stage, through 2032, NASA plans 24 missions that will land 60 tons of equipment and lay communications and energy infrastructure to support sustained lunar activity. In the third stage, beginning in 2032, another 28 missions are expected to land, carrying about 150 tons of equipment. This phase includes building permanent habitats, developing infrastructure to use local lunar resources, and developing the ability to launch uncrewed cargo spacecraft from the lunar surface.

Year of the Dragon in Space

Three Chinese astronauts launched last week to China’s Tiangong space station, one of whom will remain there for a full year — the first time China has carried out such a long-duration mission. China revealed the crew members’ identities on Saturday, May 23, just over a day before their launch on the Shenzhou-23 mission. The mission commander is 39-year-old Zhu Yangzhu, who previously served aboard the Chinese station in 2023. The mission pilot is 40-year-old Zhang Zhiyuan, making his first spaceflight, and the payload specialist is 43-year-old Li Jiaying, or Lai Ka-ying in Cantonese. This is also her first flight, and she is the first person from Hong Kong to reach space.

The new crew launched on Sunday evening, May 24, from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert aboard a Long March 2F rocket. A few hours later, they docked with the Tiangong space station and joined the three crew members of the Shenzhou-21 mission.

China’s space agency said the astronaut who will remain in space for a full year has not yet been chosen. The decision will be based on the crew’s performance during the mission and on their health. However, according to the agency, the commander and pilot are able to perform each other’s roles, suggesting that one of them is likely to stay behind. The other two crew members will return to Earth in six months, after two replacements arrive on the Shenzhou 24 mission. They will be joined by Pakistan’s first-ever astronaut, who will spend several days aboard the space station under an agreement announced last year. He will be chosen from two candidates now training for the mission, Mohammad Zeeshan and Ali Khurram Daud. He will be not only Pakistan’s first representative in space, but also the first non-Chinese astronaut to visit China’s space station. After the crew handover, the two astronauts who are not continuing for a full year in space will return to Earth with the Pakistani guest aboard the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft.

The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft docks with the Tiangong space station, followed by the meeting between the Shenzhou-23 astronauts and the Shenzhou-21 crew:

A Military Starlink Network for the U.S. Space Force

SpaceX has won a contract worth more than $2 billion to build a secure, high-speed satellite communications network in low Earth orbit for the United States Space Force — effectively a military internet network in space. The contract covers the backbone of the network, known as the Space Data Network, or SDN. It will include satellites connected to one another by optical communications links, allowing them to transmit military data rapidly through space without relying on ground-based relay stations.The satellites will be able to transfer large volumes of data at high speed between sensing systems, such as radars and satellites, as well as command systems and weapons systems.

The network will be based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellites — communications satellites developed for defense and intelligence use by government agencies. They are based on Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite network for providing internet service from space, but include additional capabilities in areas such as protection, cybersecurity and secure communications.

The SDN network is expected to become one layer in a broader satellite communications network for the U.S. defense establishment. The Space Force said additional providers are expected to join the project in the coming years. The announcement did not specify how many satellites the network will include. The $2.29 billion contract was approved under a rapid-prototyping agreement, which requires a functioning prototype of the network’s satellites to begin operating by the end of 2027.

Blue Ink in Martian Meteorites

Researchers who took a closer look at the composition of meteorites from Mars were surprised to find diamonds, alcohol and even blue pigments used in pen ink inside them. These were not, of course, materials from Mars, but contaminants that had entered the meteorites during handling. Although humans have not yet managed to deliberately bring soil samples back from Mars — and it is still unclear when that will happen  — the universe has already supplied us with several hundred Martian samples. Of the tens of thousands of meteorites, or rocks that have fallen to Earth from space, nearly 300 are known to have come from Mars. They were most likely ejected into space by a violent impact, then eventually crossed paths with Earth. The outer layers of these meteorites are considered contaminated because of their passage through our atmosphere and their contact with the ground. Until now, however, scientists had assumed that their cores remained sterile and reflected the true composition of material from Mars.

The researchers, from the University of the Basque Country in Spain (EHU), used several techniques to examine the internal composition of meteorites from which samples had already been taken, to determine whether the sampling process itself had contaminated them. They examined meteorites from their university collection, as well as samples they received from NASA for the study. Among other things, they found traces of diamonds that almost certainly came from the drill bits used to collect the samples. Meteorites are usually washed with alcohol, or ethanol, to remove such residues, but the new study shows that this process does not completely remove the tiny diamond fragments — and that tiny amounts of the ethanol itself can also remain in the meteorite. 

The researchers also found traces of blue pigments, and analysis of their composition showed that they are dyes used in ordinary ballpoint pen ink. This does not mean, of course, that one of the researchers stabbed the space rock with a pen. More likely, traces of ink stuck to a glove that later touched the meteorite or the drill bit, for example. The problem is apparently not limited to a particular researcher or laboratory: the team found traces of at least three types of ink in the meteorites.

The study reveals just how vulnerable space samples are to contamination. This is especially important in light of recent discoveries of life’s building blocks in samples returned from asteroids. The researchers are not claiming that all samples are contaminated, or that previous findings are invalid, but they do argue that handling methods must be examined carefully. They also propose several practical steps, such as replacing ethanol with another type of alcohol and matching solvents to the meteorite’s chemical composition. At the same time, they are continuing to develop analytical methods for identifying contaminants in space samples and improving the protocols for handling them — in the hope that one day they will be able to apply those methods to samples brought back from Mars.