This Week in Space: NASA Blasts Russia’s Use of the ISS For Anti-Ukrainian Propaganda

Hello and welcome back to This Week in Space. Unlike the temperature, this week the news has some major ups and downs. Ingenuity is experiencing some wear and tear on the surface of Mars, but this week we’ll hear that a team of engineers is looking to bio-inspired designs that could sidestep Mars’ two greatest hazards. After a brief dropout, NASA has regained radio contact with its CAPSTONE lunar probe. However, tensions are rising in low-Earth orbit, as the Ukraine war finally creeps aboard the International Space Station. Finally, NASA night-sky expert Preston Dyches tells us to look for a teapot in the sky.

NASA Blasts Russia’s Space-Based Invasion Propaganda

Space exploration is one of the few areas where cooperation between the United States and Russia remains not just cordial but actively collaborative. We praised astronaut and cosmonaut for working hand in hand to keep the ISS aloft, and for studiously avoiding political commentary or conflict. Even after Putin invaded Ukraine, journalists heaved a sigh of relief that the conflict had not reached the International Space Station. However, that changed this week, when Roscosmos published several anti-Ukraine propaganda photos taken from the ISS.

The photos show Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS, posing with flags representing the illegitimate Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. These quasi-states exist solely because Russia has waged an illegitimate war against Ukraine for the past eight years, culminating in a full-scale invasion of the country back in February.

NASA has condemned the propaganda effort, writing: “NASA strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its war against Ukraine, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful purposes.”

Up until this point, NASA has tried to emphasize ongoing peaceful cooperation with the Russians, despite tensions in Ukraine. Such cooperation between our two nations has a long, proud history. The first joint mission between the United States and the then-Soviet Union occurred in 1975, with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The Space Shuttle visited the Russian space station Mir on 11 occasions before the ISS had even come online. It is unfortunate that Rogozin and Roscosmos continue to jeopardize a decades-long relationship with lies and propaganda.

New Wing Designs Could Fly the Martian Skies

To NASA’s collective delight, Ingenuity has demonstrated the potential for powered helicopter flight on Mars. The space helicopter can cope with the thin Martian atmosphere by spinning its rotor at unearthly speeds. However, as Ingenuity enters its second year on the Red Planet, mission scientists believe that the Martian regolith is getting into its moving parts. It’s not great news for the space copter that could. But flight on Mars might not even require a gearbox, or any moving parts at all. A team of engineers has built a sailplane whose bio-inspired wing design mimics the albatross, a seabird that can soar for weeks at a time.

These sailplanes would only weigh about 11 lbs each, with a 10-11 foot wingspan. Like the albatross, they could remain aloft in the Martian atmosphere for weeks at a time, gathering data across vast swathes of the planet at much higher fidelity than is currently available from orbital satellites. The sailplanes would stay aloft on Mars by taking advantage of static and dynamic soaring. Here’s how the press release describes the process: “The planes fly at a slight upward angle into the slow-moving, low-altitude wind. When they reach the faster, high-altitude wind, they turn 180 degrees and let the high-speed wind power them forward at a slight downward angle. When they start to run out of energy from the high-speed wind, they repeat the process, weaving their way forward. With this nimble maneuvering, the sailplanes can continually harvest energy from the atmosphere, flying for hours or even days at a time. This is flying for free.”

Sailplanes could be dispatched in cubesats attached as a secondary payload for a larger mission. Once they arrived, the planes would either inflate or unfold. They might be carried into the atmosphere via a balloon before deploying at optimal height. Like seabirds, presumably the sailplanes would eventually land, but they could theoretically carry low-power sensors allowing them to serve as fixed weather stations even after grounding.

The idea of a fleet of low-cost, lightweight gliders gathering data across the planet has caught NASA’s attention. The entire point of the project is that it could piggyback on an already-planned Mars mission. But it’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of this project. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

PEBCAK*: NASA Regains Contact With CAPSTONE

NASA had a bit of a scare this week when the CAPSTONE mission went radio silent. The diminutive cubesat lost contact with Earth shortly after it split from its Photon spacecraft and began its long, looping orbit past the Moon. It wasn’t initially clear if engineers would be able to re-establish communication with the satellite. However, NASA regained contact with CAPSTONE within a day.

Ultimately, NASA experts believe that user error caused the loss of contact. According to NASA, “the spacecraft operations team attempted to access diagnostic data on the spacecraft’s radio and sent an improperly formatted command that made the radio inoperable.” While this should’ve been grounds for an immediate radio reboot, a flaw in CAPSTONE’s flight control software prevented that from happening. The flight software did eventually clear the error, however, which allowed the cubesat to resume communication with ground control.

CAPSTONE has already performed one engine burn and will perform another on July 9. The satellite won’t actually enter orbit around the Moon for another four months. However, when it does, the spacecraft is set to take up an unusual Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around our nearest neighbor. Why? NASA chose a NRHO for the Gateway lunar station it wants to build in the future. CAPSTONE is designed to fly the same orbital path the space agency hopes to use for the lunar station. One of CAPSTONE’s goals is to test new navigation technology that can measure the position of spacecraft relative to the Moon via the currently in-orbit Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter rather than relying on Earth-based tracking.

* Problem Exists Between CAPSTONE And Keyboard

New Plan For Space Station Trash: Literally Throw It Out The Airlock

At the end of June, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft successfully boosted the ISS into a higher orbit. Station personnel had packed the spacecraft with trash, debris and other assorted jetsam. Not long after the orbit-raising engine burn, Cygnus cast off from the ISS and burned up in a controlled destructive descent.

This is the way we’ve done waste management on the ISS for years and years. Space garbage builds up until Cygnus arrives, whereupon more space garbage builds up inside Cygnus until we send it home. But we might be done relying on Cygnus to take out the trash. Nanoracks, a Houston-based space company who operates the space station’s Bishop Airlock, has another idea. Surprise: it involves their airlock.

Skywatchers Corner

It’s July. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, this means that summer is beginning to heat up in earnest. But do you know where the phrase “the dog days of summer” comes from?

It’s actually an old, old saying. In classical antiquity, the Greeks and Romans had both noticed that at the height of summer, the sun lies in the same part of the sky as the dog-shaped constellation Canis major. Sirius, the constellation’s most prominent star, is also the brightest star in the night sky. According to NASA skywatching expert Preston Dyches, “In Ancient Greek, Sirius means “the scorcher,” and both the Greeks and Romans believed the blazing bright star’s proximity in the sky added to the Sun’s heat during that time of the year making it even more oppressive.”

For some reason, this makes me want to celebrate the dog days of summer by putting an ice cube in my dog’s water bowl. And I don’t even have a dog. But, I digress.

Looking southward at this time of year, you’re facing the Milky Way. If you’re out in the country or otherwise fortunate enough to live in a dark-skies region, you can see the core of the galaxy as soon as it’s fully dark outside. And you won’t need a telescope or binoculars to check it out! (Maybe consider some bug dope, because this year, the mosquitoes are big enough to pick you up and carry you away.)

Dark skies are a true delight for skywatching. But even in places with too much light pollution to see the ‘backbone of night,’ there’s a celestial landmark that should be bright enough to let you find where the Milky Way is in the sky. It’s a teapot! No, really. And it’s not a philosophy joke. There’s an asterism called the Teapot, a group of bright stars that lies within the constellation of Sagittarius. If you can pick out Sagittarius and Scorpio, you can find the Teapot.

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will remain standouts in the morning sky for the month of July. On the 20th, the last-quarter moon will appear between Mars and Jupiter. The next morning, you’ll find the waning crescent right next to Mars.

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That’s all for this week. But if you’re interested in the James Webb Space Telescope, you might like to know that next Tuesday, July 12th, Webb officially opens its doors (shutters?) for science. To celebrate, NASA plans to release a whole portfolio of the telescope’s very first science images. We’ll make sure you see them as soon as we do, but we’ll also give you a breakdown in next Friday’s edition of This Week in Space. If these beauty shots are anything like the first jaw-dropping images from Webb, prepare to be amazed.

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