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Space News Update — September 10, 2019 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

India’s First Attempt to Land on the Moon Appears to End in Failure

Story 2:

Insight Mission Seeking New Ways to Fix Heat Flow Probe

Story 3:

New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. India’s First Attempt to Land on the Moon Appears to End in Failure

Update: The lander module from India's moon mission was located on the lunar surface on Sunday, one day after it

lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the

nation's space agency said. The Press Trust of India news agency cited Indian Space and Research Organization

chairman K. Sivan as saying cameras from the moon mission's orbiter had located the lander. "It must have been a

hard landing," PTI quoted Sivan as saying. ISRO officials could not be reached for comment. (phys.org)

*****

Ground teams lost communication with India’s first lunar landing mission moments before its scheduled touchdown

on the moon Friday, and the robotic research craft apparently crashed during final descent.

The Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, said controllers lost contact with the Vikram lander in the final

minutes of its descent to a landing site near the moon’s south pole.

A live broadcast from the lander control center in Bengaluru showed tension rising as the spacecraft neared the

lunar surface, with excitement turning to despondency after engineers unexpectedly lost their radio link with

Vikram.

India was seeking to become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the moon, following successes by the

former Soviet Union, the United States and China.

The Vikram lander, part of India’s multi-part Chandrayaan 2 mission, was steering toward a landing zone at 70.9

degrees south latitude on the near side of the moon. Touchdown was set for 4:23 p.m. EDT (2023 GMT) Friday.

The spacecraft’s targeted landing site was closer to the moon’s south pole than any previous mission.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi observed the landing attempt from a gallery overlooking the Chandrayaan 2

control center in Bengaluru.

Video from the live broadcast showed K. Sivan, ISRO’s chairman, meeting with Modi soon after teams lost contact

with Vikram, apparently briefing the prime minister on the status of the landing attempt.

Vikram, named for the father of India’s space program, was in the final stages of a 15-minute powered descent to

the moon’s surface when teams lost contact with the spacecraft.

“The Vikram lander descent was as planned, and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1

kilometers (1.3 miles),” Sivan said in the control center after briefing Modi. “Subsequently, the communications

from the lander to the ground station was lost. The data is being analyzed.”

Artist’s illustration of the Vikram

lander during descent. Credit:

ISRO

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Modi later visited ISRO teams, telling them to “be courageous” before meeting with Indian students invited to

witness the landing at the control center.

The somber mood inside the Chandrayaan 2 control center mirrored the appearance of Israeli engineers in April,

when the Beresheet lander crashed during an attempt to become the first privately-funded spacecraft to safely land

on the moon.

India’s landing attempt Friday was the third try to put a spacecraft on the moon’s surface this year. Before

Beresheet’s failed landing in April, China successfully landed the Chang’e 4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon in

January.

The Vikram lander ignited four of its retrorockets as designed at 4:07 p.m. EDT (2007 GMT) to begin a pre-

programmed descent sequence expected to last more than 15 minutes. The braking rockets were designed to slow

Vikram’s horizontal velocity from 3,600 mph (1.6 kilometers per second) to zero in preparation for landing.

The four throttleable liquid-fueled engines fired for 11 minutes, apparently as designed, to complete the Vikram

lander’s “rough braking phase” guiding the craft to an altitude of around 24,000 feet, or 7.4 kilometers. Then

Vikram was supposed to use a laser altimeter and hazard avoidance camera to scan the lunar surface, providing

inputs to the spacecraft’s navigation computer to control its descent rate.

Vikram was then supposed to head for an altitude of around 1,300 feet (400 meters), before proceeding down to

330 feet (100 meters). The four-legged spacecraft was programmed to hover momentarily to allow its landing

sensors to identify a safe, flat, boulder-free landing site before beginning the final descent.

A center engine was scheduled to ignite at an altitude of approximately 42 feet (13 meters) to control the final

seconds of the landing, a measure intended to reduce the amount of dust kicked up as Vikram reached the lunar

surface.

But the loss of communication suggested something went wrong during the final minutes of Vikram’s descent. ISRO

did not offer any additional details on the fate of the lander in the immediate hours after the preset landing time.

Less than half of the attempts to land on the moon since the dawn of the Space Age have been successful.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

Screen capture of

the trajectory of the

Vikram lander at the

moment mission

control lost contact.

Note the down

range deviation at

the end of the path.

ISRO / Doordashan

News

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2. Insight Mission Seeking New Ways to Fix Heat Flow Probe

An Aug. 17 image from NASA's InSight Mars lander shows the "mole" for its eat Flow and Physical Properties Package

instrument sticking out of the surface, having created a hole much wider than the mole as it struggled to penetrate

deeper into the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Members of the InSight mission team are using a break in spacecraft operations to study new ways to get one

of the spacecraft’s key instruments to resume burrowing into the Martian surface.

Scientists and engineers involved with InSight’s Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrument have

been working for the last several months to get the instrument’s probe, or “mole,” to start moving into the

surface again. The mole, intended to hammer to a depth of five meters below the surface, stopped in early

March only about 30 centimeters below the surface.

In June, the mission decided to use the lander’s robotic arm to remove the support structure for the

instrument. That would allow the instrument team to get a better view of the condition of the mole and also

take new steps to get the mole moving again. Scientists believed that a lack of friction with the surrounding

regolith was preventing the mole from gaining traction as it attempted to hammer deeper into the surface.

Removal of the support structure confirmed that hypothesis. Images showed the top of the mole peeking out

above the surface in a hole about twice the diameter of the mole. A twist in the tether linking the mole to the

rest of the instrument suggested it had started to spin around, widening the hole, as it tried to hammer

deeper into the surface.

The instrument team then used InSight’s robotic arm again, pressing the scoop at the end of arm against the

surface around the hole to try and collapse it. In an Aug. 27 blog post, Tilman Spohn, principal investigator for

the instrument at the German space agency DLR, said that images taken after those attempts showed that the

pit was only, at best, partially collapsed on one side.

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Spohn said it appears there is a layer of “duricrust,” or regolith that is mechanically strong, on the surface,

covered by about a centimeter of loose dust. Below that duricrust, which he estimated to be five to ten

centimeters thick, could be “cohesionless sand” that prevents the mole from penetrating.

InSight is currently on hiatus while it and other spacecraft at Mars are in solar conjunction, with the sun

between Mars and the Earth blocking communications. Spohn said that while the break is a time for some to

take a vacation, he and others are thinking about new ways to get the mole moving again.

One possibility would be to use the scoop on the robotic arm in a different way. “I am thinking towards

pinning the mole with the scoop such that the pinning and the pressing of the mole against the wall of the pit

would increase friction,” he wrote. “This will be more risky than the previous strategy, but with the

unexpectedly stiff duricrust, it may be worth a try.”

Spohn didn’t state when the mission would try a new approach to get the mole moving again. Andrew Good, a

spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Aug. 29 that there will be no action immediately after the

solar conjunction period ends Sept. 7. It will take about a week after that to get all the data back from InSight

and other spacecraft at Mars.

“Even after that, the team is continuing to conduct testing and discuss the next move,” he said, and thus there

is no firm date for deciding what to do next with the mole.

The picture left shows the result of pushing with the tip - right is the result of the final push with a flat blade. Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Source: SpaceNews.com Return to Contents

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3. New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters

This artist's concept of a lake at the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan illustrates raised rims and rampart-like features

such as those seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft around the moon's Winnipeg Lacus. New research using Cassini radar

data and modeling proposes that lake basins like these are likely explosion craters, which could have formed when liquid

molecular nitrogen deposits within the crust warmed and quickly turned to vapor, blowing holes in the moon's crust. This

would have happened during a warming event (or events) that occurred in a colder, nitrogen-dominated period in Titan's

past. The new research may provide evidence of these cold periods in Titan's past, followed by a relative warming to

conditions like those of today. Although Titan is frigid compared to Earth, methane in the atmosphere provides a

greenhouse effect that warms the moon's surface. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Using radar data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, recently published research presents a new scenario to

explain why some methane-filled lakes on Saturn's moon Titan are surrounded by steep rims that reach

hundreds of feet high. The models suggests that explosions of warming nitrogen created basins in the moon's

crust.

Titan is the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its

surface. But instead of water raining down from clouds and filling lakes and seas as on Earth, on Titan it's

methane and ethane — hydrocarbons that we think of as gases but that behave as liquids in Titan's frigid

climate.

Most existing models that lay out the origin of Titan's lakes show liquid methane dissolving the moon's bedrock

of ice and solid organic compounds, carving reservoirs that fill with the liquid. This may be the origin of a type

of lake on Titan that has sharp boundaries. On Earth, bodies of water that formed similarly, by dissolving

surrounding limestone, are known as karstic lakes.

The new, alternative models for some of the smaller lakes (tens of miles across) turns that theory upside

down: It proposes pockets of liquid nitrogen in Titan's crust warmed, turning into explosive gas that blew out

craters, which then filled with liquid methane. The new theory explains why some of the smaller lakes near

Titan's north pole, like Winnipeg Lacus, appear in radar imaging to have very steep rims that tower above sea

level — rims difficult to explain with the karstic model.

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The radar data were gathered by the Cassini Saturn Orbiter — a mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion

Laboratory in Pasadena, California — during its last close flyby of Titan, as the spacecraft prepared for its final

plunge into Saturn's atmosphere two years ago. An international team of scientists led by Giuseppe Mitri of

Italy's G. d'Annunzio University became convinced that the karstic model didn't jibe with what they saw in

these new images.

"The rim goes up, and the karst process works in the opposite way," Mitri said. "We were not finding any

explanation that fit with a karstic lake basin. In reality, the morphology was more consistent with an explosion

crater, where the rim is formed by the ejected material from the crater interior. It's totally a different process."

The work, published Sept. 9 in Nature Geosciences, meshes with other Titan climate models showing the

moon may be warm compared to how it was in earlier Titan "ice ages."

Over the last half-billion or billion years on Titan, methane in its atmosphere has acted as a greenhouse gas,

keeping the moon relatively warm — although still cold by Earth standards. Scientists have long believed that

the moon has gone through epochs of cooling and warming, as methane is depleted by solar-driven chemistry

and then resupplied.

In the colder periods, nitrogen dominated the atmosphere, raining down and cycling through the icy crust to

collect in pools just below the surface, said Cassini scientist and study co-author Jonathan Lunine of Cornell

University in Ithaca, New York.

"These lakes with steep edges, ramparts and raised rims would be a signpost of periods in Titan's history

when there was liquid nitrogen on the surface and in the crust," he noted. Even localized warming would have

been enough to turn the liquid nitrogen into vapor, cause it to expand quickly and blow out a crater.

"This is a completely different explanation for the steep rims around those small lakes, which has been a

tremendous puzzle," said Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker of JPL. "As scientists continue to mine the

treasure trove of Cassini data, we'll keep putting more and more pieces of the puzzle together. Over the next

decades, we will come to understand the Saturn system better and better."

Source: NASA Return to Contents

These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan represent some of

the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon's surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board

NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Credit:

NASA/JPL

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The Night Sky

Wednesday, Sept. 11

• You know that the season is changing; we've reached the time of year when, just after nightfall, Cassiopeia

has already climbed a little higher in the northeast than the Big Dipper has sunk in the northwest. ‘Cas’ rules in

early evening during the fall-winter half of the year. The Big Dipper takes over for the milder evenings of

spring and summer.

Midway between them stands Polaris, currently a little above the midpoint.

Thursday, Sept. 12

• Arcturus, the "Spring Star," shines a little lower in the west after dark each week. From Arcturus, the narrow

kite-shaped pattern of Bootes extends 24° to the upper right.

Friday, Sept. 13

• Full Harvest Moon (exact at 11:33 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). The Moon rises in the east shortly after

sunset for North America, a lovely sight as twilight descends. After dark, look upper left of the Moon for the

Great Square of Pegasus balancing on one corner (outside the frame above). The Square is made of 2nd- and

3rd-magnitude stars.

And then watch for 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut rising to the Moon's lower right, by about two fists at arm's

length. How early can you see it? The farther south you live, the higher and easier Fomalhaut will be. The sky

scenes drawn here are always drawn for latitude 40° north.

Saturday, Sept. 14

• By the end of twilight the bright Moon, a day past full, has risen to shine low in the east. Look a couple of

fists to its upper left for the Great Square of Pegasus, tipped onto one corner. The Square's lower left side

points diagonally down at the Moon.

Source: Sky and Telescope Return to Contents

Tuesday, Sept. 10

• This evening the bright

gibbous Moon shines inside the

dim boat pattern of

Capricornus. The brightest star

high to the Moon's upper right

is Altair, with little Tarazed a

finger-width at arm's length

beyond.

Watch lower left of the Moon,

by some 20° or 30°, for

twinkly, 1st-magnitude

Fomalhaut to rise into view.

Shine on, shine on Harvest Moon. (It's full on the 13th.).

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Wed Sep 11, 5:16 AM 3 min 24° 11° above NNW 23° above NE

Thu Sep 12, 4:29 AM 2 min 18° 16° above N 17° above NE

Thu Sep 12, 6:04 AM 6 min 83° 10° above NW 11° above SE

Fri Sep 13, 5:16 AM 6 min 54° 15° above NW 10° above ESE

Sat Sep 14, 4:30 AM 3 min 32° 32° above NE 10° above E

Sat Sep 14, 6:03 AM 5 min 27° 11° above WNW 10° above SSE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone)

September 10, Tuesday

4 p.m. – Video file of the International Space Station Expedition 61-62 crew’s departure from the Gagarin

Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (Skripochka,

Meir, Almansoori) (Media Channel)

5 p.m. – Coverage of the launch of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) HTV-8 “Kounotori”

cargo craft to the International Space Station; launch scheduled at 5:33 p.m. EDT – Johnson Space Center

via the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan (All Channels)

September 12, Thursday

3 p.m. – NASA Science Live: A World of Fires (All Channels)

September 13, Friday

10:50 a.m. – International Space Station Expedition 60 In-Flight education event with the National STEM

Cell Foundation in Louisville, Kentucky, and NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan (All

Channels)

12 p.m. – SpaceCast Weekly (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Sep 10 - HTV-8/ AQT-D/ RWASAT 1/ NARSScube 1 H-2B Launch (International Space Station)

Sep 10 - Apollo Asteroid 2019 QY4 Near-Earth Flyby (0.006 AU)

Sep 10 - Apollo Asteroid 2019 RH Near-Earth Flyby (0.018 AU)

Sep 10 - Aten Asteroid 367943 Duende Closest Approach To Earth (0.190 AU)

Sep 10 - Lecture: In Search of the Ultimate Ruler - The Grand Challenge of Distances in Astronomy, Kamuela, Hawaii

Sep 10 - Lecture: The Origin of the Moon Within a Terrestrial Synestia, Tucson, Arizona

Sep 10-12 - Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium: Exploration is the Work of Generations, Huntsville, Alabama

Sep 10-12 - 2019 Fall Meeting of the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences (CAPS), Pasadena, California

Sep 10-12 - Climate Intervention Strategies that Reflect Sunlight to Cool Earth - Research Governance Workshop, Stanford, California

Sep 10-16 - Conference on Recent Developments in Strings and Gravity, Corfu, Greece

Sep 11 - Lecture: The UK Space Science Programmes, London, United Kingdom

Sep 11 - Colloquium: Efficient Computation of Timing Residuals Induced by Eccentric Black Hole Binaries, Sydney, Australia

Sep 11-13 - Planetary Exploration Horizon 2061 Synthesis Workshop, Toulouse, France

Sep 11-13 - Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment (AIDA) International Workshop, Rome, Italy

Sep 11-13 - 11th European CubeSat Symposium, Luxembourg

Sep 11-13 - Astro2020 Meeting: Panel on Exoplanets, Astrobiology, and the Solar System, Washington DC

Sep 11-13 - Astronomical Society of Japan 2019 Fall Meeting, Kumamoto, Japan

Sep 12 - Apollo Asteroid 2019 RJ1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.028 AU)

Sep 12 - Lecture: A Mud Matter - The Recent Discovery of Organic Matter Preserved in 3-billion-year-old Mudstones on Mars, Washington DC

Sep 12 - Colloquium: The Globular Cluster System of NColloquim: Getting Under Europa's Skin, Ithaca, New York GC 4258 - A Relic of Cosmic High Noon?, Ithaca, New York

Sep 12 - Colloquium: Critical Tests of Theory of the Early Universe using the Cosmic Microwave Background, Barcelona, Spain

Sep 12 - Colloquium: Conformal Field Theory - From Boiling Water to Quantum Gravity, Princeton, New Jersey

Sep 12 - Colloquia: Critical Tests of Theory of the Early Universe using the Cosmic Microwave Background, Barcelona, Spain

Sep 12-13 - 11th Summit on Earth Observation Business, Paris, France

Sep 12-13 - Workshop: Supergravity 2019, Padova, Italy

Sep 13 - Mercury Passes 0.3 Degrees From Venus

Sep 13 - Apollo Asteroid 2013 CV83 Near-Earth Flyby (0.041 AU)

Sep 13 - Conference: Accelerating Geospatial Intelligence through Earth Observation, Harwell, United Kingdom

Sep 13-15 - European Rover Challenge, Kielce, Poland

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

ESA Spacecraft Dodges Large Constellation

Predicted conjunction between Aeolus and Starlink 44

For the first time, ESA has performed a 'collision avoidance manoeuvre' to protect one of its spacecraft from

colliding with a satellite in a large constellation.

On Monday morning, the Agency's Aeolus Earth observation satellite fired its thrusters, moving it off a

potential collision course with a SpaceX satellite in the Starlink constellation.

Constellations are fleets of hundreds up to thousands of spacecraft working together in orbit. They are

expected to become a defining part of Earth’s space environment in the next few years.

As the number of satellites in space dramatically increases, close approaches between two operated spacecraft

will occur more frequently. Compared with such 'conjunctions' with space debris – non-functional objects

including dead satellites and fragments from past collisions – these require coordination efforts, to avoid

conflicting actions.

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Today, the avoidance process between two operational satellites is largely manual and ad hoc – and will no

longer be practical as the number of alerts rises with the increase in spaceflight.

“This example shows that in the absence of traffic rules and communication protocols, collision avoidance

depends entirely on the pragmatism of the operators involved,” explains Holger Krag, Head of Space Safety at

ESA.

“Today, this negotiation is done through exchanging emails - an archaic process that is no longer viable as

increasing numbers of satellites in space mean more space traffic.”

ESA is proposing an automated risk estimation and mitigation initiative as part of its space safety activities.

This will provide and demonstrate the types of technology needed to automate the collision avoidance process,

allowing machine generated, coordinated and conflict-free manoeuvre decisions to speed up the entire process

– something desperately needed to protect vital space infrastructure in the years to come.

What happened?

Data is constantly being issued by the 18th Space Control Squadron of the US Air Force, who monitor objects

orbiting in Earth’s skies, providing information to operators about any potential close approach.

With this data, ESA and others are able to calculate the probability of collision between their spacecraft and all

other artificial objects in orbit.

About a week ago, the US data suggested a potential ‘conjunction’ at 11:02 UTC on Monday, 2 September,

between ESA’s Aeolus satellite and Starlink44 – one of the first 60 satellites recently launched in SpaceX’s

mega constellation, planned to be a 12 000 strong fleet by mid-2020.

Experts in ESA’s Space Debris Office worked to calculate the collision probability, combining information on the

expected miss distance, conjunction geometry and uncertainties in orbit information.

As days passed, the probability of collision continued to increase, and by Wednesday 28 August the team

decided to reach out to Starlink to discuss their options. Within a day, the Starlink team informed ESA that

they had no plan to take action at this point.

Experts in ESA’s Space Debris Office worked to calculate the collision probability, combining information on the

expected miss distance, conjunction geometry and uncertainties in orbit information.

As days passed, the probability of collision continued to increase, and by Wednesday 28 August the team

decided to reach out to Starlink to discuss their options. Within a day, the Starlink team informed ESA that

they had no plan to take action at this point.

ESA’s threshold for conducting an avoidance manoeuvre is a collision probability of more than 1 in 10 000,

which was reached for the first time on Thursday evening.

An avoidance manoeuvre was prepared which would increase Aeolus’ altitude by 350 m, ensuring it would

comfortably pass over the other satellite, and the team continued to monitor the situation.

On Sunday, as the probability continued to increase, the final decision was made to implement the manoeuvre,

and the commands were sent to the spacecraft from ESA’s mission control centre in Germany.

At this moment, chances of collision were around 1 in 1000, 10 times higher than the threshold.

On Monday morning, the commands triggered a series of thruster burns at 10:14, 10:17 and 10:18 UTC, half

an orbit before the potential collision.

About half an hour after the conjunction was predicted, Aeolus contacted home as expected. This was the first

reassurance that the manoeuvre was correctly executed and the satellite was OK.

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Since then, teams on the ground have continued to receive scientific data from the spacecraft, meaning

operations are back to normal science-gathering mode.

Left, Aeolus – understanding Earth’s winds (ESA). Right: Starlink Spacecraft

Contact with Starlink early in the process allowed ESA to take conflict-free action later, knowing the second

spacecraft would remain where models expected it to be.

New space

Since the first satellite launch in 1957, more than 5500 launches have lifted over 9000 satellites into space. Of

these, only about 2000 are currently functioning, which explains why 90% of ESA’s avoidance manoeuvres are

the result of derelict and uncontrollable ‘space debris’.

In the years to come, constellations of thousands of satellites are set to change the space environment, vastly

increasing the number of active, operational spacecraft in orbit.

This new technology brings enormous benefits to people on Earth, including global internet access and precise

location services, but constellations also bring with them challenges in creating a safe and sustainable space

environment.

Space rules

“No one was at fault here, but this example does show the urgent need for proper space traffic management,

with clear communication protocols and more automation,” explains Holger.

“This is how air traffic control has worked for many decades, and now space operators need to get together to

define automated manoeuvre coordination.”

Autonomous spaceflight

As the number of satellites in orbit rapidly increases, today's 'manual' collision avoidance process will become

impossible, and automated systems are becoming necessary to protect our space infrastructure.

Collision avoidance manoeuvres take a lot of time to prepare – from determining the future orbital positions of

functioning spacecraft, to calculating the risk of collision and the many possible outcomes of different actions.

Source: ESA Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Raindrops of Sand in Copernicus Crater Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Explanation: The dark features here look like raindrops, but are actually sand dunes. This spot was targeted by Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) because the dunes are rich in the mineral olivine. Olivine-rich dunes are very rare on Earth, as olivine rapidly weathers to clays in a wet environment. There is also olivine-rich bedrock in the central peaks of Copernicus Crater on the Moon. There is only a handful of very important scientists, like Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) who have craters named after them on both Mars and the Moon.

Source: HiRISE Operations Center Return to Contents