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Top 5 Space Missions In News (World) – Science & Tech

Top 5 Space Missions in News (World)

Science & Tech

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Juice mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission in April 2023

About Juice mission

  • The Juice mission will complete 35 fly-bys near Jupiter and will make detailed observations about the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons–Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. 
  • Apart from exploring Jupiter’s environment in depth using the ten sensors aboard, the mission will also characterise its moons as both planetary objects and potential habitat.
  • The Juice spacecraft will monitor Jupiter’s complex environment in depth including its magnetism, radiation and plasma. After it completes its 35 fly-bys near Jupiter and its Moons, it will also become the first spacecraft to shift its own orbit to another world by moving to Ganymede’s orbit.
  • Among the three moons, Ganymede will be the primary scientific target of the Juice mission. It is the largest moon in the Solar System and is larger than both Pluto and Mercury. It is also the only moon to have its own intrinsic magnetic field
  • Mercury and Earth are the only other solid bodies that generate a dipole field like Ganymede.
  • Also, Juice will study the Galilean moons’ hidden oceans, magnetism, heating processes, tidal effects, orbits, surface activity, cores, compositions, atmospheres and space environments to investigate whether the conditions necessary for life could have ever emerged on these three moons. The spacecraft’s high-resolution mapping will hunt for biologically essential and important elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, magnesium and iron.

OSIRIS-Rex mission

About

  • The OSIRIS-REx mission was launched in September 2016
  • In 2021, it took off from the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft is carrying samples of the asteroid and is on track to return them to Earth in September 2023. 
  • When the spacecraft reaches around 250 kilometres above the surface of our planet, it will release a sample capsule that will make a precise landing at the United States Air Force’s Utah Test and Training range.
  • According to NASA, asteroids like Bennu can act as time capsules for the earliest history of our solar system. They preserve chemical signatures from when the universe was a younger place and might even contain samples of the ancient building blocks of life. The space agency will distribute portions of the samples to scientists around the world but a large fraction of it will be preserved so that it can be studied by future generations with much more advanced technology.
  • NASA refers to Bennu as an “ancient relic of the solar system’s early days.” The asteroid has more than 4.5 billion years of history and its present-day composition was already established within 10 million years of the solar system’s formation.
  • Bennu probably broke off from a much larger carbon-rich asteroid between 700 million to two billion years ago
  • It likely formed in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has drifted closer to the Earth. Since it is so old, it may contain molecules similar to those that were involved in the beginning of life on Earth.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission

  • NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year was a smashing success, literally. 
  • The DART asteroid intentionally rammed into an asteroid moonlet named Dimorphos on September 27, 2022 and proved that a space rock’s trajectory can be changed artificially. According to the data collected post-impact, the orbit of Dimorphos (560 feet) which revolves around a bigger asteroid named Didymos (780 feet) was changed by 33 minutes. 
  • Numerous pictures and videos surfaced showing the aftermath of the collision, and the one which is going viral now are visuals captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. 
  • The clip above shows both Dimorphos and Didymos visible as one bright blue object followed by the ejection of an enormous amount of dust after the 545 kg DART collides with the former at speeds over 22,000 km per hour. NASA says that Hubble began observing the asteroid about 1.3 hours before the impact and the first post-impact visuals are two hours after the collision. 

  • NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year was a smashing success, literally. 
  • The DART asteroid intentionally rammed into an asteroid moonlet named Dimorphos on September 27, 2022 and proved that a space rock’s trajectory can be changed artificially. According to the data collected post-impact, the orbit of Dimorphos (560 feet) which revolves around a bigger asteroid named Didymos (780 feet) was changed by 33 minutes. 
  • NASA says that Hubble began observing the asteroid about 1.3 hours before the impact and the first post-impact visuals are two hours after the collision. 
  • The collision caused dust and debris to be released into outer space at a speed of about 6.5 km per hour, fast enough to escape the asteroid’s gravity. 
  • Scientists estimate that Dimorphos shed as much as one million kg of debris and left a 10,000 km long trail. 
  • Using Hubble, scientists were able to watch the dust blow off and form a comet-like tail by the pressure of sunlight on the tiny dust particles. This tail later split into two over the next few days.
  • The idea behind launching DART was to develop technologies that could one day prevent a fate similar to the dinosaurs. 
  • With the success of DART, the European Space Agency (ESA) has planned to launch its HERA mission in 2024 to explore the obliterated Dimorphos up close. Based on the resulting data, scientists would scale up DART’s version and develop a planetary defence mechanism to save from a planet-killing asteroid if one such day ever comes. 

NISAR Mission

ISRO-NASA built NISAR satellite ready to be shipped to India for launch

About NISAR

  • An earth-observation satellite jointly developed by NASA and ISRO that will help study Earth’s land and ice surfaces in greater detail 
  • This mission will be a powerful demonstration of the capability of radar as a science tool and help us study Earth’s dynamic land and ice surfaces in greater detail than ever before
  • ISRO and NASA joined hands in 2014 to build the 2,800 kg satellite. In March 2021, ISRO sent its S-Band SAR payload developed in India to NASA for integration with the L-Band payload built by JPL (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
  • This marks an important milestone in our shared journey to better understand planet Earth and our changing climate. NISAR will provide critical information on Earth’s crust, ice sheets, and ecosystems
  • NISAR will gather radar data with a drum-shaped reflector antenna almost 12 meters in diameter. It will use a signal-processing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, to observe changes in Earth’s land and ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch.
  • The satellite will help researchers detect slow-moving variations of a land surface that can precede earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions.

Benefits

  • Data about such movements could help communities prepare for natural hazards such as the Joshimath land subsidence.
  • Measurements of melting sea ice and ice sheets will improve understanding of the pace and impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.
  • Over the course of its three-year prime mission, the satellite will observe nearly the entire planet every 12 days, making observations day and night, in all weather conditions

Tiangong space station

China selects mystery astronauts for 2023 missions to Tiangong space station

About

  • China will later this year send two crews to the now fully operational Tiangong to spend six months in orbit conducting science experiments and keeping the space station maintained.
  • Two three-person crews have been selected for the Shenzhou 16 mission, due to launch in May, and the following Shenzhou 17 mission, launching six months later. The missions will lift off atop Long March 2F rockets from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert
  • Tiangong, which means “Heavenly Palace,” will consist of Tianhe the main habitat for astronauts, and two modules dedicated to hosting experiments, Mengtian and Wentian.

  • Tiangong will be much smaller than the International Space Station (ISS)
  • Tiangong will also be lighter than the ISS, which weighs about 400 tons (450 metric tons) 
  • China is only the third country in history to have put both astronauts into space and to build a space station, after the Russia and the US. 

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