RED ALERT

SPACE APOCALYPSE IS IMMINENT !

In this highly coveted terrestrial suburb, thousands of satellite constellations, foremost among them SpaceX's Starlink, cross paths at dizzying speeds.

Today, only an automated choreography of avoidance, repeated several times a day with micro-pushes, separates humanity from an irreversible technological disaster.

Here is an in-depth analysis of this invisible crisis that threatens our hyper-connected civilization.

1. The great 500-kilometer traffic jam

For decades, low Earth orbit (LEO) was a vast and relatively uncrowded space.

Those days are over. The advent of mega-constellations has transformed the area between 430 km and 500 km altitude into a veritable ring road during rush hour.

Why this precise altitude?

It offers the ideal compromise for low-bandwidth telecommunications and high-speed internet:

minimal latency and natural atmospheric reentry within a few years for the debris, thus avoiding perpetual pollution of space.

The result: everyone is rushing in. In addition to the thousands of Starlink satellites, there are the fleets of OneWeb, Amazon's projects (Project Kuiper) and a multitude of university or military cubesats.

2. The War of the Buttons: Thousands of Daily Avoiders

At altitudes where objects are traveling at nearly 28,000 km/h (approximately 7.8 km/s), a crossing at a distance of one kilometer is considered a hair's breadth.

At that speed, the slightest impact is not a simple shock: it is an explosion of pure kinetic energy.

To avoid the worst, operators must constantly adjust trajectories.

Autonomous algorithms:

SpaceX, for example, uses automated avoidance systems based on tracking data from the US Space Command.

Invisible impulses:

Thanks to Hall effect thrusters (ion engines), the satellites receive emergency commands, making small thrusts several times a day to modify their orbit by just a few meters.

The cost of survival:

Each maneuver consumes precious fuel, reducing the satellite's operational lifespan, and is akin to a game of orbital Russian roulette where the slightest computer bug would be equivalent to a head-on collision.

3. The Kessler Syndrome: The Apocalypse Scenario

If two medium-sized satellites were to collide head-on, the world would witness the onset of Kessler Syndrome .

Theorized in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, this scenario describes a terrifying domino effect.

The mechanism of the chain reaction

The initial collision:

Two satellites pulverize, instantly generating a cloud of tens of thousands of debris the size of a marble or a brick.

The Shrapnel effect:

Each of these fragments retains its indomitable orbital velocity and in turn becomes a deadly projectile.

Saturation:

These debris will cross into neighboring orbits, colliding with other satellites, which will in turn break apart.

Within a few days, or even a few hours, an uncontrollable chain reaction could transform low Earth orbit into an unusable wasteland.

4. The "Night of the Satellites": the consequences of a global blackout

If this catastrophe were to occur, the consequences for humanity would not be merely a spectacle of lights in the night sky. It would be an immediate and brutal technological regression. A veritable "night of the satellites" would paralyze our daily lives.

Communications blackout: Instantaneous loss of global internet in isolated areas, disruption of maritime and air links.

Logistical and financial chaos: Geolocation systems (GPS, Galileo) interconnected with low Earth orbit would suffer major disruptions, freezing global banking transactions synchronized by space atomic clock and blocking transport.

Climate and weather blindness: No more real-time data to anticipate hurricanes, monitor fires or map agricultural resources.

Earth in quarantine: The curtain of debris surrounding the planet would make manned space missions, maintenance of the International Space Station, and deep-space exploration (to the Moon or Mars) simply impossible. Earth would be trapped under an armor of kinetic scrap metal.

5. The urgent need for a space highway code

Space today suffers from the "commons" syndrome:

Everyone benefits, no one regulates it in a binding way.

Current rules rely largely on the goodwill of private companies and national agencies.

If we want to prevent the 500-kilometer radius from becoming the graveyard of our modernity, the international community must urgently impose a universal space highway code :

financial penalties for abandoned debris, the obligation of immediate deorbiting in case of failure, and the industrial development of orbital cleaning technologies (space tugs, magnetic nets).

The orbital watch is working at full capacity, but the thread holding our space infrastructure together has never been thinner. The countdown to the final, fatal impact has already begun.

SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH FOR THE CREW-12 MISSION WITH FRENCH SPACEBOOK SOPHIE ADENOT
TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

The first French woman to go into space thirty years after Claudie Haigneré, and her three colleagues are currently travelling at more than 27,000 km/h towards the International Space Station.

Originally from Nièvre, she is accompanied by Americans Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway and Russian Andrei Fedyaev. This former helicopter pilot in the army underwent an intense and accelerated training of only two years and ten months.

She will spend eight months aboard the ISS, a record for a European astronaut. She will participate in more than 200 scientific experiments.
The French astronaut's mission is primarily a scientific one focused on understanding the human body in weightlessness.

Understanding the effects of microgravity on the human body

After just a few days in weightlessness, the body begins to deadapt to gravity: this is the phenomenon of deconditioning. This manifests itself in particular through a decrease in physical capacity, a loss of muscle mass, weakened bones, metabolic disorders, and an increased risk of fainting upon returning to Earth.

This is why many experiments are carried out on board the ISS in order to better understand the impact of weightlessness on the major functions of the body.

The medical experiments entrusted to Sophie Adenot have the primary objective of observing and measuring these transformations in real time, in order to improve astronaut safety during long missions.

For example, some protocols use body sensors and physiological recording systems to continuously monitor the functioning of the heart, muscles, and metabolism. The data collected helps to understand how the body adapts to microgravity and to develop new medical countermeasures.

This research is also of major interest to terrestrial medicine: the results can improve the care of patients suffering from osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, or neurological disorders.

Ultrasound and Autonomous Diagnostic Experiments:

A significant aspect of medical research relies on astronaut autonomy. On Earth, medical examinations are performed by specialists; in space, crews must be able to diagnose themselves.

With this in mind, Sophie Adenot is testing innovative ultrasound tools such as EchoFinder, which combines augmented reality and artificial intelligence to guide the user during a medical examination without direct assistance from a doctor.

The objective is to enable rapid and reliable diagnoses in isolated situations, an essential condition for future long-distance missions.

Another experiment, EchoBones, aims to analyze the evolution of bone density and structure during stays in microgravity using new imaging techniques. It allows for a better understanding of the bone fragility observed in astronauts and the development of preventative solutions.

In addition to research in physiology, Sophie Adenot will also participate in studies on the presence and spread of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi or viruses) in the space environment.

Although the equipment sent to the station is carefully disinfected, the human presence inevitably implies the introduction of microscopic life forms.

The human microbiota, made up of many species of microorganisms that live naturally in our bodies, can spread into the passenger compartment, particularly through droplets or contact, which requires rigorous scientific monitoring to guarantee the health safety of the crew.

By better understanding the mechanisms of human adaptation to space, these experiments help prepare future manned explorations to the Moon, Mars and beyond, while also providing concrete scientific benefits for health on Earth.

NORTHERN LIGHTS IN EUROPE AND FRANCE

WHY THE SKY STILL LIGHT UP WITH COLOURS

On the night of November 12, 2025, many Europeans looked up at the sky to admire a phenomenon of exceptional beauty: the Northern Lights, visible at latitudes where they almost never appear. A rare spectacle that could be repeated in the nights to come.

But to understand the origin of these luminous green, red or purple veils, we have to go back thousands of kilometers above our heads, where an invisible battle is taking place between the Sun and the Earth's magnetic field.

A solar spectacle above all

The polar auroras originate from solar activity.

Our star constantly expels a stream of charged particles called the solar wind. These particles, mainly electrons and protons, travel at several hundred kilometers per second.

During more violent events, such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), the Sun hurls billions of tons of plasma into space, accompanied by powerful magnetic fields.

It is precisely this type of particularly intense eruption that caused the auroras visible in Europe and France. When these clouds of particles reach Earth, their interaction with our space environment triggers phenomena that are sometimes spectacular.

The magnetosphere: a deforming shield

The primary terrestrial actor in this phenomenon is the planet's magnetic field.

Originating from the movements of the liquid core, it forms a vast protective shield, the magnetosphere, which deflects the majority of the solar wind.

This magnetic field extends up to 60,000 km on the day side and forms a huge tail of several million kilometers on the night side.

Normally, it prevents solar particles from easily penetrating.

But when the magnetic field carried by the solar wind is oriented towards the south, therefore opposite to that of the Earth, an essential process can occur: magnetic reconnection.

Magnetic reconnection occurs when two opposing magnetic fields break apart and then reform.

This complex phenomenon, still actively studied in plasma physics, temporarily opens "gates" in the magnetosphere.

At that moment:

- Solar particles massively penetrate the magnetosphere.
- A large amount of magnetic energy is released.
- The particles are accelerated along Earth's magnetic field lines.

Transported at high speed towards the poles, they form the famous auroral substorms, responsible for the most intense auroras.

When particles strike our atmosphere: the birth of light

Solar particles penetrate the upper atmosphere at altitudes between 100 and 300 km.

By colliding with oxygen and nitrogen molecules, they excite them.

When these molecules return to their normal state, they release energy… in the form of light.

Each gas produces a characteristic color:

- Green: oxygen at 557 nm, the most frequent color
- Red: oxygen at higher altitude
- Violet or blue: ionized nitrogen
- Pink: mixture of oxygen and nitrogen transitions.

The intensity and color of auroras depend on altitude, particle energy, and atmospheric density.

Why do the auroras extend as far south as France?

The auroras are normally visible in an auroral oval located around 65° latitude, near the Arctic.

But during strong geomagnetic storms measured by the Kp index, this oval widens.

- Kp 5: Scotland
- Kp 6: Germany
- Kp 7–8: France
- Kp 9: Mediterranean, possibly North Africa.

The November 2025 eruption reached a high level, shifting the auroral oval approximately 2,000 kilometers southward. As a result, auroras were visible as far south as Brittany, Normandy, the Île-de-France region, and the Southwest.

This phenomenon is all the more likely as the Sun approaches its peak activity, predicted for 2025–2026.

Experts point out that we are currently experiencing a period of high solar activity (five years around the maximum of the eleven-year cycle), which favors the occurrence of powerful eruptions.

According to some astrophysicists, this active phase could end towards the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, making these auroras particularly valuable to observe.

A universal phenomenon: auroras on other planets

Auroras are not an exclusively terrestrial phenomenon.

They exist wherever three ingredients are combined: a magnetic field, a flow of particles (like the solar wind), and a surrounding atmosphere or plasma.

Thus, Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, fueled by the volcanic activity of Io. Saturn has auroras similar to those of Earth.

Uranus and Neptune, with their highly inclined magnetic fields, generate auroras that are still mysterious.

Mars, lacking a global field, shows local auroras above fossil magnetic zones.

Even some exoplanets appear to exhibit auroras detected by radio waves or ultraviolet light.

Auroras, far from being a mere spectacle, are therefore a natural laboratory of extreme physics throughout the cosmos.
Where beauty comes with risk.

These storms are not just visual: they also impact our technologies.

Among their possible effects: disrupting satellites (discharges, overheating, loss of orbit), disrupting GPS and radio communications, and creating risks for electrical networks (such as the Quebec blackout in 1989).

This is why organizations like NOAA, ESA, and CNES continuously monitor space weather.

The Northern Lights are much more than just colorful veils of light.

They bear witness to the complex and ongoing relationship between our star and our planet.

This celestial ballet, visible a few nights a century in France, reveals the immensity of the forces that surround us : solar plasma, the Earth's magnetosphere, the dynamics of magnetic fields and the fragility of our technological environment

JAMES-WEBB FIXES IT, OR HOW TWO PHD STUDENTS SAVED THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL

TELESCOPE WITH CODE

This one is housed in a university laboratory in Sydney.

Not in a Californian control center saturated with 16K screens. Not in a vibration-controlled clean room with full-body suits.

In an office, probably with cans of coffee on the table, are two PhD students in their early twenties. And an anomaly that, until now, would have required a manned spacecraft.

Except that no shuttle today or in 20 years will be able to physically approach the place where James-Webb is located.

We're talking about 1.5 million kilometers.

A place further away than any safety cushion we've ever sent humans to.

And despite that, the problem was fixed.

Not with extravehicular gloves riveted to the orbit like for Hubble in 1993, but with code!

Louis Desdoigts and Max Charles, two young Australian researchers, corrected an optical defect in the most powerful space telescope ever built, without ever touching the hardware, without even lifting a screwdriver, and without any mechanical assistance from space.

In the history of space exploration, this marks a turning point.

This isn't just the trick of clever engineers.

This is a philosophical shift: repairing an inaccessible object that is absolutely inaccessible solely through modeling, algorithms, and software intelligence.

A failure reminiscent of Hubble's ghost

The scale of the comparison must be understood: when Hubble's mirror proved to be poorly polished, NASA had to charter astronauts, dock the shuttle, deploy the robotic arm, and install a complete optical corrector. This cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involved a major human risk.

Webb, however, is out of reach. He never will be .

The telescope is stationed at L2, accompanying the Earth in its dance around the Sun. A man in a spacesuit would not survive there. A spacecraft has never flown there before.

So when the first generation of images came back blurry, with an unacceptable optical haze , the anxiety was real: if it was a structural failure, we wouldn't be able to go and repair it.

The flaw came from a very particular instrument: the aperture masking interferometer, the only piece of Webb whose design originated in Australia, via Professor Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney).

A highly specialized instrument, designed to intelligently combine different areas of the main mirror in order to oversample the celestial scene and uncover exoplanets at the limit of detectability.

But a discreet, treacherous physical phenomenon was scrambling the signal: the so-called “brighter-fatter” effect.

The electrical charge spread slightly into the neighboring pixels of the infrared detectors, causing the light from bright sources to swell. A tiny propagation, certainly, but enough to ruin the precision of the combined optics.

There was no ON/OFF button to disable the effect.

No spare lens.

No logistics route.

The invisible repair

So, what do we do when only the universe is reachable, but not the object that looks at it?

The object is simulated.

We simulate its physics.

His illness is being simulated.

And we calculate as if we were there.

The two doctoral students then developed AMIGO: a neural architecture designed to emulate the instrument as it actually is in space, with its flaws, and to digitally “re-linearize” the light flow.

AMIGO analyzes the diffusion patterns, recognizes the electrical fingerprint of the blur, then removes it, pixel by pixel.

And it returns to the point where Webb was able to capture, in direct imaging, that is to say, see an extremely faint exoplanet, and a red-brown dwarf orbiting around the star HD 206893, 133 light-years away.

It wasn't cosmetic.

That was crucial.

In another observation campaign, led by Max Charles, the instrument thus “re-spurred” was able to provide clear images of a black hole jet, the volcanic surface of Io, and the stellar winds of the variable star WR 137.

These are not laboratory demonstrations: these are deliverable scientific results.

Structural consequences

What we are observing here is not a local trick but the beginning of a new logic of spatial maintenance.

If we can repair an instrument 1.5 million kilometers away “remotely” — through modeling — then the scale of accessible space infrastructures changes.

We can imagine tomorrow more daring observatories, more isolated because we know that we can correct them without touching them.

This is not valid for all breakdowns obviously, but the conceptual shift is there: there is now a precedent.

What was once “irreparable” becomes “repairable by software”.

And this fact was raised by two doctoral students.

And besides, they engraved it on their skin: they got the aperture-masking interferometer tattooed on their arm.

This is not marketing: it is an act by researchers who are aware that they have inscribed something in the history of their discipline.

Louis Desdoigts then secured a postdoctoral position in Leiden. The team, for its part, now wants to distribute AMIGO to the entire JWST community so that others can also correct their data.

The studies were posted on arXiv in October 2025. Louis Desdoigts's will be published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia .

This story comes at the exact moment when NASA is opening a new cycle of observations and going through a period of institutional turbulence.

A moment when Webb is already reshaping what we thought we knew about primordial galaxies, initial black holes, and the chemical composition of exoplanets.

And at the very moment when Webb's Australian instrument, long "the least visible", suddenly becomes one of the finest pieces in his arsenal.

In conclusion

We must face the facts: we are witnessing a profound shift.

The space mythology of the 20th century was a muscular mythology: gloved hands, titanium plates, steel structures, a robotic arm, men in the unknown, shuttles docking, rivets holding the destiny of a generation.

The mythology of the 21st century, however, will be a software mythology.

And the image can be summed up in a spectacular shortcut: the most remote repair in human history, the most inaccessible repair of all time, was not done with a screwdriver, but with a commit to a code repository.

This is a moment of rupture exactly like the appearance of radar, the transistor, the laser or GPS: an invisible functionality changes the nature of what is possible.

We don't feel it yet because the power of the act is… immaterial.

Because it makes no noise, no fire, no metal.

And yet: the civilizational shift is here.

What Louis Desdoigts and Max Charles have just proven in a university office in the south of the planet is that it is now realistic to augment, stabilize, repair machines located too far away for human hands to approach.

A new food chain in the cosmos has just been inaugurated.

This is not “just a study”.

It's not "just a gain in sharpness".

This is the launch of a new idea:

The future of exploration will not be mechanical. It will be mathematical.

WHEN THE ISS WAITS IN VAIN FOR FIVE TONS OF SUPPLIES LOST IN THE VOID OF SPACE

But on September 17, 2025, this equation cracked.

A Cygnus XL space cargo ship, launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, carrying five tons of food, equipment and crucial materials, missed its rendezvous with the station.

The event, discreet in NASA's official communication, nevertheless resonates like a brutal warning:

At 29,000 km/h, a margin of error of a few seconds can be enough to deprive an entire team of its means of survival.

Far from being a simple technical anecdote, this incident highlights the complexity of orbital supply chains, the geopolitical stakes of a continuous human presence in space, and the limits of a technology that we sometimes believe to be infallible.

This article proposes to return in detail to this spectacular failure, to analyze its immediate consequences and to place this setback in the broader context of the challenges of space exploration in the 21st century.

1. The ISS: an orbital citadel dependent on Earth

Inaugurated in 1998, the ISS is not a self-sufficient fortress. Far from being a space ark capable of producing everything it needs, it functions as an ultra-sophisticated scientific platform that consumes resources sent from Earth day after day.

On average, six to eight resupply missions take place each year, carried out by an international consortium: SpaceX's Dragon cargo ships, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus, Russian Progress ships and, more recently, Japanese HTV-X cargo ships.

The station, despite its impressive size, is not designed to accumulate vast reserves. It lives in a permanent tension between consumption and delivery, between autonomy and dependence.

2. A millimeter-precise orbital ballet

Space logistics is anything but a routine supply chain. Sending cargo to the ISS is a meticulously choreographed process, where every parameter must be adjusted down to the second.

Launch : The cargo must be propelled into an orbit almost identical to that of the station.

Trajectory corrections : multiple engine firings gradually adjust speed and altitude to converge on the ISS.

The final approach is the most delicate phase. At less than 1,000 meters, every movement is controlled and monitored by the astronauts and the Houston center.

The slightest anomaly – a faulty sensor, a delay in the ignition of a thruster, a communication error – can lead to a postponement or even the failure of the mission.

3. The Cygnus XL Incident: The Ghost Freighter

During its September 2025 mission, the Cygnus XL took off safely from Cape Canaveral. Its payload represented a vital treasure: five tons of supplies, nearly a third of which was food and water, with the remainder consisting of scientific equipment, maintenance parts, and personal care packages.

As they approached the station, everything seemed normal. The astronauts, including American Jonny Kim (a physician, former Navy SEAL, and flight engineer on this rotation), were preparing to enter the spacecraft.

Then, an anomaly occurs: a delay in ignition of the approach engines causes a deviation from the trajectory. In a few seconds, the critical distance is exceeded. To avoid any risk of collision, the safety procedure is activated: the cargo ship moves away.

Result: the meeting is missed . At 29,000 km/h, there is no "immediate second chance."

4. Official reactions: caution and restraint

NASA communicates quickly but in a measured manner:

"A technical incident prevented the docking," a spokesperson said.

"Options are being explored for a further attempt."

"The safety of the crew was never compromised."

The astronauts, for their part, maintain a calm expression in front of the internal cameras. But behind the scenes, the tension is palpable. The missing five tons represent a logistical chasm.

5. Concrete consequences for the crew

The astronauts are not in immediate danger: the ISS has several weeks' worth of safety reserves. But every day without deliveries creates a delay in planning.

Food : Certain foods will have to be rationed. Planned menus, often varied to avoid dietary monotony, may be reduced.

The situation is not dramatic, but it illustrates how each delivery is a fragile umbilical cord .

6. The solutions envisaged

NASA and Northrop Grumman immediately embarked on a race against time. Several scenarios were considered:

Another docking attempt : If the cargo ship retains enough fuel, a second approach can be planned. But each maneuver consumes a portion of its precious reserve.

Partial load transfer : If this fails, consider repatriating the cargo or returning part of its load in a subsequent mission.

Each solution involves astronomical costs – literally.

7. Structural challenges of space refueling

This incident is not a first. Over the past twenty years, several cargo ships have run aground:

In 2015, a Russian Progress exploded shortly after launch.

In 2019, a SpaceX Dragon experienced a docking anomaly.

These failures are a reminder that reliability, while very high, is never absolute. Every mission is a high-risk experiment .

8. A problem that goes beyond technology: political and economic issues

Behind the technical aspects lies a broader reality:

Commercial competition : SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Roscosmos, JAXA – each is staking its credibility on these missions.

Economics : Each kilogram sent into orbit costs between $20,000 and $40,000. Five tons lost represents a colossal loss of revenue.

Politics : The station is a symbol of international cooperation. A failure undermines this image and fuels debates about the relevance of a permanent human presence.

The Cygnus incident thus becomes a reputational issue as much as a logistical one.

9. Lessons for the future

Every failure fuels learning. The incident underlines several points:

The growing role of advanced robotics and AI in critical operations.

The need for redundancy : multiplying supply vectors so as not to depend on a single mission.

The importance of autonomous technologies : Cargo ships capable of automatic docking (such as Dragon or Progress) reduce the margins of human error.

10. A mirror for the future of human exploration

This episode goes beyond the immediate scope of the ISS. It poses a broader question:

How to supply future lunar and Martian missions?

On Mars, delivery times can be months or even years. A delivery failure there could be potentially fatal.

On the Moon, the delays are a few days, but the environment is even more hostile.

The Cygnus incident is therefore an anticipated echo of tomorrow's challenges .

In conclusion: an assumed fragility

The International Space Station has never been a static achievement, but a living, fragile experiment, full of brilliant successes and instructive failures.

The Cygnus XL incident is a reminder that space exploration is not a series of spectacular triumphs, but a succession of precarious balances where every error has immediate repercussions.

By missing its rendezvous, this phantom cargo ship not only deprived the astronauts of five tons of resources.

He reminded all of humanity that our dream of space still rests, and will for a long time, on a thin thread stretched between Earth and the sky.

SPACEX ANNOUNCES RESUMPTION OF STARSHIP MEGAROCKET FLIGHTS

The launch is part of a series of tests aimed at perfecting the largest space launcher ever designed and demonstrating its reliability ahead of possible manned missions to the Moon and Mars.

A return after a thorough investigation

SpaceX announced Monday that it plans to resume test flights as early as Friday, subject to regulatory approval. The launch, scheduled to take place from its Boca Chica base in Texas, could take place as early as 23:30 GMT (12:30 a.m. French time on February 1). The resumption comes after a lengthy investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which ordered the flights suspended after the second stage disintegrated over the Caribbean in January.

The incident, spectacular in its scale, caused an incandescent rain of debris, observed as far as the Turks and Caicos Islands. While the material damage observed was minimal, the accident nevertheless raised questions about the robustness of the launcher's upper stage. In response to the conclusions of the investigation, SpaceX claims to have made "several modifications" aimed at improving the reliability of this critical stage.

Regulatory supervision under pressure

When asked by AFP, the FAA declined to comment on the investigation's findings or the adjustments made by SpaceX. This situation is reminiscent of the tensions that regularly pit Elon Musk against regulatory agencies. Under Joe Biden's administration, the SpaceX boss has consistently criticized the FAA, accusing it of stifling innovation through excessive oversight.

Musk’s close relationship with former President Donald Trump has also raised concerns about his potential influence on future regulatory decisions. As the billionaire and his companies continue to push technological boundaries, the balance between innovation and regulation remains at the heart of the debate.

An ambitious test flight

This eighth test flight is not just a simple launch attempt. SpaceX intends to test several new features and push the rocket to its limits in order to validate maneuvers essential to its future operation.

Among the main objectives is the recovery of the first stage of Starship, a spectacular operation already successfully carried out twice. This maneuver, which consists of returning the enormous booster to Earth for later reuse, is a central element of SpaceX's business model, based on reducing costs by reusing the components of its launchers.

In addition, the mission includes for the first time the deployment of simulated payloads: four replicas of next-generation Starlink satellites. These mock-ups, similar in size to the real craft, will be released into orbit before disintegrating in the Earth's atmosphere. This test aims to demonstrate Starship's ability to transport and deploy satellites, a key challenge for the company's commercial ambitions.

A second floor under surveillance

One of the major challenges of this test is the recovery of the Starship's second stage. During the previous flight, this stage could not be recovered due to its premature explosion. This time, SpaceX has integrated several atmospheric reentry experiments, aimed at testing the ability of this stage to return to Earth safely.

The company has notably added elements designed to simulate extreme re-entry conditions. These devices, present on the second-generation version of the Starship, aim to voluntarily apply constraints to the structures of the ship in order to evaluate their resistance to aerodynamic and thermal forces.

For safety reasons, SpaceX specifies that the return of the second stage to the launch base will only be attempted if strict criteria are met. In the absence of optimal conditions, the craft will be redirected to the Gulf of Mexico for a controlled splashdown, thus avoiding any risk to ground infrastructure.

A key step for the future of Starship

This eighth test is of crucial importance for the future of the Starship program. SpaceX hopes to increase the pace of its launches in 2024, with the ambition of reaching a regular cadence. The company is counting on this megarocket to realize its dream of sending humans to Mars, a flagship objective of Musk's space program.

NASA is also closely monitoring the tests, as Starship is expected to play a key role in its Artemis program. That effort, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon in the coming years, relies in part on a modified version of Starship to land lunar crews.

As the countdown begins for this new test flight, the success of this mission could mark a decisive step forward for SpaceX and confirm that Starship is well on its way to technical maturity. If the company succeeds in validating the objectives set, it could move a little closer to its ultimate dream: making humanity a multi-planetary species.

THE RETURN OF THE TWO ASTRONAUTS

STARLINER SHIP DELAYED AGAIN

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two Americans who left for an eight-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), have been in weightlessness since last June.

On Tuesday, NASA announced that their return to Earth will not take place before "the end of March, at the earliest." That's still quite an extension for an impromptu vacation in space !

The cause ? The failures of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Instead of bringing back our two explorers, the Starliner preferred to turn back empty after long weeks of fruitless tests.

Fortunately, Elon Musk's company SpaceX sent a new ship to rescue our space Robinsons in September. The Crew-9 mission, with astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov on board, reached the ISS.

But the shuttle will not be able to return until Crew-10 takes over. Surprise !

NASA has just pushed back this launch to "the end of March" to give SpaceX teams time to fine-tune their new ship. So, a few more months of patience for Butch and Suni.

The two astronauts were originally part of the first manned test flight of Boeing's Starliner. But propulsion problems stranded them in orbit, adding another chapter to Boeing's technical misadventures.

One begins to wonder whether they should not have been suspicious when seeing the performance of the airliners of the same company.

Despite everything, our two space heroes are taking the situation philosophically. During a press conference at the beginning of September, they assured that the extension of their mission was not so difficult to live with.

"The transition wasn't that hard," Williams said. "We both come from the Navy, so we're used to extended tours. It just gives us a little more time to enjoy the view."

So, next time you complain about your delayed flight, think of Butch and Suni, stuck in space !

A FASCINATING DISCOVERY

ON BLACK HOLES

Despite this, the reality of their existence has long been a subject of debate among scientists, sparking discussions and controversies for almost a century. It was not until 1965 that British mathematician Roger Penrose provided crucial theoretical proof by demonstrating that black holes inevitably form as a result of the gravitational collapse of massive stars.

This landmark work laid the foundation for a modern understanding of black holes. However, it was not until the 1990s that more direct observational evidence emerged. Thanks to the pioneering work of American astrophysicists Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, clues suggesting the presence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, were discovered. This fundamental work, combined with the contributions of Roger Penrose, was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020.

Today, technological advances are allowing even more spectacular observations. Thanks to the international collaboration known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), scientists have succeeded in capturing the image of the "shadow" of the black hole located at the heart of our galaxy. This scientific feat is a major step in validating the existence of black holes and in our understanding of these extreme objects.

Thus, the existence of black holes in the Universe is now firmly established thanks to converging theoretical and observational evidence. But the story does not end there: current research, based on the Standard Model of fundamental forces, suggests the possible existence of a new category of black holes as yet unknown, opening the way to exciting discoveries and new perspectives on the nature of the Universe.

The Origin of Black Holes

Today, it is widely accepted that black holes are ubiquitous in our Universe. In general, two main scenarios explain their formation.

First, there are stellar black holes, which are formed by the gravitational collapse of ordinary stars at the end of their life. This happens when these stars, having exhausted all their nuclear fuel, collapse under their own weight. Stellar black holes have masses that generally vary between 2 to 3 solar masses and can reach tens or even hundreds of solar masses.

Once formed, these stellar black holes can grow by absorbing surrounding matter. They can also merge with each other, emitting gravitational waves in the process. The first detection of these gravitational waves, the result of the merger of two stellar black holes, was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.

Second, it is possible that some black holes, called primordial black holes, formed shortly after the Big Bang, by the collapse of primary matter in the first second of the Universe. The masses of these primordial black holes can be extremely varied. Some can reach billions of solar masses, such as the supermassive black holes located at the centers of most galaxies.

Others may be much smaller, the size of planets or asteroids, with radii of less than a centimeter. It is therefore conceivable that the Universe is full of these tiny primordial black holes, whose detection would represent a major challenge for observational astrophysics. Even lighter primordial black holes would have evaporated very quickly according to the Hawking process, and thus not survived to the present day.

Current research suggests that some of these small primordial black holes that still exist today may have an intriguing new characteristic: being “hairy.” Traditionally, black holes are considered to “have no hair,” a metaphor for being completely defined by only three properties: their mass, their electric charge, and their angular momentum. However, the discovery of black holes with additional characteristics could revolutionize our understanding of these fascinating objects.

Unification of theories and ringed black holes

Researchers have just made another fascinating discovery: that of black holes with a magnetic charge and surrounded by a unique structure: a "hair" in the form of rings.

These rings are made up of elementary particles, in particular the W, Z and Higgs bosons. These particles form a Bose-Einstein condensate, a very special state of matter. This type of condensate occurs when particles behave as a single quantum entity, usually at extremely low temperatures or under very specific conditions. This phenomenon has already been observed in the laboratory for atoms cooled and trapped using lasers, a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

In the case of black holes, the electroweak condensate is created by the intense magnetic field surrounding the charged black hole. This condensate, itself magnetized, is repelled by the black hole's magnetic force and therefore cannot fall into it. However, it is also held nearby by the black hole's gravitational pull. Thus, it remains suspended, trapped in a stable region just outside the black hole.

Ringed black holes differ radically from classical black holes. They can be macroscopic in size, on the order of a centimeter, which is immense compared to the subatomic scale of the elementary particles that make up their rings.

Let's imagine a black hole (a black dot) surrounded by several successive layers. The gray region represents the intense magnetic field that surrounds the black hole. Around this area, there are three distinct rings. One ring carries part of the magnetic charge, while the other two rings correspond to electric currents formed by W bosons that circulate around the black hole. These structures are the direct result of the mathematical solutions that the researchers obtained.

These ringed black holes are described by theories that have been experimentally validated. This means that they are probably not simple mathematical constructs, but could indeed exist in reality as physical objects in the Universe.

It is unlikely that black holes of this type could form in the present Universe. On the other hand, the extreme conditions that prevailed in the very first moments after the Big Bang could have allowed their formation. These black holes would therefore be classified as primordial black holes , that is, objects formed in the extremely dense and fluctuating primordial plasma that characterized the early Universe.

A remarkable property of these ringed black holes is their stability. The presence of the rings actually reduces the overall mass of the black hole, making their energy dissipation unfavorable. This stability would allow them to survive until today, making them potential candidates to explain part of dark matter.

These hairy black holes, surrounded by electroweak rings, represent a major advance in our understanding of the Universe, notably offering a clue to solving the enigma of dark matter...

A CELESTIAL SHOW

THE BEAVER SUPER MOON

TSUCHINSHAN-ATLAS

THE SPECTACULAR COMET OF 2024

READY TO DAZZLE THE NIGHT SKY

On September 27, 2024 at 5:00 p.m., a rare and fascinating event took place millions of kilometers from Earth:

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has reached its closest point to the Sun, a decisive milestone in its long journey that began several million years ago.

If it survives this perilous approach, this comet could offer a dazzling spectacle from mid-October 2024. Its fate remains uncertain, however, and everything will depend on its ability to resist the immense forces of gravity and heat exerted by our star.

A discovery at the edge of the solar system

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, also known scientifically as C/2023 A3, was discovered in January 2023 by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China, which gave it the first part of its name.

However, official confirmation of its existence was made by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope in South Africa, which added the second name to this cosmopolitan comet.

These two astronomical installations, located on two continents, have collaborated to reveal the existence of this ancient traveler from the confines of our solar system.

Astronomers believe that C/2023 A3 likely originated in the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical region at the outer edge of the solar system, more than 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun (about 9,460 billion kilometers).

This gigantic reservoir of icy bodies and asteroids is thought to house billions of comets orbiting the Sun, some of which occasionally venture into the inner regions of the solar system, as is the case with Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

A journey of millions of years

What makes this comet so captivating, beyond its mysterious origin, is the length and nature of its journey. Unlike planets or asteroids that follow well-defined orbits around the Sun, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has a so-called "non-closed" orbit.

This means that, according to some astronomical models, this comet could have traveled a phenomenal distance, up to 400,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, before approaching us.

Lucie Maquet, an astronomer at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (IMCCE) at the Paris-PSL Observatory, explains that the data collected since its discovery do not allow its entire journey to be accurately reconstructed, due to the limited observation time.

However, its journey through space may have begun millions of years ago, at the dawn of the modern solar system, in regions far further away than the Kuiper Belt.

The Challenge of Survival : Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Facing the Sun

The closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, is a critical moment for all comets. As Tsuchinshan-ATLAS approached its closest point to the star, it faced intense heat and extreme gravitational pull.

At this distance, the solar temperature causes the ices in the comet's nucleus to sublimate, releasing immense quantities of gas and dust into space.

It is this release that creates the coma, this luminous envelope which surrounds the nucleus, and its long tail, the visual signature of comets.

However, this spectacular phase also carries risks: if the comet loses too much mass or if the structure of its nucleus is too fragile, it could literally disintegrate under the effect of the Sun's gravity. This scenario is not uncommon in the history of comets, and it remains a possibility for Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

"The whole question is whether this degassing will not be too significant," explains Lucie Maquet, recalling that such disintegration is always a potential danger.

However, there is some good news: Initial observations suggest that C/2023 A3 has a relatively massive core, increasing the chances that it will emerge unscathed from this encounter with the Sun.

A celestial spectacle to come : the comet visible to the naked eye in October 2024

If comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS survives its passage near the Sun, it will offer a rare spectacle to Earthlings from October 13, 2024, this time in the northern hemisphere.

Until now, only observers in the southern hemisphere had a chance to see it with the naked eye, but now it will appear every evening above the western horizon, shortly after sunset.

For lovers of starry skies, this will be a unique opportunity to observe one of the brightest comets of recent decades.

As the comet moves higher into the sky each evening, its spectacular tail should become increasingly visible, offering a rare moment to admire this cosmic traveler.

Equipped with a pair of binoculars and a clear horizon, amateur and curious astronomers will be able to enjoy this astronomical "one shot" .

Uncertainties about the comet's brightness

It is difficult to predict with any precision how bright the comet will be. Early predictions suggested it could reach exceptional brightness, but those estimates have since been revised downward.

Despite this, Lucie Maquet remains confident: "It's a bit of a surprise at the last minute, but in any case it's going to be a brilliant comet, that's for sure."

The next few weeks of observation will tell us more about the size and beauty of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS' tail.

However, after its closest approach to Earth, its brightness is expected to decrease, so the optimal time to observe it will probably be in the second half of October.

Each evening, the comet will shine a little less, but it will continue to capture the attention of astronomy enthusiasts.

The uncertain future of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS : between stars and possible return

After its passage near the Earth and the Sun, the future of the comet is far from sealed. Its orbit, already complex, will be further disrupted by the gravitational forces of the other celestial bodies it will cross, as well as by the loss of mass suffered during its encounter with the Sun.

Some models predict that it could be ejected from the solar system, venturing into the interstellar depths, "getting lost among the stars," according to a bulletin from the Institute of Celestial Mechanics.

However, this ejection is not guaranteed. The Oort cloud, its place of origin, is an environment full of mysteries.

It only needs to encounter another celestial body during its long journey for it to be deflected, and perhaps one day return to the solar system for another close passage of the Sun in thousands, even millions of years.

A unique meeting not to be missed

In summary, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is a unique opportunity for humanity to observe an ancient and distant object in our solar system.

Whether you are a seasoned astronomer or just a curious observer, this encounter is not to be missed. It may well leave us forever after this luminous episode, merging into the vast cosmic expanses.

EARTH WILL HAVE TWO MOONS

AROUND HER FOR TWO MONTHS

Starting September 29, 2024, Earth will no longer be accompanied only by its faithful Moon. For a period of two months, a small asteroid will be added to our sky as a "mini-moon," a temporary second moon.

This celestial object, named 2024 PT5, was captured by the gravitational pull of Earth and will complete a single orbit before escaping on November 25, 2024.

Although this phenomenon is rare, it is not entirely unprecedented.

2024 PT5: A discreet but fascinating mini-moon

Discovered on August 7, 2024 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) observation system, which scans the skies for objects that could collide with Earth, 2024 PT5 is a relatively modest asteroid in size.

Measuring about 10 meters in diameter, it is much smaller than the Moon, and its presence will not be noticeable to the naked eye. However, despite its discretion, this asteroid is a subject of major interest for astronomers.

According to Tony Dunn, a well-known amateur astronomer on the X Network (formerly Twitter), 2024 PT5 will complete a single orbit around our planet before being thrown back into interplanetary space. 

Calculations of its trajectory are being followed with great attention, not only to understand its dynamics, but also to anticipate its future appearances near the Earth.

A mysterious origin:

Arjuna's asteroid belt

According to researchers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, 2024 PT5 could originate from the Arjuna asteroid belt.

This group of celestial objects is distinguished by orbits very close to those of the Earth, making their passages close to our planet more frequent than for other asteroids.

Objects in this group are often studied because they can occasionally be temporarily captured by Earth, before returning to the cosmos.

Rare but not unprecedented phenomenon: a look at past mini-moons

If the Earth will temporarily have a "double moon", this phenomenon, although rare, is not a first. In 2006, another small asteroid was also captured by the Earth's gravity and accompanied our planet for almost a year before returning to space.

More recently, another celestial object also orbited Earth for several years, until its escape in May 2020. These events allow scientists to better understand the gravitational interactions between Earth and objects near our planet.

Regular returns: 2024 PT5 will return

The story of 2024 PT5 with Earth will not end in November 2024. Calculations show that this asteroid will make another pass near our planet on January 9, 2025, although this time it will not be captured in orbit. In addition, it is expected to return even closer in 2055.

These periodic meetings are fascinating for the scientific community, which sees in these temporary mini-moons an opportunity to learn more about asteroids and their gravitational interactions with our planet.

Ultimately, the arrival of 2024 PT5 around Earth offers a window into a natural phenomenon that is both rare and spectacular, a reminder of the cosmic dance that binds Earth to the many objects that populate our Solar System.

SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH FOR THE EUROPEAN ARIANE 6 ROCKET

After around ten years of development (and four years of delay), the European Space Agency (ESA) launcher took off, one year almost to the day after the very last launch of Ariane 5, the July 5, 2023, after 27 years of service. Its predecessors Ariane 1/2/3/4 and Ariane 5 having each been operated for around twenty years, the Ariane 6 assets were built to allow the same duration of exploitation.

Its raison d'être is twofold: the reduction in launch costs compared to Ariane 5 and flexibility (version with 2 or 4 boosters and re-ignition of the upper stage).

With a height of 56 meters and a diameter of 5.4, capable of carrying 4.5 to 11.5 t of payload for the geostationary transfer orbit (10.3 to 20.6 t for low orbit) depending on its configurations (Ariane 62, equipped with two boosters and Ariane 64, equipped with four boosters), Ariane 6 was designed to be versatile, in a context of developments in the market for satellites and launchers, including the partially reusable and very competitive Falcon 9 from Space X. Due to the lack of a European rocket and due to the war in Ukraine which deprives the ESA of access to Russian Soyuz launchers, Elon Musk's launcher had also been mobilized for the launch of two satellites for the European Galileo GPS system , last April.

The evolving needs of the space sector

The needs of satellites have indeed evolved considerably. Indeed, in the era of Ariane 4 and Ariane 5, the vast majority of satellites aimed at geostationary orbit and asked to be placed on a transfer trajectory towards this orbit. This type of mission was carried out by direct injection after the single thrust of the last stage of the rocket.

Launch requests are now much more varied and most often require upper stage re-ignition capability. This is due to the arrival of electric propulsion of satellites (more efficient but which requires a different orbital injection strategy), but also to that of satellite constellations in low orbit, for example telecommunications constellations like Kuiper, d 'Amazon, or Iris2, of the European Union. The re-ignition of the upper stage of Ariane 6 will make it possible to offer better services for interplanetary missions, by enabling trajectories that were not possible until now.

This re-ignition capacity will also be used to deorbit the stage so that it disintegrates in the atmosphere at the end of its mission to limit the presence of waste from the space industry in Earth orbit.

The flexibility of Ariane 6 is also expressed through its modularity. Its two-propeller version makes it a medium launcher, of the Soyuz rocket class – which was launched from Guyana for Arianespace until 2021 – particularly suited to earth observation type missions of 3 to more than 5 tonnes or the European geolocation constellation Galileo.

Its version with four boosters makes it a heavy launcher of the Ariane 5 type, which can send satellites weighing more than 10 tonnes into geostationary orbit and around 20 tonnes into low orbit for a transfer vehicle to the international space station such as ATV, or for telecommunications constellations.

A successful launch

Ariane 6 is perfectly suited to institutional and commercial space missions. Its two versions A62 (2 additional lateral thrusters) and A64 (4 additional lateral thrusters), combined with its upper stage re-ignitable engine (that of Ariane 5 was not), therefore allow it to cover a wide range of performances and thus respond optimally to very varied orbiting demands:

Low orbit (< 2,000 km altitude) for Earth observation or telecommunications constellations;

Average orbit for Galileo (around 15,000-25,000 km altitude), the European satellite navigation system;

Geostationary orbit (36,000 km altitude), for telecommunications or meteorology satellites;

“Exotic” orbits for certain scientific missions;

Missions in the solar system.

For its maiden flight, Ariane 6 was loaded with small satellites, deployers and experiments, developed by companies, research institutes, universities, young professionals and agencies. Among these projects, the 3 Cat-4, a CubeSat (cubic nanostallite) for Earth observation developed by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), which will have the particular mission of extracting information on ocean data such as ice cover and thickness. Another CubeSat, Robusta-3A, developed by the Montpellier University Space Center, will contribute to better anticipation of Cévennes episodes, which often cause intense rain and severe flooding, by helping to quantify the accumulation of water vapor above of the Mediterranean Sea.

The end of the launcher's mission was, however, marked by a technical anomaly. It will take time to understand in detail the reasons for the malfunction.

Even if a maximum of tests and simulations were carried out during the development of Ariane 6 to limit risks, it is during its maiden flight that a rocket is confronted for the first time with real conditions, such as vacuum space, strong accelerations and stage separations to name just a few examples.

The main players in the development of Ariane 6

The development and manufacturing of the Ariane 6 rocket is carried out by ArianeGroup. The ESA (European Space Agency) is the project owner but also the architect of the launch system, that is to say responsible for the coherence between the ground installations and the rocket.

CNES, for its part, is responsible for developing the ground installations at the Guiana Space Center: this is the ninth launch pad that it has designed. It is also responsible for carrying out “combined tests”, assists the ESA and ensures the safety of goods, people and the environment under the French Law on Space Operations. ArianeGroup and CNES rely on a group of European industrialists.

Finally, it is Arianespace which markets Ariane 6.

At the end of the so-called commercial mission, that is to say after the separation of the nanosatellites, this launch will be an opportunity to test more complex maneuvers, such as those that would be necessary for interplanetary missions.

After the first flight, the teams will analyze the measurements transmitted to the ground to authorize the next flight as soon as possible. Indeed, the ramp-up must be rapid to respond to the 27 launches already marketed by Arianespace.

An evolution of Ariane 6 is even already in preparation with an increase in its carrying capacity... without increasing its costs.

RETURN OF THE BOEING STARLINER NASA

STRIKE HARD FROM JUNE 26 2024 !

This launch, which experienced several years of delays and numerous last-minute postponements, represents a crucial step for Boeing's space program and for NASA.

A Crucial Demonstration Mission

The Starliner docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6, 2024. Initially, the two astronauts' stay was scheduled to last eight days, but it was extended due to technical problems. These complications include propellant issues and helium leaks, problems that required extensive analysis to ensure the safety of the crew and the ship..

Technical Problems Encountered

Thruster failures and helium leaks caused major concerns. NASA and Boeing had to carry out additional checks to ensure that the spacecraft was ready to return to Earth safely. Steve Stich, a NASA official, said the extra time was needed so teams could "verify the data, do some analysis and make sure we're really ready to go back."

The Return of the Starliner

The Challenge for Boeing

This mission is of paramount importance to Boeing. The aeronautics giant, which faces production quality problems in its commercial aviation branch, must prove its ability to carry out manned space missions. A success would strengthen Boeing's position in the space sector and allow NASA to have a reliable alternative to SpaceX for transporting its astronauts to the ISS.

In 2014, NASA signed contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to develop vehicles capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon capsule, has already successfully accomplished this task and has been carrying out regular missions since 2019. Boeing, on the other hand, has experienced significant delays and technical failures which have pushed back the operational entry into service of its Starliner spacecraft.

A Future Partnership with NASA

The atmospheric re-entry phase is undoubtedly the riskiest stage of this mission. At high speed, the Starliner capsule will have to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, experiencing intense friction which generates extreme temperatures. The heat shield is designed to protect the capsule and its occupants from this infernal heat, but any failure at this point could be catastrophic.

The success of this phase depends on many factors, including the accuracy of the trajectories, the perfect functioning of the navigation and control systems, as well as the structural integrity of the heat shield. NASA and Boeing teams have worked tirelessly to simulate and prepare for this critical phase of the mission, hoping to avoid past mistakes.

Consequences for the Space Industry

The success of the Starliner's return will have significant implications for the space industry. Boeing, by proving the reliability of its vessel, will be able to claim a leading role in future manned missions from NASA and other international space agencies. Additionally, the Starliner could be used for commercial missions, providing an alternative to SpaceX for private companies wanting to send crews or payloads into orbit.

The competition between Boeing and SpaceX is also beneficial for the industry in general, as it incentivizes innovation and constant improvement in space technologies. Each company attempts to outperform the other in terms of reliability, cost and efficiency, which ultimately benefits space agencies and consumers of space services.

Future Outlook for Boeing and NASA

Boeing's future in space depends largely on the success of this mission. If the Starliner's return goes as planned, it will mark a major milestone for Boeing and NASA. This will mean that Boeing has overcome technical challenges and is ready to fully participate in manned space missions.

For NASA, having two reliable suppliers for transporting astronauts to the ISS is crucial. This reduces the risks associated with reliance on a single supplier and ensures mission continuity in the event of a problem with one of the ships. Additionally, the diversity of transportation options allows NASA to better plan and manage missions based on availability and specific needs.

After years of delays and technical challenges, this mission represents an opportunity for Boeing to demonstrate the reliability and safety of its vessel.

The success of this mission would benefit not only Boeing, but also NASA and the entire space industry, by increasing competition and providing more flexibility for future missions.

The Advancement and Reliability of SpaceX Machines

Since 2019, SpaceX has played a crucial role as the primary provider of space transportation services for NASA. With its Crew Dragon capsule, SpaceX not only met expectations but also exceeded predictions in terms of reliability and performance. Here are some key points that illustrate SpaceX's lead and how it could influence the space landscape despite the rise of the Boeing Starliner:

The SpaceX Success Story

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, quickly gained a reputation as a pioneer in commercial spaceflight. After years of intensive development, the Crew Dragon capsule has been certified by NASA to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Since beginning operations in 2020, Crew Dragon has accumulated an impressive history of successful missions, establishing a high level of reliability.

Regular Operations Towards the ISS

SpaceX currently provides regular crew transport missions to the ISS, with rotations planned several times per year. This sustained pace allows SpaceX to consolidate its operational expertise and maintain consistency in the provision of space services. This consistency is essential for NASA, which can plan its missions with increased predictability and confidence in SpaceX's ability to meet deadlines and safety requirements.

Continuous Innovation at SpaceX

In addition to its operational reliability, SpaceX continues to innovate with advanced technologies such as the Falcon 9 rocket reusability system, which helps significantly reduce launch costs. This approach has allowed SpaceX to not only become competitive in the commercial market but also to push the boundaries of what is technologically possible in the space industry.

Impact on the Spatial Landscape

Despite the advancements of the Boeing Starliner and its potential to become a major player in the field of human spaceflight, SpaceX remains undeniably ahead in terms of mission volume and proven reliability. This reality could lead NASA to continue to favor SpaceX for the majority of its missions to transport astronauts to the ISS, while integrating the Starliner in a complementary role to ensure redundancy and operational flexibility.

SpaceX's significant advance in human spaceflight, with its Crew Dragon capsule, is a testament to its commitment to innovation and safety.

As the Boeing Starliner takes its first steps toward operationality, it remains to be seen how it will position itself in the competitive landscape against SpaceX. In the meantime, NASA benefits from a diversity of space transportation solutions that enhance its ability to maintain a continuous human presence on the ISS and beyond.

While awaiting the outcome of this mission, all eyes are turned to the sky, hoping for a safe return for the astronauts aboard the Starliner.

FEEDBACK ON THE LAUNCH OF THE MS-27 CARGO

This event, which is part of a long tradition of resupply missions, once again demonstrates the robustness and reliability of Russian space programs. The careful preparation, launch precision and flawless execution of space travel are the result of decades of experience and technical mastery.

Launch from Baikonur

Launch site number 31 of the Baikonur cosmodrome was the scene of this launch. At 12:42 p.m. Moscow time, the Soyuz-2.1a rocket, carrying the Progress MS-27 cargo ship, was launched into space. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in the vast steppes of Kazakhstan, is an emblematic site in space history. From the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, to modern missions to the ISS, Baikonur remains a pillar of space exploration.

The Soyuz-2.1a Rocket

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket is a modernized version of the Soyuz launcher, known for its reliability and efficiency. With a height of 46.3 meters and a diameter of 2.95 meters, the Soyuz-2.1a can carry up to 7,800 kg of payload into low Earth orbit. This three-stage launcher uses kerosene and liquid oxygen as fuels for its first and second stages, while the third stage, called Blok I, uses a similar mixture to provide orbital insertion of the cargo craft.

Theft and Separation

Once launched, the rocket followed a precise upward trajectory. Every step of the flight, from engine ignition to jettison of spent stages, was executed with meticulous precision. Separation of the third stage took place without problems, allowing the Progress MS-27 spacecraft to deploy into orbit. The antennas and solar panels deployed correctly, providing the power and communications needed for the remainder of the journey.

The Progress MS-27 Cargo Ship

The Progress MS-27 ship is an upgraded version of the Progress series of ships, designed specifically for resupply missions to the ISS. With a total mass of 7,300 kg, the Progress MS-27 is capable of carrying various types of cargo, including fuel, water, provisions and scientific equipment.

Resupply for the ISS

On June 1, 2024, at 2:47 p.m. Moscow time, the Progress MS-27 spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS. The vessel delivered a total of 2,504 kg of cargo. This cargo included 1,290 kg of devices and equipment for the station's systems, packaging for scientific experiments, clothing, food, as well as medical and sanitary products for the crew. In addition to these items, 754 kg of fuel were provided to resupply the station, as well as 420 kg of potable water and 40 kg of nitrogen.

The Importance of Supplies

Supply deliveries like this are vital to maintaining operations aboard the ISS. The equipment and devices delivered make it possible to maintain and improve the station's vital systems. Food and medical supplies are crucial to the well-being of astronauts and cosmonauts, while scientific supplies are essential for the continuation of the many ongoing experiments. The delivered fuel is used to adjust the station's orbit and for debris avoidance maneuvers, ensuring the safety of the station and its crew.

Crew Members

On board the ISS, an international team of seven astronauts and cosmonauts was ready to receive supplies. Among them are Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and Aleksandr Grebionkin, as well as NASA astronauts Matthew Dominic, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Tracy Dyson. Each of these members plays a crucial role in the daily operations and scientific research carried out aboard the station.

Historical and Technical Context

This was the eighth Russian space launch of the year 2024 and the fourth from Baikonur. This flight was also the 68th for the Soyuz-2.1a launcher and the 180th for a Progress family ship in history, including 91 missions to the ISS. These figures illustrate the frequency and reliability of Russian resupply missions, which are key elements of international space logistics.

Russian Space Mechanics

Russian space mechanics are renowned for their reliability and efficiency. Repeated successful launches and dockings without incident reinforce this reputation. The Soyuz-2.1a, in particular, is a launcher whose design dates back several decades but which has evolved over time thanks to continuous technological improvements. This reliability is a source of inspiration and comparison for other space agencies and private companies such as Ariane Espace and Boeing.

The launch of the Progress MS-27 is a perfect example of the synergy between experience, innovation and technology in the Russian space domain. Each resupply mission is a demonstration of the ability of Russian engineers and scientists to sustain complex space operations and contribute significantly to humanity's exploration and use of space. With missions like these, international collaboration in space continues to flourish, ensuring that the ISS remains a premier research laboratory and a base for future deep space exploration.

The Russian Progress MS-27 cargo ship, carrying supplies for the International Space Station (ISS), was launched Thursday, May 30, 2024 from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket, carrying the Progress MS-27 cargo spacecraft, was launched on Thursday at 12:42 p.m. (Moscow time) from launch site number 31 at the Baikonur cosmodrome.

The Progress MS-27's launch into a given orbit, its separation from the rocket's third stage, and the deployment of the ship's antennas and solar panels proceeded as usual, and smoothly as usual.

The cargo ship will dock with the ISS on June 1 at 2:47 p.m. Moscow time.

The Progress MS-27 delivered 2,504 kg of cargo to the ISS, including 1,290 kg of devices and equipment for the station's systems, packaging for scientific experiments, clothing, food, medical and sanitary products for the crew, 754 kg of fuel for supplying the station, 420 kg of drinking water and 40 kg of nitrogen.

Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and Aleksandr Grebionkin, NASA astronauts Matthew Dominic, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Tracy Dyson are currently on board the ISS.

This is the 8th Russian space launch in 2024 and the fourth from Baikonur. This flight was the 68th for the Soyuz-2.1a launcher and the 180th for the Progress family spacecraft in history (91st to the ISS).

One thing is certain, Russian space mechanics are well established, efficient, reliable, which should give food for thought to others (Nasa, Ariane Espace, Boeing, etc.). 

STARLINER THE BOEING SPACESHIP

But as tensions rise, a shadow looms over the launch site:

A technical problem compromises the takeoff.

On May 7, 2024, a day that should have marked a major milestone in space exploration, NASA and Boeing were forced to cancel the Starliner spacecraft's first manned flight to the international station.

Just two hours before the scheduled launch time, the dream faded, postponed to May 17, 2024.

The Starliner, designed to transport humans to distant celestial destinations, was to lift astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS.

The preparations seemed impeccable:

The Atlas V rocket was fueled, the weather was clear, and the astronauts were ready to embark on this historic journey.

But technology, so often a source of pride and wonder, chose that day to demonstrate its fragility.

A faulty valve on the Atlas V rocket was identified as the cause of the setback, plunging Boeing and NASA into a race against time.

United Launch Alliance (ULA), the rocket's manufacturer, quickly announced that a new attempt would be considered after careful analysis of the anomaly. But this is not enough to calm the anxious minds of those involved in this mission.

For Boeing, this postponement represents much more than just a delay in the schedule.

It is a crucial test, a last chance to prove the reliability and safety of the Starliner before venturing on regular missions to the ISS.

The aerospace giant has invested years of hard work, considerable resources and immeasurable hopes into this ambitious project. The success of this test mission is therefore vital for the future of the company in the space sector.

But the stakes are just as important for NASA.

For a decade, the US space agency has pinned its hopes on the Starliner, seeking to diversify its options for transporting astronauts to the ISS. With SpaceX as a lead partner in this endeavor, the addition of the Starliner to its arsenal represents a welcome redundancy, providing crucial operational flexibility in the event of an emergency or outage.

Dana Weigel, ISS program manager, emphasizes the strategic importance of having multiple means of transportation to the space station.

She emphasizes that this would make it possible to better respond to various unforeseen scenarios, thus ensuring the continuity of operations and the safety of astronauts.

However, despite the ambitions and efforts made by Boeing and NASA, it is impossible to ignore SpaceX's undeniable dominance in the space domain.

With its Crew Dragon spacecraft already operational and several successful missions to the ISS under its belt, SpaceX has taken a considerable lead in the race to conquer inhabited space.

The postponement of the Starliner launch raises important questions about Boeing's competitiveness in the space sector, as well as NASA's ability to maintain a balance between its various partners.

As SpaceX continues to set new standards in performance and innovation, Boeing faces a significant challenge:

Prove your worth in a cutthroat competitive environment.

Despite these challenges, the very essence of space exploration remains unchanged:

Pushing the boundaries of our understanding, exploring new horizons and achieving the impossible.

Delays and obstacles are an integral part of this daring human adventure, but they must not dampen our resolve to continue our quest for knowledge and discovery in the vast expanses of infinite space.

For the moment, we can only note that only SpaceX, which has a great head start both technically and in terms of reliability, remains the master in terms of launches to get to the international space station.

SPACEX CRUSHES COMPETITION AND EMERGES

AS THE UNDISPUTED LEADER

 IN THE GLOBAL SPACE INDUSTRY

April 27, 2024, will be etched in the history of aerospace as the day SpaceX demonstrated its supremacy by successfully launching two Galileo satellites aboard its Falcon 9 rocket, thereby overshadowing European space pride.

SpaceX's Overwhelming Victory:

While Europe's space sector grapples with delays in the Ariane 6 program and issues with the Soyuz and Vega launchers, SpaceX has once again proven its ability to innovate and push the boundaries of space technology. SpaceX's successful deployment of the Galileo satellites highlights the undisputed superiority of American space technology and marks a turning point in space exploration history.

SpaceX has distinguished itself from its competitors with remarkable technological advancements and its ability to achieve previously unimaginable feats. SpaceX was able to complete three rocket launches within 24 hours from three different launch sites, a feat that demonstrates the reliability and efficiency of its launchers. Furthermore, SpaceX has developed technology enabling the reuse of a rocket's core twenty times, a major breakthrough revolutionizing the field of space flight.

SpaceX's resounding success in the space sector extends beyond satellite launches. The American company has also succeeded in developing a reusable space capsule, the Crew Dragon, which was recently used to send astronauts to the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew program. This achievement reflects SpaceX's commitment to reducing costs and making space travel more accessible.

Decline of Europe's Space Sector:

Faced with SpaceX's repeated successes, Europe's space sector is experiencing alarming decline. The delay in the Ariane 6 program has left Europe without a means to launch new Galileo satellites, jeopardizing Europe's goal of space independence. While SpaceX continues to achieve remarkable feats in the space sector, Europe is facing significant delays in the development of its own launchers, calling into question its leadership position in the aerospace industry.

Europe's space situation is even more worrying as SpaceX continues to innovate at a rapid pace. The American company has recently developed the Starship technology, a fully reusable rocket capable of transporting passengers and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. While SpaceX prepares to launch the first manned flights to Mars in the coming years, Europe struggles to launch satellites into Earth orbit.

Challenges for Europe to Overcome:

Despite this setback, Europe remains determined to regain its space sovereignty. A new shipment of two Galileo satellites is scheduled for July 2024, this time aboard the Ariane 6 rocket. However, the delay accumulated by this program raises concerns about its reliability and its ability to meet Europe's needs for access to space. As SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of space technology, Europe must redouble its efforts to develop its own space capabilities and ensure its sovereignty in this crucial domain for its future.

Europe's space sector must also address the challenge of economic competitiveness. While SpaceX offers significantly lower rates than its European competitors, Europe must find ways to reduce its production and operating costs to remain competitive in the global space launch market.

Global Impact:

SpaceX's resounding success in the space sector marks a turning point in space exploration history and raises important questions about the future of Europe's aerospace industry. As SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of space technology, Europe must quickly adapt to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive market. By demonstrating its supremacy in the space sector, SpaceX is paving the way for a new era of space exploration, where innovation and technology will be the keys to success.

SpaceX's success in the space sector also has significant geopolitical implications. As the United States strengthens its position as a leader in space exploration, other powers such as China and Russia are also intensifying their efforts to dominate space. Europe, on the other hand, must find its place in this new space race and ensure its sovereignty in a crucial domain for its future.

The Need to Invest in Research and Development:

SpaceX's success in the space sector reflects the power and capacity for innovation of the American space industry. As SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of space technology, Europe must redouble its efforts to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive market. By investing in research and development, Europe can hope to regain its leadership position in the aerospace industry and ensure its sovereignty in space.

Europe's space sector must also collaborate more closely with the private industry to stimulate innovation and accelerate the development of new space technologies. By encouraging public-private partnerships, Europe can leverage the expertise and experience of space companies like SpaceX to strengthen its position on the global space stage.

SpaceX's resounding success in the space sector marks a turning point in space exploration history and raises important questions about the future of Europe's aerospace industry. While SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of space technology with private funding, Europe's space sector struggles to compete with the spectacular advancements of the American company, despite massive investments from European states and taxpayers.

SpaceX, a private company founded by Elon Musk, has demonstrated unprecedented innovation and efficiency in the space sector. By using private funds and avoiding the bureaucratic burden often associated with public projects, SpaceX has succeeded in achieving remarkable feats, pushing the boundaries of what was previously considered possible in space exploration.

In contrast, Europe's space sector, mainly represented by Ariane Espace, has faced numerous obstacles and delays in the development of its launchers. Despite massive investments from European states, Ariane Espace has been unable to compete with the speed and efficiency of SpaceX, leaving Europe in an increasingly precarious position on the global space stage.

Faced with this reality, Europe must rethink its space strategy and adopt a more agile and innovative approach. By investing in research and development and encouraging public-private partnerships, Europe can hope to regain its leadership position in the aerospace industry and ensure its sovereignty in space.

It is time for Europe to learn from SpaceX's success and adopt a more dynamic and ambitious approach for the future of its space program before it's too late!!

WILL TARDIGRADES COLONIZE THE MOON ?

Everything was going as planned when suddenly on April 11, the probe experienced a problem with its propulsion as it began its descent. The speed was too great to slow down enough so that it crashed at over 3,000 km/h into our satellite

What happened to the tardigrades after the crash ? 

Are some still viable, buried under regolith, lunar dust whose depth varies from a few meters to a few tens of meters ?

Animals proof against almost anything

Tardigrades, these tiny creatures, occupy a unique place in the animal kingdom. Their size of less than a millimeter in no way reflects their remarkable complexity. Equipped with two eyes and a neuronal structure, they also have a mouth orifice at the end of a retractable proboscis, an intestine housing a microbiota, and four pairs of legs devoid of joints but equipped with sharp claws.

Their relationship with arthropods, such as insects and arachnids, is undeniable, testifying to a common evolutionary past.
Although most tardigrades live in aquatic environments, their presence is felt in all environments, including the most inhospitable of urban areas.
These beings fascinate mainly because of their incredible ability to withstand extreme conditions, far surpassing those encountered on Earth or the Moon. They can suspend their metabolism, losing up to 95% of their body water without apparent harm.

Some produce trehalose, an antifreeze sugar, while others synthesize proteins that transform cellular constituents into a glassy matrix, providing vital protection.
Dehydration causes a dramatic reduction in their size, sometimes up to half, with the legs disappearing, leaving only claws.

In this state, called cryptobiosis, they patiently wait for more lenient conditions to return to life.
However, specimens vary in their ability to withstand this desiccation, and not all are capable of resuscitation. Adult tardigrades can survive several minutes at extreme temperatures, reaching up to –272°C or 150°C, and are resistant over the long term to gamma ray doses of up to 1000 or 4400 Gray (Gy) , depending on the species. This unparalleled ability to survive defies the limits of biology and continues to amaze scientists to this day.

But difficulties...to survive

First of all, they must have survived the impact. Laboratory tests showed that frozen specimens of the species Hypsibius dujardini were intact after a vacuum impact at 2600 km/h on sand but were mutilated above 3000 km/h.

They must then resist the absence of water and withstand a cold of –170 to -190°C during the lunar night and a heat of 100 to 120°C during the day. A lunar day or night lasts a long time, a little less than 15 Earth days. Even the probe was not designed to withstand such amplitudes and had to cease all activity after only a few Earth days.

Finally, the surface of the Moon is not protected from solar particles and cosmic rays, particularly gamma rays. But there the tardigrades would be able to resist. Indeed, Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, Professor at the University of Kiel in Germany, and his team showed that the doses of gamma rays striking the lunar surface were permanent but low compared to the doses cited previously. According to him, 10 years of exposure to gamma rays would correspond to a total dose of around 1 Gy.

Regardless, without water, oxygen or microalgae, the tardigrades will never be able to reactivate. Thus the colonization of the Moon by these animals is impossible. But specimens are on lunar soil and their presence raises ethical questions, as Matthew Silk, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, points out. Among these questions, there is one on the scientific level.

At a time when space exploration is taking off again in all directions, will contaminating other planets make us lose the possibility of looking for extraterrestrial life ?

PSYCHE MISSION ON THE METAL ASTEROID

SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE AND COMMERCIAL INTEREST

IN A LEGAL FRAMEWORK TO BE DEFINED

Powered by two large solar panels, the probe will be propelled by four ion engines expelling xenon at high speed, ensuring a six-year journey. In May 2026, Psyche will receive a gravitational boost from the planet Mars before heading towards the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Why return to observe an asteroid when the Japanese Hayabusa-2 and American Osiris-REx missions have already collected numerous data on two of these celestial bodies, Ryugu and Bénou, and brought back samples? Because the term "asteroid" actually encompasses a whole diversity of stars, and Psyche, the target of NASA's mission, differs considerably from its counterparts.

First by its size:

This 280 km diameter asteroid is worth so much because it is one of the “M-type” asteroids, meaning it is mainly composed of metals.

Then, by its composition: Psyche is made up of nickel, iron and gold. This type of asteroid is quite rare in our solar system and could allow us to answer many questions about the origin of planets like Earth, which is why NASA is sending a space probe to Psyche this Friday October 13, 2023.

Studying the heart of our planet

The main interest of this mission is to collect as much information as possible on this stellar object, similar to the earth's core. All rocky planets, including Earth, have a metallic core, but we still know little about ours due to access limitations imposed by extreme heat and pressure. Jules Verne's novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” unfortunately remains pure fiction.

This makes it easier for scientists to observe Psyche and her exposed heart. “One of the existing theories is that it was in the bowels of a forming planet,” explains David Oh, engineer and project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Psyche may have been the metallic core that was forming inside a baby planet, which then collided with another planet, which tore away that rocky mantle, leaving only a piece of that core in the 'space ".

So by studying Psyche, scientists could study the Earth's core of planets like ours in detail for the first time. Even more, since scientists assume that these are the remains of a planet from the beginning of our solar system, the information collected could shed light on how planets formed.

In particular, since scientists assume that Psyche is a remnant of a planet from the early days of our solar system, the data collected could shed light on the process of planetary formation. This will be the first exploration not only of an asteroid of this type, but also of a whole new world made of metal.

A value of 10,000 billion dollars

While the contribution to science promises to be enormous, the commercial attractiveness and legal framework of these new missions for the exploration and exploitation of space resources still raise questions.

Although this mission is primarily scientific in scope, the value of the asteroid could arouse envy and trigger a gold rush.

With a diameter of around 220 km, the asteroid Psyche could indeed represent a value of 10,000 billion dollars (or approximately 9,534 billion euros), according to estimates relayed by the American magazine Forbes.

This exceeds the accumulation of global economies, sparking keen interest and raising questions about the exploitation of space mining resources to compensate for the scarcity of certain metals on Earth. In addition, many H-type asteroids, which have a much higher metal composition than that of Earth, are found in abundant quantities.

A sector already very invested

The senators of the foresight delegation underline in a report published in June that the exploitation of space resources is no longer a science fiction scenario, but a reality.

Players, particularly from the private sector, are already mobilizing to position themselves on this future market. The sector is not at the embryonic stage since players, particularly in the private sector, are already working to ensure a place on this (future) market. Especially since the hope of exploiting minerals from space is fueled by the latest scientific advances. For example, the Osiris-Rex mission returned to Earth in September with 250 grams of samples from the asteroid Bennou, the largest quantity of such a celestial body ever reported on our planet.

At the beginning of the 2010s, American companies set the ambition to achieve this. Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, as well as Avatar director James Cameron, invested in one of these companies in 2012. The Duchy of Luxembourg also acquired, in 2016, 10% of one of these start-ups. The blow was over in 2018.

Some companies in the sector have gone bankrupt or been bought out to reorient themselves towards other space domains. Recent scientific advances fuel hopes of exploiting minerals from space. Companies like AstroForge in the United States, Asteroid Mining Corporation in the United Kingdom and ispace in Japan are positioning themselves as pioneers of this movement.

The American company AstroForge is increasing its tests with autonomous prospecting space robots in order to exploit extraterrestrial resources. It hopes to be able to launch its first real mission at the end of 2025 and bring it back to Earth by 2030, Matt Gialich, co-founder of the start-up, told the American channel CNN in April. AstroForge claims to have 31 platinum-rich asteroids in its sights

The essential stage of the moon

With the signing of the Artemis Accords in 2020, providing for a human return to the Moon, the installation of a base and the exploitation of its resources, the prospect of exploiting extraterrestrial minerals has become more concrete."The Moon, c is clearly the essential step" before going further in the exploration of Mars and exploiting celestial bodies, summarizes Florian Vidal, recalling that the return to our natural satellite gives rise to a new global race involving China , Russia, India and the United Arab Emirates.

However, technological, financial and legal challenges remain, particularly regarding the repatriation of minerals to Earth. Some experts suggest exploiting asteroid resources there for scientific purposes. This could be used to power probes to extend their lifespan . For example, the Juice mission, which left in mid-April to explore the icy moons of Jupiter. The resources could also be brought back to our planet.

The urgency of the legal framework

Alongside technical and scientific considerations, there is the thorny question of ownership of resources from space. But is it even possible to take over an asteroid ?

On this, Armel Kerrest, professor of space law and vice-president of the ESA European Center for Space Law, is categorical: “On a legal level there are rules which were set in the 1967 treaty , which provides that celestial bodies cannot be the subject of appropriation.”

Several countries, such as the United States, Luxembourg, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, have adopted texts to regulate these activities. China, Russia and even Saudi Arabia are also in the starting blocks.

Indeed, the treaty stipulates that “outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, cannot be the subject of national appropriation by proclamation of sovereignty, nor by way of use or occupation , nor by any other means".

On a global scale, these legal questions "must be addressed urgently in order to avoid space wars for natural resources, estimates Ifri in a note from May 2023. These questions should ideally be resolved before embarking on mining and energy exploitation of space."

SPACEX DISAPPEARANCE OF 212 SATELLITES

Starlink, which has long been SpaceX's flagship, seeks to eliminate digital deserts by bringing good web connectivity to underserved areas. While the company launched its Starlink V2 satellites to great fanfare in March, others simply seem to evaporate into the skies.

A mysterious escape

For three years, SpaceX has regularly reported satellite losses, but this time the disappearance peaked between July 18 and September 18, 2023.

Some experts question the reliability of this data, particularly that accessible in real time on sites such as Satellite Map

However, figures from public sources like space-track.org support these statistics. For the moment, SpaceX has remained silent about these losses, leaving doubt as to their nature: are these losses planned as part of the Starlink project, or are they the result of technical failures?

Technology or natural phenomenon, who is the culprit ?

It is important to note that the satellites in the Starlink constellation are not intended to last indefinitely. SpaceX predicted a lifespan of approximately five years for these satellites, before their natural disintegration in the Earth's atmosphere. Since the inaugural launch in 2019, more than 5,000 satellites have been put into orbit, of which 4,500 are still operational.

Another factor, in addition to technical failures, must be taken into account: solar activity and its potential electromagnetic disturbances. Satellites are particularly vulnerable to these phenomena, and this summer the Sun has been particularly turbulent, generating intense solar storms.

This could provide part of the explanation for the mysterious disappearances.

Already last year, Starlink admitted the loss of 40 satellites due to violent solar winds. It is therefore possible that this new series of disappearances is attributable to the same causes. SpaceX will certainly have to provide clarification in the coming weeks, but for now, the mystery remains intact.

The situation that currently concerns SpaceX cannot be underestimated.

The eyes of the world are now on SpaceX, eagerly awaiting answers to these cosmic riddles.

TRIP FOR THE NIGHT OF THE STARS

First arrival at McClellan-Palomar airport (KCRQ) is 4:05 local time.

Here is our little team Luc our pilot, scientific expert and journalist, Joanne and me (Mia) journalists for our expedition to Mount Palomar almost arrived at their destination finally almost !

Problem the keys of the helicopter that Luc must then use are not there !

Whoever dropped off the Bell 206 left with it by mistake.

Satisfaction all the same because undoubtedly the Mont Palomar awaits us, to us the stars !

After a telephone contact we are authorized to land near the observatory to leave the standard landing zone (zone H) free in case another helicopter needs to come on site.

Before installing on board the Bell 206, Luc as a good Pilot weighs everything!, because there are three of us on board plus the equipment and in the event of overweight, safety would be engaged.

Yes hard for me because my wardrobes will stay in the jet, but that's the price of safety.

.

Takeoff and after a short flight here we are at Mount Palomar.

As soon as we arrived, at work, but what a joy to be there, what an unobstructed view of a cloudless blue sky that promises us success.

We have installed photo equipment outside to do astrophotography.

Night falls with it, the magic of the stars begins.

I I

 I attach  to this article some photos taken on the spot but, for technical reasons on our online newspaper it is not possible to deposit high resolution versions, part of our readers are with smartphones, others with a connection not top.....

However, I hope you will be amazed by the beauty of the sky and the stars, the images speak for themselves.

We would like to thank the whole team who received us and welcomed us so well and without whom our expedition would not have been the same.

I am composing this article on my laptop sitting in the back of the jet, hoping that this expedition carried out for you, our readers, will make you discover a starry sky which is too often invisible to citizens living in cities where observation is almost impossible.

THE STARLINER SHIP WILL BE READY

IN MARCH ANNOUNCEMENT BOEING

Although the road has been rocky, there is no denying that the determination and commitment of the Boeing team has paid off, offering a ray of hope for future space travel.

Indeed, several challenges emerged during the development of the capsule, but this series of trials only reinforced Boeing's determination to meet these challenges with flying colors.

Recent developments indicate that the Starliner spacecraft should be fully operational by March 2024, according to recent company statements in August.

Mark Nappi, the program manager at Boeing, cautiously pointed out that setting a precise lift-off date has yet to be determined, due to variable factors such as the opportunities offered by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) industry group for the launch of the rocket, as well as the availability of seats on board the International Space Station (ISS).

As an essential partner of NASA, Boeing aims to meet the ambitious mission of providing a second provider for the transport of astronauts to the ISS, in addition to the services of SpaceX which have been used successfully since 2020.

The importance of diversifying transportation options to the ISS is a priority for NASA, helping to ensure reliable and continuous access to this crucial space station.

After an unsuccessful test flight in 2019, Boeing's Starliner capsule finally successfully crossed the threshold of the ISS in May 2022, ushering in a new era of exploration and opportunity.

Although this flight was unmanned, it marked a crucial step towards the spacecraft's final certification for manned flight.

Boeing is about to perform a decisive manned test to obtain this certification, before diving into its long-awaited operational missions.

The inevitable delays experienced by Boeing have been a source of continuous learning and development for the team.

The most recent hurdle, announced last June, was twofold. On the one hand, it was to perfect the parachutes that play a vital role in slowing the capsule down on its return to Earth.

Boeing experts have shown ingenuity in modifying the design to ensure optimal robustness, and a crucial test is scheduled for November to validate these improvements.

Passing this test is essential for the progress of the program and to ensure the safety of the astronauts.

On the other hand, a challenge related to the capsule's internal electrical cables was also diligently met. The tape used for the cables was found to pose a flammability hazard, requiring careful re-evaluation.

Boeing experts responded quickly by removing a substantial amount of tape and putting in place appropriate protective measures. This move demonstrates Boeing's unwavering commitment to crew safety and the reliability of its spacecraft.

Joel Montalbano, NASA's program manager, emphasized the critical importance of the Starliner vehicle to the future of the space station.

This spacecraft represents a major step in NASA's space strategy, with ambitious plans for its first manned flight.

The Starliner's maiden voyage will carry astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the ISS, where they will settle for a week-long mission. Liftoff will take place from scenic Cape Canaveral in Florida, symbolizing a new and exciting chapter in the history of space exploration.

In sum, the challenges Boeing overcame in developing the Starliner spacecraft have carved a history of resilience, innovation and perseverance.

Lessons learned from each hurdle have reinforced Boeing's resolve to deliver a safe, reliable and innovative space transportation solution for years to come.

With continuous efforts and strong collaboration with its partners, Boeing is poised to write a new chapter of thrilling space adventures, leaving a lasting mark in the exploration of the infinite cosmos.

EXTREME SOLAR STORM

RISK OF BLACKOUT FOR SEVERAL DAYS

These storms, though rare, could wreak devastating havoc if our modern civilization is not prepared to face their fury.

Scientists are sounding the alarm as a solar storm of unprecedented magnitude, unseen in 200 years, threatens our interconnected world.

A joint study by the University of Reading and Apollo Academic Surveys found that 90% of 144 experts consulted believed that without an accurate space weather forecast, Earth would be exposed to massive damage in the event of a solar storm.

These events, as powerful as the historic Carrington storm in 1859, could occur with increasing frequency, surpassing even the largest storms of the past two centuries, with potentially disastrous consequences for our infrastructure and technologies.

The Carrington Event, a cataclysmic solar phenomenon, had plunged the world into darkness, massively disrupting telegraphy networks and illuminating the night sky with glorious auroras visible across the globe.

According to specialists, a similar scenario could repeat itself in the next 10 years, posing a serious threat to our civilization, which is highly dependent on electricity and communications.

The urgency of adequate preparation is undeniable, as a lack of appropriate measures would lead to widespread power cuts for several days.

Dr Luke Barnard, a space weather expert at the University of Reading and co-author of the survey, highlighted the potentially devastating consequences of such blackouts:

"Imagine without electricity for several days. Transport, communication, essential services would be paralyzed. Our modern way of life would be put to the test".

The consequences would not just be limited to terrestrial infrastructure, as solar storms can also cause critical malfunctions in space.

Satellites, which play a vital role in GPS navigation, telecommunications, weather forecasting, and other vital areas, could be damaged, causing major disruption to our communication and geolocation systems.

Scientists denounce the lack of precision of current space weather forecasts, which do not allow adequate anticipation of major solar storms.

To remedy this shortcoming, they recommend the deployment of constellations of satellites closer to the Sun, in order to obtain more precise measurements of the solar wind, responsible for storms.

Faced with this imminent threat, the researchers stress the importance of increased international collaboration in space surveillance and the establishment of emergency backup systems to deal with power outages.

Coordinated and effective preparation could prove vital to protect our connected world and avoid a prolonged blackout with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In a world where technology and communications are everywhere, such an extreme solar storm could shake our modern society, reminding us of our vulnerability to the powerful and unpredictable forces of the universe.

Preparing to face this eventuality therefore becomes an absolute priority to ensure the stability and resilience of our hyperconnected world.

"SCIENCE" OR "NATIONAL SECURITY"

THE EXISTENCE OF UFOS INFLATE AMERICA

In recent years, ufological studies have experienced unprecedented enthusiasm, fueled by the courageous testimony of many "whistleblowers" who have seized the opportunity of digital transparency to share their revelations in broad daylight. These testimonies, striking in many respects, have now acquired greater credibility.

Congress itself conducts hearings, highlighting the testimonies of fighter pilots confronted with very real and recurring incidents.

During a hearing before a committee of the United States Congress on Wednesday, July 26, 2023, Mr. David Grusch, a resigning former agent of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, having elected "whistleblower" status, maintained that our governments concealed many realities from us... "We are not alone in the universe, and the authorities hide the evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials, including the remains of an unidentified object, affirmed Mr. Grusch, emphasizing being "absolutely" convinced that the United States has a UFO.

Colonel decorated during the war in Afghanistan, David Grusch spent 14 years of his life within the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) under the aegis of the American Department of Defense. From 2019 to 2021, he was a member of a team responsible for investigating UFOs, then appointed co-head of the Agency for the analysis of "unidentified aerial phenomena", a term officially used by the American authorities. During this period, he had access to images captured by American air pilots, revealing objects with "unknown characteristics".

Last April, David Grusch left the Ministry of Defense to start a "whistleblower" procedure.

This procedure forced him to hand over to the ministry his classified documents intended for the American Congress.

On July 26, 2023, before this national institution, he confirmed his sensational comments previously made on television:

"In the course of my duties, I learned that there was a program (...) aimed at recovering the remains of an unidentified device and analyzing it. This testimony is based on information that I were passed on by individuals with a proven track record of legitimacy and service to this country, and many have provided me with compelling evidence, in the form of photographs, official documents and classified oral testimony."

Decades of observation, including military

Awaiting evidence, remain the disturbing testimonies of two other witnesses called by Congress:

David Fravor, ancien commandant de la marine, et Ryan Graves, ancien pilote. Ryan Graves n’a pas hésité à exhorter la représentation à "mettre de côté la stigmatisation et à aborder le problème de sécurité et de sûreté que ce sujet représente", faisant aussi part des "multiples rencontres" expérimentées par plusieurs pilotes lors de vols d’entraînements.

"Si les ovnis sont des drones étrangers, c’est un problème urgent de sécurité nationale ; s’il s’agit d’autre chose, c’est un problème pour la science.

Dans les deux cas, les objets non identifiés sont une préoccupation pour la sécurité des vols", a-t-il aussi déclaré.

En avril, Sean Kirkpatrick, le responsable du service du Pentagone chargé d'enquêter sur ces phénomènes et les risques qu'ils posent pour la sécurité nationale, avait quant à lui assuré qu'aucun signe d'activité extraterrestre n'avait été recensé.

Le bureau "n'a détecté aucune preuve crédible d'une activité extraterrestre, de technologie non terrestre ou d'objets défiant les lois de la physique", avait-il affirmé.

Le gouvernement américain prend, toutefois, au sérieux ces phénomènes et la Nasa a récemment appelé à davantage d'efforts pour les étudier scientifiquement, tout comme le Pentagone qui, lui, s'inquiète de possibles activités d'espionnage chinoises.

Un certain nombre de cas déroutants

In the United States, these phenomena have been analyzed very closely since the 1940s, various projects having been set up over time, the best known being Grudge, Blue Book and the Condon report. Blue Book thus allowed the examination of 10,147 cases of which 9,501 were explained.

Of the 3,201 cases retained for the final statistical analysis, the confirmed but still unexplained cases represented a total of 22% of the total.

In July 2020, scientist Ravi Kopparapu and astrobiologist Jacob Haqq-Misra, both working for NASA, wrote in Scientific American magazine about the need to revisit the conclusions of the report that ended the "Blue Book" project, considering that "beyond military aircraft and strange weather formations, there are still a number of truly puzzling [unidentified anomalous] cases that might be worth investigating."

A little later, an assessment, mandated by the United States government, was published on June 25, 2021 just after Barack Obama said "there are images and recordings of objects in the sky, which we do not don't know exactly what they are".

This report was compiled by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and consisted of 144 sightings of unidentified phenomena between 2004 and 2021. Of these 144 phenomena, 18 exhibited objects with "unusual flight characteristics" and "appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, moving against the wind, maneuvering suddenly or moving at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion".

More surprisingly, some of these objects emitted radio frequency energy detected by US Air Force planes.

For some authors of parapsychology, UFOs are the angels and gods of our myths.

For others, UFOs are a fascinating anthropological case study, not extraterrestrials, but perhaps time travelers or manifestations from the supersensible world...Others, more prosaic, consider the hypothesis of military technologies developed in secret.

The fact remains that, extraterrestrial or not, unexplained aerial phenomena are indeed a reality that the American government takes seriously enough to communicate regularly about them.

Research into this exciting topic continues, ushering in a new era where the possibility of encounters of the third kind is no longer relegated to fantasy, but is a scientific and security challenge that authorities are determined to understand.

And if, finally, the authors of science fiction were right ?

SECRET RESEARCH PROGRAMS

ON UFO'S IN THE UNITED STATES ?

In an article from the scientific site The Debrief (in English) published Monday, June 5, a former American intelligence agent claims that programs are underway in the United States to exploit material from UFO crashes, "unidentified flying objects ", now referred to as "PAN" ("Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena").

Experiments that would have been hidden from Congress.

David Charles Grusch served in the armed forces in Afghanistan, before working at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).

He was notably assigned, from 2019 to 2021, to the team responsible for investigating UFOs. The ex-soldier assures that the American authorities have collected, in recent decades, "intact and partially intact" devices. These are "non-human" elements, that is to say of unknown or extraterrestrial origin, "according to their shape" and their "unique" characteristics, such as "their radiological signature".

In a file dated April 6, 2023, stamped "Department of Defense (DOD)", the officer explains that he tried to inform his hierarchy about the existence of secret American programs. According to him, these works have been practiced for decades.

As early as July 2021, the whistleblower is providing classified information to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense (DOD-IG). Almost a year later, in May 2022, David Charles Grusch filed a complaint with the intelligence department. The reason ?

He was allegedly pressured to remain silent.

Also according to the whistleblower, this "classified information" would have been "abusively withheld" or "hidden" from Congress by agents "to deliberately and intentionally thwart the legitimate monitoring", by parliamentarians, of the UFO analysis program .

Not all experts are convinced.

“So far, Grusch has only reported hearsay and documents he has seen, tempers Avi Loeb, physicist at Harvard, To make scientific progress, we need access to data and materials.

These revelations come three years after the publication of a Pentagon report on UFOs.

This document confirmed the existence of more than a hundred unexplained "aerial phenomena" over the past twenty years.

ARTEMIS 1 SUCCESSFUL RETURN TO EARTH

The Orion capsule landed after a journey of just under a month around the Moon.

It was a question of evaluating whether the heat shield will be able to withstand the 2800 degrees Celsius implied by the return of the capsule which contains mannequins fitted with sensors.

This ambitious program aims to return to the Moon by 2025. The American space agency aims to send four astronauts around the Moon on the next flight, in 2024, and to land humans there as early as 2025.

Our country the United States should invest nearly 100 billion dollars in this program. Reconnecting with a project initiated more than fifty years ago.

CHINA LAUNCHES SHENZOU 15 MISSION

TO HIS SPACE STATION

China is launching the Shenzhou-15 space mission to China's space station today, the first since the structure's assembly was completed three weeks ago. Its launch takes place on November 29, 2022.

Shenzhou 15 (simplified Chinese: 神舟十五号; pinyin: Shénzhōu shíwǔ hào; lit. "Godship 15") is the tenth Chinese manned space mission and the fourth to the China Space Station (SSC). Long March 2F is expected to take place from Jiuquan Launch Base

The Shenzhou spacecraft is launched by a CZ-2F or Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. This launcher is 62 meters high and weighs 477 tons. It can place 8.5 tons to an orbit of 500 km.

Three taikonauts will take place on board to replace the three occupants of the station. The trio, led by Mission Commander Fei Junlong accompanied by two space newcomers, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will transfer directly into orbit with the crew of Shenzhou-14 to the China Space Station currently under construction, which will mark a first in Chinese aerospace history.

Goals.

The mission should last six months, during which its members will be able to take full advantage of the three modules of the Chinese space station to carry out experiments. According to the mission plan, the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft will perform rapid and automated rendezvous and docking with the space station at the front port of the Tianhe core module, and then form a new combination of three spacecraft and three modules.

It will be the largest structure of the Chinese Space Station to date, with a total mass of nearly 100 tons. For comparison, the international space station can accommodate seven people and has 16 modules.

The Chinese Space Station is the first of its kind to be open to all UN member states. So far, several scientific experiment projects from 17 countries, including Switzerland, Poland, Germany and Italy, have been included in the selected projects of the Chinese Space Station, Zhao said.

Like the United States, China has great space ambitions. Behind, Russia is left behind. “For Beijing, space is above all a vector of prestige.

China aspires to become the world's leading power in all areas by 2049,” explains Marc Julienne, head of China activities at the French Institute for International Relations.

THE CURIOSITY MISSION

AFTER TEN YEARS ON MARS

On Mars, days are called sols, numbered from landing (Sol 0); August 6, 2022 therefore corresponds to Sol 3555, or 3652 Earth days.

This anniversary gives us the opportunity to draw up a technical and scientific assessment of this mission and to discuss the discoveries made with the instruments on board Curiosity.

Curiosity: an international adventure that began long before landing

Curiosity took ten instruments on board, two of which were Franco-American: ChemCam and SAM.

ChemCam is the result of the work of more than 300 people in France (CNRS, universities, CNES and industries) under the technical and scientific responsibility of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in cooperation with the Los Alamos National Laboratory ( LANL – USA) and under the project management of the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), which finances the French contribution to the project.

The ChemCam instrument was selected to analyze the chemical composition of the Martian rocks around the rover, by firing lasers at them and collecting the returned light (this is called laser-induced plasma spectrometry or LIBS). The principle is to heat the rock very strongly (>10,000°C) on a small surface (less than a square millimeter) so that a very small fragment is sublimated (passes from the solid state to the gaseous state) then ionized in the plasma state.

It is with the spectral analysis of the light from this spark that the atomic composition of the rock is determined and that the scientists deduce the nature of the rock.

SAM meanwhile is a large analytical chemistry laboratory, weighing nearly 40kg, or half of all the rover's instruments. It allows the rover's environment to be analyzed at the molecular level. It is also a Franco-American contribution to the mission, and results from the work of nearly 100 people in France (CNRS, universities, CNES and industry) under the responsibility of the Laboratoire Atmosphères Observations Spatiales (LATMOS) and under the supervision work of CNES. It was developed in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The latter also designed, developed and assembled Curiosity.

SAM makes it possible to heat the samples taken by the rover up to more than 850°C, and to finely analyze the chemical nature of the gases produced with the three additional instruments it contains. This makes it possible to provide information on the nature of the minerals and organic compounds present in the samples analyzed. SAM also has the ability to analyze the composition of the atmosphere to understand the present and past climate of the planet.

SAM is made up of three different instruments that search for and measure the organic compounds often associated with the presence of life on a planet. NASA

For 10 years, at CNES in Toulouse, the Martian Operations Center, named FOCSE (French Operation Center for Science and Exploration), has been welcoming French teams working directly with NASA (American Space Agency) every other week. Every evening, the engineers and scientists who operate the ChemCam and SAM instruments meet at CNES to ensure the monitoring and programming of the instruments, the recovery and processing of scientific data.

Mars: A once habitable planet

During the first soils following its landing, a phase of verification of the good health of the scientific instruments (ChemCam, SAM, etc.) was carried out. Then Curiosity began exploring the crater. We thought we would find there alluvium (sedimentary deposits) transported by one or more rivers, one of which flowed from the surrounding plateau. The rover was then looking for traces of these past flows.

Stupor: a sample, taken from the Cumberland drilling site, revealed that Mars had met, at one point in its history, all the conditions required for its habitability: liquid water, organic matter and a source of energy. A simple life form could have existed there, but we cannot say whether or not Gale Crater ever hosted a life form.

The various on-board tools have also made it possible to discover the presence of organic matter that has been sought for nearly 40 years. The teams are also studying the origin of the sediments present and their transformation into rocks when the water flowed on the Red Planet...

Observing all the conditions of habitability exhaustively is not common. To date, this has only been possible on Earth and Mars.

Confronting “ground truth” with orbital data

The Mars adventure nominally took place during the first Martian year (almost 2 Earth years). NASA then decided to extend the mission to explore other geological formations.

In the middle of the Gale crater, rises the central peak which culminates at more than 5500 meters above the floor. It is called Aeolis Mons, more familiarly called Mont Sharp. It exposes on its sides many geological layers whose stacking constitutes an open book on the history of the planet. Within 10 km of Curiosity's landing site, there are access routes to Mount Sharp that the rover takes around Sol 750.

Martian mountain landscape

One of the first notable layers encountered on this climb is called Vera Rubin Ridge, after astronomer Vera Rubin.

According to data collected in Martian orbit, this area is rich in a mineral called “hematite”. It is an iron oxide frequently formed in aqueous medium. Observing this layer from the ground thanks to the rover allows us to acquire what in geology we call the ground truth.

Orbital data remains important because it allows global coverage of the planet, but will never be as accurate as data acquired directly on the ground. However, contrary to what the orbital data suggested, this area is not much more enriched in hematite than the surrounding terrain. This highlights the complementarity of the two types of data, in orbit and on the ground, to analyze the history of the planet.

The second area of ​​interest for the Curiosity mission is what has been called the clays unit. Clays are of great interest for exobiology, which is interested in pre-biotic (before the appearance of living things) and biological processes in the universe. They protect the organic matter because they preserve it between the layers that constitute them.

We could see clays a little like the mille-feuille of minerals because they are made up of a stack of sheets, between which slips organic matter. The data acquired in this clay zone are still being analyzed and the scientific articles concerning them are gradually being published in various specialized journals. This area therefore characterizes the humid period of the history of Mars with remains of lakes and rivers.

Finally, the third area of ​​interest that constitutes Mount Sharp is the sulphate layer. They are potentially the witnesses of an environmental transition: the passage from an era rich in liquid water towards an increasingly arid era. The rover is currently heading to this area to test this hypothesis, and the results are yet to come.

All of these discoveries show that Mars has a complex and rich geological history dating back more than 3 billion years.

After ten years, despite the many challenges (significant diurnal thermal changes, dust and radiation), Curiosity and its instruments are still working. Precautions are taken to preserve the material so that the scientific mission can continue.

Today, at the entrance to the impressive Gediz Valley, Curiosity finds itself in a breathtaking landscape and the mission has just been renewed for three years.

martian landscape

To date, Curiosity is no longer alone in surveying the surface of Mars since the Perseverance rover joined it on February 18, 2021 with the mission of searching for prebiotic traces and collecting samples that will be brought back to Earth.

The Insight lander also landed on Mars in November 2018 to "listen" to the planet's tremors, thanks to the French seismometer SEIS, and thus study the heart of Mars. Knowledge of the structure of Mars is important to understand its evolution, for example to know the reasons for the disappearance of the magnetic field which once surrounded Mars and is closely related to the habitability of the planet.

Should have been added to this Rosalind Franklin, the first European rover which also includes French participation, as part of the Exomars mission. It was supposed to take off in September 2022 with a Russian launcher, but its launch has been delayed until further notice following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the political consequences of which impact scientific cooperation.

This rover should dig up to two meters deep to analyze rocks better protected from the harsh conditions prevailing on the surface. They are therefore supposed to contain more information about the pre-biotic chemistry of Mars than the samples analyzed so far.

All these extremely complementary space missions for the study of Mars are designed with this in mind, and are the result of international cooperation. But if they allow us to better understand the history of the planet Mars, they also inform us about the history of the young Earth.

Indeed on Earth, the very old rocks, witnesses of the appearance of life, have been obliterated by plate tectonics. On the other hand, this tectonics did not exist on the planet Mars or was very limited: we therefore have access to rocks that have been preserved for billions of years, and which were probably formed in an environment close to that of our Earth. at the time.

In view of the similarities of the two planets, better understanding the geological history of Mars will allow us to understand our genesis as well as our possible evolution.

Cyril Szopa, University Professor, Exobiologist at the Atmospheres Modeling and Spatial Observations Laboratory (LATMOS), University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) – University of Paris-Saclay

Éric Lorigny, Head of MSL/ Curiosity and Perseverance Operations at CNES, National Center for Space Studies (CNES)

Olivier Gasnault, Researcher at the CNRS, Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology, National Center for Space Studies (CNES)

Valérie Mousset, Project Manager for the French participation in the Mars Science Laboratory project, National Center for Space Studies (CNES) NASA

Article published in The Conversation

BACK TO THE MOON WITH

THE NEXT ARTEMIS MISSION

The great return of man to the Moon is soon underway: Monday, August 29, 2022 must take off the Artemis mission of the new American lunar program. Artemis is a program of NASA, the American Space Agency, which collaborates with the European Space Agency, the space agencies of Canada and Japan, as well as several commercial partners (Airbus and Lockheed Martin, in particular).

The take-off of Artémis 1 is scheduled for Monday August 29, 2022. The NASA mission must last 42 days in total. It's a trip to the Moon, but without an astronaut on board (that will be for Artemis 3). Meticulously choreographed, it should make it possible to collect spectacular images as well as valuable scientific data.

SLS, like Space Launch System, is NASA's new giant rocket. With its 70 tons and almost 100 meters high, it will be the most powerful launcher ever built, surpassing the emblematic Saturn V which carried 24 American astronauts to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. It will make its first flight from the Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Its four RS-25 engines, and two white boosters on each side, will produce 39 meganewtons of thrust - 15% more than the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket.

After two minutes, the thrusters will fall back into the Atlantic Ocean. After eight minutes, the main stage (orange in color) will detach in turn. There will then only be the Orion spacecraft, whose solar panels will then be deployed, attached to the upper stage of the rocket (ICPS). After circling the Earth, the latter will provide the final push that will place Orion on the Moon's trajectory, approximately 1.5 hours after takeoff - before also being released.

The journey, without an astronaut, of the Orion capsule

The ship will then only consist of the capsule where the astronauts will be in the future, powered by a service module built by the European Space Agency (ESA). It will take several days to reach the Moon, which it will approach on arrival at only 100 km. The Orion capsule will go up to 64,000 km behind the Moon - a record for a habitable capsule.

But initially, an empty Orion ship will be launched by the SLS to test all the stages of the mission. It will remain in orbit around the Moon for several days to allow NASA engineers to verify its performance.

Orion's "passengers"

The capsule will carry a dummy called Moonikin Campos, installed in the commander's seat and dressed in the new NASA suit. It will record the acceleration and the vibrations undergone. Also on board: two busts of women, named Helga and Zohar, and made of materials imitating bones or even human organs. One will be wearing a radiation jacket, the other will not. Sensors will make it possible to evaluate the levels of radiation received, in particular in deep space, where they are much more important.

If this dress rehearsal is successful, a first crewed flight will follow during the Artemis II mission, currently scheduled for mid-2024. Like their Apollo 8 predecessors, the mission's four astronauts will fly over the Moon but not land on it. We will therefore have to wait for Artemis III to see the real return of a crew to the surface of our satellite. After leaving Orion to land aboard the HLS (Human Landing System), two astronauts, including the first woman to walk on the Moon, will spend nearly a week on the surface, more than double the record set during the Apollo missions. . Scheduled for 2025, the mission could however experience several years of delay according to the latest report from NASA's Inspector General.

Goal Mars

The objective of the whole program is to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon, which will go through an essential stage: the construction of the Deep Space Gateway (DSG) , a space station hosting a habitation module around the Moon, capable of accommodating crews for a period of 42 days. The space station, the Gateway, will be assembled in orbit around the Moon from the end of 2024. Much smaller than the International Space Station (ISS), it will rely on a similar partnership between American, European and Japanese space agencies. and Canadian, but this time without Russia.

The Gateway is one of the big differences between the Artemis and Apollo programs. By offering a transit point and a place of experimentation between the Earth and the Moon, it is presented as an ingredient for the sustainability of the return to the Moon, the motivations of which today are less geopolitical than economic. The Artemis agreements, which France has just joined, for example explicitly provide for the possibility of extracting resources from the Moon (such as helium 3, essential for the nuclear fusion reactors of the future, or rare earths useful for the manufacture new technology...).

In the longer term, the idea behind the Artemis program is to reuse the developments made for a first trip to the planet Mars by 2040., confirms these indirect objectives that the Artemis mission is preparing:

JUPITER AS SEEN BY 

THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

Now NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet.

Webb's observations of Jupiter will give scientists even more clues about Jupiter's inner life.

The images obtained with Webb are truly remarkable, we can see details of Jupiter with its rings, its tiny satellites and even its galaxies in a single image.

In the stand-alone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several Webb images, the auroras extend to high altitudes above Jupiter's north and south poles.

The aurora glows in a filter mapped to more red colors, which also highlights reflected light from lower clouds and upper mists.

A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows mists swirling around the north and south poles.

A third filter, mapped to blue, presents light reflected from a deeper main cloud.

The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, like other clouds, because they reflect a lot of sunlight.

Brightness here indicates high altitude, so the Great Red Spot has high altitude haze, as does the equatorial region.

Numerous bright white "spots and stripes" are observed which are likely very high level cloud tops of condensed convective thunderstorms.

In a wide-field view, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea.

The blurry spots in the lower background are probably "photobombing" galaxies.

Information from the James Webb Telescope arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Webb's science and mission operations center, as raw data.

STScI processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and forwards it to the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes for dissemination.

Discoveries about the universe thanks to the James Webb space telescope should allow us to take an extraordinary leap in knowledge.

THE NIGHT OF THE STARS

The Night of the Stars.
This year it is from August 5 to 7, 2022 that you may have the chance to make a wish to see a shooting star.

To contemplate the heavenly vault you have to, a telescope if you can or go to an observatory.

Inquire: sites are open to observe these stars but you can see them with the naked eye.

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stars but you can see them with the naked eye.

A site has been opened to understand stars like the Great Bear, Jupiter, Saturn's rings, etc.

Tap on your tablets ''Nights of the Stars'' and meet on August 12 and 13 for the rain of shooting stars.

I leave you I go to the observatory of Mount Palomar to watch them.

THE JAMES-WEBB TELESCOPE TAKES US

13 BILLION YEARS IN THE PAST

Take pictures of the origins of the universe

In the photo taken by the JWST, we see a lot more as shown in the comparison below. The bright dots with crosses are stars in our galaxy. These “peaks of light” are due to the configuration of the telescope mirror, segmented into small hexagons. Everything else is galaxies. On the other hand, the biggest difference lies in the time it takes to take it. It took several weeks for Hubble to produce this image, but only twelve and a half hours for Webb. This is due to the large size of its mirror, collecting more light faster.

Some of the galaxies visible in this image are 13 billion light-years away. This means that light has taken 13 billion years to travel to us since it was emitted from the galaxy, meaning that we see the universe as it was shortly after the Big Bang. If this could have been possible with Hubble, the James-Webb telescope has a much better resolution, making it possible to detect the shapes of galaxies in a much more detailed way.

These galaxies are of various morphologies and colors. The colors tell us about their distances, the furthest being those with the longest wavelength, therefore the reddest. These are also simpler forms, less structured, because they are "younger". Galaxies take on increasingly complex shapes as they interact with other galaxies.

There is still a huge field to photograph with the Webb, because the part of the universe that we see in this image is tiny: we could hide it by holding a grain of sand at arm's length.

Infrared to understand the formation of galaxies

One of the big differences between Hubble and the Webb is their spectral range: Hubble sees mainly in the visible while the Webb is an infrared telescope. Stars near the Big Bang, although long dead, emitted ultraviolet radiation. Their distance, due to the expansion of the universe, shifts their wavelengths towards the infrared.

The Webb will also make it possible to observe stardust. This substance exists in two forms: carbonaceous, similar to soot, and in the form of silicate, resembling sand. It forms around stars at the end of their life, then passes through the interstellar medium, eventually forming new stars. And eventually, new galaxies.

This dust has the crucial property of being visible in the infrared and opaque in the visible, making it impossible for Hubble to analyze it. The Webb's observation of dust should lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms of formation of stars and galaxies. This will be done in particular by observing the Carina Nebula, the Austral Ring Nebula and Stephan's Quintet.

Finally, the images from the Webb telescope, freely accessible to scientists and the general public, will make it possible to scrutinize exoplanets and their atmosphere. Indeed, several molecules are observable in the infrared – the water molecule for example.

CONTROL OF THE MOON A STRATEGIC CHALLENGE BETWEEN

THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA

This is what NASA administrator and former astronaut Bill Nelson told German newspaper Bild in an interview published on Saturday.

The head of the US space agency has indeed declared that China's space program is a military program. He added that China had stolen some ideas and technologies.

But this Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry clearly responded to Bill Nelson. “This is not the first time a NASA chief has made irresponsible remarks against China.

When it comes to our space program, which is completely normal and reasonable, our country is constantly the victim of smear campaigns. Even though we have always called for the construction of a community of nations in space and we have always firmly opposed its militarization. »

China is defending itself against accusations by NASA administrator Bill Nelson. It is absolutely not in his plans to "take control" of the Moon.

But over the past decade the pace of China's space program has picked up with a program that focuses on the moon. China has in fact never hidden its intention to embark on the conquest of space, quite the contrary. Since the 1990s, it has been developing an independent space program, on the fringes of international cooperation. It must be said that China was excluded from the ISS because the United States forbids NASA any collaboration with Beijing. A reason that pushed her to build her own station.

After a first unmanned landing in 2013, China was the first to land a rover on the far side of the Moon. And she hopes to send astronauts to our natural satellite before the end of the decade. It also plans uncrewed missions to the moon's south pole by 2025.

The President of China Xi Jinping is also the biggest promoter of this program which he baptized “Space Dream”. A dream that is becoming reality. On April 29, the central module Tianhe "Heavenly Harmony" of the future Chinese space station was successfully launched from the base of Wenchang, located on the island province of Hainan. A decisive step in the creation of the future Chinese space station Tiangong “Heavenly Palace”. A base that will consist of three parts, including the central Tianhe module, will be the management and control center. Two other 14.4m long modules, Wentian "Heavenly Quest" and Mengtian "Heavenly Dream", will be attached to Tianhe.

This is enough to worry NASA, as part of its Artemis program, which plans to send a crewed mission into orbit around the Moon in 2024 and to make a crewed landing near the lunar south pole in 2025....

UN ETRANGE OBJET DANS LA VOIE LACTEE

Une découverte « un peu effrayante », selon l’astrophysicienne Natasha Hurley-Walker ?

Des astronomes australiens ont observé un étrange objet tournant dans la Voie lactée qui, selon eux, ne ressemble à rien de déjà vu, selon une publication scientifique publiée dans la revue Nature. Un objet mystérieux qui illumine le ciel de ses ondes radio comme aucun autre.

L’objet, repéré pour la première fois par un étudiant, produit un important rayonnement électromagnétique trois fois par heure. Les ondes sont émises toutes les 18,18 minutes, explique Natasha Hurley-Walker, qui a observé le phénomène dans l’Outback australien. « Il n’y a rien de connu dans le ciel qui fasse cela ». Une source d'ondes radio comme il n'en avait jamais observé auparavant.

A seulement 4.000 années-lumière de la Terre.

« C'est presque effrayant, commente Natasha Hurley-Walker, chercheur à l'université Curtin (Australie) dans un communiqué de l’Icrar. Parce qu'il n'y a rien de connu dans le ciel qui fasse ça ». Rien de connu qui libère autant d'ondes radio régulièrement, toutes les 20 minutes.

Cette source, les chercheurs l'ont débusqué grâce d'une part au large champ « de vision » du Murchison Widefield Array (MWA, Australie) et à son extrême sensibilité. Une combinaison qui permet de « sonder l'ensemble du ciel et de détecter l'inattendu ». Mais ne nous y trompons pas. Les astronomes ont l'habitude d'observer des objets qu'ils appellent transitoires. Des objets qui semblent clignoter dans le ciel.

Ce qui rend ce nouvel objet vraiment particulier c'est qu'il s'allume pendant une minute trois fois par heure. Les autres transitoires connus, eux, peuvent émettre pendant quelques jours -- c'est le cas des supernovae -- ou pendant seulement quelques millisecondes ou peut-être quelques secondes -- lorsqu'il s'agit de pulsars.

Les astronomes avancent aussi que l'objet est incroyablement brillant -- dans le domaine des ondes radio, s'entend -- et pourtant, plus petit que notre Soleil. Et qu'il émet des ondes radio hautement polarisées. De quoi suggérer non seulement qu'il s'accompagne d'un champ magnétique particulièrement puissant, mais aussi qu'il est capable de convertir cette énergie magnétique en ondes radio d'une manière bien plus efficace que tout ce que nous connaissons par ailleurs.

L’équipe a donc établi que l’objet se trouve à environ 4 000 années-lumière de la Terre, qu’il est incroyablement brillant et doté d’un champ magnétique extrêmement puissant.

Les hypothèses ?

« Si vous faites tous les calculs, vous trouvez qu’il ne devrait pas avoir assez de puissance pour produire ce genre d’ondes radio toutes les 20 minutes. Cela ne devrait tout simplement pas être possible », a déclaré Natacha Hurley-Walker.

Il pourrait s'agir là du tout premier «  magnétar » -- une étoile à neutrons, issue de l'effondrement d'une étoile massive en fin de vie, entourée d'un champ magnétique intense -- à ultra longue période jamais observé. L'objet a bien déjà été imaginé par les théoriciens. Ou encore d’une « naine blanche », une étoile vieillissante d’une température en surface deux fois plus élevée que celle du soleil.

Un type d'objet nouveau ?

« Bien sûr, il pourrait s'agir de quelque chose auquel nous n'avons jamais pensé. Il pourrait s'agir d'un type d'objet entièrement nouveau », affirme Natacha Hurley-Walker.

L'équipe de recherche a pu observer le signal sur une large gamme de fréquences.

 « Cela signifie qu'il doit s'agir d'un processus naturel, ce n'est pas un signal artificiel », a assuré la scientifique à la question de savoir si ce signal radio puissant et cohérent provenant de l'espace pourrait avoir été envoyé par une autre forme de vie.

LE TELESCOPE SPATIAL JAMES WEBB

A ACHEVE SON DEPLOIEMENT

Des dizaines d’étapes au millimètre près, à des kilomètres de la Terre, sans plan B. Le James Webb Telescope, successeur de Hubble, est entièrement déployé dans l’Espace deux semaines après son lancement depuis Kourou, en Guyane, annonce l’agence spatiale américaine.

Le télescope spatial a achevé avec succès ce samedi 8 janvier 2022 la dernière étape de son déploiement, avec celui de son miroir principal, et il se trouve désormais dans sa configuration finale pour pouvoir commencer, dans un peu plus de cinq mois, son exploration du cosmos​.

L'emblématique miroir principal du télescope mesure environ 6,5 mètres de diamètre, et était donc trop grand pour entrer tel quel dans une fusée lors de son décollage, il y a deux semaines. Ses deux côtés avaient ainsi dû être repliés vers l'arrière.

La première de ces deux ailes a été déployée vendredi, et la seconde s'est ouverte samedi matin, comme prévu, a annoncé la Nasa. Les équipes de l'agence spatiale continuaient toutefois à la verrouiller en place, afin de la sécuriser de façon définitive.

La Nasa retransmettait samedi matin en direct les images de la salle de contrôle, où des dizaines d'ingénieurs ont applaudi de joie à l'annonce du déploiement complet.

« Je suis ému », a déclaré en direct par vidéo Thomas Zurbuchen, responsable des missions scientifiques à la Nasa. « Quelle étape extraordinaire. »

Observer les premières galaxies

Le déploiement dans l'espace d'un tel télescope, non seulement de ses miroirs mais aussi de son bouclier thermique plus tôt cette semaine, était une procédure ultra-périlleuse qui n'avait jamais été réalisée par le passé.

Le télescope spatial le plus sophistiqué jamais créé entre désormais dans une phase « d'alignement et de calibrage » qui doit durer cinq mois, avant les premières prises de vue, explique la Nasa.Avant d'être opérationnel, le télescope devra toutefois encore atteindre son orbite finale à 1,5 million de kilomètres de la Terre.

Observatoire spatial le plus puissant jamais conçu, James Webb doit notamment permettre d'observer les premières galaxies, formées seulement environ 200 millions d'années après le Big Bang.

LE LANCEMENT DU TELESCOPE SPATIAL JAMES WEBB POUR UN LONG VOYAGE JUSQU'AU POINT L2

Après plusieurs années d’attente, c’est enfin fait ! Ce samedi 25 décembre à 13h20, heure française, de nombreux ingénieurs, astronomes et passionnés ont retenu leur souffle pendant plusieurs minutes alors que s’élançait Ariane 5 depuis la Guyane.

Dans sa coiffe se trouvait le plus grand et le plus puissant observatoire spatial de toute l’histoire.

Plié pour tenir dans la coiffe d'Ariane 5, comme une chrysalide d'un peu plus de 4 mètres de diamètre, l'engin fabriqué par Northrop Grumman doit déployer un miroir primaire de 6,5 m, et un bouclier thermique souple de 14 mètres sur 20, l'équivalent d'un court de tennis.

Le lancement dans l'espace du télescope spatial James Webb s'est déroulé parfaitement, mais il lui reste une série de manœuvres critiques à accomplir avant de pouvoir fonctionner dans quelques mois.

Et il a encore du chemin à faire, 1,5 million de km à couvrir en un mois, avant d'atteindre le point de Lagrange 2, à quatre fois la distance séparant la Terre de la Lune.

Pour atteindre ce poste d'observation final, le James Webb a effectué la première, et la plus importante, de trois corrections de trajectoire.

La grande impulsion que lui a fournie la fusée pour atteindre son but a été sciemment minimisée pour éviter que l'instrument, qui ne peut freiner sa course, dépasse son objectif, sans véritable espoir de retour.

La semaine qui vient va s'avérer cruciale.

Environ deux jours et demi après le lancement et une deuxième correction de trajectoire, les ingénieurs du centre de contrôle du télescope, à Baltimore, vont superviser le relâchement des deux « palettes » contenant le bouclier solaire.

Cet empilage de cinq grandes voiles d'un tissu aussi fin qu'un cheveu, est la condition sine qua non au bon fonctionnement du James Webb et de ses instruments, dont la température de travail demande un froid minimum de -230°C.

Son objectif :

étendre nos savoirs sur l’Univers et pourquoi pas lever le voile sur certains des mystères les plus persistants de l’astrophysique.

En attendant, il convient d’arriver sur place, autour du point de Lagrange 2, à plus d’1,5 million de kilomètres de la Terre. Au cours de ce voyage, le Webb Telescope devra par ailleurs opérer plusieurs manœuvres essentielles.

Correction de trajectoire

L’une d’elles a été exécutée avec succès environ 12,5 heures après le lancement. Alors qu’il se trouvait à environ 160 000 km de la Terre, l’observatoire a en effet exécuté une brûlure de ses propulseurs pour corriger sa trajectoire, s’assurant ainsi qu’il atteindrait sa destination en toute sécurité.

La correction de trajectoire est une opération assez courante dans les heures qui suivent le lancement d’un vaisseau.

En général, ces manœuvres impliquent de se retourner dans le but de ralentir. Dans le cas du Webb Telescope, cela était impossible, car ses instruments ultrasensibles auraient été exposés au Soleil.Ainsi, l’observatoire ne pouvait qu’augmenter sa vitesse.

En prévision, la séquence de lancement de l’observatoire a été conçue pour fournir juste un peu moins de puissance que nécessaire plutôt que juste un peu plus. Cette brûlure, surnommée Mid-Course Correction Burn 1a (ou MCC1a), a donc été l’occasion pour l’observatoire d’affiner sa trajectoire vers L2.

Selon la NASA, il s’agissait de la plus importante des trois brûlures prévues au cours de ce voyage et la seule qui devait être soigneusement chronométrée.

La suite du programme

Dès le troisième jour, ce mardi, le Webb Telescope commencera à déployer son pare-soleil dans l’optique d’empêcher la lumière du soleil d’atteindre les capteurs infrarouges du télescope, les pièces les plus essentielles de cette mission.

Pour sonder les profondeurs du cosmos, l’observatoire doit en effet fonctionner à des températures extrêmement basses. Cette manœuvre cruciale devrait normalement s’opérer en trois jours, impliquant environ 7 000 pièces.

Après six jours de vol, le miroir secondaire du télescope devra à son tour se déployer avant l’ouverture du miroir principal tapissé d’or le lendemain. Là encore, tout devra fonctionner correctement au risque de faire échouer la mission.

Enfin, un mois après le lancement, le Webb Telescope devrait atteindre le point de Lagrange L2.

UNE MISSION RUSSE ENVOIE UN MILLIARDAIRE JAPONAIS DANS L'ESPACE

Ce mercredi 8 décembre 2021 à 8h38, une fusée Souyouz a décollé de Baïkonour pour emmener le milliardaire Yusaku Maezawa, son assistant et un cosmonaute russe vers l'ISS, marquant une nouvelle étape dans la course au tourisme spatial.

Un milliardaire japonais a décollé ce mercredi 8 décembre au matin à bord d'une fusée russe pour un séjour de douze jours à bord de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS), un voyage marquant le retour de Moscou dans le tourisme orbital.

Le fantasque Yusaku Maezawa, âgé de 46 ans et qui a fait fortune dans la mode en ligne, et son assistant Yozo Hirano sont partis comme prévu du cosmodrome de Baïkonour au Kazakhstan à 7h38 GMT.

Il est prévu que leur vol dure six heures, avec un arrimage attendu au module Poïsk du segment russe de l'ISS à 13h41 GMT.

Un voyage de douze jours

Le cosmonaute Alexandre Missourkine, qui fait partie de la mission, a jugé que ses compagnons auraient un programme chargé.

Il a prévu avec eux un tournoi "amical" de badminton en apesanteur. Le milliardaire, qui s'est fixé 100 tâches à accomplir dans l'espace, a prévu de documenter en vidéo son séjour sur sa chaîne YouTube qui compte plus de 780 000 abonnés.

Sept personnes se trouvent actuellement à bord de l'ISS, dont deux Russes et un Japonais.

Dans la matinée, le milliardaire, son assistant et le cosmonaute Alexandre Missourkine, qui pilotera le Soyouz, ont quitté leur hôtel à Baïkonour au son d'une chanson soviétique qu'on met traditionnellement pour tous les cosmonautes avant le vol. Cette chanson, sur les cosmonautes nostalgiques de leur maison, a été partiellement chantée en japonais.

"Les rêves se réalisent", a tweeté mercredi matin Yusaku Maezawa. "Je suis excité comme un enfant avant un voyage de classe", a-t-il dit lors d'une conférence de presse à la veille du départ.

Avant cela et pendant de longues semaines, lui et son assistant se sont préparés à la Cité des étoiles, ville construite près de Moscou dans les années 1960 pour former des générations de cosmonautes.

Un  secteur concurrentiel  à exploiter pour la Russie

Le secteur des vols privés spatiaux, très lucratif, est actuellement dynamisé par la récente entrée dans la course des sociétés des milliardaires américains Elon Musk (SpaceX) et Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), ainsi que celle du Britannique Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic).

En septembre, SpaceX a organisé un vol de trois jours en orbite avec un équipage composé intégralement d'amateurs. Elle prévoit aussi d'emmener plusieurs touristes faire le tour de la Lune en 2023, dont M. Maezawa, qui finance cette opération.

Après un hiatus d'une décennie, le vol de mercredi marque dès lors le retour dans l'arène de l'agence spatiale russe, Roscosmos, alors que l'industrie aérospatiale du pays est minée par des scandales de corruption et des difficultés techniques et financières.

En 2020, avec la mise en services des fusées et capsules de SpaceX, la Russie a perdu son monopole des vols habités vers l'ISS et les dizaines de millions de dollars que la NASA et d'autres agences spatiales payaient pour chaque place à bord des Soyouz.

La mission des deux touristes japonais est organisée par Roscosmos et son partenaire américain Space Adventures. Entre 2001 et 2009, ces deux partenaires avaient déjà envoyé de richissimes entrepreneurs dans l'espace à huit reprises.

Signe de la volonté du secteur spatial russe de faire peau neuve, Roscosmos a dépêché en octobre un réalisateur et une actrice à bord de l'ISS pour y tourner le premier film long-métrage de l'histoire en orbite, avant un projet concurrent de la star hollywoodienne Tom Cruise.

SUCCESSFUL TAKEOFF FOR SPACEX'S FIRST TOURIST MISSION

The space tourism passes a new milestone. Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, sent four passengers for three days in space on Wednesday, September 15. At 2:02 am that night, the launch of SpaceX's fourth manned mission, the first entirely with civilian passengers, without any professional astronauts, went as planned. The four Americans aboard the Crew Dragon capsule will remain in orbit for three days.

Passengers took off from the legendary Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Center, Florida, where the Apollo missions took off to the moon, boarding a Falcon 9 rocket. Atop the Falcon 9 rocket, which measures 70 meters high, is perched the Dragon capsule, where the crew is located. This spacecraft has already taken 10 astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on three separate missions.

The Dragon capsule (8m high, 4m in diameter) has been modified here: a huge glass dome has been installed to offer passengers a 360 ° view of the vacuum of space. It replaces the system normally intended to dock with the ISS. The Dragon capsule will then remain in space for three days. It will go further than the ISS, which rotates at an altitude of 400 km, aiming for an orbit of 575 km. It will then begin a vertiginous fall towards the Earth, and will land off the coast of Florida, slowed down by immense parachutes. This time, it is about going to fly further than the International Space Station. "The risk is not zero", recognizes Jared Isaacman in one of the episodes of the documentary broadcast by Netflix on the mission. “You are traveling in a vessel at 28,000 km / h around the globe.This kind of environment is associated with some risk. "

Called Inspiration4, this mission is to conclude a summer marked by the flight of billionaires over the final frontier: first Richard Branson on July 11, aboard the Virgin Galactic ship, then a few days later Jeff Bezos, with his company Blue Origin.

A crew of novices

This 100% tourist mission was chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman, at his expense. This 38-year-old American, married with two daughters, is the CEO of the company Shift4 Payments, which offers a service for processing bank card transactions to stores and restaurants. He created it when he was 16, from the basement of the family home. Passionate about piloting, he holds a record for circumnavigating the world in a jet and is qualified to fly on military aircraft. He is a captain on board.

Three anonymous are on the trip, selected by the billionaire through an original process that began with an advertisement projected during the Super Bowl halftime. Each seat is meant to embody a value. Hayley Arceneaux, survivor of pediatric cancer, represents "hope". The 29-year-old was selected because she works as a medical assistant at St Jude's Pediatric Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the youngest American to be sent into orbit around the Earth and the first person with a prosthesis to go to space, and she is the medical lead of the mission.

Chris Sembroski, 42, got the seat of “generosity”. He is a former US Air Force employee who now works in the aviation industry and was selected after making a donation as part of the fundraiser for St Jude's Hospital. Its role is to help manage cargo on board, and communications with Earth.

Finally, the last seat represents "prosperity", and was offered to Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old professor of earth sciences who, in 2009, almost became an astronaut for NASA. She took part in an experiment in Hawaii simulating life on Mars, and twice applied to NASA to become an astronaut. In 2009, she arrived among the finalists (a few dozen out of more than 3,500 candidates at the start). She is the fourth African American woman to go to space. She is the mission pilot, assisting the commander. It won its seat by creating an online sales site linked to the space, as part of an entrepreneurial competition organized by Jared Isaacman's company.

None are professional astronauts.

A training of several months

All four of them trained for just under six months, compared to years for astronauts. They experienced the g-force to which they will be exposed thanks to a centrifuge, a rapidly rotating arm of several meters. On board parabolic flights, they have already tasted a feeling of weightlessness. They also did a high altitude snow trek on Mount Rainier in the northwestern United States.

Finally, although the flight will normally be fully automated, the passengers have been trained by SpaceX to be able to take control in the event of an emergency.

Science

During the three days in orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed. Tests will be carried out before and after the flight, to study the effect of the trip on their body.

A Netflix series to follow the adventure

Inspiration4 can be followed in a documentary series called Countdown on Netflix. Five episodes are planned in total on this mission. Four episodes of this series have already been put online on the platform presenting first the four members of the crew, then the training and the final preparations before the flight. The last, which will be broadcast at the end of September, "just a few days" after the end of the mission.

The start of space tourism on a larger scale

The stated goal of the mission is to open the doors of space to more people.

Several tourist mission projects are already underway. In January 2022, three businessmen will travel to the ISS alongside an experienced astronaut. SpaceX is also planning another trip to orbit for four private clients, organized by intermediary company Space Adventures. Finally, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa must also take a trip around the Moon, a priori in 2023, this time aboard the Starship rocket, still under development by SpaceX.

As for Virgin Galactic, the start of regular commercial operations is scheduled for 2022. Russia, for its part, will send an actress and a director to the ISS, aboard a Soyuz rocket. The goal: to shoot the first fiction film in orbit and in zero gravity.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

A FIRE AND CRACKS IN THE RUSSIAN ZVEZDA MODULE

A fire is said to have started in the Zvezda service module, which is part of the Russian wing of the station. The kind of thing you don't like to see 400 kilometers above Earth, in a capsule stuffed with oxygen and therefore highly flammable.

This incident, which certainly did not damage anything, follows several other incidents on board the ISS in recent months. In 2019 and early 2021, the Zvezda module had notably experienced air leakage problems. On the Zvezda module which dates from 1998, the oldest, two cosmonauts spotted mini-cracks at the end of August. Vladimir Soloviev, chief engineer of RKK Energuia - a company responsible for maintaining the Russian part of the station -, also shared the cracks detected on the Zvezda cargo module.

"About 80% of flight systems are at the end of their service life, which means that once all the systems have exhausted their service life, the next day irreparable breakdowns could occur," he said. -he adds. What revive the question of the obsolescence of the Russian module on which cracks appear.

However, Roscosmos does not plan to do major works in the ISS. And for good reason: Russia is clearly thinking of withdrawing from the ISS (United States, Canada, Japan, European Space Agency) in order to launch its own space station, or even a lunar base with China.

Who will therefore take care of the maintenance of this part of the ISS? On the western side, we plan to use the station at least until 2024....

JEFF BEZOS AND RICHARD BRANSON

ARE NOT ASTRONAUTS !

In a press release, the organization certainly recalls the conditions for obtaining the "wings" of an astronaut, in particular in terms of altitude reached and training. But the FAA adds that an astronaut is a "member of the crew", who participated in the piloting and "contributed to safety during space flight". It is therefore also necessary to have been responsible, during the flight, for activities "essential to public safety", or which "have contributed to the safety of manned space flights". The American administration therefore seems to want to recognize the difference between a Neil Armstrong and a Jeff Bezos: sitting in your seat enjoying the trip therefore does not count. As passengers on "tourist" flights, the two billionaires are excluded from the profession of "astronaut".

A possible honorary distinction

As mere passengers on their respective flights, it therefore seems that Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cannot claim the title of astronaut. The FAA press release nonetheless mentions “honorary awards given on the basis of merit”. not denying the contribution of billionaires to the development of the space sector. However, the FAA recalls that it has full discretionary power over the attribution of these honorary “wings”. It will not be up to whoever financed a flight to declare himself an “astronaut”. Only the FAA gives their “wings” to passengers on American space flights, whether commercial or not.

All hope is therefore perhaps not lost for the two billionaires in space.

THE RECORDS OF ASTRONAUT

THOMAS PESQUET IN SPACE

A record spacewalk

Thomas Pesquet returned to the interior of the International Space Station without incident on Sunday, June 20, 2021, after another spacewalk lasting more than six hours. On this occasion, the French astronaut broke a record.

Never has a French astronaut spent so much time in space! Thomas Pesquet is since Sunday the tricolor record holder of duration in terms of spacewalk, with a total of 26 hours and 15 minutes accumulated on the clock.

A 19-year-old record that was until now held by French astronaut Philippe Perrin, during his only mission in 2002 aboard the International Space Station (ISS). He had then donned his spacesuit three times for a cumulative duration of 19 hours and 31 minutes, in the company of the American astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz.

Thomas Pesquet carried out this Sunday the fourth extra-vehicular outing (EVA) of his career, the second after that of Wednesday which could only be partially accomplished due to a series of technical incidents.

Installation of a solar panel

For 6 hours and 28 minutes, the tricolor astronaut and his American teammate Shane Kimbrough completed the installation of a first latest generation solar panel, attached by two cables to the Space Station running 400 kilometers above the Earth....

The two "mechanics" then began to install a second. Six in total, these solar panels, called iROSA, are supposed to increase the power generation capacities of the ISS.

Soon another record on his hunting board ?

Philippe Perrin nevertheless retains two other records. Starting with that of the longest spacewalk for a Frenchman, which is still 7 hours and 17 minutes. During his Wednesday, Thomas Pesquet however almost dethroned him ... within two minutes. Following a problem in the transmission of data to check the condition of the suit, his teammate Shane Kimbrough had to return to the Station's airlock and perform a reset, before exiting. Meanwhile, the Frenchman was waiting for him, hanging by his feet on a robotic arm. The mission finally resumed, but a precious hour was lost. It only lasted "only" 7 hours and 15 minutes.

The first to take command of the ISS

Another record is still held by Philippe Perrin: that of the number of spacewalks during a single mission, three in total. NASA is however planning a new spacewalk on June 25 for the duo to complete the installation of the second solar panel. Thomas Pesquet should therefore at least equal him.

To end this new odyssey on a high note, the Normand will also become the first Frenchman to take control of the space laboratory for about a month, towards the end of his six-month mission. “I am incredibly honored ! (...) I am fortunate to be the first Frenchman at the controls of a space vehicle ", rejoiced the former airline pilot of 43 years at the time of the announcement." It is a very special honor ”, also underlined a spokesperson for the European Space Agency (ESA).

New posts on Instagram

The companion of Anne Mottetl posted on Instagram, impressive photos of his exit off the International Space Station and was able to testify of his unique experience.

"It was a real fight"

“It was both a magical experience and a real struggle; I'm not ready to forget this little trick at the end of the robotic arm, holding equipment that is 3 times my weight, the slightest movement causing it to gain inertia ”, he first wrote before to add:

“Visually it was a bit like holding a fridge, hanging up by the feet, head upside down on a steep wall a few kilometers away. A lot of things didn't go as planned, but I'm really proud of the team who fought for solutions ”.

A unique experience

A few moments later, Thomas Pesquet thanked the entire team which was present and which made this operation successful. “Shane equal to himself in composure and professionalism, the team at the control center at the top, the colleagues with the robotic arm or who put us in the spacesuits (and we got out of them).

I might still be on the adrenaline rush, but I don't think we can find better (or we'll have to prove it to me). We will try to take a little rest while waiting for the rest of the operations, ”he wrote.

CHINA LETS THE ZHURONG ROBOT ON MARS

Mars has proven to be an elusive goal, with most missions since 1960 from Russia, Europe, Japan and India failing. And yet China has just achieved it again.

The remote-controlled robot "Zhurong" has indeed landed successfully on the red planet, according to a Chinese state media. A flawless: China succeeded on Saturday in landing a small remote-controlled robot on the surface of Mars, a first for the Asian country during a particularly delicate mission.

"The Tianwen-1 lander successfully landed in the predefined area" on Mars with the robot "Zhurong" on board, state television CCTV reported, which broadcast a special edition titled "Nihao Huoxing" (Hello Mars ), and specified that a "signal" had been received on Earth. The landing took place in an area of ​​the red planet called "Utopia Planitia", a vast plain located in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

Landing on the Red Planet is far from easy: in the past, many European, Soviet and American missions have failed. In 2011, China did try to send a probe to Mars, during a joint mission with Russia. But the attempt had collapsed and Beijing has since resolved to continue the adventure alone.

The Chinese thus launched in July 2020 from Earth their uninhabited mission "Tianwen-1", named after the probe sent into space. This is made up of three elements: an orbiter (which revolves around Mars), a lander (which has landed on the red planet) and on board a remote-controlled robot, "Zhurong".

In February, "Tianwen-1" had moved into Martian orbit and managed to take pictures of the red planet. Early Saturday, China managed to land the lander, which should allow the robot "Zhurong" to come out. Carrying out these three operations during an inaugural mission to Mars is a world first.

Radar, lasers and solar panels

For this first attempt alone, the ambitious Chinese wanted to do everything the Americans have achieved in several Martian missions since the 1960s.

Weighing around 240 kg, "Zhurong" is to conduct soil and atmosphere analyzes, take photos and map the red planet. China already has experience in this area: it rolled two small robots on the Moon, the “Jade Rabbits” 1 and 2 - deposited in 2013 and 2019 respectively.

The mission to Mars must also look for possible signs of past life. "Zhurong" is equipped with solar panels for its power supply and is supposed to be operational for three months. The robot is also equipped with cameras, radar and lasers which will allow it in particular to study its environment and analyze the composition of Martian rocks.

He arrived on the Red Planet a few months after Perseverance, the rover from NASA, the US space agency, which landed on Mars on February 18 with the mission of looking for proof of past life.

The name "Zhurong" was chosen after an online survey and refers to the god of fire in Chinese mythology. A symbolism justified by the name in Chinese of Mars: "huoxing", literally "the planet of fire".

All-round space ambitions

China is investing billions of euros in its space program, in order to catch up with Europe, Russia and the United States. It sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. China is also launching satellites for itself or on behalf of other countries. And in 2019, she landed a device on the far side of the Moon - a world first. Last year, samples of the Moon were brought back to Earth.

THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCES CONDUCTED

BY THOMAS PESQUET ON BOARD THE ISS

Thomas Pesquet will carry out a hundred experiments in space

As part of his “Alpha” mission, the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet will conduct a multitude of scientific experiments. In a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In all, the French astronaut will carry out around a hundred experiments, including 12 designed in Toulouse by the Center d'Aide au Développement des Activities in Microgravity and Space Operations (CADMOS). These experiments carried out in the European Colombus module of the station make it possible in particular to prepare longer space missions.

He will conduct a hundred experiments.

Thomas Pesquet's schedule will be loaded during his six months aboard the ISS. The French must carry out a hundred experiments. Twelve of them were designed by the Center for the Development of Microgravity Activities and Space Operations (Cadmos), which is located in Toulouse. These experiments will be carried out in the European Colombus module and aim, among other things, to prepare for long-term space missions.

In the viewfinder: the red planet. “The ultimate goal, at least within our reach for the next hundred years, is Mars, because it is the twin sister of the Earth, because it has a very similar history, because it has had liquid water , " Thomas Pesquet told" Special Envoy

Mini-brains

Asked about an experience that is particularly close to his heart, Thomas Pesquet mentioned that involving "mini-brains, brain stem cells (...) in a Petri dish". The aim is to study the aging of these stem cells to better understand pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease.

Dreams Study

Thomas Pesquet will also work for a study, called "Dreams", which focuses on the sleep of space travelers. Rachel Debs, neurologist at the Toulouse University Hospital, explains that we will "be able to monitor the sleep which we know is disturbed in space because it will not have the day-night alternation over 24 hours". Indeed, on board the ISS, humans "see the sun rise and set 16 times a day, this is not at all the normal rhythm for the organism and therefore sleep is disturbed for the astronauts. ", Continues the specialist." We have a sleep of a shorter duration, more fragmented, and the paradoxical sleep is also in proportion less important than on earth. "

A blob

Thomas Pesquet will also be accompanied by a blob, an organism neither animal, nor plant, nor fungus. This blob will be cultured aboard the International Space Station, under the watchful eye of the French astronaut.

Composed of a single cell, the "physarum polycephalum" is a living species apart. She has neither a mouth nor a brain, but moves, eats and has amazing learning abilities. Several specimens will be hosted on board the ISS. The goal is to see "if the blob behaves differently in space", and to study "the effects of microgravity and radiation on its evolution", specified the CNES.

Edible packaging

Scientific material is now packaged in bulky petroleum-based foams to send it into space. But for this mission, it will be transported in biodegradable and recyclable transport kits. Another particularity: part of the partitions will be edible! “It was a request from Thomas who told us: 'All these foams that we throw away, it's very nice but if we could do something with them and possibly eat them, it would not be worse. And we took him at his word, rejoices Alain Mayer, responsible for the “Eco pack” experience.

In this container, we have three cookies, two gingerbread, natural taste and ginger taste, we have Genoa bread and madeleine.

SPACEX NASA THOMAS PESQUET FLIGHT TO THE ISS

THE MANUFACTURE OF OXYGEN ON MARS

NEW JOB FROM NASA

The demonstration took place on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, and NASA hopes that future versions of the experimental tool used can pave the way for exploration by humans.

Five grams of oxygen produced for ten minutes

Produced at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (Moxie) is a golden box the size of a car battery, located on the right front of the rover. Moxie has been manufactured with heat resistant materials to tolerate the scorching temperatures of 800 ° C required for its operation.

He uses electricity and chemistry to split CO2 molecules, producing oxygen on one side and carbon monoxide on the other.For his first experiment, Moxie produced five grams of oxygen, enough to breathe. for 10 minutes for an astronaut with normal activity. The engineers in charge of Moxie will now conduct more tests and try to increase this result. The tool has been developed to be able to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour.

An efficient and practical method

According to MIT engineer Michael Hecht, a one-ton Moxie - this one weighs 17 kg - could produce the roughly 25 tons of oxygen needed for a rocket to take off from Mars. Mars' atmosphere, made up of 96% carbon dioxide, may prove to be easier than extracting ice from below its surface to make oxygen by electrolysis.

Not only could the process produce oxygen for future astronauts to breathe, it could also prevent the large amounts of oxygen needed to propel the rocket on the return trip from Earth.

One more step forward in the colonization of the red planet ?

HISTORIC FLIGHT OF INGENUITY

THE FIRST HELIPCOPTER TO FLY OVER MARS

Three meters. This is the altitude at which Ingenuity, the first helicopter in history to be sent to Mars, made its first flight on Monday. His feat was filmed by the Perserverance rover from Martian soil.

After rising to three meters of altitude, having spent 30 seconds in suspension, the small NASA helicopter rested safely on Martian soil.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter became the first motorized craft to fly to another planet on Monday, April 19.

"We can now say that humans flew a motorized device to another planet!" Enthusiastically Ms. MiMi Aung, helicopter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

An unprecedented technical feat which brings the small twin-blade drone into the pantheon of aerospace history. This flight was filmed by the Perseverance rover, which arrived in February on the Red Planet. A few images have already been released, and the helicopter itself has sent a black and white photo, showing its shadow on the red planet.

Tuesday, the day after the flight, once its batteries are recharged, the helicopter must transmit a color photo of the horizon taken by its other camera. The full video taken by Perseverance is due to be transmitted in "the following days," said Elsa Jensen, head of the rover's cameras.

A real challenge

The operation was a real challenge, as the Martian air is of a density equivalent to only 1% of that of the Earth's atmosphere. However, it is by pushing the air while turning that the propellers can lift weight. On Mars, "there are simply fewer molecules to push," MiMi Aung explained before the flight.

To achieve this feat, even if the gravity is three times weaker there than on Earth, the NASA teams therefore had to develop an ultralight machine (1.8 kg), the blades of which turn much faster than a standard helicopter. . With its four feet and two superimposed blades (1.2m in length), it looks more like a large drone.

A second flight scheduled for Thursday

After this first success, NASA intends to embolden itself while time is running out, the lifespan of Ingenuity on Mars being one month. The second flight could take place as early as April 22. Other flights are planned, of increasing difficulty.

For its second flight, the helicopter is expected to climb to a height of five meters and move horizontally a few meters. If all goes well, Ingenuity will make a round trip of about fifty meters for his third attempt.

AMAZING IMAGE ICE DUNES ON MARS

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, commonly known as MRO, has been deployed since 2005. The goal of its space mission is to map the surface of Mars.

This photo was captured by the spacecraft and shared by NASA on its website. According to the US space agency, “a field of sand dunes occupies this frosted crater 5 kilometers in diameter in the high latitudes of the plains north of Mars.

Some dunes have separated from the main field and seem to climb the slope of the crater along a kind of ravine ”. Indeed, a study published last year revealed that the planet Mars would have been covered with glaciers and not rivers.

Breathtaking Martian icy dunes

The image of the Orbiter probe is totally captivating. Thanks to its high definition, it allows us to see the different textures at the bottom of the crater. NASA effectively explained that the striped and lobed patterns "indicate seasonal thaw caused by sublimation of ice."

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this image in February 2021. It used its camera called “High Resolution Imaging Experiment” or HiRiSE. It was then about 315 kilometers above sea level from the red planet.

L'ASTRONAUTE FRANCAIS THOMAS PESQUET

 COMMANDANT DE BORD DE L'ISS

Thomas Pesquet, qui doit s'envoler le 22 avril pour sa deuxième mission sur la station spatiale internationale (ISS), sera commandant de bord durant une partie de son séjour en orbite, a annoncé mardi l'Agence spatiale européenne.

C'est la première fois qu'un astronaute français se voit désigner commandant de bord de l'ISS. Il sera assigné à cette tâche pendant environ un mois, vers la fin de sa mission dans l'espace, qui doit durer six mois. « Je suis incroyablement honoré ! », s'est réjoui Thomas Pesquet lors d'une conférence de presse virtuelle de l'ESA.

« Ça fait trois commandements européens à la suite pour trois missions sur l'ISS. Ça montre la place centrale que prend l'Europe de plus en plus dans la station spatiale, et pour les futures explorations lunaires », a-t-il ajouté.

La fonction de commandant est exercée tour à tour par les membres désignés de l'équipage de l'ISS. «C'est comme un bateau, il y a un seul maître à bord après Dieu», a commenté Thomas Pesquet. «Évidemment, il y a beaucoup de choses qui se décident au centre de contrôle au sol», a-t-il expliqué, mais «quand ça va mal et qu'il faut réagir vite, c'est le commandant qui décide, qui assigne un peu les tâches, par exemple si on doit faire face à un départ de feu ou une dépressurisation».

Thomas Pesquet, qui a été pilote de ligne, sera le premier Européen à rejoindre l'ISS à bord d'un vaisseau privé américain, la capsule Crew-2 Dragon de Space X, qui doit décoller depuis la Floride le 22 avril avec trois autres astronautes à bord.(les Américains Megan Mc Arthur et Shane Kimbrough, et le Japonais Akihiko Hoshide).

A la fin de son séjour dans l'espace, Thomas Pesquet devrait être rejoint par un autre astronaute de l'ESA, l'Allemand Matthias Maurer.

« Ça arrive très rarement que deux Européens travaillent ensemble sur l'ISS, ce serait un beau symbole qu'on puisse travailler ensemble », espère Thomas Pesquet.

A JOURNEY AROUND THE MOON A BILLIONAIRE OF JAPANESE OFFERS EIGHT SEATS TO ACCOMPANY HIM ON BOARD THE STARSHIP ROCKET

If it has long been an old dream of science fiction writers, space tourism today represents a concrete field for which many companies have launched projects. This is particularly the case with SpaceX, whose commercial reusable rocket Starship is currently being tested.

Elon Musk's company has teamed up with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa for the dearMoon project, which involves traveling around the moon in 2023. And the billionaire, online fashion mogul, art collector contemporary and patron, offers eight tickets to people around the world to accompany him on a space tourism trip around the Moon, scheduled for 2023 with SpaceX.

Yusaku Maezawa was the first private customer to book a flight aboard Starship, a future habitable rocket developed by US aerospace company Elon Musk, for an undisclosed fee. Initially, he planned to find a girlfriend for his flight around the Moon, by launching a strange contest with "single women aged 20 and over". He then changed his plans, not without having attracted nearly 30,000 applications, saying he wanted to invite six to eight artists instead.

On Wednesday March 3, 2021, in a video posted on his Twitter account, the 45-year-old billionaire finally opted for a broader recruitment policy, saying he is now convinced that "everyone who does something creative can be called an artist". “I invite you to join me on this mission. Eight of you from around the world, he said. I bought all the seats so it will be a private trip. Candidates will only need to meet two criteria, he said: be willing to "push the limits" of creativity and be willing to help other crew members do the same.

Pre-registration until March 14

In all, 10 to 12 people are expected to participate in the expedition supposed to circle the moon before returning to Earth, said Yusaku Maezawa. The schedule calls for aspiring astronauts to pre-register by March 14, and an initial screening is due a week later. An "initial screening" process begins on March 21, with a "final interview and medical examination. At the end of May.

The dearMoon mission will take three days to reach the Moon and loop around it, then another three days for the return trip.

Yusaku Maezawa and his companions will become the first lunar travelers since the last American Apollo mission in 1972, at least if SpaceX is able to complete this project on time. Indeed, two prototypes of its Starship rocket crashed on landing in recent months. "I am very confident that we will reach the orbital level with Starship before 2023 and that the safety will be sufficient for human flight in 2023. It is very promising," said Elon Musk in the video of Yusaku Maezawa released. this Wednesday.

SpaceX plans to launch its first space tourism mission for the fourth quarter of 2021, targeting low Earth orbit. This mission, called Inspiration4, will be carried out using the reusable Falcon 9 space launcher and SpaceX's Crew Dragon space vehicle, already used by NASA. It will host the American billionaire Jared Isaacman, who also offered three seats at his side. Her first elected, announced at the end of February, is a 29-year-old American survivor of pediatric cancer.

SpaceX has not disclosed its spending on the Starship program as of yet, but Musk previously estimated that he expected it to cost the company around $ 5 billion.

SpaceX's valuation has skyrocketed since Maezawa's initial announcement, from around $ 25 billion at the time to around $ 74 billion last month..

UNE IMPRESSIONNANTE PHOTO DE MARS

PUBLIEE PAR LA NASA

La Nasa a publié, mercredi 24 février, une spectaculaire photo panoramique de Mars prise par Perseverance dans la zone où le rover a atterri la semaine dernière : on se croirait dans une zone désertique ..La photo, reconstituée à partir de plusieurs clichés pris par le véhicule, montre la crête du cratère de Jezero, qui a contenu selon les scientifiques un profond lac dans lequel se jetait une rivière il y a environ 3,5 milliards d'années .

Le rover a réalisé 142 clichés à 360 degrés avec les appareils haute définition installés sur son mât.

« Nous sommes installés sur un très bon site, d’où on peut voir des caractéristiques très similaires à celles trouvées par Spirit, Opportunity et Curiosity [trois rovers ayant précédé Perseverance sur la Planète rouge] sur leur zone d’atterrissage », s’est réjoui Jim Bell, de l’université de l’Arizona.

L’agence spatiale américaine a comme but explicite de trouver des traces de vie ancienne sur la Planète rouge, en collectant pendant au moins deux ans jusqu’à une trentaine d’échantillons de roche.Les caméras de Perseverance aideront les scientifiques à déterminer l’histoire géologique et les conditions atmosphériques du cratère, et identifier les rochers et les sédiments qui seront prélevés avant d’être transportés sur Terre lors d’une future mission, prévue dans les années 2030.

La NASA avait déjà diffusé, lundi, deux documents exceptionnels capturés par son rover, une spectaculaire vidéo de son atterrissage enregistré sous tous les angles, et le son d’une bourrasque de vent martien, premier audio enregistré sur la Planète rouge par un micro.

LE ROVER PERSEVERANCE A ATTERI SUR MARS

«Atterrissage confirmé ! », s'est exclamée Swati Mohan, en charge du contrôle des opérations d'atterrissage de Perseverance. Le robot de la Nasa s'est posé sur Mars, jeudi 18 février 2020 .

Perseverance a posé ses six roues sur un site d’atterrissage « spectaculaire », le cratère de Jezero, au terme de « sept minutes de terreur », dixit la NASA, de la séparation du rover et de la capsule qui le transporte, au « touchdown », en passant par l’entrée atmosphérique. Des cris de joie ont retenti dans la salle de contrôle de Pasadena, en Californie.

Après être entré dans l'atmosphère martienne avec une vitesse de  20 000 km/h, les frictions avec l'air ont fait monter la température du vaisseau jusqu'à 1300°C.

Le rover était protégé par un bouclier thermique, qui n'a été largué qu'après l'ouverture d'un immense parachute supersonique. Huit rétrofusées ont fini de le

La mission Mars 2020, qui a décollé fin juillet, a transporté Perseverance, le véhicule le plus gros et le plus avancé jamais envoyé sur la Planète rouge.

Construit par la NASA, il pèse une tonne, est équipé d’un bras robotique de plus de deux mètres, de pas moins de 19 caméras et, pour la première fois, de deux micros. Arrivé à bon port, jeudi 18 février, c’est le cinquième rover à réussir le voyage depuis 1997.

Mars 2020 est la première mission ayant explicitement pour but de prouver qu’il y a eu de la vie sur la Planète rouge. Les chercheurs pensent que le cratère de Jezero abritait, il y a plus de trois milliards et demi d’années, un profond lac d’environ 50 km de large. A l’époque, « Mars était très similaire à la Terre sous de nombreux aspects. Elle avait une atmosphère conséquente, des lacs et des rivières », selon les scientifiques.

Perseverance devrait prélever des échantillons qui devront être analysés par les laboratoires les plus performants sur Terre pour y distinguer, peut-être, les traces microscopiques d’anciens organismes. Les tubes contenant les échantillons seront précieusement conservés sur Mars jusqu’à ce qu’une mission ultérieure soit capable de revenir les chercher, dans les années 2030.

La Nasa a rapidement communiqué une photo prise par le rover sur place. « Bonjour le monde. Ma première vue sur la maison qui sera la mienne pour toujours », a tweeté le compte officiel du rover pour accompagner l'extraordinaire image en noir et blanc.

MYSTERE DES MONOLITHES SUR TERRE ET DANS L'ESPACE

LE MYSTERE S'EPAISSIT !!

Au Pays-Bas un cinquième monolithe est apparu.

Après des apparitions de manière éphémère aux États-Unis (en Utah et en Californie), en Roumanie et au Royaume-Uni, des randonneurs sont tombés nez à nez avec un nouvel objet couleur métal dans la réserve naturelle du Kiekenberg.

«Je me suis approché mais il n'y avait rien à remarquer autour du monolithe.

C'était comme s'il avait été déposé depuis le ciel», a confié un des randonneurs qui a découvert cette installation.

Un mystérieux «monolithe de métal» est apparu dans une lande du nord des Pays-Bas, ont confirmé lundi les autorités, après la découverte d'objets similaires aux États-Unis, en Roumanie et au Royaume-Uni.

Des randonneurs ont découvert l'objet dimanche sur un terrain privé proche de la réserve naturelle du Kiekenberg dans la province de la Frise, selon Imke Boerma, porte-parole de Staatsbosbeheer, l'organisation néerlandaise des gardes-forestiers.

«Nous savons qu'il a probablement été installé ce week-end car des randonneurs qui marchaient là l'ont trouvé (...). Mais nous ne savons pas comment il est arrivé à cet endroit», a confié Imke Boerma à

Des gardes-forestiers sont allés l'inspecter ce lundi matin et étaient encore à la recherche d'indices sur sa provenance.

Monolithe sur Phobos Lune de Mars !

Un collectif appelé The Most Famous Artist et basé au Nouveau-Mexique a revendiqué la paternité du monolithe de l'Utah, mais pas celles des objets découverts en Roumanie, au Royaume-Uni et aux Pays-Bas.

Il continue de « pleuvoir » des monolithes mystérieux sur la planète. Un nouvel objet de ce type est apparu dans une lande du nord des Pays-Bas, ont confirmé lundi les autorités, après des découvertes similaires aux Etats-Unis, en Roumanie et au Royaume-Uni ces derniers jours.

Des randonneurs ont découvert l'objet dimanche sur un terrain privé proche de la réserve naturelle du Kiekenberg, dans la province de la Frise, selon Imke Boerma, porte-parole de Staatsbosbeheer, l'organisation néerlandaise des gardes forestiers.

« Nous savons qu'il a probablement été installé ce week-end car des randonneurs qui marchaient là l'ont trouvé […]. Mais nous ne savons pas comment il est arrivé à cet endroit », a confié Imke Boerma. Des gardes forestiers sont allés inspecter l'objet lundi matin et étaient encore à la recherche d'indices sur sa provenance.

Monolithe sur la Lune !!

Un collectif appelé The Most Famous Artist et basé au Nouveau-Mexique a revendiqué la paternité du monolithe de l'Utah. Mardi dernier, des images ont été diffusées sur Internet montrant quatre hommes s'affairant de nuit pour démanteler l'étrange sculpture, qui a donné lieu à des nombreuses.