Main Engine Cut Off - T+9: ExoMars 2016 and 2020, Chinese Partnerships and Policy
Episode Date: June 22, 2016The ExoMars 2020 rover received a funding boost and a reassessed schedule, the 2016 orbiter/lander set its sights on Mars, NASA and ESA coordinated a practice communication session, and China opens up... to the international space community. European Space Agency still backing Mars rover project - BBC News Mars Express chats with Curiosity: Practice makes perfect | Mars Express ESA - Robotic Exploration of Mars: ExoMars sets sights on the Red Planet China prepares assembly of its space station, invites collaboration through U.N. - SpaceNews.com Email feedback to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon
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I want to turn our attention this week to Mars, and specifically the ExoMars program,
which is the partnership between Russia and the European Space Agency.
There was a meeting last Wednesday in
Paris to discuss the future 2020 mission for ExoMars, which is the rover that was originally
intended to be launched for the 2018 transfer window, but through a series of technical delays
and financial issues that got delayed from 2018 to 2020. The two main things that the meeting was
focused on were the technical issues that the program was experiencing in terms of the rover, and also the financial issues that they were having in actually
funding the program fully. In terms of the technical side of things, it sounds like they've
reassessed the schedule that they were on for the rover program, and have kind of rearranged the way
things are working, put in a couple extra contingency programs there for, you know, issues that they
could see coming down the pipe. But really, there was not a whole lot of detail that they talked
about regarding what those decisions were, but it just sounds like they kind of rearranged their
schedule a little bit, readjusted it, and just put it on a more realistic trajectory, whereas the
other one kind of seemed a little rushed because they wanted to get this nice cadence of missions
to Mars. They have the one coming up at the end of this year that's due to land on October 19th,
and actually another orbiter that will be entering orbit on October 19th. And they were trying to
follow that up with the next window with this rover itself. So I think they were rushing a
little bit to try to make it something that they're sending every launch window in the way that
SpaceX is planning to do with their Red Dragon missions. So it's good to hear that they kind of reassessed and put themselves on a realistic
timeline rather than rushing to hit a launch window that they weren't going to be ready for,
especially for a rover as complex as the rover that they're going to send is. This is a rover
that they're planning on using on the surface, and it's actually going to have a drill to be
able to drill a couple of meters into the surface to search for water, to search for life,
do a little bit of science deeper into the surface than we have been before.
So as far as the technical side of things, it seems like good news, though we don't have too
many details. It's still a little bit of uncertainty on what they actually decided there.
But if they say they're on a more realistic schedule, I will believe them and take their
word for that and hope that we can hit the 2020 window with this mission.
Now on the financial side of things, things are a bit unclear there. The big four in ESA,
which is France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, agreed to inject 77 million euros into the program
immediately, which is meant to kind of keep the development going on
the rover and kind of keep it in sync with the technical schedule that they developed. So this
is something that is almost an emergency infusion of cash just to keep things where they need it to
be while they figure out the future budget and the future financial forecast for this program.
But in terms of that, they didn't want to say exactly how much
of a shortfall in the overall budget there was. But right now, it seems like the 2020 mission,
which is a satellite and a rover, kind of similar to the 2016 mission, that's going to be around
1.5 billion euros total, which is a bit higher than the 1.25 billion that they thought they
were going to pay for the mission back in 2012 when they were estimating that.
So all in all, the financial situation there is a bit unclear, and I hope that they can figure out what they need for the future.
You know, this quick cash is great, but if this is 77 million euros down the drain,
that's not really a good situation for the future ExoMars program to be in. But you know, that also says
that they really, really do care about this mission. If they're willing to put 77 million
euros into this program right now, that's a good amount of cash coming from four different countries
that are all kind of having their own internal struggles and political struggles and things like
that. So it's a good sign that they care about the program. I just hope they can figure out what they need to do for the future to make sure that this mission
can launch and not only this mission, but, you know, follow on programs after this.
I really hope that they can keep this going because it's encouraging to see the progress
that they're making from two agencies that really haven't done a lot at Mars yet.
Now, there was also some cool news for the current ExoMars mission
that is on its way to the Red Planet and set to arrive in October of this year. Mars Express,
which is the European Space Agency's orbiter around Mars, was doing a bit of practice in
preparation for the ExoMars arrival, and they were establishing a communication link with the
Curiosity rover that
NASA's operating on the surface. They were kind of using that as a stand-in for the Schiaparelli
lander that will be arriving in October. So what they did for this test was had Mars Express in
the configuration it would be in when the Schiaparelli lander is making its entry, descent,
and landing to the Martian surface. And they used Curiosity Rover as the
stand-in for that. So Curiosity was mocking the signals that Schiaparelli would be sending to
Mars Express. Mars Express recorded all of that data and then transmitted it back to Earth at a
later time. So this was a full-up dress rehearsal of the process that would be needed to handle all
of the data from the lander itself. And things went really well with this. It looks like they
had a completely successful test and everything worked out the way that they needed it to. And it was
kind of even a full-up test from Mars back to Earth as well. I think the signals came into the
Canberra station of the Deep Space Network. So this was a really interesting test to watch.
And it's really cool to see them using the hardware that's already at Mars to kind of simulate what
would be needed for the mission that's on its Mars to kind of simulate what would be needed
for the mission that's on its way there right now. That's a really cool thing that we have going.
Since we have so much hardware at Mars, we might as well use some of these things
to be useful and to get us ready for the mission that's arriving next.
That's something that we can only do now because we do have so much hardware at Mars. You know,
in the early days, there weren't enough missions there to really have this infrastructure set up, but we're
beginning to have this little bit of a satellite network around Mars now that
we have a handful of orbiters there, we have a couple things on the surface
still operating, so we're starting to get this kind of infrastructure built at
Mars, which is really exciting when you think about what that means for future
missions. Before I get too far into the future on that, I just want to finish up
about the exo mars
transmission process because I still think this is pretty cool to see how this will work
so when exo mars arrives at mars when the scaparelli lander is headed to the surface
mars expresses a thing that is in charge of recording all of the data during the entry
descent landing and after the first few minutes on the surface. But then when
it's landed on the surface a few hours after that, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be picking
up some signals from the lander itself and transmitting that back to Earth at a later time.
Then the Trace Gas Orbiter, which is the orbiter of the ExoMars program, that will be recording
the entry, descent, and landing phase from Schiaparelli while it's on its way to orbit there.
And then in the days after the landing, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as the Mars Odyssey Orbiter and MAVEN will all be relaying data back from the lander to Earth.
that every single piece of hardware in Mars orbit, aside from the Indian probe, I guess,
will be transmitting data back to Earth from this single lander. So, you know, you can see we have this whole network. We've got four different satellites that will be picking up signals and
transmitting it back to Earth as they pass over the lander itself. So when we talk about SpaceX's
Red Dragon missions getting support from NASA, specifically in terms of communication networks, this is the kind of thing we're talking about,
where we're using the couple of different satellites we have at Mars to relay signals
back to Earth as they pass over the landing site of the lander, rover, whatever it is.
We're using this kind of infrastructure to maintain connectivity to the surface in a way
that's a little bit better than kind of
relying on the old ways that we used to, which was a single relay point or even direct transmissions
only when facing Earth. So it's kind of a tricky thing that we used to do, but now that we start
to have this hardware built out, we've got this more complex communication network, and we've got
a lot more time of connectivity to the landers and rovers than we used to have.
Now, aside from the communications test that they did, they also tested out the camera
on the orbiter itself. So they snapped a picture of Mars for the first time from this camera. The
camera was flipped on back in April, took some shots of the starry background there, and it
worked out some of the kinks there, checked, making sure that the system was working as it
should be. But this is the first time that it captured Mars on kinks there, checked, making sure that the system was working as it should be.
But this is the first time that it captured Mars on its way there.
And they're going to keep taking photos of Mars as they get closer.
But it won't be until October that the pictures we're getting back will surpass what we can capture here from Earth,
from things like the Hubble and other places.
But it's cool to see that we're going to get this kind of flow of pictures while on approach.
And it's good to see that the camera itself is working out as perfectly as they could have hoped.
So good signs for the mission that's headed there right now.
And on July 28th, the spacecraft will perform a major course correction burn,
which will line it up for its orbit insertion and entry, descent, and landing portion of the mission for the lander.
So all in
all, the 2016 mission continues to be a great looking mission, something that will be very
successful, we hope. Again, it's this is the first time that someone other than NASA could land
successfully on the Martian surface. So very exciting to watch the European Space Agency and
Russia work towards a successful mission here that hopefully will lay the groundwork for future missions like the 2020 rover and maybe even programs beyond that.
Now, keeping the international focus a bit, I want to switch to China and some announcements that were made last week, which were very interesting in terms of international partnerships of that program.
The deputy director of China's human spaceflight agency was talking to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, this was on June 14th last week, and stressed that China is very open to having non-Chinese experiments, payloads, astronauts, even complete space station modules as part of the future Chinese space stations that they're going to launch, that they're planning to launch.
that they're going to launch, that they're planning to launch. So this is a sign that China itself really wants these international partnerships in space, and it's not something that they want to be
a solely Chinese thing, which is very important to look at because for a while China has been
kind of shunned by the U.S. specifically. In 2011, there was a law enacted that barred officials
communicating with China in any sense about space
because of concerns over national security. So that kind of barred China from any participation
in the International Space Station. And that left a lot of people disgruntled and still are to this
day, that China can have no part in the ISS itself when there's been so many astronauts
from so many different nations on board the ISS and different experiments on board, different modules on board.
It kind of felt limiting that we weren't allowing China into that partnership as well.
These kind of announcements from China show that they're very open to partnerships.
They're not going to be standoffish like some people would assume that they're going to
be.
But you know, the ESA back in January of 2015 added China itself to a list of core
strategic partners.
Uh, and that list was, you know, three long, it was us, Russia, and China.
So the ESA is not really going to hold back in using China as a partner in, you know,
space operations, just like they're partnering with Russia on things like ExoMars.
You could see them doing that with China on future missions as well.
Russia on things like ExoMars, you could see them doing that with China on future missions as well.
Back in 2015, when ESA was talking about those kinds of things, astronauts from ESA visited China's training facility, and they learned to speak Chinese, and they were, you know,
meeting with the different Chinese astronauts and things like that. And so there was kind of
this burgeoning partnership between ESA and China back then. And, you know, this is something that could see future cooperation if
China is saying, you know, we want some payloads and modules for our space station. ESA might say,
you know, we can help out with that. We would love to help out with that. Because as of right now,
ESA has not committed to being part of the ISS till 2024. This past week, Charlie Bolden from
NASA was urging ESA to commit to supporting the ISS till 2024 but
as of right now they have not so you know after their time is up with the ISS they could shift
focus and work with Chinese space stations something like that in the future so again this
is going to be interesting to see who latches on to this opportunity to be a partner with China
on these space stations and it's something that will happen very, very quickly because as of right now, the Tiangong-2 orbiting laboratory module
is due to be launched in September. Now, this initial module is a test for their larger space
station that is due to be launched in 2018 or beyond. But this is really their biggest test
leading up to that. And this will even test their newest version of their rocket, the Long March 5B, which
is a really, really hefty rocket.
This is something that is a Delta IV heavy class rocket.
It's 25 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 14 metric tons to GTO.
So this is a big, big rocket that will lift these space station modules, but could have
a lot of uses in other places,
like heavy military satellites that the U.S. would be worried about China launching.
Now, before I go down that rabbit hole and what they could launch with that rocket, I just want
to talk about the rocket a little bit itself. The 5B is going to use Kerolox and Hydrolox
as part of its fuel on the way up to orbit, and this is a really good move by China to move away from some
of the toxic hypergolics that they've been using on their other launch vehicles. This shows that
they're getting a little bit more advanced with both of their fuel tanks and their engines for
this rocket. So this is a big rocket that will be very useful for a lot of things, not only space
stations, but like I said, military satellites. And the fact that this will be tested in September
as part of
a test for their future space station shows that their momentum is really picking up. And that's
something that the, you know, the ESA and others could latch on to and be partners with them in
the future. In my opinion, the US really needs to open up to China in terms of, you know, being able
to talk to them at all about space. I don't see how putting up this roadblock between us and them
is helpful in any way if you're worried about China's use of space.
I think it'd be beneficial to have a line of communication open
and to have some sort of partnership to fall back on
in the way that we have with Russia.
If we're able to fly with Russia up to the space station,
to fly humans up to the space station,
to operate half of the space station right now,
to fly with them to Mars on the ExoMars program, if we're able to do that with Russia,
who we've got a lot of tensions with geopolitically right now between the US, Europe, Russia, the
Middle East issues, all of that kind of stuff that's going on over there, you know, if there's
all that tension and we're still able to work with Russia on these different missions, why is China
any different? It would be helpful to have a line of communication into China, into the Chinese government, into the Chinese space agency.
If we are worried about these things, we could talk to them and say, here's what we're concerned
about. Here's what we'd like you to do to kind of ease our concerns. Here's what we'll do to ease
your concerns. You know, work with them a little bit in the way that we have worked with Russia.
If China is about to start partnering with ESA and Russia and other people that we have partnerships with, it's just going to look more and more stupid that
we're blocking ourselves from being able to talk to them at all in any capacity about space.
And it's something that I could see, you know, becoming a real issue over the next five to 10
years when we start having this competing space station, if you're going to look at it in terms
of that, if, you know, they're going to steal away ESA's participation from the ISS to Tiangong-2 or 3 or whatever it is, it's something that could become
a real issue in terms of space policy. And it's something I'd like to see us correct now rather
than waiting until it's an issue. So all that's to say, China itself is opening up. And I think
that the space community at large, you know, the United States,
ESA already has, and Russia might open up to China. But I really think we should open up
lines of communication a little bit, work with them on what we can, maybe start off with a
smaller mission, help out with some of the communication aspects of their space station,
maybe relay some signals for them, do whatever to extend a little bit of an olive branch to China to sort of open up lines of communication a little bit, especially if you're concerned about
their use of space. And not only that, but, you know, they're going to start looking towards the
moon pretty soon. They've already expressed, you know, desires to head towards the moon. They've
got the lander and rover up on the moon right now. They've got another one probably heading to the
south pole of the moon in the years ahead. So they're going to start turning their attention away from low
earth orbit to deeper into space. So it's really the right time to open up these lines of communication
if China's coming to the UN and saying, we want to open up to you. So if you've got any thoughts
about China's space policy or the space policy of the United States or Europe towards China,
or if you've got any thoughts about ExoMars as it heads on to the surface or the rover
as it heads to a launch, hopefully closer to 2020. If you've got any thoughts about that,
I'd love to hear it. Email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. If you're enjoying the
show, I'd really, really appreciate a rating or review in the iTunes store. It helps to spread the word about the podcast a little bit.
If not, just spread the word to a fellow spaceflight nerd that you know,
and hopefully we can grow the community a little bit and get some more feedback from you all to contribute to the show.
So thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week. Thank you.