Why Is Mercury So Difficult For Spacecraft To Visit? | The New Frontier | Spark

foreign it won't be long now before you too can enjoy a view like this [Music] economy or business class there will be a variety of choices of carrier and cabin The View will be spectacular [Music] foreign [Music] this is the traditional way to orbit a Russian soyuz launched from Kazakhstan NASA has to pay in the area of 70 million dollars per seat return trip and prices are about to go up only the Chinese have an alternative launch system [Music] very shortly there will be two carriers taking tourists into space on sub-orbital flights blue origin will probably launch first with their capsule and reusable launcher next will be Virgin Galactic and their suborbital space plane launched from beneath a carrier aircraft and Landing like one two although to what altitude is still not known [Music] then you have America's return to space with its two commercial Partners Boeing have their CST Starliner the first launch capable capsule already off the assembly line looking every bit like an Apollo spacecraft it will be able to Ferry crew to and from the ISS foreign test launched to the space station is imminent and the crew has been picked to undertake the first few missions their standout competitors are SpaceX and their manned Dragon capsule performing the same vital service [Music] they are hedging their bets in the tourist sector as well with their bfr concept naming their first paying customer foreign [Applause] thank you everyone wow I am from Japan my name is AWA you can call me MZ please [Music] foreign [Music] heavy Maiden launch SpaceX is ramping up design and construction of its even larger rocket ship to Mars [Music] however the two other commercial entities are interesting on their launchers either Jeff bezel's blue origin has developed its be4 engine to power an orbital delivery system and they have the US Air Force on board I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 50 two layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required not to be left out of the market virgin has also developed a small payload orbital system virgin orbit with its launcher 1. [Music] [Music] flew into 35 000 feet slung beneath Cosmic girl a virgin 747 new stage rocket can lift up to 500 kilograms into orbit and an inclination up to 120 degrees Dream Chaser is still in the running with its pilotless shuttle still under development for long duration orbits [Music] the late Microsoft founder Paul London's company strato launch has unveiled the largest aircraft in the world the scaled up Airborne launch platform with multiple payloads from the existing Pegasus rocket to a medium and heavy launch vehicle and a reusable space plane in the future in the meantime there is no shortage of conventional launch systems competing for their share of the market from the USA Europe China India Japan even Israel and New Zealand [Music] [Music] [Music] the key to any launch system is of course the engine the smaller lighter and more powerful the better they pose many design problems fuel type and the ignitable Chamber pressure limits sea level or vacuum exhaust nozzle shape but above all reliability and cost this is the Avio rocket Factory in califeru Italy here Engineers are developing the carbon fiber casing for the solid propellant rocket stages of esa's new Vega C launcher to build them 5000 kilometers of carbon fiber impregnated with epoxy resin is wound around a pre-made metal mandrel this produces the very lightweight but sturdy casings for the first second and third stages of the Vega launcher these casings are later fitted with an engine and loaded with solid propellant one of these solid propulsion engines is the p120c it was recently successfully tested in Google and is the largest and most powerful monolithic solid propulsion rocket ever built this new rocket is a hopes to respond to launcher Market demands the agency is also looking for value for money this new engine is designed with the latest immersive technology and Leading Edge materials and processes foreign foreign will bring down the unit cost but the design is for both Vega C and the strap-on boosters for Ariane 6. [Music] [Music] so certainly in the launcher sector the competition is growing worldwide but we believe that the European answer the ISA answer with Vega cnn6 is the right answer in an aggressive manner we are trying to make things a more and more competitive one of these examples is the joint solid rocket motor that we are developing across the two programs the Vega C and the Ariane 6 the p120c solid rocket motor that enables the possibility to harmonize resources and to have the same motor serving the Legacy as a first stage as well as the Aryan 6 in both configuration as a strap-on boosters so this is a very good answer to tackle the competitiveness aspect with figa C the C stands for consolidation Issa is further developing Vega it will add increased performance to the flexibility of the current system without increasing the costs today the ghaken launch up to 1.5 tonnes on a 700 kilometer orbit with Vega C it will go up to 2.3 tons in order to increase performance two new solid propulsion engines have been developed the p120c and the zephiro 40 for the second stage it is clear that whatever we develop has an exploitation objective so we do not develop Rockets just for the fun of it but we develop rockets that need to be exploitable therefore competitive in the worldwide market and that's the way we are working hand in hand with industry to prepare them to work on their legs in the future throughout the exploitation phase two other enhancements are made with Avon plus which is derived from the current figures Avon upper stage foreign Motors also means investing in new launch facilities we have foreseen a lot of activities to modify the launch site from the Vega configuration to the Vega C configuration Legacy is a heavy loading and length launchers with respect to the to the Vega one so for this reason we have to modify the Arches to the stages increasing the diameters for what concerned the first the first stage [Music] other changes include modified fluid services and installation of a more powerful crane needed to lift the heavier second stage of Vega C during these modifications the site has to remain operational for the scheduled Vega launches in the end the launch site will be compatible with both launchers with Vega C Esa is also working on related products such as the space Rider based on esa's experimental re-entry vehicle ixv it should allow for payloads to be sent into orbit and later return to Earth in addition to this we have other products like the specific adapter for launching into orbit a small spacecraft so enabling the possibility of universities and research centers to access space at limited cost so coping with the payloads which go from one kilogram up to 500 Kilograms we also have early elements of definition for a platform called Venus which could allow payloads to transfer from orbit to orbit one unit which has been around for years and is still the Ferrari of Rocket Motors is the space shuttle main engine [Music] four of them will be mounted on the long-awaited space launch system reusing proven shuttle technology has saved time and money the solid rocket boosters have been extended and tested the aerojet Rocketdyne rs-25 Motors continue to roll off the assembly line foreign [Music] fabrication of the immense components cryogenic tanks into tanks and fairings continues [Music] [Music] [Music] the Orion capsule has flown once the second flight ready capsule is being prepared for the grand show foreign [Music] there is one more critical piece of Kit required perhaps one of the most important sections for keeping the astronauts alive the surface module at Airbus in Europe they have delivered the first flight ready unit for the launch [Music] foreign [Music] component will house the electrical power life support and propulsion unit for the Orion spacecraft and like a giant pocket watch every component is carefully and painstakingly assembled the European service module is part of an entire spacecraft built by an American company Lockheed Martin under the contract of NASA and we are part of that and of that spacecraft NASA Lockheed Martin is building we're providing the European service module we are providing the PowerHouse of that entire spacecraft that means we are providing the propulsion system so the thrust to get into into the dedicated orbit we would like to fly with the spacecraft we are providing the air condition I'm saying that's the thermal control system of the entire spacecraft we take care of the Heat which has been generated in the capsule which has been generated out of several electronic components in the European service module as well and we are making sure that that heat get radiated into the outside of that spacecraft on top of this we are generating power our solar Airway wings are producing that power we are conditioning that power and deliver that to the cool module and deliver that to the batteries with it which are located inside the core module and finally we are also providing what the astronaut need to have to live in that spacecraft that's mainly water in terms of with the consumables and that's oxygen and nitrogen to generate the atmosphere in the cool module itself on the power side we are proud that we have installed Hardware which has already been flown several years ago on a shuttle so the big engine we are flying here the OMS e was a challenge for us to bring that into the vehicle this is not new technology in that sense but the the integration itself that that was really for us a challenge that was new [Music] we're preparing ourselves to be ready for the final integration with the rest of the vehicle and then we are ready for a test campaign in the U.S which is including several environmental tests several functional tests that last couple of months up to that point where the NASA team is handing over the spacecraft to gsdo to the launch campaign so that the vehicle can be put onto the launcher and then we are ready for flight [Music] the first engine is the big engine which is coming from the space shuttle with this big engine we performed the big transition maneuver to go to the moon or to go back to the Earth so we can see here the auxiliary Thruster which are red we have eight of them coming from aerochet here we have the OMS e so the main engine but without the nozzle will be integrated on one of the latest integration step we can see here the propellant tanks we have four of them two for each propellant ATV basically the automated transport vehicle here in Europe played a role a significant role in terms of opening the door for that specific joint work on that spacecraft it also played a role that we learned our lessons with a kind of that service module finally the components we have flown on ATV there are not so many which which we carry on in in the Orion European service module we have a couple of them mainly auxiliary thrusters yes on the RCs thrusters and also a couple of Tanks like our pressure and tanks but there are just a few items which We Carry On from ATV into the European service module design the difficulty here for the human space flight is the change of mindset so to think that we are here in this space mission we are flying human and it's not like a rocket which is only flying with a satellite therefore we are putting more efforts on the safety aspect we have a lot of redundancy each change we introduce the smallest change we introduced in our system has to go through the safety boards our safety boards is a safety board and then the program safety board to be sure that we can bring the crew back home safe thank you [Music] with Orion and the service module certified the sky won't be the limit we will see ships refueling in orbit a Gateway station with a return to the Moon then on to Mars and Beyond foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] space to Industry and exploration space flight will become the norm rather than the exception Mining and Manufacturing in orbit power production and habitats one day it might be as easy as driving to work in that great convertible of yours Brute Force at work a European Ariane 5 rocket lifts off from Kuru for baby Colombo Europe's first mission to Mercury the real journey has begun it's seven and a half year flight is a major challenge in orbital mechanics and we'll see it reach the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system in 2025 there its Discovery Mission will really begin foreign [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] program with the Japanese space agency jaxa Pepe Colombo is one of the most complex scientific missions ever launched it carries two orbiters designed to unravel many of Mercury's Mysteries include an unusual magnetic field strange surface features called Hollows and ancientites hidden in polar craters [Music] front spacecraft is provided by Esa which is a mpo we call it mpo Mercury planetary Orbiter and this spacecraft has a focus more on the planet we want to observe the planet through remote sensing characterize the surface around the craters wanting to know about the composition of the surface the interior of that planet and in addition we have a second space guard and this spacecraft is called the Mercury magnetospheric Orbiter more focused on the environment and this spacecraft is provided by the Japanese space agency [Music] we know the micro is very hot and we have to make the satellite that can survive in that harsh environment and we know well it is very difficult and we started when we started we already did some development and we think that we can do it but actually the hardware is much higher harder than we expected and takes a long time but now you see the this is the flight model baby Columbus Road design research and development phase the construction assembly and testing phase has been long and hard culminating in the launch from the European Spaceport in French Guyana Mercury is three times closer to the Sun and therefore the radiation or the heat which we are getting for America is 10 times higher so everything which we had to develop had to withstand the higher temperatures but also the higher radiation doses which we got from the solar wind and for that we need special insulation of our spacecraft special materials to be developed for the antenna for the solar panels and yeah that was a very big challenge for the mission in itself now of course we do the health checks to verify the system is healthy and we did alignment mechanical checks electrical checks all over we checked the propulsion subsystems so to see if the propulsion elements are still leak tight in preparation for the fueling Hardware apart training of the scientists and technicians back on Earth was extensive requiring years of preparation the simulations campaign is the first time that all the experts involved in the baby Colombo spacecraft design integration testing and operations work together as a single team the campaign is essential for this group to learn to work as a single team to train the decision-making process the campaign is also very important for us to fine-tune our plans and procedures it's the first time that we exercise the flight plans and procedures in a realistic context taking into account communication constraints ground station and timing in preparing for a mission like this we have to carefully train all the aspects what we actually do in the rehearsals we do in preparation of a launch we train the teams to work together we train the teams to work with the flight procedures and also we train the team as the teams as much as we can in Flight conditions so normally when we test before we test with many workarounds what we try to simulate here is actually to replicate as much as possible flight condition and we typically do between 20 and 30 of this rehearsal before a flight with the nail-biting launch sequence complete for many it's time to sit back and wait the cruise will be built above seven years we will fly by once the Earth two times Venus and six times Mercury itself before we come into the orbit which allows us to capture with the small gravity of planet Mercury against the big sun that means when we fly simply break against the sun because we fly into the inner side of our solar system and when you fly towards the most heaviest element there you constantly accelerate we don't want that that's why we decelerate [Music] because this planet is so close to the Sun you need to have a lot of energy to go there it's even easier to send a spacecraft to Pluto than to Mercury you have to break until the gravity of the Sun and you need a lot of energy and for that reason our mission takes quite a long time because we also need the help of planetary flybys in order to bring our spacecraft there then we want to send two spacecraft in an orbit around Mercury and that in itself is also a problem because on the other hand you need to break against the Sun but on the other end you also need to accelerate your spacecraft to bring it in the same speed as mercury goes around the Sun and then to finally drop it into an orbit of the planet I'm working now 14 years on this Mission so it's really like yeah a baby growing up and then leaving the house finally so for for me it's a special moment Betty Colombo's main component parts are two orbiters and one transfer module these took four weeks to disassemble and pack and required 70 shipping containers and four cargo planes to ensure safe delivery to the European Spaceport at Kuru [Music] spacecraft have got up close and personal with Mercury twice before thanks to NASA's Mariner 10 probe and some 40 years later the messenger mission messenger mapped the surface and identified strong evidence for water ice in shaded craters but its Mission also raised new questions about this mysterious planet [Music] this latest probe has a sophisticated Suite of sensors and instruments that will come into play when it reaches orbit around Mercury so the the big step forward for Betty Colombo is the fact that we have two spacecraft the European Space Agency spacecraft which is looking directly designed to look at the surface of the planet and to study the planet in detail and the orbit is designed such that you maximize the objectives that you can do relating to the surface and the second spacecraft is designed to look at the environment and so having two spacecraft will enable us to do a great deal of new science compared to the previous missions foreign approach we have one satellite the MMO sitting in the solar wind and the other one is inside the magnetosphere so we can see what is coming towards the magnetosphere and what is driving changes within the magnetosphere we have 11 instruments on both the spacecraft and when we are at Mercury these instruments are gathering data and then they will store it in effectively a large hard drive which we have on both the spacecraft that data is then collected over a number of hours and when we have a visibility with the spacecraft in Mercury typically it's every 16 hours a week and talk to the spacecraft at Mercury the data is then downlinked using um a very large High Gain antenna it's a very powerful antenna in order to have a data rate of about 340 kilobits per second if you compare to your home internet this is nothing it's a very slow data rate but it's very fast considering we are very close to the Sun and we might get some interference from the energy from the Sun so it's it's as powerful as we can have with the resources we have on both the spacecraft with the assistance of gravity flybys the spacecraft will rely on its solar electric repulsion system it consists of four TX ion thrusters fueled with xenon gas that is ionized and electrically propelled out providing thrust for months at a time the thrusters will rely on the spacecraft's solar arrays for power the T6 thrusters can accelerate Pepe Colombo 15 times more efficiently than a conventional chemical thruster so at Earth the solar flux is 1.4 more or less 1.4 kilowatts per square meter as we approach Mercury which is the most innermost planet of the solar system that solar flux has risen 10 times so now we have 14 kilowatts per square meter now you might think that's a good thing in the sensor it gives you more energy to turn into electricity to be able to run your thrusters but it turns out that that immense flux that we're getting from the Sun Also drives the temperature of the spacecraft very high and in particular our solar arrays which are sensitive to high temperature need to be protected now we do that in a number of different ways we keep as much of the open surface covered in little mirrors that we call osrs Optical surface reflectors or with specially developed white Coatings which help to reject the heat from the Sun but perhaps the the biggest mechanism that we use to keep the Solar Ray cool is to off point rather other than pointing the solar rays directly to the sun we point them at a very shallow angle and what that does is it means it keeps the thermal energies under control while still giving us the necessary energy to turn into electric uh Power for the thrusters now the reason why the solar rays is so big is because we're off pointing by so much that in order to get a sufficient um cross section of the solar array the Solar Ray needs to be big [Music] by multi-layered insulation and thermal blankets and a radiator to dissipate heat Esau's Mercury planetary Orbiter will have to cope with extreme environments [Music] if one of the payloads is getting too hot in order to stop that power from being damaged we'll switch it off we'll send an emergency message back to back to the Earth reporting that there's an issue we need to we need ESOP to take action to investigate why items are getting too hot and then to recover the uh to recover the unit in the spacecraft once they reach mercury in late 2025 the orbiters will separate from the transfer module to begin their comprehensive scientific mission in 2026. [Music] in principle all the planets have the same chemical elements because the whole solar system has the same chemical composition but it's distributed differently in different planets and and different environments so so the the the it is vital to understand what is the ratio of the abundancies of different elements to understand the structure of the of the surface of Mercury [Music] one of the advanced sensors about baby Colombo is a sensitive Imaging x-ray spectrometer called mix which produces a global map of Mercury's surface Atomic composition and high spatial resolution [Music] the mix instrument the Mercury was Imaging x-ray spectrometer looks at the fluorescence that happens when the Sun Shines on on Mercury and x-rays so it's a bit like when you you wear a shirt in party lights which has been washed in the right sort of washing powder the party lights shine on your shirt and your shirt close and it's exactly the same with the sun and Mercury The Sun Shines on the uh on the surface in X-rays and the surface of mercury glows in X-rays and if you detect those x-rays you can tell what Mercury is made of and what it tells you you're actually counting the atoms on the surface so it tells you in a very quantitative way exactly what the surface layer of mercury is made of say one of the most exciting things about mix is the fact that we will be able to produce the first images in x-ray wavelengths of mercury surface and that is going to be able to give us a great deal of new information both on a global scale and on a local scale of how the composition of mercury varies over its entirety of its surface um another aspect of the mixed science which I'm personally very excited about is the fact that we can also see x-rays from the surface which are being produced by particles from Mercury's magnetosphere actually precipitating onto the surface and producing x-rays that we will be able to also measure so we can have an extra aspect to the science that we can do relating to how Mercury's magnetosphere interacts with the surface irregularly shaped depressions known as Hollows found in clusters over a wide range of latitudes and longitudes Hollows have bright interiors and Halos with a fresh appearance that suggests they are geologically very young I think that there are two Mysterio two very intriguing objectives of Betty Colombo the first one are are the olives the olives are featured discovered by messenger these features seems to be quite distributed all over the surface the of mercury and is something related to the volatile that come to the surface after an impact after a volcanic event but of course we need baby Colombo to really characterize it to understand which is the origin of the olives [Music] there are also clear traces of much more recent Hollows where the surface has been eaten Away by some process that removed solid volatile substances such as sulfur chlorine sodium and potassium as vapor thank you [Music] and this is because we don't have the composition data we have seen we can measure the dimension of the size of the olus we can have an idea of the distribution but no more and also of course a messenger didn't get so many high resolution images and didn't hit I the digital terrain mode the 3D images at high resolution has we will provide only Sim uses in other words I think that olives the olives are one of the most interesting discovery made by messenger existing evidence indicates that if combined and spread out over a city the size of say Washington the amount of water ice concealed in Mercury's polar craters would be over two miles thick and the second point is the water because even messenger said yes on the polar region we may have some Water Ice hidden just in the shadow of the craters because the polar region there are some floor of the clutters some wall of the karates that are not that are always in Shadow has occur on the moon but the messenger didn't have the instruments to trying to observe if it is to make a direct measurement of water has occurred on the moon and baby Colombian symbiosis will be able to do it with our spectrograph [Music] if confirmed by Betty Colombo the story of how the inner planets including Earth acquired water and some of the chemical building blocks for life becomes much clearer it would support the theory that organic compounds as well as water were delivered from the outer solar system to the inner planets and may have led to Prebiotic chemical synthesis and as a consequence life on Earth foreign Mercury is crucial to better understand the formation of our solar system how Earth is formed at evolved and where we are coming from so Mercury is in a way a missing piece in the big puzzle of the formation of the solar system and The crucial end member because it's close to the Sun and if you want to get this full picture you have to look at the planet close to the Sun as we also did in Future Past missions that we were looking at the Comets or planets for Zara we all have our individual science objectives for each of our instruments and what we're starting to do now is to bring all of our ideas together which obviously are complementary to each other and we can start to form a broader set of goals at working group levels so the surface working group and the environment working group and that helps us to again maximize the science that we can get from the mission by coordinating what it is that we want to do potentially looking at specific Targets on the surface and that and that kind of thing we can work together to to get the best from from the mission that we possibly can Esa science and engineering teams have already been working on baby Colombo for more than a decade but with a long journey ahead of it the recent launch marks only the beginning of the next intriguing stage of Pepe Colombo's Voyage of discovery [Music] foreign

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Keywords: ESA, JAXA, Mars exploration, Moon missions, Spark, amazing science, astronomy videos, celestial bodies, commercial space companies, prospects of space tourism, space colonization, space exploration, space facts, space race, space research, space science research, space shuttle, space technology advancements, space travel updates, tourist revenue, travel to space

Id: bZ8w5vWK9aA

Length: 46min 21sec (2781 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023