The Space Roundup - Dec 19th, 2021

Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
Are you ready for yet another week of space awesomeness?

This week I want to welcome my new patron on Patreon - Vernon: your generosity is mind-boggling! Each new patron, subscriber, every like, share, comment means the world to me! Thanks all for your support.

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3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!

Touching the Sun

For the first time, a spacecraft has literally touched the Sun. The Parker Solar Probe flew through the Sun’s upper atmosphere, its corona, last April. The next approach will be in January 2022. It took six decades of research and development to get to this massive engineering and scientific feat that will help us better understand how our star works. Wow.

Martian updates

Tons of Martian news this week!

After a communication issue, data coming from Ingenuity indicated that flight 17th was a success. Ingenuity was in excellent condition and it broke a record: it pushed the total flight time past the 30-minute mark! 

And then, this week, it successfully completed its 18th flight! It has pushed the limits of Ingenuity’s radio range. After their latest experience, the team has modified the flight sequence to communicate in a low-data-rate mode, providing an additional signal-strength boost to the radio link.

NASA’s Perseverance rover mission has discovered that the rock it has been driving on since February is likely formed from red-hot magma. “Rocks in the crater have interacted with water multiple times over the eons and that some contain organic molecules.”

And more water!  The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has identified "a large, not-too-deep, easily exploitable reservoir of water” at Valles Marineris in Mars. It is still too early to know whether it’s liquid, mineral, or water ice, but according to ESA, it "could be easily exploitable for future explorers”. Boum! Great!

All I want for Christmas is a space telescope

NASA confirmed Christmas Eve for the James Webb Space Telescope launch. So, finally, December 24th will be the launch date… oh, man, we’ll be all glued to our