Tag: Space vehicle

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science persevere by Allison Lamoureux

rocket explodes bright
science fails but we do not
science persevere

by Allison Lamoureux

This sciku was inspired by the perseverance of science and technology, in this case the aerospace industry. When a rocket explodes, space companies and organizations investigate what went wrong in order to do better next time. This perseverance of the human spirit and drive to continue to innovate is inspiring, and can be seen across science disciplines.

In fact, the Mars rover ‘Perseverance’ was specifically named by school student Alexander Mather for humanity’s perseverance, saying “We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future”.

Further reading:

‘How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster’, 2017, SpaceX, available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ&t=1s

‘Private Orbital Sciences Rocket Explodes During Launch, NASA Cargo Lost’, 2014, Mike Wall, Space.com, available: https://www.space.com/27576-private-orbital-sciences-rocket-explosion.html

‘Nasa SpaceX mission to International Space Station ends in explosion’, 2015, Martin Pengelly & Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, available: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/28/nasa-spacex-launch-international-space-station-wrong

‘Perseverance (rover)’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover)

Author bio:

Allison Lamoureux is a graduate student at Stony Brook University in the M.S. in Science Communication program with a passion for curiosity and sharing her love of science with others. Her capstone work is on analyzing science communication messages after aerospace failures. Her blog can be found here: https://allytalksscience.blogspot.com/

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Found: Beagle lander

Found: Beagle lander.

Solar panel malfunction

prevents contact home.

 

In 2003 the Beagle 2 Mars lander arrived at Mars and was expected to make its first communication from the surface on Christmas day. The lander remained silent. None of the 24 attempts to make contact with the lander were successful, and without a sighting of the lander it was difficult to know what had gone wrong.

Now, Bridges et al (2017) have identified the lander using a recalculation of the predicted landing area and Mars Orbiter imagery of the target area. The lander was found within 20 kilometres of the original landing target and the images suggest that not all of the solar panels deployed successfully. Without the panels properly deploying communication would have been impossible. These findings suggest that everything appeared to be going well with entry, descent and landing sequence until a final fault during solar panel deployment.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170785