https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasa-artemis-science [ ] IEEE.orgIEEE Xplore Digital LibraryIEEE StandardsMore Sites Sign InJoin IEEE Here's All the Science Hitching a Ride on Artemis-1 Share FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER Search: [ ] Explore by topic AerospaceArtificial IntelligenceBiomedicalComputingConsumer ElectronicsEnergyHistory of TechnologyRoboticsSemiconductorsSensors TelecommunicationsTransportation IEEE Spectrum FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER Topics AerospaceArtificial IntelligenceBiomedicalComputingConsumer ElectronicsEnergyHistory of TechnologyRoboticsSemiconductorsSensors TelecommunicationsTransportation Sections FeaturesNewsOpinionCareersDIYThe Big PictureEngineering Resources More Special ReportsCollectionsExplainersPodcastsVideosNewslettersTop Programming LanguagesRobots Guide For IEEE Members Current IssueMagazine ArchiveThe InstituteTI Archive For IEEE Members Current IssueMagazine ArchiveThe InstituteTI Archive IEEE Spectrum About UsContact UsReprints & PermissionsAdvertising Follow IEEE Spectrum Support IEEE Spectrum IEEE Spectrum is the flagship publication of the IEEE -- the world's largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences. Our articles, podcasts, and infographics inform our readers about developments in technology, engineering, and science. Join IEEE Subscribe About IEEEContact & SupportAccessibilityNondiscrimination PolicyTerms IEEE Privacy Policy (c) Copyright 2022 IEEE -- All rights reserved. A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. IEEE websites place cookies on your device to give you the best user experience. By using our websites, you agree to the placement of these cookies. To learn more, read our Privacy Policy. view privacy policy accept & close Enjoy more free content and benefits by creating an account Saving articles to read later requires an IEEE Spectrum account The Institute content is only available for members Downloading full PDF issues is exclusive for IEEE Members Access to Spectrum's Digital Edition is exclusive for IEEE Members Following topics is a feature exclusive for IEEE Members Adding your response to an article requires an IEEE Spectrum account Create an account to access more content and features on IEEE Spectrum, including the ability to save articles to read later, download Spectrum Collections, and participate in conversations with readers and editors. For more exclusive content and features, consider Joining IEEE. Join the world's largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to all of Spectrum's articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits. Learn more - CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN JOIN IEEESIGN IN Close Access Thousands of Articles -- Completely Free Create an account and get exclusive content and features: Save articles, download collections, and talk to tech insiders -- all free! For full access and benefits, join IEEE as a paying member. CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN AerospaceTopicTypeNews Here's All the Science Hitching a Ride on Artemis-1 A small fleet of CubeStats joins three mannequins, fungus, algae, and more on a trip to the Moon and back Evan Ackerman 5h 4 min read An orange survival space suit reclines inside of a a cramped space capsule This Artemis 1 mannequin--nicknamed Commander Moonikin Campos--will be traveling farther out into space than any human astronaut ever has. Frank Michaux/NASA Artemiscubesatsspace NASA's Artemis-1 mission launched early in the pre-dawn hours this morning, at 1:04 a.m. eastern time, carrying with it the hopes of a space program aiming now to land American astronauts back on the moon. The Orion spacecraft now on its way to the moon also carries with it a lot of CubeSat-sized science. (Some satellites have even, as of press time, begun to tweet.) And while the objective of Artemis 1 is to show that the launch system and spacecraft can make a trip to the Moon and return safely to Earth, the mission is also a unique opportunity to send a whole spacecraft-load of science into deep space. In addition to the interior of the Orion capsule itself, there are enough nooks and crannies to handle a fair number of CubeSats, and NASA has packed as many experiments as it can into the mission. From radiation phantoms to solar sails to algae to a lunar surface payload, Artemis 1 has a lot going on. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of the variety of the science on Artemis 1 comes in the form of CubeSats, little satellites that are each the size of a large shoebox. The CubeSats are tucked snugly into berths inside the Orion Stage Adapter, which is the bit that connects the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage to the ESA service module and Orion. Once the propulsion stage lifts Orion out of Earth orbit and pushes it towards the Moon, the stage and adapter will separate from Orion, and the CubeSats will launch themselves. A metal cylinder five meters across rests in a clean room with scaffolding around it, with ten small boxes mounted on platforms insideTen CubeSats rest inside of the Orion stage adapter at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.NASA KSC While the CubeSats look identical when packed up, each one is totally unique in both hardware and software, with different destinations and mission objectives. There are ten in total (three weren't ready in time for launch, which is why there are a couple of empty slots in the image above). Here is what each one is and does: While the CubeSats head off to do their own thing, inside the Orion capsule itself will be the temporary home of a trio of mannequins. The first, a male-bodied version provided by NASA, is named " Commander Moonikin Campos" after NASA electrical engineer Arturo Campos, who was the guy who wrote the procedures that allowed the Apollo 13 command module to steal power from the lunar module's batteries, one of many actions that saved the Apollo 13 crew. A mannequin in an orange flight suit lies on its back in a testing roomMoonikin Campos prepares for placement in the Orion capsule.NASA Moonikin Campos will spend the mission in the Orion commander's seat, wearing an Orion Crew Survival System suit--essentially a spacecraft itself, the suit is able to sustain its occupant for up to six days if necessary. Moonikin Campos' job will be to pretend to be an astronaut, and sensors inside of him will measure radiation, acceleration and vibration to help NASA prepare to launch human astronauts in the next Artemis mission. Two blue female mannequins, one wearing a bulky black vest, strapped into the interior of a space capsuleHelga and Zohar in place on the flight deck of the Orion spacecraft.NASA/DLR Accompanying Moonikin Campos are two other female-bodied mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) along with the Israel Space Agency. These are more accurately called "anthropomorphic phantoms," and their job is to provide a detailed recording of the radiation environment inside the capsule over the course of the mission. The phantoms are female because women have more radiation-sensitive tissue than men. Both Helga and Zohar have over 6,000 tiny radiation detectors placed throughout their artificial bodies, but Zohar will be wearing an AstroRad radiation protection vest to see how effective it is. A dozen researchers in masks stand in front of two blue bags in a NASA laboratoryNASA's Biology Experiment-1 is transferred to the Orion team.NASA/KSC The final science experiment to fly onboard Orion is NASA's Biology Experiment-1. The experiment is really just seeing what time in deep spaces does to some specific kinds of biology, so all that has to happen is that Orion successfully hauls some packages of sample tubes around the Moon and back. Samples include: * Plant seeds to characterize how spaceflight affects nutrient stores * Photosynthetic algae to identify genes that contribute to its survival in deep space * Aspergillus fungus to investigate radioprotective effects of melanin and DNA damage response * Yeast used as a model organism to identify genes that enable adaptations to conditions in both low Earth orbit and deep space There is some concern that because of the extensive delays with the Artemis launch, the CubeSats have been sitting long enough that their batteries may have run down. Some of the CubeSats were able to be recharged, but for others, recharging was judged to be risky enough that they were left alone. Even for CubeSats that don't start right up, though, it's possible that after deployment, their solar panels will be able to get them going. But at this point, there's still a lot of uncertainty, and the CubeSats' earthbound science teams are now pinning their hopes everything going well after launch. For the rest of the science payloads, success mostly means Orion returning to Earth safe and sound, which will also be a success for the Artemis 1 mission as a whole. And assuming it does so, there will be a lot more science to come. From Your Site Articles * Aerospace Companies Compete to Build Lunar Landers for NASA's ... > * Can the Artemis Moon Mission Revive the Glamour of Big Tech ... > Related Articles Around the Web * NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission: Live updates | Space > * NASA Artemis > Artemiscubesatsspace Evan Ackerman Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes. The Conversation (0) periodic table with molecule dots SensorsTopicTypeComputingNews Quantum Microscopes Could Enable Atom-Scale MRI 5h 4 min read Top500: Frontier Still #1; Where's China? ComputingTopicTypeAnalysis Top500: Frontier Still #1; Where's China? 15 Nov 2022 3 min read A black and white bitmapped image of an East Asian woman combing her hair, done in the style of a traditional woodblock print. History of TechnologyTopicTypeComputingGuest Article Celebrating the Art of Code 15 Nov 2022 3 min read Related Stories SensorsTopicTypeNews The World's Largest Camera Is Nearly Complete AerospaceTopicNewsType MOXIE Shows How to Make Oxygen on Mars AerospaceTopicTypeNews NASA's Artemis I Revives the Moonshot AerospaceTopicMagazineTypeFeatureSpectrum CollectionsSeptember 2022 Telecommunications The Webb Space Telescope's Profound Data Challenges 3,000x farther from Earth than Hubble--with a 25x greater download deluge Michael Koziol 08 Jul 2022 4 min read Two men fix metal rods to a gold-foiled satellite component in a warehouse/clean room environment Technicians at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems facilities in Redondo Beach, Calif., work on a mockup of the JWST spacecraft bus--home of the observatory's power, flight, data, and communications systems. NASA For a deep dive into the engineering behind the James Webb Space Telescope, see our collection of posts here. When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals its first images on 12 July, they will be the by-product of carefully crafted mirrors and scientific instruments. But all of its data-collecting prowess would be moot without the spacecraft's communications subsystem. The Webb's comms aren't flashy. Rather, the data and communication systems are designed to be incredibly, unquestionably dependable and reliable. And while some aspects of them are relatively new--it's the first mission to use K[a]-band frequencies for such high data rates so far from Earth, for example--above all else, JWST's comms provide the foundation upon which JWST's scientific endeavors sit. As previous articles in this series have noted, JWST is parked at Lagrange point L2. It's a point of gravitational equilibrium located about 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth on a straight line between the planet and the sun. It's an ideal location for JWST to observe the universe without obstruction and with minimal orbital adjustments. Being so far away from Earth, however, means that data has farther to travel to make it back in one piece. It also means the communications subsystem needs to be reliable, because the prospect of a repair mission being sent to address a problem is, for the near term at least, highly unlikely. Given the cost and time involved, says Michael Menzel, the mission systems engineer for JWST, "I would not encourage a rendezvous and servicing mission unless something went wildly wrong." According to Menzel, who has worked on JWST in some capacity for over 20 years, the plan has always been to use well-understood K [a]-band frequencies for the bulky transmissions of scientific data. Specifically, JWST is transmitting data back to Earth on a 25.9-gigahertz channel at up to 28 megabits per second. The K[a]-band is a portion of the broader K-band (another portion, the Ku-band, was also considered). An illustration depicting different Lagrange points and where the Webb Telescope is.The Lagrange points are equilibrium locations where competing gravitational tugs on an object net out to zero. JWST is one of three craft currently occupying L2 (Shown here at an exaggerated distance from Earth). IEEE Spectrum Both the data-collection and transmission rates of JWST dwarf those of the older Hubble Space Telescope. Compared to Hubble, which is still active and generates 1 to 2 gigabytes of data daily, JWST can produce up to 57 GB each day (although that amount is dependent on what observations are scheduled). Menzel says he first saw the frequency selection proposals for JWST around 2000, when he was working at Northrop Grumman. He became the mission systems engineer in 2004. "I knew where the risks were in this mission. And I wanted to make sure that we didn't get any new risks," he says. [svg]IEEE Spectrum Besides, K [a]-band frequencies can transmit more data than X-band (7 to 11.2 GHz) or S-band (2 to 4 GHz), common choices for craft in deep space. A high data rate is a necessity for the scientific work JWST will be undertaking. In addition, according to Carl Hansen, a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (the science operations center for JWST), a comparable X-band antenna would be so large that the spacecraft would have trouble remaining steady for imaging. Although the 25.9-GHz K [a]-band frequency is the telescope's workhorse communication channel, it also employs two channels in the S-band. One is the 2.09-GHz uplink that ferries future transmission and scientific observation schedules to the telescope at 16 kilobits per second. The other is the 2.27-GHz, 40-kb/s downlink over which the telescope transmits engineering data--including its operational status, systems health, and other information concerning the telescope's day-to-day activities. Any scientific data the JWST collects during its lifetime will need to be stored on board, because the spacecraft doesn't maintain round-the-clock contact with Earth. Data gathered from its scientific instruments, once collected, is stored within the spacecraft's 68-GB solid-state drive (3 percent is reserved for engineering and telemetry data). Alex Hunter, also a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that by the end of JWST's 10-year mission life, they expect to be down to about 60 GB because of deep-space radiation and wear and tear. The onboard storage is enough to collect data for about 24 hours before it runs out of room. Well before that becomes an issue, JWST will have scheduled opportunities to beam that invaluable data to Earth. JWST will stay connected via the Deep Space Network (DSN)--a resource it shares with the Parker Solar Probe, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the Voyager probes, and the entire ensemble of Mars rovers and orbiters, to name just a few of the other heavyweights. The DSN consists of three antenna complexes: Canberra, Australia; Madrid, Spain; and Barstow, Calif. JWST needs to share finite antenna time with plenty of other deep-space missions, each with unique communications needs and schedules. [svg]IEEE Spectrum Sandy Kwan, a DSN systems engineer, says that contact windows with spacecraft are scheduled 12 to 20 weeks in advance. JWST had a greater number of scheduled contact windows during its commissioning phase, as instruments were brought on line, checked, and calibrated. Most of that process required real-time communication with Earth. All of the communications channels use the Reed-Solomon error-correction protocol--the same error-correction standard as used in DVDs and Blu-ray discs as well as QR codes. The lower data-rate S-band channels use binary phase-shift key modulation--involving phase shifting of a signal's carrier wave. The K-band channel, however, uses a quadrature phase-shift key modulation. Quadrature phase-shift keying can double a channel's data rate, at the cost of more complicated transmitters and receivers. JWST's communications with Earth incorporate an acknowledgement protocol--only after the JWST gets confirmation that a file has been successfully received will it go ahead and delete its copy of the data to clear up space. The communications subsystem was assembled along with the rest of the spacecraft bus by Northrop Grumman, using off-the-shelf components sourced from multiple manufacturers. JWST has had a long and often-delayed development, but its communications system has always been a bedrock for the rest of the project. Keeping at least one system dependable means it's one less thing to worry about. Menzel can remember, for instance, ideas for laser-based optical systems that were invariably rejected. "I can count at least two times where I had been approached by people who wanted to experiment with optical communications," says Menzel. "Each time they came to me, I sent them away with the old 'Thank you, but I don't need it. And I don't want it.'" From Your Site Articles * Inside the Universe Machine: The Webb Space Telescope's ... > * Inside the Universe Machine: The Webb Space Telescope's Chilly ... > Related Articles Around the Web * Webb - ESA > * The James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to do science ... > Keep Reading |Show less {"imageShortcodeIds":[]}