JAXA is about to perform a Phobos sample return mission

Posted by Muhammad523 4 days ago

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Comment by Animats 1 day ago

Nice. These missions that tell us the basics about objects in the Solar System are more useful than, say, re-visiting the moon or Mars.

Venus and Europa could use some attention. Anything underway?

Comment by rexskimmer 1 day ago

There is also NASA's upcoming mission to Titan, where they plan to fly an octocopter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(Titan_space_probe)

Comment by Muhammad523 1 day ago

I'm really exited about Dragonfly, as Titan is a world not too different from ours: it gas lakes and rivers (made out of hydrocarbons, like methane), dunes and mountains

Comment by lucaslazarus 1 day ago

All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Comment by hn_submit 1 day ago

I can't imagine aliens being so stupid to claim part of our Solar System. To me this would become a giant bullseye.

Comment by Muhammad523 1 day ago

Aliens who are from the solar system have the right to claim their planet for themselves, just as we did

Comment by manquer 1 day ago

Europa could have some Europeans in it ; or extra solar aliens who can only survive in its climate so don’t care about rest of the system

Comment by King-Aaron 1 day ago

What if hypothetically they had claimed it before us.

Comment by kridsdale1 1 day ago

Then they’d better be prepared to defend it.

Comment by King-Aaron 1 day ago

I'd presume a species capable of interstellar travel would find that fairly trivial

Comment by busssard 1 day ago

there is an ice war on europa

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ice-war-on-europa-warforever

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by tagami 1 day ago

Europa clipper launched 2 years ago arrives in 2030. DAVINCI, a Venusian probe, is slated net 2033

Comment by GolfPopper 1 day ago

BepiColombo, another joint ESA-JAXA mission, will enter orbit around Mercury next month after a longer-than-expected journey. It will be the third spacecraft to visit Mercury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BepiColombo

Comment by godshatter 1 day ago

Apparently five Venus missions (DAVINCI, VERITAS, Envision, Venus Life Finder, and Venus Orbiter) all in the next five years or so: https://www.space.com/astronomy/venus/these-5-venus-missions...

For Europa, Europa Clipper Mission (already on the way): https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/mission-time...

... and JUICE (already on the way): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice

There might be others, those are just what I found in a quick search.

Comment by hparadiz 1 day ago

Sample return from Venus is practically impossible with our current tech.

Comment by hn_submit 1 day ago

I suggest Terraforming Venus with microbes or extremophiles.

And to hell with the "planetary protection" treaty. We need "lebensraum"! Our females want to breed!

Comment by kridsdale1 1 day ago

Venus needs men!

Comment by 23 hours ago

Comment by TGower 1 day ago

JAXA does great work, they also publish the highest resolution open access global surface elevation model. Really impressive for a country with about 1/10th the GDP of the US.

Comment by dvh 1 day ago

I hope they make some photos of Phobos monolith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_monolith

Comment by a3w 1 day ago

Bringing Protomolecule to earth, when?

(Minor spoilers for The Expanse, word Protomolecule means something there.)

Comment by Panzerschrek 1 day ago

Russia tried such mission back in year 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt. Sadly it failed shortly after the launch.

Comment by hbarka 1 day ago

I wonder how this mission compares in scale to the JAXA Hayabusa comet interceptor done twenty years ago.

Comment by numpad0 1 day ago

4 ton launch mass, so 8x mass increase against Og Hayabusa probe(510kg). About 5.4x Satrlink V2 mini sats.

The OG Hayabusa was tiny as it was on the M-V 3-stage all-solid launcher with just 1.85t to LEO of max payload. This one was on H3-24L with up to 16t to LEO(91% of an F9 ASDS) so it's bigger accordingly.

Comment by tommykins 1 day ago

My annual thing I can genuinely comment on in relation to hackernews. This is fucking so cool, I simply cannot tell you how rare it is we get primary material to do anything with.

Comment by johnea 1 day ago

This is good space science.

Unlike iPhone selfies around the moon, or golf on mars.

Manned space missions are very rarely justified in the modern era.

An unmanned probe doing science for 20 years, or a one shot influenza photo op.

The cost is about the same...

Comment by fooker 1 day ago

It is important to get people excited about science, and inspire the next generation of scientists rather than choose the cheapest path to ‘good science’.

Without public support, you’ll soon find yourself without any funding. This pretty much explains NASA’s dire funding situation over the last thirty or so years.

You can only get so many people excited about weather balloons and space rock chemistry.

Comment by dyauspitr 1 day ago

> Manned space missions are very rarely justified in the modern era.

Unless you want to be interplanetary

Comment by autuni 1 day ago

I'm not an expert, but in my mind if you actually want to make the human species interplanetary, flying small groups of people to the planet won't do anything for it. Send robots to build a base first, and yes that will take a long time. Otherwise you'll just be a species that visited other planets. (which would already be cool though obviously)

Comment by manquer 1 day ago

Depends on your definition of you .

If it means life , then We don’t need humans to make life interplanetary at all; that is least efficient way to go about it ; we should instead design/choose lifeforms that are most likely to survive the target environment not depend on brittle/expensive life support technology to spread life through the system.

If the you is intelligence , then spreading AI could be a better approach rather than humans who are unlikely to be able evolve to survive in a hostile environment naturally anytime soon.

Humans in our current form in space is always going to expensive tourism no matter how much science fiction likes to pretend otherwise .

Comment by adrian_b 22 hours ago

It would be very expensive, but not impossible, to make big enough spaceships in which to have suitable life conditions for humans in our current form, including gravity at the terrestrial level and radiation shielding.

Living inside huge spaceships, orbiting around some planets, where everything needed for a permanent stay should be provided, is a far more plausible way for humans to expand in the Solar System, than living on the surface of any planet or satellite of the Solar System.

The experiments with mice on the ISS have indicated that, at least for them, the gravity level at which no health problems appear is around two thirds of the Earth level, and at least one third of the Earth level is needed to avoid very serious health problems. Humans might support a somewhat lower gravity level than mice, but it is not likely that the difference is great.

Except perhaps when floating in the atmosphere of Venus, there is no place in the Solar System where the gravity is suitable for long term living. On the other hand, in a rotating spaceship the gravity level can be adjusted to whatever value is desired. One could build a rotating part also in an underground base, but unlike in a spaceship that would consume energy continuously.

Comment by manquer 12 hours ago

> very expensive

That is exactly my point, Human life supporting environments are great for tourism or experimental research missions where return on investment is not a critical factor.

Sending humans is not economically scalable option and cannot be ever cheaper than small carbon (or silicon based) based bots/organisms are the ones who can actually spread some version of life in the solar system and beyond.

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This is same dynamics in fighter plane or submarines at smaller scale. We will get an interregnum period where the drones would be pitched that multiply/augment the ability of the pilot as in some proposed 6th generation designs.

This only serves mostly to get to the current crop of pilots and leadership to sign-up on a new program, 7th generation will be purely only drones. The full switch will happen when some rival Air Force will develop/skip to drone only 7th gen and the U.S. would have to catch up if not lead it. Submarines are also in the similar trajectory.

Comment by johnea 18 hours ago

Given that we're not living in Johnny Quest, let's get over the fictional thinking and focus on real life.

If you want to "live on mars", just bury a cargo container in the Nevada desert and move in.

You'll have the advantages of significantly reduced cosmic radiation, and the grocery store is much closer...

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