The intention of this column is to cover one current news story or general topic relating to space. The focus tends to be on smaller stories, ones that don’t hit the major headlines. Last issue was an exception, focusing on the widely-publicised SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion. This issue, the most important topic on the landscape is still SpaceX. As a compromise between unique, niche coverage and important mainstream news, this article will cover both SpaceX and a few other stories that are being, unfortunately, overshadowed.

SpaceX

On September 27 SpaceX’s cofounder and CEO, Elon Musk, announced his plan to eventually have a 1 million-person colony on Mars. This dream is to be facilitated by a massive rocket known as the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). An announcement of this sort has been long-awaited as Musk has been on the record saying that his goal is to make humanity “a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanet species.”

The proposed interplanetary system is clearly based very heavily on the Falcon 9. The promotional video that accompanied the announcement shows a large payload on top of a massive booster, the booster boasting the iconic waffle-iron grid fins that are used to steer the Falcon 9 as it returns to the launch pad. The launch pad is sleek and modern. The rocket is larger than the massive Saturn V used for the Apollo program and capable of launching almost four times as much payload to low Earth orbit. And the mission outline is simultaneously ridiculously outlandish and incredibly practical.

The ITS will work by launching a 100-person transport vehicle into orbit, sans fuel. The booster then performs the same type of retro-burn as the Falcon 9 to return to Earth. In the promotional video the booster lands perfectly back on the launch pad it took off from. Then—in apparently only a few hours—the booster is refueled and fitted with a “tanker” payload. The tanker payload is sent to orbit just like the passenger vehicle. As the booster returns to the planet, presumably for its third trip of the day, the tanker rendezvouses with the first payload and transfers fuel. As it detaches, the crew vehicle rockets off on a quick 80-day trip to Mars.

This could be a wild fantasy, just like the moon bases that were discussed in the closing days of the Apollo program. Some things seem less plausible than others. The three-hour turnaround time seems wild, but also very cost-effective. On the other hand, using a solar power plant on Mars to create oxygen and methane out of carbon dioxide and water ice for the return trip sounds both feasible and cost-effective. SpaceX seems determined to make this proposal come through; once the Falcon Heavy and Dragon capsule are working, they intend to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars and most of their engineering expertise to the challenge. The timeline is certainly intense, suggesting the maiden ITS voyage to Mars, named “Heart of Gold” after a ship from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, will leave in December 2022. Even more ambitious is the January 2025 goal of setting down humans on another planet for the first time.

Farewell Rosetta

After 12 years, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) comet-chasing Rosetta mission has come to an end. On September 30, mission control purposefully crashed the satellite into 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the comet it had been orbiting since September 2014. It continued to collect and transmit data as it descended, including a photograph with 5mm/pixel resolution taken from 20m above the surface.

Rosetta was still functioning before the crash, but, unfortunately, a number of events conspired to make this the best time to end the mission. For one thing, the comet and orbiter were getting further and further away from the sun, so Rosetta’s solar cells were producing less power. The mission would have been forced to end soon because of this limitation. Additionally, the relative motion of Earth and 67P was bringing the Sun nearly between the two, making communication difficult. As a result, it was decided that the best thing to do was to crash Rosetta into the comet, collecting some high-quality science as it did so.

Rosetta crashed into a location called Ma’at, on what has been described as the “head” of the duck-shaped comet. As it went down, it attempted to take photographs of some pits in the region; scientists hope to get a look at the walls of the pits so they can get a sense of the comet’s internal structure. While the data has not yet been analysed, principal investigator Holger Sierks has suggested that the taken images will be useful.

Overall, the Rosetta mission was a huge success. The ESA proudly lauds the milestones of their amazing craft: first spacecraft to orbit a comet and first spacecraft to deploy a lander on a comet. The lander, Philae, ran out of battery power after landing in a shaded ditch. However, it still managed to perform most of its science objectives in 60 hours before the battery ran out.

Some very important discoveries have been made by the two crafts. For instance, both detected phosphorus and an amino acid called glycine, suggesting that the chemicals required for life could have been delivered by comet. As well, Rosetta found that there is much more heavy water—made from the uncommon hydrogen isotope deuterium—on 67P than on Earth, suggesting that Earth’s water did not come from comet impacts.

As said by Christa Van Laerhoven of the University of Toronto’s Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, “They haven’t had a chance to really look at everything the spacecraft has sent so far… It’s going to take us a very long time to dig through and get everything that we can out of this data.” While the spacecraft may be deactivated and crashed, it will continue to provide us with exciting new discoveries for years.

Water Jets on Europa

Much of the coverage of this story comes from a small joke by NASA on an otherwise routine tweet. In the tweet they announced that they have new findings from Europa, and clarify that the findings are “NOT aliens”. As banal as the joke is, it was enough to get people and media outlets interested. Which is just fine, since Europa is one of the coolest bodies in our solar system. It is widely believed that, underneath its icy surface, Europa has a liquid ocean heated by gravitational effects from Jupiter and the other Galilean moons. As such, it is considered one of the most likely places where we could find extra-terrestrial life in our solar system.

The discovery announced by NASA is that they have detected jets of water originating from the moon’s surface. These jets extend upwards an incredible 200km before raining back down to the surface. The detection was made by scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). They observed Europa in ultraviolet light as it passed in front of Jupiter. On three out of ten occasions, they saw evidence for the jets. This data fits nicely with observations made in 2012 that also suggested Europa was spewing water. The 2012 observations were similarly made using the HST, but using spectroscopy—a different technique. Therefore, the two sets of observations are thought to support each other, making the discovery more substantiated.

The detection of jets is significant because Europa is a prime candidate for a future NASA mission. Some variants call for a drilling mission so that samples of the sub-surface ocean could be collected. With the discovery of these jets, the drill may no longer be needed. Instead, the spacecraft could pass through the plume to collect samples. After being collected, they could be analysed for organic molecules and even evidence of life.