Japan Lands on the Moon, and New Glenn Takes Shape

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week’s newsletter is 647 words, a 5-minute read.

Table of Contents

• 1 Big Thing: Japan Landed on the Moon!

• 2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

• 3. New Glenn is Finally Put Together

• 4. How Do Rocket Engines Work?

• 5. What I’m Reading

• Please Send Me Feedback!

1 Big Thing: Japan Landed on the Moon!

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) successfully landed on the moon this past Friday (Jan 19). The landing makes Japan the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon.

The Mission’s Purpose: Japan is using SLIM to test precision landing techniques with a small spacecraft. SLIM aimed to land within 100 meters of its target; this sounds far, but most conventional landings miss their targets by kilometers, not meters.

Why It Matters: There’s a new race to find water and other valuable resources on the moon, mostly between China, India, and Japan. Super accurate landers will be crucial for locating and accessing these resources.

The Good News: The spacecraft landed safely and began transmitting data. It also deployed two small rovers and took lots of pictures that we’ll hopefully see soon.

The Bad News: SLIM’s solar panels are facing west instead of upward, so they’re not generating power. The lander did its thing until its battery power ran down to 12%, then it shut itself off. Japanese scientists hope that enough sunlight will hit the solar cells soon to power SLIM back up and recharge the batteries.

2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

1. SpaceX sent four people, including Turkey’s first astronaut, to the ISS. (CBS)

2. NASA lost contact with its Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, then regained it after two days. (NPR)

3. Sierra Space successfully tested its inflatable module for space stations. (SpaceNews)

3. New Glenn is Finally Put Together

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has mated the two stages of its new heavy lift rocket, the New Glenn. This mating is just for testing, but the rocket is slated to make its maiden flight later this year.

Heavy Lift: New Glenn is a lot different from Blue Origin’s current rocket, New Shepard. New Shepard is a small suborbital rocket that carries passengers to the edge of space and back. New Glenn will be able to carry up to 100,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit.

• This puts New Glenn on par with some of the most powerful rockets we have, like the Falcon Heavy and ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur.

• New Glenn’s payload capacity will be about double the capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Big & Reusable: New Glenn’s first stage is designed to be reusable, powered by 7 engines. The rocket will stand 322 feet tall, making it one of the tallest ever built (for reference, the Saturn V moon rocket stood about 363 feet).

Mars First: We don’t have an exact date yet, but New Glenn is targeting an August 2024 launch. The rocket’s debut flight will carry NASA’s EscaPADE Mars mission.

4. How Do Rocket Engines Work?

TL;DR - Rocket engine shoots a lot of stuff really fast one way, rocket goes really fast the other way.

I wrote an article this week on Medium where I explained as simply as possible how rocket engines work. You can check it out here:

5. What I’m Reading

I’m about halfway through Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan. 

The book is written in such an easy tone to breeze through. It has crazy high ratings on Amazon and it provides some awesome unknown history surrounding the Apollo program.

Check it out here:

Please Send Me Feedback!

Should I do book reviews? Should I cover space news in more detail? Is there something specific you’d like me to write about next week?

I’d greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

Thanks as always.

-Michael