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An Upside-Down Landing, and a Retired Helicopter
Michael Gras
January 30, 2024
Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week’s newsletter is 673 words, a 5-minute read.
Table of Contents
1 Big Thing: Japan’s Moon Lander Wakes Up
A photo taken by one of SLIM’s rovers of the upside-down moon lander
Last week, I wrote about Japan’s SLIM moon lander and its (sort of) successful landing.
Scientists’ best guess was that the moon lander was sideways and its solar panels weren’t receiving enough power to keep it running.
They Were Wrong: We have photo confirmation that the moon lander is actually upside down. Not ideal, but could be worse.
The Good News: On Sunday (1/28), the spacecraft sent us a message saying it was okay, despite being upside down. The sun was able to hit SLIM’s solar panels and charge its batteries, and the craft has been sending us data and photos ever since.
The Bad News: SLIM will probably die soon. It was designed to last two weeks (one lunar day), and its life could be cut even shorter by its upside-down-ness.
In the Meantime: The craft deployed its two rovers flawlessly, it’s sending us data, and it only missed its landing target by about 100 meters, which is really, really close in space terms.
2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed
RIP Ingenuity
SpaceX launched two rockets on the same day, both carrying Starlink satellites - one from California and one from Florida. (Space)
NASA officially retired its Ingenuity helicopter, the first aircraft to fly on another planet. (NPR)
The Perseverance Mars rover confirmed the existence of ancient lake sediments in a giant basin called Jezero Crater. (Reuters)
3. Ingenuity Helicopter Ends its Mission
One last aerial shot taken by Ingenuity. I still can’t believe this is another world, 200 million miles away.
The Ingenuity helicopter was retired by NASA. It was the first aircraft to fly on another planet, and it made 72 successful flights. After a rough landing on its final flight, NASA decided to pull the plug.
What is Ingenuity?: Ingenuity is an experimental helicopter that flew to Mars with the Perseverance rover in 2020. It’s 4 pounds with 4-foot-long rotors that spin at an insane 2400 rpm. For reference, Earthly helicopter blades spin at about 400 rpm.
What’s So Special About It?: Flying a helicopter on Mars is really, really hard. Mars only has about 1% the atmosphere that Earth has, so there’s not a lot of air to use for powered flight.
Fun Mars Fact: Those violent Martian dust storms you see in movies like The Martian are really stupid. The Martian winds only gust at about 60mph, and with 1% the atmosphere of Earth, you’d barely feel them. They do wreak havoc on solar panels, though.
Looking Forward: Ingenuity proved that aircraft could be a vital part of exploring other planets. With no scientific instruments, the helicopter was sent purely as an experiment, but that’ll definitely change for future interplanetary aircraft.
4. Why Should We Return to the Moon?
TL;DR - Sending humans to the moon sounds stupid to some people. Not me.
I wrote an article this week on Medium where I laid out 5 reasons why sending humans back to the moon is a noble cause. Check it out here:
5. I’m Giving Away Free Books!
I’m really excited to announce the new Apoapsis Newsletter referral program 😊
If you refer 5 friends to my newsletter, I’ll send you a free copy of a great book I read recently - A Brief Welcome to the Universe, by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Click the link below to share the newsletter, or copy and paste it to others. Once 5 people subscribe using your link, I’ll email you about how to claim your free book.
6. Check Out This Other Cool Newsletter
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I subscribed to EV Universe last week and I love it so far. If you’re interested in the EV industry or just like reading about cars, please subscribe :)
Thanks as always.
-Michael