Ontwikkelingen in de ruimtevaart - Deel II - Actualiteit, wetenschap en maatschappij

zondag 9 november 2025 21:16

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Interessant stuk bij ArsTechnica over de orbit van beide ESCAPADE satellieten:

“ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

[...]

ESCAPADE’s path through space, relative to the Earth, has the peculiar shape of a kidney bean. In the world of astrodynamics, this is called a staging or libration orbit. It’s a way to keep the spacecraft on a stable trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars late next year.

“ESCAPADE has identified that this is the way that we want to fly, so we launch from Earth onto this kidney bean-shaped orbit,” said Jeff Parker, a mission designer from the Colorado-based company Advanced Space. “So, we can launch on virtually any day. What happens is that kidney bean just grows and shrinks based on how much time you need to spend in that orbit. So, we traverse that kidney bean and at the very end there’s a final little loop-the-loop that brings us down to Earth.”

That’s when the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, will pass a few hundred miles above our planet. At the right moment, on November 7 and 9 of next year, the satellites will fire their engines to set off for Mars.

TL;DR: lancering is niet in een gebruikelijk launch window voor Mars, maar Blue Origin moest qua planning nu een missie vliegen en bood NASA een 'offer they couldn't refuse'. Beide satellieten blijven nu een jaar lang in een speciale baan om de aarde, en gaan in november '26 pas onderweg naar Mars.

Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments distingués.

zondag 9 november 2025 21:24

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Yaksa

De huidige 'on hold' situatie wordt veroorzaakt door een paar boten die in de verboden zone varen.........

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former

zondag 9 november 2025 21:28

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D-dark

Yaksa schreef op zondag 9 november 2025 @ 21:24:
De huidige 'on hold' situatie wordt veroorzaakt door een paar boten die in de verboden zone varen.........

Zucht, dat komt bekend voor van Space-X lanceringen

zondag 9 november 2025 21:44

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