CSTD Strategy and Implementation Plan (SIP) 2022-2026

Week in images: 02-06 September 2024 Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:01:00 Rover trials in a quarry in the UK showing a four-wheeled rover, known as Codi, using its robotic arm and a powerful computer vision system to pick up sample tubes. The rover drives to the samples with an accuracy of 10cm, constantly mapping the terrain. Codi uses its arm and four cameras to locate the sample tube, retrieve it and safely store it on the rover – all of it without human intervention. At every stop, the rover uses stereo cameras to build up a 180-degree map of the surroundings and plan its next maneouvres. Once parked, the camera on top of the mast detects the tube and estimates its position with respect to the rover. The robotic arm initiates a complex choreography to move closer to the sample, fetch it and store it. The sample tubes are a replica of the hermetically sealed samples inside which NASA’s Perseverance rover is collecting precious martian soil inside. To most people on Earth, they resemble lightsabres.The reddish terrain, although not fully representative of Mars in terms of soil composition, has plenty of slopes and rocks of different sizes, similar to what a rover might encounter on the martian surface. Quarry testing is an essential next step in the development process, providing a unique and dynamic landscape that cannot be replicated indoors. ESA continues to run further research using the rover to maintain and develop rover capabilities in Europe.Read the full article: Rovers, lightsabres and a piglet.

In 2022 NASA’s DART spacecraft made history, and changed the Solar System forever, by impacting the Dimorphos asteroid and measurably shifting its orbit around the larger Didymos asteroid. In the process a plume of debris was thrown out into space.The latest modelling, available on the preprint server arXiv and accepted for publication in the September volume of The Planetary Science Journal, shows how small meteoroids from that debris could eventually reach both Mars and Earth – potentially in an observable (although quite safe) manner.

Image: ESA’s Metal 3D Printer has produced the first metal part ever created in space. The technology demonstrator, built by Airbus and its partners, was launched to the International Space Station at the start of this year, where ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen installed the payload in the European Drawer Rack of ESA’s Columbus module. In August, the printer successfully printed the first 3D metal shape in space.  This product, along with three others planned during the rest of the experiment, will return to Earth for quality analysis: two of the samples will go to ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands (ESTEC), another will go to ESA’s astronaut training centre in Cologne (EAC) for use in the LUNA facility, and the fourth will go to the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). As exploration of the Moon and Mars will increase mission duration and distance from Earth, resupplying spacecraft will be more challenging.  Additive manufacturing in space will give autonomy for the mission and its crew, providing a solution to manufacture needed parts, to repair equipment or construct dedicated tools, on demand during the mission, rather than relying on resupplies and redundancies. ESA’s technology demonstrator is the first to successfully print a metal component in microgravity conditions. In the past, the International Space Station has hosted plastic 3D printers.