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Views from Space: Mars

Views from Space: Mars

European Space Agency engineer talks deep space discovery.

Views from Space: Mars
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Presented by Terran Orbital (LLAP)
Aired Jan 25, 2023
In this episode of Public Live, guests Margherita Cardi from Tyvak International and Franco Perez Lissi from the European Space Agency, join host Kinsey Grant to talk about deep space, Mars, Milani...

Kinsey: Hello, everybody. Happy Wednesday and welcome once again to Views from Space where we dive into the space economy and where it's headed. This is part of a monthly series presented by Terran Orbital, a manufacturer of small satellites. 

I'm your host Kinsey Grant, and I am so excited to dive into our topics today, as the live title will suggest we have some big ones coming up Deep Space, Mars, Milani, all sorts of great new tech that we're going to be talking about today with our fantastic guests who I'm going to introduce right now. We have Margarita Cardi who is the VP of Programs at Tyvak International, which is the International segment of Terran Orbital, and also with us Franco Perez Lissi, the systems engineer at the European Space Agency. Franco, Margherita, welcome to Public Live. I'm so excited to have you here with us today. How are you doing?

Franco Perez Lissi: Good afternoon. All good. How are you doing?

Margherita Cardi: Hi, everybody - Margherita here.  Thanks for the invite and it’s evening here but good afternoon to you guys.

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, isn't that funny how that works. I'm actually in Los Angeles right now so it's morning here, evening there but you know what? Space – there’s never a bad time to talk about it. So let's dive in. Are you guys ready to get to some big questions today?

Margherita Cardi: Absolutely.

Franco Perez Lissi: Yeah, let's go. Right.

Kinsey Grant: All right, great. So I want to start here, with getting a better understanding of what we're going to talk about today, setting the groundwork, and understanding the important context. Space as a topic is I would say often rife with a lot of mystique and, and a lot of fascination that goes along with that. Now in your work developing small satellites Margherita, you are working to make space more accessible and especially when we're talking about making space more accessible, we're talking about deep space. 

So for our listeners, knowing that this is part of space that's well beyond the Earth's atmosphere, with an emphasis on the area beyond the Earth Moon system, I would love it if you could just walk our audience through a quick rundown of what you think makes deep space so appealing. And I think appealing in a lot of ways, you know, appealing from just a general interest standpoint, but also appealing as a satellite developer or for a scientific researcher, what makes deep space so interesting to you, Margherita? 

Margherita Cardi: Yeah, thanks for the question. It is a very nice one. And I have to say that, at the moment, let's say, we are pretty, you know, conscious about the Earth orbit so the Leo and the orbit around Earth, are environments that are quite well known, I would say, at this moment, while the deep space environment is kind of unexplored, or, let's say less explored, this makes this you know, fascinating for the human being in general. And, and of course, the other aspect that I love about this environment is that we are targeting, you know, bodies, planets, asteroids, on whatever that are not really known in terms of structure and also visual impact. 

So the fact is that even if we have some very good assets on the ground that can, you know, do amazing pictures and amazing inspection of some bodies, just when you just get close to that you can really understand what it looks like, in reality. And so this is something that is really fascinating for me personally, but I think that is the driver, you know, for all the people working in the space environment and targeting, you know, the deep space. So there's a, you know, very far away environment with bodies that we really don't don't know yet. And so even in our mission, which we will go to dive a little bit in detail, we are going to a body that we don't really know about, right? So that's the mystery of discovering something new and, and we don't know what to expect. So with that there is like the mystery of that which is driving our, our work and our let's say the way to do satellites to explore this kind of environment. 

Kinsey Grant: Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting. And I think that your focus here on trying to know the unknown is certainly going to be a recurring theme that I'm sure we encounter today as we talk Talk about deep space. Franco, I'm curious if you have anything to add about why you think deep space is so interesting and so attractive and intriguing for both people who are just interested in space and also for the Science and Technology communities?

Franco Perez Lissi: Yeah, sure. So thanks very much. Similar to Margherita, I think I had always the interest and ambition to go beyond Earth since we know little about it, which makes it more appealing. And I think the amount of science and technology demonstration potential on this planetary bodies is very large. So we're going beyond Earth, in many cases to study planets or objects of our solar system that could also explain the origin of our universe, and that's making it super cool.  I mean, by investigating Mars, we can extract information about how the Earth was or how it will be millions of years. So for instance, we studied the core of asteroids as the one things we’re going to do on our mission, and we could understand the millions of millions of years of history before our universe. So for the mission that we're working on, we're going into deep space with a different objective, we're going there to support the protection of our Earth in case of a closer encounter with a potentially dangerous asteroid. So in this situation, hypothetical by now, we need to deviate the trajectory of an asteroid way before it arrives, two years before. We need to go as far as possible to avoid collision with earth and study these bodies in detail, of course, to get all the tools required. So for me there are planetary defense technology, and scientific interests ongoing. So it's a little bit of a combination. 

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, that's really interesting to consider how understanding our past and our origins might help us to be better equipped to handle whatever comes in the future. I find that to just be endlessly fascinating. Now, with both of these answers in mind, I would love it if the two of you could explain a little bit how satellites come into play here.

So what are some of the use cases for satellites navigating deep space? And I think this would be a great time to talk about some of the focus areas that both of you have and the work that you're doing within the satellite ecosystem. So tell me a little bit about how satellites play into our strategy for exploring deep space – and both of you can feel free to chime in here and share whatever comes to mind.

Kinsey Grant: Margherita, would you like to kick us off?

Margherita: Yes, sure. So coming to the, let's say, the technology area, of course, as I was saying before  the space is kind of a different environment with respect to the Earth orbits, and there are a few things that I would like to stress and to focus on a little bit because these environmental impacts on the design of the spacecraft for a few things, which are crucial. So for the first place, I would say that the radiation environment is different. So let's say in the, in the Deep Space, and in general, out of the atmosphere, there is a radiative environment, which is very peculiar, and it's different with respect to you know, the distance from Earth and from the sun, etc. And so, in the Milan emission, for example, and in the asteroid environment, we have a very peculiar environment, and we have to make sure that our technology, and our systems are able to survive this kind of environment. So, of course, there are some methods in order to ensure that and we are executing an extensive edition campaign on some of the crucial modules of the spacecraft so that we can, you know, try to reproduce on Earth what we will be seeing during the mission. It's not, let's say possible to have a match one to one, but in general, we can have some models that allow us to replicate the environment. 

And so, thanks to this test, we are able to understand how the systems are responding to the relative environment and so, to be able to implement any mitigation action that we can actually implement on ground before the mission. So, I would say that ideation is one of the main topics that we are focusing on on Milani as well as the navigation because again, we are not in the Earth orbit. So we cannot rely on, you know, existing assets such as the GPS, for example. So, we have to rely on different methods of navigation with which combined to the distance from the Earth. It makes the world aggregation approach pretty peculiar and complex, I would say. So, we have to implement systems that allow us to navigate in such a far and unknown environment and this is kind of something that is putting challenges in our development. 

And in this particular mission, in addition to that, the results are another constraint that We have to consider is that the Milani satellite that we are developing as part of the head of mission will not have the capability to directly communicate with Earth. So, we have to rely on the Hara mothercraft for the communication. So, there is a so-called inter-satellite link system that is allowing Milani and Hara to communicate. And then Hara will be, you know, the main bridge to Earth to download the data and the scientific measurements. So, I would say these three things, at least from the Milani point of view, and then we will see what Frank was saying about the overall mission. But these three challenges are the ones that at the moment are really, you know, adding challenges and pushing the development to a more extreme, let's say level, I would say.

Kinsey Grant: Right, right. I imagine that that tremendously complicates things. And I would love to dig in a little bit more to this Milani mission, the Milani CubeSat mission. Franco, if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about the purpose of the mission? What are the scientific objectives for the Milani mission?

Franco Perez Lissi: Yeah, for sure. So, the main scientific objectives of the mission are mainly related to characterize the binary asteroid surface of Deimos, you see now a hyperspectral camera on board a CubeSat. So, the size objectives are split in three. So, the first one is to map the composition of the Deimos, just to understand, which is the content inside the asteroid to be able to respond. As I said before, if an asteroid is coming to the earth, we need to hit it, we need to change the trajectory. So we need to understand first, the materials and what we're finding when we get there, that is determining the mineral composition difference between the two objects. 

I mentioned that this is a binary asteroid, a binary means that probably there is a main body and then there is a small asteroid orbiting around the main body as a moon. So we need to determine if there are differences in mineral composition. And also determine the surface roughness and regolith grain size, what we call the surface made out of boulders, it's compact material, etc. So that will give us a good understanding of how strong we need to hit the Astro, for instance, to change the trajectory, and so on. 

So mainly you are familiar with the dark mission that our mission was a NASA mission that was launched a few months ago, and also a few months ago, it impacted the moon. So this mission was demonstrating the first step of the whole space safety program, which was hitting the asteroid and now characterizing what is the aftermath of this technology, right? So this is when Milani will come into play. So basically Milani, once we arrive with the main spacecraft, Milani will be deployed in the asteroid vicinity, we will be flying around the asteroid and take your images in different spectral ranges to understand all these objectives that we mentioned before.

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, it really is fascinating stuff and I appreciate all the context here and explaining the, you know, real world real life use cases for all this that’s happening. I know that for a lot of people out there, myself included, it can be difficult to completely understand the scope of some of these projects that are happening in deep space. So I appreciate the attention to detail and helping me understand them. 

Now, I would love to transition here for a minute to talk about the big picture relationships that make all this happen. We were talking here about the Milani mission, this is a collaboration between your two organizations. And I understand that for much of our modern history, when it comes to space exploration, we hear about competing ambitions from different nations, you know, it's one nation trying to beat another to a certain space milestone. But I understand now that it comes down to a lot more collaboration than that when we're talking about real space exploration and real, you know, major innovation in space, in deep space. So tell me a little bit about how that has worked, you know, this collaboration between Tyvak and with the ESA, tell me how these relationships have evolved to be a little bit more global, as we tried to navigate what comes next and what we need to do next when it pertains to deep space?

Margherita Cardi: Sure, I can start answering the question, if you don't mind. So, from my perspective, I have to say that I need to take a little step back in the sense that in Europe, let's say in the last, I would say 10 or 20 years, I'd say that the space environment has been evolving a lot. So historically, there were you know, big space companies, which were you know, getting the majority of the industry at the end on the market and say in the last decades, these small companies, let's say small space companies started to grow, and to have the place, you know, in Europe and and now we can demonstrate that also the medium company as we are, can really do a lot of things for the Europe and for the European Space Agency in general.

The example of Tyvak International is pretty useful to understand this trend, because we were born in 2016 and we were just, you know, three or four employees and now we count 50 people and we grew organically in the European ecosystem I would say of companies, and all our employees are from Europe. Actually, most of them are Italian at the end. And our supply chain is mostly European and Italian. And so we are actually bringing value to the European ecosystem. And, this program demonstrates that, you know, small companies as we are can act as prime contractors. So for Milani, we act as the prime contractor for the European Space Agency, and so we had this amazing opportunity three years ago to start this very challenging project and for which I will never stop to thank ESA for this opportunity because now this is possible. 

And it's happening more and more in different projects and, of course, Italy, as always plays a good role, because of course, we have one of the main contributors to the space ecosystem in Europe. And again, working on this program and on other programs that we did in the past it’s challenging and it’s of course having a, you know, a very demanding customer. But I also found in the ESA team, you know, very pragmatic people very prepared, and so the collaboration between the two teams is amazing for this project in particular, I will never stop saying that, you know, the relationship and the collaboration and the pragmatic approach, when everything happens is is really is really awesome. I would say I have never seen something like that before and I'm pretty grateful for that, in this occasion. So that gives me the opportunity to thank again, ESA for that and saying that as my example, I mean, our example as a small company in Italy, working on these small satellites, you know, we demonstrated that we can do more, and we will be growing in the in the future, let's say.

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, very, very interesting to hear that. And I think that you know, Margherita, it's very obvious and hearing that answer that collaboration is an enormous part of what both of your companies are doing or both of your organizations are doing. So I appreciate you sharing that. Now finally, to close out today, we'd like to do a little myth busting to talk about some of the biggest myths or misconceptions about space. 

And today we'll talk about Deep Space, particularly, but I'd love to ask both of you. Do you have any misconceptions about the space industry that you want to reset the narrative or set the record straight? Anything that you think people get wrong about space that you would like to set them right off? Franco, would love to kick off here with you anything you want. 

Franco Perez Lissi: Well, so I'm not sure if it misconceptions, but I think probably there are many aspects of Space Science or space technology that people tend to underestimate because probably they don't understand how complex they are. And I would like to focus on two probably two aspects. So the first one is the space environment. So Margherita was mentioning it before a little bit, but within the low earth orbit, when we are close to the Earth, we are protected by the magnetosphere which protects the Earth from high energy particles. Therefore the environment is more, let's say, adequate for satellites. But when we go beyond, and also that applies also for human spaceflight, so when when astronauts go beyond, things are starting to get a little bit more complex because we don't have that protection of the earth Magnetosphere, and we start interacting with particles that can hit our electronics, deposit a lot of energy and create like break the electronics or create overcurrent over voltages etc. So there is a large complexity in designing and mission that goes beyond, not only because we're going far from the earth and the communications are harder and so on, but also because of the environment. 

And the second topic that I would like to also highlight is people usually tend to underestimate the complexity of how hard it is to navigate in space. So we don't have GPS or we don't have our iPhones or Android phones with Google Maps there. But what we have is the stars, and we have the knowledge of our position in the universe so that what we call G and C is guidance, navigation and control of the spacecraft is one of the most complex disciplines. And it's amazing how we can actually help the NASA Dark mission there. So basically, we launch a rocket from the earth, and we can hit an object with an accuracy that is amazing. And that object is probably 200 Million (kilometers) away from Earth.

So that is something that I think people tend to underestimate and how complex it is to hit that target from 200 million kilometers away. So these two aspects for me are things that usually I get questions about. And I think Tyvak is doing an amazing job on both domains, so on the radiation on the environment, etc, designing a robust mission, but also on the guidance and navigation and control to navigate the cube sat around around the authoring system.

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, absolutely and I appreciate you sharing that. Margherita, anything you would like to add here?

Margherita Cardi: Maybe just a couple of more generic points, of course, I fully agree with what Franco said. And maybe something that also people tend to not really fully understand because they are not working on them on this domain is that, you know, space is useless, and there are a lot of problems on the earth so we are wasting money and time working on space missions. And, you know, this is this is, this is a common feeling for people that are not working on the domain. And I would say that, you know, that's not fully true. And in the sense that working on the space, as demonstrating to have a social return, you know, of investment and competencies and knowledge also for on more ground application, I would say. 

So based on the different domains and applications, this is kind of something that is now demonstrated. So this is one of the topics that I encounter more and more when I deal with this kind of discussion, having dinner with friends that are not doing this job. And so this is one of the things that I keep stressing with these people that are more external to the space environment, and also that the space, you know, it's accessible to very few people. And it's something that is, again, not accessible. And, again, we spoke about that at the beginning of this half- hour together. But we demonstrated that this is not true anymore. And small satellites, more launchers have opened a big door to space to basically everyone. So I appreciate it's like a complex domain. But you know, the doors now are open to everybody. And so this was not like that 10s of years ago, but now, with the new space economy, this is starting to be a reality. And so everybody can really access space, if they want. So I will say these two topics are our most of the discussion that I have with, you know, people that are not working in this domain.

Kinsey Grant: Yeah, I appreciate that context, too. And I think that one of the big lessons or takeaways here that I've had from this conversation is understanding that so much of what is going on in deep space really can have implications and impacts on the way that we go about living here on Earth, and I think that that's really, really interesting. 

So with that, I would love to thank both of you, Margherita and Franco for joining us today. Once again, Margherita is the VP of programs at Tyvak international Franco is a Systems Engineer at the European Space Agency. And I would love to thank you both for your time and for joining me here today. I learned so much. Thank you again.

Franco Perez Lissi: Thanks for having us on. 

Margherita Cardi: Thanks for the invite. Thanks a lot. Have a nice afternoon.

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