Space: The Final Frontier

[Stan]

https://www.meteorwatch.org/iss-international-space-station-times-uk-january-2022/

 

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Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon

A rocket launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and explode.

The Falcon 9 booster was launched in 2015 but after completing its mission, it did not have enough fuel to return towards Earth and instead remained in space.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell told BBC News it will be the first known uncontrolled rocket collision with the Moon.

But the effects will be minor, he says.

FULL REPORT

 

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Scientists taught a goldfish to drive a car, and the research could one day help astronauts in space

As it turns out, goldfish can take to driving a car like a duck to water.

A team at Ben-Gurion University taught the fish to move its own tank ­– on what the team termed a ‘Fish Operated Vehicle’ or FOV ­– towards a target, in return for a treat. Aside from making fairground games a lot more difficult, the research has implications for humans’ futures among the stars, says Dr Ohad Ben-Shahar, professor of computer science and one of the authors of the study.

Ben-Shahar is interested in how we navigate through a space, and what that space looks like in our minds. There must be some mapping happening in our minds, says Ben-Shahar, that links our movements and body parts to changes in space. This is how we know how far to extend our arm to reach for, or navigate toward, our cup of tea, for example, without extending it too far and knocking it over. “How space is represented in the brain is the mechanism by which navigational decisions are made,” explains Ben-Shahar.

FULL REPORT

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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NASA’s Lunar Gateway: The plans for a permanent space station that will orbit the Moon

2022 will see NASA, with help from its international partners, take the first major step on humanity’s journey back to the Moon, and the start of a mission to establish an outpost alongside Earth’s natural satellite.

 

If all goes to plan, sometime in 2022 NASA’s Space Launch System rocket (SLS) will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its maiden flight. The giant SLS rocket, fully 111.25m tall, is set to launch no earlier than February, but probably not until the summer, and will send an uncrewed capsule on a test mission around the far side of the Moon and back again. Known as Artemis 1, it will truly mark the beginning of humanity’s return to the Moon.

The Artemis 2 mission, currently scheduled for May 2024, will repeat Artemis 1 but this time with a crew of astronauts. In their looping journey around the Moon, they’ll go further into space than any previous astronaut. Then comes the big one: Artemis 3, which will carry the next astronauts to land on the Moon.

In between these tent-pole missions will be a sequence of other launches to ensure the astronauts have everything they need to complete their missions when they reach lunar orbit. Absolutely critical to the long-term success of the Artemis programme is the Gateway lunar space station.

FULL REPORT & PHOTOS

 

[nudge]

Mind-blowing images...

 

 

[Stan]

6 minutes ago, nudge said:

Mind-blowing images...

 

 

That's legit the black hole and my mind is blown even more. 

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                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

                                                               2022 February 1

Moon Phases 2022
Video Credit: Data: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ; Animation: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio;
Music: Build the Future (Universal Production Music), Alexander Hitchens

Explanation: What will the Moon phase be on your birthday this year? It is hard to predict because the Moon's appearance changes nightly. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates images and altitude data taken by NASA's Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2022 -- as seen from Earth's northern (southern) hemisphere. A single lunation describes one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases. A full lunation takes about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th). As each lunation progresses, sunlight reflects from the Moon at different angles, and so illuminates different features differently. During all of this, of course, the Moon always keeps the same face toward the Earth. What is less apparent night-to-night is that the Moon's apparent size changes slightly, and that a slight wobble called a libration occurs as the Moon progresses along its elliptical orbit.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

 

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by CaaC (John)

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Iris: Student-built robot rover on track to explore the Moon

William "Red" Whittaker may not be a household name, but he should be.

The robotics professor has been leading the development of a tiny wheeled robot called Iris, which could become the first uncrewed rover sent by the US to explore the Moon.

Iris has not been built by experienced engineers at Nasa or a large aerospace company, but by students at Whittaker's home institution of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. The robot was recently secured to its lunar lander, ahead of a launch scheduled for mid-2022.

The project represents a dream come true for the robotics pioneer, whose work has spanned cleaning up nuclear accidents to building driverless cars.

On 28 March 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, experienced a partial meltdown in one of its reactors. Radioactive gases were released into the environment and the reactor building became too contaminated for people to enter.

FULL REPORT

 

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First glimpse of final moments of disintegrating planets

Long-awaited observations of crumbling planets being consumed by their ageing host star confirm decades of indirect evidence.

The fate of most stars, including our own Sun, is to become a white dwarf – a star that has burnt up all its fuel and shed its outer layers, often destroying its orbital bodies in the process. Over 300,000 white dwarf stars have been discovered in our galaxy alone, and researchers have long suspected that many of them are “feeding” on the scattered debris of planets and other objects that once orbited them.

But until recently, there has only been indirect evidence to support this theory.

Now, for the first time, researchers can confirm that the disintegrating remnants of planets are indeed destined to be swallowed up by the dying stars that once held them in their orbits.

The results, published in Nature, are the first direct measurement of such accretion of rocky material into a white dwarf.

Astronomers from the University of Warwick, in the UK, used x-rays to detect the collision and consumption of rocky and gaseous material from a collapsing planetary system with the white dwarf at its centre, watching the death of the system some billions of years after its initial formation. This is the first time that astronomers have seen the material actually being pulled into the star.

For several decades, astronomers have used spectroscopy at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths to measure the abundance of elements on the surface of white dwarf stars, deducing from this the composition of the objects they came from. From these indirect spectroscopic observations, astronomers could see that between a quarter and a half of all white dwarfs observed have heavy elements such as iron, calcium and magnesium polluting their atmospheres, which were presumed to have derived from the planetary bodies they were gobbling up.

Dr Tim Cunningham of the University of Warwick Department of Physics says that, until now, researchers have relied on “numerical models that calculate how quickly an element sinks out of the atmosphere into the star, and that tells you how much is falling into the atmosphere as an accretion rate. You can then work backwards and work out how much of an element was in the parent body, whether a planet, moon or asteroid.”

Finally having a direct confirmation of theory is thrilling, says Cunningham, noting that the degree of congruence between the established models and the new observations is “remarkable”.

The key to these new observations was the use of x-rays. As debris from crumbling planets is pulled into a white dwarf, the speed with which it slams into the star’s surface generates shock-heated plasma. This plasma, with a temperature between 100,000 and one million degrees kelvin, then settles on the surface, and as it cools it emits x-rays.

But detecting these x-rays is challenging. There are a number of bright x-ray sources scattered across our skies, and filtering out the very small amount reaching us from distant white dwarfs can be difficult.

To tackle the task, astronomers turned to the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a satellite telescope currently orbiting the Earth and normally used to detect x-rays from black holes and neutron stars that are accreting. This time they used it to analyse the nearby white dwarf G29-38.

With Chandra’s improved angular resolution over other telescopes, they could isolate the target star from other x-ray sources. They then viewed, for the first time, x-rays from an isolated white dwarf.

“What’s really exciting about this result is that we’re working at a different wavelength, x-rays, and that allows us to probe a completely different type of physics,” says Cunningham.

“This detection provides the first direct evidence that white dwarfs are currently accreting the remnants of old planetary systems. Probing accretion in this way provides a new technique by which we can study these systems, offering a glimpse into the likely fate of the thousands of known exoplanetary systems, including our own Solar system.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/first-glimpse-of-final-moments-of-disintegrating-planets/

 

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Rocket part on crash course with Moon 'not from Elon Musk's SpaceX'

 

Astronomers say that a rocket section set to crash into the Moon in March did not come from Elon Musk's space exploration company as they first thought.

Instead they believe it is probably a Chinese rocket stage launched for a lunar mission in 2014.

The impact of the collision with the Moon will be minor, scientists say.

Astronomers first identified a piece of machinery on course to crash into the Moon on 4 March in January.

Machinery left in space that doesn't return to the Earth's atmosphere after completing missions is known as space junk.

Data analyst Bill Gray identified the object as a Falcon 9 booster from a 2015 launch by billionaire Elon Musk's space exploration programme SpaceX. It was subsequently reported by journalist Eric Berger. Mr Musk's company ultimately aims to get humans living on other planets.

But now Mr Gray says he made an error and instead he believes it is a rocket launched in October 2014 as part of China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission that sent a small spacecraft to the Moon.

Prof Jonathan McDowell from the US-based Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told BBC News he agrees with Mr Gray's re-assessment. He explained that there is a lot of "intrinsic uncertainty" in identifying space debris far from Earth and that mistakes happen.

There are limited resources for tracking space debris, he explained: "We rely on a small handful of volunteers who do it on their own time. So there is limited scope for cross-checking."

Objects close to Earth are tracked by a team at the US military's Space Force, but junk further out in deep orbit is left unobserved.

The European Space Agency commented: "This still-evolving finding underscores the need for enhanced space tracking, and greater data sharing between spacecraft operators, launch providers and the astronomy and space surveillance communities."

Prof McDowell said he is 80% certain that the object on course to hit the Moon is from the 2014 Chinese rocket launch.

When the object was first identified, Prof McDowell told BBC News it will be the first known uncontrolled collision of a human-made object with the Moon.

The rocket stage will explode as it makes contact.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60378119

 

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Astronomers discover a new type of star covered in helium burning ashes

Stellar riddle challenges our understanding of the evolution of stars.

Astronomers have discovered a puzzling new type of star that is covered in the ashes of burning helium.

Outlining their findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team of German astronomers who first glimpsed these strange new heavenly bodies say the surfaces of these stars are unlike any other that has ever been observed.

In place of the normal stellar surface of hydrogen and helium, these newly spotted stars are covered in carbon and oxygen – the ashy byproducts of helium burning. Adding to this astronomical riddle, the stars are of a size and temperature that indicates that they’re still burning helium within their cores, which is a stellar property usually only seen in stars of a much more advanced evolutionary stage than these.

“Normally we expect stars with these surface compositions to have already finished burning helium in their cores, and to be on their way to becoming white dwarfs,” explains lead author Professor Klaus Werner from the University of Tübingen.

“These new stars are a severe challenge to our understanding of stellar evolution.”

In an accompanying paper, a separate group of astronomers from the University of La Plata and the Max Planck Institute have risen to the challenge, offering the first possible explanation for how such a star may form – and the posited circumstances are just as exciting as the new stars.

“We believe the stars discovered by our German colleagues might have formed in a very rare kind of stellar merger event between two white dwarf stars,” says Dr Marcelo Miller Bertolami of the Institute for Astrophysics of La Plata, lead author of the second paper.

White dwarfs are stars that have burnt up all their nuclear fuel and shed their outer layers, typically collapsing inwards to become very small and dense. When two of these stars orbit each other closely in a binary system, their mutual orbit tends to collapse inwards as they radiate gravitational waves, and mergers are not uncommon.

But until now, all known white dwarf mergers have resulted in predictable stellar compositions. Astronomers now believe that these surprising new surfaces might be the product of two white dwarfs with very different compositions colliding.

“Usually, white dwarf mergers do not lead to the formation of stars enriched in carbon and oxygen,” explains Miller Bertolami, “but we believe that, for binary systems formed with very specific masses, a carbon and oxygen-rich white dwarf might be disrupted and end up on top of a helium-rich one, leading to the formation of these stars.”

But despite this tentative explanation, no current stellar models can fully account for the surface properties of these new stars.

The team will now work to refine their stellar models to assess the likelihood of their proposed merger situation, hoping to understand not just these strange new stars but also the intricacies of the late evolutionary stages of binary star systems.

Until astronomers develop these more refined models, the origins of the helium-covered stars will remain up for debate.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/astronomers-discover-a-new-type-of-star-covered-in-helium-burning-ashes/

 

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The Milky Way is a giant ‘smoothie’ of blended stars

New research offers insight into Milky Way’s galaxy-eating youth, mingling old and new.

A new Australian study has analysed the light from 600,000 stars in the Milky Way to identify which ones originated within it, and which formed in other galaxies and were blended into ours in the distant past.

“Although the Milky Way is our home galaxy, we still do not understand how it formed and evolved,” says first author Dr Sven Buder, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and the Australian National University (ANU).

“The Milky Way ate up lots of smaller galaxies but, until recently, we did not have enough evidence of that to say for sure. That’s because simple images of stars in our Milky Way look the same – whether they were born inside the galaxy or outside and then blended into the galaxy.”

Published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers analysed the light from stars to help us understand what went in to creating the Milky Way we see today.

The team, from the Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) Survey, used Australia’s largest optical telescope – the Anglo-Australian Telescope (ATT) to collect the light from more than 600,000 stars and split it with the HERMES (High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph) instrument.

Akin to the way water droplets in the atmosphere split white light into its components to form rainbows, the researchers split the light into its different wavelengths to get 600,000 stellar spectra signatures. Each contains specific bands of light which correspond to the emission spectrum of different chemical elements, acting like tiny barcodes that vary depending on a star’s chemical composition.

“By scanning these ‘stellar barcodes’, we measured how abundant 30 elements – such as sodium, iron, magnesium, and manganese – were, and how they appeared in different concentrations depending on where the star was born,” explains Buder.

This method, known as chemical tagging, looks at the percentage composition of sodium, iron, magnesium and manganese to detect whether a star formed within the galaxy or was absorbed from a satellite galaxy.

This early step in reconstructing the early Milky Way offers an insight into the size of the galaxies it consumed in its early stages. It could also answer questions about several of its special features, for example our galaxy’s  two distinct groups of stars in the disc that we see as the milky band in the night sky.

“The Milky Way spread out across the night sky is a familiar sight, and when we look at it, we are actually gazing into the centre of our galaxy with its billions of stars,” says Buder. “But we are looking at two populations of stars, one much older than the other.

“The old stars have moved, so they look like they bulge out of the main plane of the Milky Way – while the younger stars form a much thinner band in the plane,” he adds. “But we don’t know why this has happened and our latest findings of the remnants of gigantic, galactic collisions may help us understand.”

The Milky Way has two distinct populations of stars, one older than the other. The older stars have moved so they look like they bulge out of the main plane of the Milky Way, while the younger stars form a much thinner band in the plane. Credit: author provided

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/the-milky-way-is-a-giant-smoothie-of-blended-stars/

 

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Spooky stars: phantom black hole is actually a “stellar vampire”

In a story of scientific method gone right, two rival research teams join forces to uncover new truths.

A star system previously described as the site of the closest black hole to Earth does not actually contain a black hole, a new study has reported.

Instead, the HR 6819 system is home to a rare phenomenon known as a vampire star.

Back in 2020, a team of astronomers based at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) published a paper on HR 6819. Using observations from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, they proposed that HR 6819 was a triple system containing a black hole, one star orbiting the black hole, and a second star in a wider orbit. The black hole in HR 6819 would have been the closest to Earth yet observed.

However, another team based at KU Leuven in Belgium believed that the observations could equally be explained by a binary system, with two stars in orbits of similar lengths and no black hole.

For this alternative explanation to be correct, one of the stars would have to be “stripped” – meaning that it had lost a large proportion of its mass to the other at some point in the past.

In the best scientific spirit, the two teams decided to work together to seek the truth.

“We had reached the limit of the existing data,” explains Abigail Frost, a researcher at KU Leuven and leader of the new study. “So we had to turn to a different observational strategy to decide between the two scenarios proposed by the two teams.”

“We agreed that there were two sources of light in the system, so the question was whether they orbit each other closely, as in the stripped-star scenario, or are far apart from each other, as in the black hole scenario,” says Thomas Rivinius, a lead author on the original ESO paper.

The debate was clinched by data collected using the GRAVITY and Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

“MUSE confirmed that there was no bright companion in a wider orbit, while GRAVITY’s high spatial resolution was able to resolve two bright sources separated by only one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Sun,” says Frost.

“These data proved to be the final piece of the puzzle and allowed us to conclude that HR 6819 is a binary system with no black hole.” 

However, while they may have lost a black hole, the researchers believe they have gained a rare sighting of a spooky astronomical occurrence.

 

In binary systems where two stars are close together, it’s not uncommon for one star to “suck” away the atmosphere of the other – a phenomenon sometimes called “stellar vampirism”. The researchers believe they may have observed the immediate aftermath of a stellar vampire attack in HR 6819.

“While the donor star was stripped of some of its material, the recipient star began to spin more rapidly,” says Julia Bodensteiner, who led the study proposing the stripped-star scenario as a PhD student at KU Leuven and is now a research fellow at ESO.

“Catching such a post-interaction phase is extremely difficult as it is so short,” says Frost.

“This makes our findings for HR 6819 very exciting, as it presents a perfect candidate to study how this vampirism affects the evolution of massive stars, and in turn the formation of their associated phenomena including gravitational waves and violent supernova explosions.”

 

Far from leading to acrimony, the original debate about HR 6819 has nurtured scientific understanding and the formation of a new collaboration between the astronomers.

“Not only is it normal, but it should be that results are scrutinised,” says Rivinius.

Meanwhile, the search for Earth’s closest black hole continues.

Originally published by Cosmos as Spooky stars: phantom black hole is actually a “stellar vampire”

 

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https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/j2030/

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Nasa's giant new SLS Moon rocket makes its debut

The American space agency has rolled out its new giant Moon rocket for the first time.

The vehicle, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), was taken to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to conduct a dummy countdown.

If that goes well, the rocket will be declared ready for a mission in which it will send an uncrewed test capsule around the Moon.

This could happen in the next couple of months.

FULL REPORT

 

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One ORC to rule them all (for now)

Clearest image yet of a mysterious new space object.

Like a blurry, green-blue jellyfish pulsating in the vast cosmic ocean, this image is the best captured yet of a mysterious space phenomenon known as an odd radio circle (ORC).

ORCs were first discovered in 2019 by astronomer Anna Kapinska, who was studying a pilot survey of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (a radio survey of space), which used data from CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope. Puzzled by the bizarre and spooky phenomenon she was looking at, Kapinska labelled the anomaly with four characters: WTF?

Odd radio circles are so named because they’re large, circular objects which are bright around the edges at radio wavelengths, but which can’t be seen with optical, infrared or X-ray telescopes – and at this stage, astronomers don’t really know what they are. 

And they’re massive – about a million light years across, making them sixteen times larger than our own galaxy. But despite their gargantuan size, the objects are difficult to spot, hiding in plain sight.

Theories abound about the true identity of ORCs, from galactic shockwaves to the open throats of wormholes, but what’s clear is we’ve never seen anything like them before. 

“We know ORCs are rings of faint radio emissions surrounding a galaxy with a highly active black hole at its centre, but we don’t yet know what causes them, or why they are so rare,” says study co-author Ray Norris, of Western Sydney University and CSIRO.

Norris isn’t surprised that we’ve made such exciting and unprecedented discoveries, however, because astronomy – and in particular radio astronomy – is going through a technological revolution, as newer, larger and more precise radio telescope arrays, built upon international cooperation, are being tuned into the heavens.

“ASKAP is fantastic at looking at large areas of sky, going very deep, and this is why they’ve never been seen before,” Norris explains. “Because ASKAP was going to observe the sky in a way it had never been observed before, we knew there was a fair chance we would discover new things.”

To help scientists decode the ORC’s cosmic secrets, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (SARAO) MeerKAT radio telescope has captured the clearest image of an ORC yet, allowing scientists to tease out more details about these strange objects in a new study published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“So, we’ve had a really close look at our first ORC,” says Norris. 

“Firstly, we see that there’s a whole lot of structure there that we didn’t know about before; we can see a magnetic field around it, and most importantly we can see that at the centre of this ORC, there’s a little blob of radiation which is bang on top of a galaxy.”

That means the team is now fairly confident that ORCs are actually explosions emanating from the centres of other galaxies – but we still don’t know what causes the explosions.

Norris has two contenders for his favourite theory. One is that such an epic explosion may emanate from the collision of two supermassive black holes in the centre of a galaxy; the massive ring of radio-visible energy, about a million light-years across, would be the remnants of that explosion as it travels out far beyond the width of the galaxy itself. 

The other possibility is that the ORCs are actually starbursts.

“In a starburst, a fair amount of the gas in a galaxy is converted in a very short period into stars,” Norris says. 

“If this happened in our own galaxy, when we looked up at the night sky the whole sky would be blazing with supernovae going off, stars merging, the whole sky would be lit up – except of course we’d all be dead, because all the cosmic rays from all these explosions would have killed us off.”

But starbursts, which involve massive blasts of gas in a particularly active galaxy, could in theory produce massive shockwaves.

“Either of these two models produce this enormous bubble of hot gas coming out from the galaxy.”

So, what’s the next step in unravelling this tantalising space mystery? According to Norris, they’ve just got to keep looking.

“Firstly, we need to find more of them,” he says. “Right now, we’ve only got five of them we’re studying.”

“And the ones we know of, we need to study them more,” he adds. MeerKAT in South Africa is the best telescope for the job, because it penetrates the night sky so deeply. 

The next thing is to try and tease out what ORCs look like in other wavelengths – the wavelengths they’ve so far been invisible in, including visible light, infrared light and X-rays.

“If we can study the galaxy at their centre with optical telescopes, we can see if there are any signs that it was a merger of black holes, or perhaps a starburst.”

But any hopes of glimpsing this would require far bigger, more powerful optical telescopes than we have here in Australia: “so the next thing is to try to use some of the biggest telescopes in the world, for example the European Southern Observatory’s ELT telescope in Chile.”

And the thrill, for many scientists, is in the chase.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/clearest-image-mysterious-space-phenomenon/

 

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NASA Provides Update to Astronaut Moon Lander Plans Under Artemis

An illustration of a suited Artemis astronaut looking out of a Moon lander hatch across the lunar surface, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle and other surface elements.

Credits: NASA

As NASA makes strides to return humans to the lunar surface under Artemis, the agency announced plans Wednesday to create additional opportunities for commercial companies to develop an astronaut Moon lander.

Under this new approach, NASA is asking American companies to propose lander concepts capable of ferrying astronauts between lunar orbit and the lunar surface for missions beyond Artemis III, which will land the first astronauts on the Moon in more than 50 years.

Built and operated according to NASA’s long-term requirements at the Moon, new landers will have the capability to dock to a lunar orbiting space station known as Gateway, increase crew capacity, and transport more science and technology to the surface.

“Under Artemis, NASA will carry out a series of groundbreaking missions on and around the Moon to prepare for the next giant leap for humanity: a crewed mission to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Competition is critical to our success on the lunar surface and beyond, ensuring we have the capability to carry out a cadence of missions over the next decade. Thank you to the Biden Administration and Congress for their support of this new astronaut lander opportunity, which will ultimately strengthen and increase flexibility for Artemis.”

NASA’s plans call for long-term lunar exploration and include landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon as part of future Artemis missions. The agency is pursuing two parallel paths for continuing lunar lander development and demonstration, one that calls for additional work under an existing contract with SpaceX, and another open to all other U.S. companies to provide a new landing demonstration mission from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon.

In April 2021, NASA selected SpaceX as its partner to land the next American astronauts on the lunar surface. That demonstration mission is targeted for no earlier than April 2025. Exercising an option under the original award, NASA now is asking SpaceX to transform the company’s proposed human landing system into a spacecraft that meets the agency’s requirements for recurring services for a second demonstration mission. Pursuing more development work under the original contract maximizes NASA’s investment and partnership with SpaceX.

To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

This upcoming second contract award, known as the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, combined with the second option under SpaceX’s original landing award, will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon.

“This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing System Program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the Moon under NASA’s guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market.” 

After the new draft solicitation is published, NASA will host a virtual industry day. Once comments and questions from the draft solicitation process have been reviewed, the agency plans by to issue the formal request for proposals this summer. 

Astronaut Moon landers are a vital part of NASA’s deep space exploration plans, along with the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, ground systems, and Gateway. NASA is committed to using a commercial astronaut lunar lander to carry the astronauts to the surface of the Moon, expanding exploration and preparing humanity for the next giant leap, human exploration of Mars. 

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-provides-update-to-astronaut-moon-lander-plans-under-artemis

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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‘Chaos terrains’ on Jupiter’s moon Europa, grasshopper teeth, and a new biopolymer.

On Jupiter’s moon Europa, ‘chaos terrains’ could be shuttling oxygen to ocean

Jupiter’s moon Europa is a top contender when looking for alien life because scientists have detected signs of oxygen, water, and chemicals that could be used as nutrients there. However problematically the vast liquid water ocean on its surface is covered by a crust of ice – estimated to be about 15 to 25 kilometres thick – that acts as a barrier between it and oxygen on the surface.

For life as we know it to exist in the ocean it needs oxygen, and it could be hitching a ride on salt water under the ‘chaos terrains’ of the icy shell, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

‘Chaos terrains’ are landscapes of cracks, ridges, and ice blocks that cover a quarter of Europa, and which scientists think form when the ice shell partially melts to form brine. This brine can then mix with the oxygen at the surface and drain through the ice into the ocean below.

Researchers built the world’s first physics-based computer simulation of the phenomenon and have shown that the brine drains in a distinctive manner, taking the form of a ‘porosity wave’ that causes pores in the ice to momentarily widen – allowing the brine to pass through – before sealing back up.

The researchers say that the highest estimates of the oxygen brought to Europa’s ocean could be on par with what’s present in Earth’s oceans today.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/citizenscience/europa-grasshopper-biopolymer/

 

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Hubble: 'Single star' detected at record-breaking distance

They've nicknamed it "Earendel" and it's the most distant, single star yet imaged by a telescope.

The light from this object has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us.

It's at the sort of distance that telescopes normally would only be able to resolve galaxies containing millions of stars.

But the Hubble space observatory has picked out Earendel individually by exploiting a natural phenomenon that's akin to using a zoom lens.

It's called gravitational lensing and it works like this: If there is a great cluster of galaxies in the line of sight, the gravitational pull from this mass of matter will bend and magnify the light of more distant objects behind.

Usually, this is just other galaxies, but in this specific case Earendel was in a sweetspot in the lens effect.

"We got lucky. This is really extreme; it's really exciting to find something with such a high magnification," said Brian Welch, a PhD student from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US. "If you happen to hit that right sweetspot, like we have in this case, the magnification can grow up to factors of 1000s," he told BBC News.

The previous record-setter was a star called Icarus. Again, captured by Hubble, the light from this star took nine billion years to reach us.

Earendel is therefore significantly further away. We are seeing it a mere 900 million years after the Big Bang, or at a time when the Universe was only 6% of its current age.

FULL REPORT

 

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The furthest object we’ve ever seen – a very young galaxy

The super-distant galaxy could have either a supermassive black hole, or a nursery of incredibly quick-forming stars.

Astronomers have caught a glimpse of a galaxy which, at 13.5 billion light-years away, they believe to be the most distant object yet seen.

The type of galaxy, which is named HD1, remains to be figured out. According to their observations, it’s either an incredibly young galaxy, filled with stars from the birth of the universe – or it contains a supermassive black hole, 100 million times bigger than our Sun.

It was found after 1,200 hours of observation with four different telescopes: the Subaru Telescope, VISTA Telescope, UK Infrared Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope.

“It was very hard work to find HD1 out of more than 700,000 objects,” says Yuichi Harikane, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo, Japan, who discovered the galaxy.

“HD1’s red colour matched the expected characteristics of a galaxy 13.5 billion light-years away surprisingly well, giving me goosebumps when I found it.”

The researchers then confirmed the galaxy’s distance using the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array. They’ll be following up with the James Webb Space Telescope for a final verification.

If the James Webb confirms the observation, HD1 will unseat GN-z11’s record as the most distant object – by roughly 100 million light-years.

The extra data will also be useful for figuring out which of the two theories about the galaxy are correct.

“Answering questions about the nature of a source so far away can be challenging,” says Fabio Pacucci, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, US.

“It’s like guessing the nationality of a ship from the flag it flies, while being faraway ashore, with the vessel in the middle of a gale and dense fog. One can maybe see some colours and shapes of the flag, but not in their entirety. It’s ultimately a long game of analysis and exclusion of implausible scenarios.”

The central clue is HD1’s brightness: it’s emitting a lot of ultraviolet light. Pacucci says that this means “some energetic processes are occurring there or, better yet, did occur some billions of years ago”.

This could be explained by HD1 being a starburst galaxy – a type of galaxy where stars are forming very quickly. But to explain its brightness, Pacucci says that HD1 would have to be forming stars at “an incredible rate – HD1 would be forming more than 100 stars every single year. This is at least 10 times higher than what we expect for these galaxies.”

Meaning that the galaxy could be very, very young.

“The very first population of stars that formed in the universe were more massive, more luminous and hotter than modern stars,” says Pacucci. “If we assume the stars produced in HD1 are these first, or Population III, stars, then its properties could be explained more easily. In fact, Population III stars are capable of producing more UV light than normal stars, which could clarify the extreme ultraviolet luminosity of HD1.”

But the UV light could also be caused by a supermassive black hole. This would be an exciting result too – it’d be the earliest supermassive black hole we know about.

“Forming a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, a black hole in HD1 must have grown out of a massive seed at an unprecedented rate,” says Avi Loeb, also an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian.

“Once again, nature appears to be more imaginative than we are.”

The galaxy is described in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal, and the two theories about its identity are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/furthest-galaxy-new-record/

 

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SpaceX and Axiom Space successfully launch first all-private mission to the International Space Station

The launch represents a "new era in private human spaceflight", Axiom boss says.

At 16.17BST, the first ever all-private crew of astronauts successfully lifted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to make their way to the International Space Station (ISS).

Dubbed Axiom-1, the mission will carry four astronauts, Commander Michael López-Alegría, Pilot Larry Connor, Mission Specialist Mark Pathy and Mission Specialist Eytan Stibbe, to the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket.

The launch went smoothly, as did the return landing of the stage one booster rocket. It is estimated that it will take the spacecraft 20 hours and 28 minutes to dock at the ISS.

The spacecraft will now perform a number of 'burns' to position itself for docking to the ISS.

Once onboard, the crew will spend ten days conducting experiments across a wide range of sciences, from cancer research and biomedical health to robotic developments and Earth observations.

“I first want to congratulate Michael, Larry, Eytan, and Mark. We will usher in a new era in private human spaceflight when they cross the threshold to enter the ISS,” said Michael Suffredini, president and CEO of Axiom Space.

“This journey is the culmination of long hours of training, planning, and dedication from the crew and the entire Axiom Space team, our partners at SpaceX, and of course, a credit to NASA’s vision to develop a sustainable presence in low-Earth orbit.”

Axiom Space aims to develop its own, private space station in low-Earth orbit. Building of the Axiom Station’s first module is underway and is expected to launch in late 2024.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/spacex-and-axiom-space-successfully-launch-first-all-private-mission-to-the-international-space-station/

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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NASA
April 9, 2022
Uncategorized

NASA is planning to proceed with a modified wet dress rehearsal, primarily focused on tanking the core stage, and minimal propellant operations on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) with the ground systems at Kennedy. Due to the changes in loading procedures required for the modified test, wet dress rehearsal testing is slated to resume with call to stations on Tuesday, April 12 and tanking on Thursday, April 14. Wet dress rehearsal is an opportunity to refine the countdown procedures and validate critical models and software interfaces. The modified test will enable engineers to achieve the test objectives critical to launch success.  

Engineers have identified a helium check valve that is not functioning as expected, requiring these changes to ensure safety of the flight hardware. Helium is used for several different operations, including purging the engine, or clearing the lines, prior to loading propellants during tanking, as well as draining propellant. A check valve is a type of valve that allows liquid or gas to flow in a particular direction and prevents backflow. The helium check valve is about three inches long and prevents the helium from flowing back out of the rocket. 

Following the modified test, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft will return to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) where engineers will evaluate the valve and replace if needed. Teams are confident in the ability to replace the valve once back in the VAB.   

NASA will host a teleconference to discuss details on Monday, April 11. Check back at this blog for an update on the countdown timeline prior to the modified wet dress rehearsal testing for the Artemis I mission. NASA is streaming live video of the rocket and spacecraft on the Kennedy Newsroom YouTube channel.  

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/04/09/artemis-i-wet-dress-rehearsal-update/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=NASA&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=160218987

 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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