Space: The Final Frontier

[CaaC (John)+]

8 minutes ago, nudge said:

Crew Dragon is the name of the spacecraft  And Zero-G indicator is well, a zero gravity indicator

 

 

 

Old Age making my mind go haywire 

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)+]

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Orion spacecraft on Artemis 1 to carry an incredible new safety feature

Crew capsule can jettison and reach 800km/h in two seconds.

All eyes will be on Cape Canaveral, Florida tonight as NASA’s latest moon project, Artemis 1 prepares to launch.

It’s phase one of three in NASA’s long-awaited bid to return to the moon. The mission aims to establish a long-term human base on Earth’s satellite by the end of the decade.

Initially it’s a series of tests, or proof of concept, which will stretch science and human endeavour.

Artemis 1 is uncrewed and will, among other things, test the Orion spacecraft and ‘Space Launch System’ rocket. This means certain safety measures to protect future crewed launches are in place in Artemis 1.

It is an unfortunate fact that rockets do sometimes fail either while launching, or soon after. I mean, it is literally rocket science, so there are a lot of complexities and things that can and do go wrong.

So, what have engineers put in place to protect the crew?

NASA has implemented the Launch Abort System (LAS). The LAS is designed to protect the astronauts in the case of a failed launch by pulling the crew module away from the rocket.

LAS itself weighs over 7,000 kilograms and, according to NASA, “it can activate within milliseconds to pull the vehicle to safety and position the module for a safe landing.”

It contains three solid propellant rocket motors made by Northrop Grumman. The motors are the abort motor, an attitude control motor and a jettison motor.

The abort motor can produce nearly two million newtons of thrust force to quickly pull the crew module away from any danger emerging from a failed launch or ascent. According to NASA, this thrust can lift 26 elephants off the ground.

The attitude control motor would be used to steer the crew module in any direction from inside the vehicle.

And the jettison motor will pull the LAS away from the crew module, allowing Orion’s parachutes to deploy so the craft can land safely in the ocean. NASA says it can pull the LAS away from the crew module to a height of around 100 kilometres.

The abort motor is capable of reaching 800 kilometres per hour within two seconds! But, doesn’t that make this safety device dangerous? Such acceleration would produce a G-force (the force felt by an object due to its locomotion) of over 11g.

A normal human body can withstand G-forces up to 9g. But astronauts are built (well, trained) differently. With conditioning, they can withstand 10-15g. During re-entry in 1963, astronauts aboard the Mercury Project capsule experienced 11g.

Forecasts predict there is a 70-80% chance of good weather for Artemis 1’s launch this evening.

Let’s hope it stays that way and there isn’t any need to use the Launch Abort System this time or in the future.

You can watch the livestream of the launch on NASA’s YouTube channel.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/artemis-1-safety-launch-spacecraft/

 

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[nudge]

T-5:11!

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Artemis 1 Moon mission under threat from storms and hydrogen leak

Storms and fuelling issues put the Artemis Moon mission under threat this morning with lightning and a hydrogen leak causing headaches at Kennedy Space Centre.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/artemis-1-moon-mission-under-threat-from-storms-and-hydrogen-leak/ar-AA11dBwh?li=BBoPWjQ

 

 

[nudge]

14 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

 

They re-chilled the lines and the fueling is continuing, currently the team has been given the go ahead for fueling the upper stage. So hopefully the hydrogen leak was not serious or just false alarm

[nudge]

 

Fueling the ICPS now... So far so good!

[nudge]

Working on a potential crack in the intertank and an issue with one of the engines I'll be very surprised if it flies today.

[CaaC (John)+]

6 minutes ago, nudge said:

Working on a potential crack in the intertank and an issue with one of the engines I'll be very surprised if it flies today.

Artemis 1 launch live: Inner tank flange crack and other issues could delay launch

Artemis 1 Final Countdown Live, NASA Artemis 1 Rocket Launch Live: Latest updates from the Artemis I Moon mission.

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/artemis-1-launch-live-live-updates-of-nasas-moon-mission-8118210/

[nudge]

5 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Artemis 1 launch live: Inner tank flange crack and other issues could delay launch

Artemis 1 Final Countdown Live, NASA Artemis 1 Rocket Launch Live: Latest updates from the Artemis I Moon mission.

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/artemis-1-launch-live-live-updates-of-nasas-moon-mission-8118210/

Yes I know John, I literally just posted that...  

Just hearing that the troubleshooting for Engine 3 doesn't seem to work  It's going from exciting to frustrating really fast.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

Yes I know John, I literally just posted that...  

Just hearing that the troubleshooting for Engine 3 doesn't seem to work  It's going from exciting to frustrating really fast.

 

Forgive me my dear, not with it this morning, I know you mentioned it so I gave the link so anyone knew it was you that picked it up.

Better being safe than sorry though, with the launch, I would not like them to go ahead with it and it is not a 100%.

[nudge]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

Forgive me my dear, not with it this morning, I know you mentioned it so I gave the link so anyone knew it was you that picked it up.

Better being safe than sorry though, with the launch, I would not like them to go ahead with it and it is not a 100%.

You don't have to worry John, there's nobody else but the two of us in this thread anyway  

Yeah, it's better that such issues happen during uncrewed test launch than later on when it truly matters and lives are at stake, but it's just really hard to stay positive when the SLS has been in development since 2011, was planned to be fully operational before 2017, so it's now years behind schedule and massively over-budget (which doesn't bother me because it's not my money, but still), and they still are struggling. 

[CaaC (John)+]

5 minutes ago, nudge said:

You don't have to worry John, there's nobody else but the two of us in this thread anyway  

Stan & Bluewolf pop in now and then. 

5 minutes ago, nudge said:

so it's now years behind schedule and massively over-budget

If I was a billionaire I would give them the dosh to operate 

[nudge]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

If I was a billionaire I would give them the dosh to operate 

More money to waste on non-reusable launch system and poor political decisions? No thanks  I'd rather get into a joint venture with Musk. 

[nudge]

Good news: the crack apears to be just a crack in the thermal protection system foam (insulation), and not in the actual structure, so it shouldn't be an issue for launch.

Not-so-good news: the countdown is now on hold for over 10 minutes at T-40 minutes, as the LH team discuss the Engine 3 issue with the launch director.

 

[Toinho]

So it will launch today? I haven’t checked in over the last hour or so. 

[nudge]

1 minute ago, Toinho said:

So it will launch today? I haven’t checked in over the last hour or so. 

Unclear as of now. Still working on that engine issue, the countdown has been on hold for about 30 minutes now. If they don't find a workaround soon, the launch will be scrubed. If they find a workaround, the launch window opens in about 15 minutes and will be open for 2 hours - weather permitting. So it could still launch today, but it's not looking very good... 

[nudge]

Official now: it's been scrubbed for today  Next attempt on Friday, if they resolve the issue with the Engine 3 bleed. Launch window is supposed to open again on September 2, Friday, 16:48 GMT.

[CaaC (John)+]

Shame that but there will be another day. 

[CaaC (John)+]

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Accidental discovery shows rare X-shaped galaxies might form more simply than expected

Less than 10% of astronomical radio signals come from X-shaped galaxies.

Galaxies don’t just come in spirals. There are elliptical galaxies as well as the rare X-shaped, or winged, galaxies.

Now, new 3D modelling gives us insight into the formation of these X-shaped astronomical objects, but it almost didn’t happen.

When astronomers gaze into the universe using radio telescopes, they can see the twin jets of radiation that blast out of either side of the supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies.

But occasionally – less than 10% of the time – astronomers might spot the rare X-shaped radio galaxies with not just two, but four jets of radiation extending into space.

These mysterious objects have puzzled astronomers for decades.

A new study coming out of Northwestern University in the US shows that their formation may be surprisingly straightforward. The study is the first to use large-scale galaxy accretion simulation to track the movement of gas stretching far from the supermassive black hole. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Northwestern astrophysicists found they needed only simple conditions to “feed” their supermassive black hole to form the four jets seen in X-shaped galaxies.

The researchers showed that the characteristic X-shape results from the interaction between the black hole’s jets and the gas falling into the black hole. As the simulation begins, the newly formed jets are deflected by infalling gas, effectively turning the radiation blasts on and off.

Eventually, however, the jets overcome the gas to push through along a single axis.

“We found that even with simple symmetric initial conditions, you can have quite a messy result,” says study leader Aretaios Lalakos and a graduate student at Northwestern.

“A popular explanation of X-shaped radio galaxies is that two galaxies collide, causing their supermassive black holes to merge, which changes the spin of the remnant black hole and the direction of the jet.

“Another idea is that the jet’s shape is altered as it interacts with large-scale amounts of gas enveloping an isolated supermassive black hole. Now, we have revealed, for the first time, that X-shaped radio galaxies can, in fact, be formed in a much simpler way.”

Lalakos did not intend to simulate an X-shaped galaxy. His aim was to measure the amount of mass drawn into a black hole using simple inputs. While Lalakos did not initially see the significance of the X-shape that his simulation created, his supervisor, and co-author of the paper, Assistant Professor Sasha Tchekhovskoy, responded to the discovery very enthusiastically.

“He said, ‘Dude, this is very important! This is an X-shape!’” Lalakos recalls. “He told me that astronomers have observed this in real life and didn’t know how they formed. We created it in a way that no one had even speculated before.”

Where previous simulations had failed, Lalakos’s model organically created the iconic X-shape.

“In my simulation, I tried to assume nothing,” Lalakos explains. “Usually, researchers put a black hole in the middle of a simulation grid and place a large, already-formed gaseous disk around it, and then they may add ambient gas outside the disk. In this study, the simulation starts without a disk, but soon one forms as the rotating gas gets closer to the black hole. This disk then feeds the black hole and creates jets. I made the simplest assumptions possible, so the whole outcome was a surprise. This is the first time anyone has seen X-shaped morphology in simulations from very simple initial conditions.”

Because the X-shape only emerged early in the simulation, Lalakos believes these rare galaxies might actually be more common in the universe, but only survive a short time.

“They might arise every time the black hole gets new gas and starts eating again,” Lalakos says. “So they might be happening frequently, but we might not be lucky enough to see them because they only happen for as long as the power of the jet is too weak to push the gas away.”

Lalakos plans to run more simulations to better understand the formation of X-shaped galaxies. In other simulations, very small accretion disks and extremely large accretion disks did not lead to the elusive X-shape.

“For most of the universe, it’s impossible to zoom in right at the centre and see what’s happening very near a black hole,” Lalakos adds. “In most cases, we rely on simulations to understand what happens.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/x-shaped-galaxies-formation/

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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NASA is about to try changing the direction of an asteroid

DART spacecraft set to hit Dimorphos surface on September 26.

The asteroid Dimorphos is about to have an earthly visitor – a US$300 million spacecraft that NASA will crash into the space rock’s surface in a matter of weeks.

DART – short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test – is a spaceship that has one purpose: to be destroyed in the name of science.

And while the Artemis project is making headlines as the US space agency prepares to send people back to the moon – and eventually to trial humans living on the surface for short periods – DART represents the first test of a technique that could help protect Earthlings from hypothetical asteroid impacts.

While our planet has done well in recent times to avoid catastrophic impacts from celestial objects (it’s only been 65 million years since the dinosaurs forgot to repel an incoming object) DART is a step towards determining whether deflecting an asteroid is possible.

Determining the orbit of twin asteroids

Rather than tumbling through space on its own, Dimorphos is actually a baby, itself orbiting a 780-metre wide parent called Didymos.

Now, NASA has confirmed calculations of Dimorphos’s orbit, ensuring DART’s pathway to collision later this month.

Dimorphos’s orbit was previously determined over a year ago, but recalculating this pathway gives the DART team confidence there are no other variables influencing its course, such as ‘radiation recoil’ from Didymos’s surface which might  push the moonlet further away.

Accounting for potential changes in Dimorphos’s orbit is important.

That ensures that when DART says ‘hello’ to the asteroid’s surface, NASA can be sure that any change in trajectory is caused by the spacecraft, and the spacecraft alone.

Orbit observations to resume after impact

With the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system out of telescope range for much of the last two years, NASA used the powerful Lowell Discovery (Arizona, USA) and Magellan telescopes (Atacama, Chile) to make final calculations.

“We really have high confidence now that the asteroid system is well understood and we are set up to understand what happens after impact,” says Nick Moskovitz, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory. 

The asteroids come within their astronomically closest range of Earth – around 10.8 million kilometres – on September 26. Then, DART will make contact.

NASA’s astronomers will then recommence their observations of Dimorphos’s orbit to determine whether the impact pushed it close to Didymos and shift.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-dart-dimorphos-asteroid-orbit/

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Europe’s Solar Orbiter hit by huge sun eruption, survives

Data obtained describes particles present in aftermath of Coronal Mass Ejection

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter has been hit by a massive solar plasma eruption as it transited towards Venus.

Solar Orbiter is undertaking close-up studies of the Sun and the inner heliosphere – those parts of the solar system closest to our local yellow dwarf star – and will obtain imagery and data on the sun’s solar wind, magnetic field, and material eruptions. No craft has gone closer to the sun to achieve this.

On Sunday morning (UTC), Solar Orbiter had a close encounter with an eruption known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which burst from the Sun towards Venus and the ship.

CMEs are huge clouds of plasma and magnetic fields that erupt from the Sun’s corona. They can cause auroras and electromagnetic damage if they extend far enough to reach Earth.

Solar Orbiter is designed to withstand and monitor CMEs and has continued to along its journey since. Passing six thousand kilometres from Venus’ surface, the ship will use the planet’s gravity to alter its orbit to complete its next solar pass.

“The close approach went exactly to plan, thanks to a great deal of planning from our colleagues in Flight Dynamics and the diligent care of the Flight Control Team”, explains Jose-Luis Pellon-Bailon, Solar Orbiter Operations Manager.

When it returns to the Sun, the spacecraft’s closest approach will be about 4.5 million km closer than its last pass.

Solar Orbiter’s CME encounter has sent back some useful data.

Launched in 2020, Solar Orbiter’s job is to observe and monitor the sun’s activities – events like CMEs – and its instrumentation has obtained data that describes environmental changes around Venus after the ejection took place.

It detected an increase in solar particles – protons and electrons mainly – after the CME swept through.

While particles like these, and some ionised atoms such as Helium, are regularly spat out from the Sun, they can hitch a ride on plasma eruptions which will take them further into space.

It’s these instances that can prove dangerous to both astronauts and spacecraft which aren’t enclosed in Earth’s magnetic field – the protective shield that guards Earthlings from harmful solar radiation.

Being able to track the trajectory of solar emissions and alert space missions about extreme space weather events is important.

According to Alexi Glover from ESA’s space weather team, doing so helps keep humans and other biological entities as safe as possible from destructive space weather.

“Gathering data on events like this is crucial to understanding how they arise, improving our space weather models, forecasts and early-warning systems,” says Glover.

“Solar Orbiter is providing us with an excellent opportunity to compare our forecasts with real observations and test how well our models and tools perform for these regions.”

A previous CME was captured by Solar Orbiter in May.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/solar-orbiter-hit-by-cme/

 

[Tommy]

[CaaC (John)+]

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Alien ‘diamond’ formed 4.5 billion years ago before crashing to earth say Australian scientists

Formation similar to synthetic diamond creation on Earth

Australian scientists have confirmed the existence of ‘lonsdaleite’ – a diamond-like material with a hexagonal structure – embedded in some rare meteorites.

These rare meteorites, called ureilite meteors, are believed to form within the interior of ancient celestial bodies – dwarf planets. It is theorised that the lonsdaleite they contain, upon their arrival to earth, forms during cosmic collisions with other bodies, such as asteroids.

In the case of ureilites studied by a combined team from Monash University, RMIT, the CSIRO, Australian Synchrotron and Plymouth University, the event which caused this to happen was believed to have been some 4.5 billion years ago.

Using electron microscopy, the researchers were able to discern a high level of carbon presence within the ureilites, and ultimately the occurrence of lonsdaleite.

But high impacts are not the only way this hexagonal diamond can be created.

Lonsdaleite: Harder than diamond

Lonsdaleite is named for British scientist Kathleen Lonsdale, the first woman fellow of the Royal Society who was a pioneer of crystallography.

The crystal has a similar appearance to terrestrial diamonds, but is unique in having a hexagonal crystalline structure. Diamonds typically have a cubic structure.

This structure seems to make lonsdaleite up to 60 percent harder than diamond. But as paper co-author Alan Salek from RMIT told Cosmos, it isn’t the material’s only unusual trait.

Lonsdaleites have a property whereby the diamond appears to “bend around” when forming its shape.

They’re also likely – at least in the case of the ureilites studied in this research – to have formed naturally in a process known as a supercritical chemical vapour deposition.

This process is often used to grow cubic diamonds in the lab.

Lab-grown diamonds are identical to those found in nature. But instead of high natural pressures transforming graphite into prized gemstones, chemical vapour deposition (CVD) causes carbon-containing gases like methane to deteriorate at high pressure and deposit in a crystalline state around a ‘seed’ diamond.

“Supercritical CVD involves a mixture of different elements like carbon and hydrogen as a supercritical fluid,” says Salek.

“This then forms this very strange diamond structure, and it formed when a dwarf planet that was around about four and a half billion years ago got hit by an asteroid.”

The ability to create Salek’s ‘bendy’ londsdaleite occurs when graphite – the precursor substance to a hexagonal diamond – interacts with supercritical fluid. This preserves the original hexagonal structure of the graphite in the new lonsdaleite crystal.

“If you have a bendy graphite crystal that’s quite large, with this supercritical fluid, it can actually preserve that shape,” he says.

“And so you’ve got this transition from graphite – which is quite soft – bending into this super hard material.”

Real world applications under consideration

Lonsdaleites can be formed in the laboratory, as well as occurring in nature, and recreating the conditions involved in forming the crystal is next on the cards for the research team.

They are also looking to mimic the formation of bendable crystals where supercritical fluids imprint themselves on graphite, for possible industrial uses.

“We’ve got a lot of applications for super hard materials, like, in industry, things like saw blades,” Salek says.

“If we had material 60% harder than diamond, you potentially have a blade that could last much longer, especially since practically nothing could damage it.

“The fact that you can bend these crystals, you can let your imagination fly and, and being able to grow diamonds in any shape or size will be a pretty cool thing to do eventually.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/alien-diamond-lonsdaleite/

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Supernova remnant captured in spectacular X-ray image

People in the Middle Ages might have watched the star explode.

By studying the spectacular remains of a supernova in a neighbouring galaxy, a team of astronomers have found enough clues to help wind back the clock – giving us a timeline on a star’s demise.

The supernova remnant SNR 0519-69.0 is located approximately 160 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado.

The remnant is the debris from an explosion of a white dwarf star. After the star reached critical mass, either by pulling matter from a companion star or merging with another white dwarf, it underwent a thermonuclear explosion and was destroyed.

What we can see in the image above is the leftovers. This composite image shows X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from Hubble.

What’s really cool about this is that the Chandra team has given us access to the separate parts of the composite image. X-rays with low, medium, and high energies are shown in separate colours – green, blue, and purple respectively. Optical data shows the perimeter of the remnant in red and stars around the remnant. The image itself is around 88 light-years across.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal researchers combined data from Chandra and Hubble with data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space telescope, to determine how long ago the star exploded and learn about the environment around the supernova.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal researchers combined data from Chandra and Hubble with data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space telescope, to determine how long ago the star exploded and learn about the environment around the supernova.

This data provides scientists a chance to “rewind” the stellar evolution that has played out since.

The researchers compared Hubble images from 2010, 2011, and 2020 to measure the speeds of material in the blast wave from the explosion, which range from about 6 million to 9 million kilometres per hour.

If the speed was toward the upper end of that estimate, the astronomers determined that light from the explosion would have reached Earth about 670 years ago, or during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France.

However, the evidence shows it’s likely that the material has slowed down since the initial explosion and that the explosion happened more recently.

More research will need to be done to determine an exact timeframe.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/supernova-remnant-captured-in-spectacular-x-ray-image/