Space: The Final Frontier

[nudge+]

The Moon race is definitely coming and we're in the early stages of it already. NASA has been talking a lot about it lately but it's all very vague and that article doesn't really give any new details either, unfortunately. The biggest problem of NASA is lack of budgetary independence leading to susceptibility to administration changes and government shutdowns and the likes. Also I think their biggest (only?) motivation for getting back to the moon at the moment is the fact that their politicians just don't want China to have it all for themselves... I mean competition promotes innovation so it should be a good thing but maybe for all the wrong reasons. I will actually believe it when I see it anyway as they've been making similar announcements for at least few decades already and at the moment it seems they have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, in the meantime ESA has been actually making concrete plans for landing and eventually building a base on the Moon (first lunar base plans were already released back in 2016 with a concept of a so-called "Moon village"); new contracts for landers, ground control facilities, Lunar Surface Access Service for payloads etc have been signed with numerous private sector entities just a while ago. Missions for regolith mining are being planned and they are also working on the feasibility of a lunar orbital base as a starting point for astronautical missions to the Moon or Mars. In addition, ESA teamed up with Airbus and Blue Origin and are launching a new global competition called "The Moon Race" later this year in order to encourage private companies to develop technological prototypes for lunar manufacturing, energy production, resources and biology for upcoming lunar missions in the next few years. But probably the biggest advantage ESA has over NASA is the fact that ESA - unlike NASA - is working and collaborating with the Chinese CNSA who obviously have big ambitions and plenty of resources and are taking all the necessary steps with their Chang'e missions that are expected to lead to a joint lunar base shared by multiple countries. A permanent Moon base is also Russia's top priority.

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1 hour ago, nudge said:

Also I think their biggest (only?) motivation for getting back to the moon at the moment is the fact that their politicians just don't want China to have it all for themselves...

Ditto, when I read that article I thought "China..." lol, you might get the Russians next saying the same thing, Mars and beyond really means more to me. 

 

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10 hours ago, CaaC - John said:

Ditto, when I read that article I thought "China..." lol, you might get the Russians next saying the same thing, Mars and beyond really means more to me. 

We have a lot to learn though before we can even dream of reaching "Mars and beyond", and thus I think that Europe, China and Russia are making the next logical step by planning a permanent Moon base first. An operational lunar base can teach us so much about surviving in space and will unlock other avenues to easier solar system exploration and colonisation in the future. It can be a giant test bed for technology of an eventual Mars mission (long term habitats, equipment, resource mining, comms, in-situ propellant and fuel production, etc.) and being so close to Earth it means it's much easier to maintain and send critical supplies and personnel if need be in just a matter of days, not to mention the fact that communication is almost real-time and there's no need to wait for a launch window. We can also get the so important data of health effects of spending long time in low gravity conditions. In addition, if Moon industry takes off and we can mine resources, build depots, make propellant and build infrastructure there it means much easier and more efficient construction and future launches of satellites and other spacecraft due to no atmosphere and low gravity. In other words, whoever succeeds in building and operating a moon base/outpost will gain substantial advantage as it's a prime avenue for a jumping-off point to the rest of the planets.

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Get ready for the 'Super Snow Moon': The biggest and brightest full moon of the year will light up the skies on Tuesday

Marlene Lenthang

© Getty The moon is seen during a total lunar eclipse, known as the "Super Blood Wolf Moon", in Brussels, Belgium January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Stargazers will enjoy a stunning sight this week as a rare 'super snow moon' is set to appear in the night sky. 

The supermoon will emerge on February 19 and will be the largest and brightest full moon of 2019. 

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The Super Snow Moon will dazzle the skies on Tuesday February 19. A supermoon pictured rising above a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Buffalo New York in December 2017

It's the second of three supermoons to light up the skies this year, following the Super Blood Wolf Moon that took place on January 21 and preceding yet another on March 21.

The spectacular lunar display is known as the 'snow moon' because it often appears along with heavy snowfall around this time of year, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.  

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited It is the second supermoon of the year and will be the biggest and brightest. A super Blood Moon pictured in January 2018 in Beijing, China 

The full moon names date back to Native Americans living in northern and eastern parts of the U.S. 

'The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occured,' according to the almanac.  

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited It's the second of three supermoons to take place in 2019. On January 21, 2019 a Super Blood Wolf Moon lunar eclipse took place, making the moon appear red and orange (above)

But what exactly is a supermoon? 

A supermoon is a phenomena that occurs when the moon's orbit is closest to Earth making it appear full, bright, and larger than life. 

'When a full moon appears at perigee [its closest point to Earth] it is slightly brighter and larger than a regular full moon—and that's where we get a "supermoon,"' NASA explains on their website. 

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited February 19's full moon is the second lunar spectacle in a supermoon trilogy. The first full moon, the Super Blood Wolf Moon, pictured above on January 20, 2019 in San Diego, California

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited The moon will appear full on February 19 and 19 and will also be accompanied by the star Regulus, which is the brightest in the constellation Leo the Lion

And it'll be officially full at 10.53am EST according to NASA's Skycal. 

Though the moon is officially fullest on Tuesday morning, it'll still be visible from Sunday to Tuesday evening. 

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited

It'll appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than usual.  

It'll appear especially large just as it rises above the horizon thanks to 'moon illusion' where the brain thinks the moon is bigger than it really is given its location.  

Although this moon is closer to earth than the last, it will not be as colorful as the 'Super Blood Wolf Moon' eclipse that wowed the skies in January.   

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/get-ready-for-the-super-snow-moon-the-biggest-and-brightest-full-moon-of-the-year-will-light-up-the-skies-on-tuesday/ar-BBTGq3T

 

 

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New moon found in our solar system as scientists unveil ‘Hippocamp’ floating around Neptune

Andrew Griffin

© Provided by Independent Digital News & Media Limited

Scientists have found an entirely new moon in our own solar system – and it had been hiding in plain sight.

The new object, named Hippocamp, has been discovered floating around Neptune. It is the planet's smallest moon, and behaves very strangely, in ways that could shed light on how it first formed.

Hippocamp had already been captured in previous images of the nearby planet. But astronomers' technical abilities were not enough to actually spot it, and only now has the tiny world actually been noticed and catalogued.

When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Neptune in 1989, it spotted six small inner moons orbiting the planet. Each of them is very small, and much younger than Neptune, probably having formed soon after the planet's largest moon called Triton arrived.

But new research shows that there had been another, unnoticed and tiny, moon floating near the planet. That takes the total number of moons around Neptune to 14 and sheds new light on the huge planet.

The breakthrough new discovery used the latest highly technical image processing techniques and images from Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope, allowing astronomers to see the inner moons despite the rapid speed at which they hurtle around Neptune. When the first picture was taken that included Hippocamp in it, in 2004, scientists lacked the ability to spot such a tiny object that was moving so quickly.

The new moon is named Hippocamp, after the sea creature in Greek mythology. Its tiny size makes it the smallest of Neptune's collection of moons, and it is only about 34 kilometres across.

The moon orbits close to Proteus, the biggest and furthest out of those inner moons. Astronomers say it is likely that Hippocamp was formed when fragments came off that bigger object when it was hit by a big comet.

They say it can't be ruled out that Hippocamp was formed where it is now and has no connection to Proteus. But its tiny size and strange location suggests that it formed in a collision, helping shed light on how the rest of the Neptune system formed.

"Proteus sports an unusually large crater called Pharos — a telltale sign that the moon might have barely escaped destruction by impact," writes astronomer Anne J. Verbiscer in an article commenting on the discovery." Whenever this impact occurred, it no doubt launched debris into orbit around Neptune."

One of those splintered pieces of debris could have become the new moon, the authors say.

The discovery could also help illuminate how other moons were formed, the authors say. If Hippocamp was formed in such a collision, then it is likely that the others were shaped by impacts with comets.

As well as the discovery of Hippocamp, the new research published in Nature also gives new detail on other moons such as Naiad, the innermost moon that has not been seen since 1989. The astronomers also give new data including size and orbit estimates of all the inner moons for the first time.

The same technique might lead to even more discoveries. Similar work already helped find an object in the distance reaches of the solar system, and might one day find other moons around larger planets – or even whole planets orbiting distant stars.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/new-moon-found-in-our-solar-system-as-scientists-unveil-hippocamp-floating-around-neptune/ar-BBTOOfn?li=BBoPWjQ

 

 

 

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NEW SKY MAP DETECTS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF UNKNOWN GALAXIES

 Nieuwe hemelkaart toont honderdduizenden onbekende sterrenstelsels

Sun, 17/02/2019 - 16:54

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published the first phase of a major new radio sky survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope. The survey reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve. A special issue of the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics is dedicated to the first twenty-six research papers describing the survey and its first results.

Radio astronomy reveals processes in the Universe that we cannot see with optical instruments. In this first part of the sky survey, LOFAR observed a quarter of the northern hemisphere at low radio frequencies. At this point, approximately ten percent of that data is now made public. It maps three hundred thousand sources, almost all of which are galaxies in the distant Universe; their radio signals have travelled billions of light years before reaching Earth.

 

Black holes
Huub Röttgering, Leiden University (The Netherlands): "If we take a radio telescope and we look up at the sky, we see mainly emission from the immediate environment of massive black holes. With LOFAR we hope to answer the fascinating question: where do those black holes come from?" What we do know is that black holes are pretty messy eaters. When gas falls onto them they emit jets of material that can be seen at radio wavelengths.

Philip Best, University of Edinburgh (UK), adds: "LOFAR has a remarkable sensitivity and that allows us to see that these jets are present in all of the most massive galaxies, which means that their black holes never stop eating."

Clusters of galaxies
Clusters of galaxies are ensembles of hundreds to thousands of galaxies and it has been known for decades that when two clusters of galaxies merge, they can produce radio emission spanning millions of light years. This emission is thought to come from particles that are accelerated during the merger process. Amanda Wilber, University of Hamburg (Germany), elaborates: "With radio observations we can detect radiation from the tenuous medium that exists between galaxies. This radiation is generated by energetic shocks and turbulence. LOFAR allows us to detect many more of these sources and understand what is powering them."

Annalisa Bonafede, University of Bologna and INAF (Italy), adds: "What we are beginning to see with LOFAR is that, in some cases, clusters of galaxies that are not merging can also show this emission, albeit at a very low level that was previously undetectable. This discovery tells us that, besides merger events, there are other phenomena that can trigger particle acceleration over huge scales."

Magnetic fields
"Magnetic fields pervade the cosmos, and we want to understand how this happened. Measuring magnetic fields in intergalactic space can be difficult because they are very weak. However, the unprecedented accuracy of the LOFAR measurements has allowed us to measure the effect of cosmic magnetic fields on radio waves from a giant radio galaxy that is 11 million light years in size. This work shows how we can use LOFAR to help us understand the origin of cosmic magnetic fields", explains Shane O'Sullivan, University of Hamburg.

High-quality images
Creating low-frequency radio sky maps takes both significant telescope and computational time and requires large teams to analyse the data. "LOFAR produces enormous amounts of data - we have to process the equivalent of ten million DVDs of data. The LOFAR surveys were recently made possible by a mathematical breakthrough in the way we understand interferometry", says Cyril Tasse, Observatoire de Paris - Station de radioastronomie à Nançay (France).

"We have been working together with SURF in the Netherlands to efficiently transform the massive amounts of data into high-quality images. These images are now public and will allow astronomers to study the evolution of galaxies in unprecedented detail", says Timothy Shimwell, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and Leiden University.

SURF's compute and data centre located at SURFsara in Amsterdam runs on 100 percent renewable energy and hosts over 20 petabytes of LOFAR data. "This is more than half of all data collected by the LOFAR telescope to date. It is the largest astronomical data collection in the world. Processing the enormous data sets is a huge challenge for scientists. What normally would have taken centuries on a regular computer was processed in less than one year using the high throughput compute cluster (Grid) and expertise", says Raymond Oonk (SURFsara).

LOFAR

The LOFAR telescope, the Low Frequency Array, is unique in its capabilities to map the sky in fine detail at metre wavelengths. LOFAR is operated by ASTRON in The Netherlands and is considered to be the world's leading telescope of its type. "This sky map will be a wonderful scientific legacy for the future. It is a testimony to the designers of LOFAR that this telescope performs so well", says Carole Jackson, Director General of ASTRON.

The next step
The 26 research papers in the special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics were done with only the first two percent of the sky survey. The team aims to make sensitive high-resolution images of the whole northern sky, which will reveal 15 million radio sources in total. "Just imagine some of the discoveries we may make along the way. I certainly look forward to it", says Jackson. "And among these there will be the first massive black holes that formed when the Universe was only a ‘baby', with an age a few percent of its present age", adds Röttgering.

Additional videos 

Robert Schulz (ASTRON) created a video where we travel through the radio Universe, through the galaxies detected in the LOFAR survey.

Rafaël Mostert (Leiden University & ASTRON) created a movie that gives a quick tour of four galaxies in the Universe, showing the capability of LOFAR and/or the difference between detecting radio and optical waves.

https://astron.nl/new-sky-map-detects-hundreds-thousands-unknown-galaxies

 

 

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Edited February 20, 2019 by CaaC - John

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China wants to put a solar farm in space by 2025

The orbiting station will harvest power directly from the sun.

Humanity uses a lot of energy, and while solar power here on Earth is doing a reasonable job of contributing to the electricity mix, scientists have long hypothesized that gathering the sun's energy from space would be a lot more effective. And now China says it's going to be the first to do exactly that, announcing plans to build an interstellar power station that will orbit the Earth at 36,000 kilometers.

According to China's state-backed Science and Technology Daily, Chinese scientists plan to build and launch small power stations into the stratosphere between 2021 and 2025, upgrading to a megawatt-level station in 2030 and a gigawatt-level facility high above the earth before 2050. Without atmospheric interference or night-time loss of sunlight, these space-based solar farms could provide an inexhaustible source of clean energy. The China Academy of Space Technology Corporation claims such a set-up could "reliably supply energy 99 per cent of the time, at six-times the intensity" of solar installations on earth.

China's proposal suggests converting solar energy into electricity in space, before beaming back to Earth using a microwave or laser and feeding into the grid via a ground receiving system.

There are, of course, numerous challenges associated with this sci-fi-sounding plan. Such a power station would weigh a considerable amount -- around 1,000 tons -- so getting the gear into orbit will be difficult. Researchers are therefore considering whether the station could be constructed in space using robots and 3D printing. The effects of microwave radiation on the atmosphere will also need to be studied.

But it's clearly not beyond the realms of possibility. There's already a lot of research out there exploring this technology -- Japan has been talking about this for a decade, while space programs are constantly growing their understanding of the technology needed to effectively beam power back to Earth. Japan hit upon a solution in 2015 using wireless transmission, while the California Institute of Technology announced last year that it had created a prototype capable of harnessing and transmitting solar energy from space using lightweight tiles.

China has really ramped up its space program in recent times, reaching the far side of the moon and growing the first plants on the lunar surface. Its timescales for this plan may be ambitious, but its quest to become a space superpower suggests this common science fiction dream is closer than ever to becoming a reality.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/18/china-solar-farm-power-station-space-2025/

 

Just one more reason to go to Moon. Hope they succeed; both because space advancement is awesome and because of the uproar anything related to China causes in the West  

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Searching for Planet Nine, scientist finds ancient star with mysterious rings

Chris Ciaccia

© Heritage Space Dumbell Nebula in Vulpecula. It is a planetary nebula, the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colours. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The hunt for Planet Nine has so far eluded researchers, but one citizen scientist working on a project to find the evasive celestial body has found something just as remarkable – a 3-billion-year-old dwarf star that has dust rings circling it.

German citizen scientist Melina Thévenot made the discovery while working on the NASA-led Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project. Known as LSPM J0207+3331 or J0207, the ancient dwarf star was originally thought to be a cold brown dwarf, Adam Schneider, a research scientist at Arizona State University said, but it ultimately proved to be something more.

"When Melina investigated further, she found that although the object had significant infrared brightness; it was not a nearby brown dwarf," Schneider said in a statement. "The team looked at it together, and we determined it was likely a white dwarf with infrared excess."

The rings are likely made up of warm dust, made up of the near continuous breakup of other "small rocky planetesimals" orbiting the dwarf, the statement said. However, due to the age of J0207 and its cold temperature, the rings remain a mystery.

© Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS White dwarf star illustration.

"Curiously, the mid-infrared photometry of the disk cannot be fully explained by a geometrically thin, optically thick dust disk as seen for other dusty white dwarfs, but requires a second ring of dust near the white dwarf's Roche radius," the study's abstract reads.

The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

White dwarf expert John Debes, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said that whatever is feeding the material into the rings is operating on "billion-year timescales."

"Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve," Debes said.

A cross-section of a crystallized white dwarf star. 

It's also possible that there may be more than "one distinct ring-like component" as part of the J0207 disk, which has never been seen before with a white dwarf, leading scientists to wonder how it fits into everything that has been previously known about white dwarfs.

More research is needed, some of which will use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, to determine exactly what the ring is comprised of.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/searching-for-planet-nine-scientist-finds-ancient-star-with-mysterious-rings/ar-BBTShTB

 

 

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Hayabusa-2: Japan mission set to 'bite an asteroid'

A Japanese spacecraft is set to "bite an asteroid" as it descends to collect a sample of rock from the surface.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47293317

 

 

 

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Hayabusa-2: Japan spacecraft touches down on asteroid

By Paul Rincon

Science editor, BBC News website

A Japanese spacecraft has touched down on an asteroid in an attempt to collect a sample of rock from the surface.

The Hayabusa-2 probe was trying to grab the sample from a pre-chosen site on the asteroid Ryugu just before 23:00 GMT on 21 February.

The spacecraft reached asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 after a three-and-a-half-year journey from Earth.

It is expected to return to Earth with the rocky material it has cached in 2020.

During sample collection, the spacecraft approached the 1km-wide asteroid with an instrument called the sampler horn. On touchdown, a 5g "bullet" made of the metal tantalum was fired into the rocky surface at 300m/s.

The particles kicked up by the impact should have been be caught by the sampler horn.

"We made a successful touchdown, including firing a bullet," said Hayabusa-2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda.

"We made the ideal touchdown in the best conditions," he said.

The spacecraft began descending from its "home position" of 20km above the asteroid's surface in the early hours of 21 February (GMT) - several hours later than planned.

Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive type of space rock known as a C-type. The near-Earth asteroid (NEA) is a relic left over from the early days of our Solar System.

Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, from Queen's University Belfast, told BBC News: "We think we understand how carbon-rich asteroids migrate from the asteroid belt to become near-Earth asteroids, but the samples from Ryugu will allow its history to be explored.

"After the Rosetta mission, it's now clear that most of Earth's water did not come from comets in the early days of the Solar System. We believe carbon-rich (C-type) asteroids may have significant amounts of water locked up in their rocks. It's possible such asteroids may have brought to Earth both the water and the organic material necessary for life to start.

"These samples will be crucial in investigating this possibility."

Hayabusa-2 had earlier dropped a small, reflective, beanbag-like "target marker" on to Ryugu. This was used as a guide as the spacecraft descended to the rough surface of the asteroid.

Controllers were aiming for the centre of a circle, some 6m in diameter, located about 4-5m away from the target marker.

The Japanese space agency (Jaxa) had originally planned to carry out the touchdown operation in October last year. But the asteroid's surface was found to be much more rugged than expected, with numerous, hefty boulders making it hard to find a location that was large and flat enough to sample.

Controllers had hoped they would have an area of about 100m in diameter to target. But because of the surface properties, this had to be reduced to a 6m circle for what team members are calling a "pinpoint touchdown".

The sampler horn that extends out from the bottom of the spacecraft has a length of 1m. It's therefore vital that there are no boulders more than 50cm in height at the landing site, to reduce the chances that the body of the spacecraft could hit a rock.

Unexpected surface properties also have the potential to affect the amount of material collected. Before arriving at Ryugu, researchers had expected the surface to be covered in a powdery layer of fine-grained material - the regolith.

In fact, the upper layer turned out to be akin to gravel, consisting of rocky chunks that are centimetre-sized or larger.

Prof Fitzsimmons told BBC News: "This was a surprise, as other near-Earth asteroids we have visited previously have shown areas dominated by small particles.

"It might be due to the carbon-rich composition, as the previous NEAs are composed of silicate rock, which are more Earth-like. But the shape of Ryugu also implies it was spinning much faster in the past, so it's possible this could have affected the particles' sizes in some fashion."

Scientists carried out additional tests in Japan to determine whether the sample material could still be gathered by the spacecraft.

They used a container of artificial gravel with a similar size distribution to that on Ryugu. In a vacuum chamber, they fired a tantalum bullet identical to that used by Hayabusa-2 into the gravel.

According to Jaxa, the results of the test exceeded expectations, with the tantalum projectile yielding fragments of rock in size ranges that should easily pass through the sampler horn.

This suggests that Hayabusa-2 should have been able to collect a sample.

In September, Hayabusa-2 deployed two robotic "hoppers" that propelled themselves across the surface of Ryugu, sending back images and other data.

Then, in October, the "mothership" despatched a French-German instrument package called Mascot to the surface.

Later this year, perhaps in March or April, Jaxa plans to detonate an explosive charge that will punch a crater into the surface of Ryugu.

Hayabusa-2 would then descend into the crater to collect fresh samples of material that have not been altered by aeons of exposure to space.

"We know that the surfaces of asteroids are changed over time by bombardment with energetic particles from the Sun and interstellar space," said Alan Fitzsimmons.

"Yet studies with telescopes show that this 'space weathering' affects the surfaces of carbon-rich asteroids differently to those mostly made from more rock-like silicate minerals. We don't know why this is, and the fresh sub-surface samples from Ruygu will play a very important role in understanding how this happens."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47293317

 

 

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NASA is testing a new submarine that will hunt for undiscovered sea life — and scientists eventually want it to look for aliens on Europa

• NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are developing a deep-diving drone called Orpheus. It recently completed its first ocean test.
• The drone, which is about the size of a large backyard barbecue grill, will be used to explore the depths of the oceans like never before by snapping color photos, mapping the sea floor, and discovering new creatures.
• One day, NASA hopes to use similar technology to investigate the oceans of Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, and search for alien life there.

Full article here: https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-drone-submarine-could-hunt-for-sea-life-aliens-2019-2?r=US&IR=T

 

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Virgin's Unity plane rockets skyward

By Jonathan Amos

Virgin Galactic has pushed its Unity rocket plane faster and higher than it's ever been.

Chief pilot, Scotsman Dave Mackay, and co-pilot, American Mike Masucci, took the vehicle to almost 90km in altitude above California's Mojave Desert before gliding back down to Earth.

The test flight edges Virgin that bit closer to its goal of introducing commercial passenger flights.

More than 700 people are signed up for a trip on Unity to suborbital space.

It's not clear when precisely this service will begin, but Virgin Group boss, Sir Richard Branson, believes it will be very soon.

Mr Mackay, from Helmsdale, Sutherland, becomes the first Scottish-born pilot to travel to space, by Virgin's preferred definition of that term.

"It was thrilling yet smooth and nicely controlled throughout, with a view at the top, of the Earth from space, which exceeded all our expectations," he said after landing back at Mojave airport.

Friday's mission followed the usual flight procedures.

Unity was carried aloft by the WhiteKnightTwo aircraft, before being released to ignite its rocket motor and climb high over the desert.

It's only the fifth time Unity has conducted a powered ascent, and should have provided valuable data on engine performance and the overall handling of the vehicle.

The big difference with previous flights is that there was a third person onboard. Beth Moses is Virgin's chief astronaut instructor and she was present on the mission to get a better understanding "of the customer cabin and spaceflight environment from the perspective of people in the back".

Unofficial data indicates Unity climbed to a maximum altitude of 89.9km (55.85 miles; 294,9007ft), travelling at Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) on the way up.

In December, Unity reached an altitude of 82.7km (271,330ft), which was enough for the pilots on that occasion - Mark Stucky and CJ Sturckow - to earn commercial astronaut wings from the US Federal Aviation Authority. Mackay, Masucci and Moses should now receive the same honour.

Sir Richard commented: "I am immensely proud of everyone involved. Having Beth fly in the cabin today, starting to ensure that our customer journey is as flawless as the spaceship itself, brings a huge sense of anticipation and excitement to all of us here who are looking forward to experiencing space for ourselves. The next few months promise to be the most thrilling yet."

Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic company is vying with Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin outfit to be the first to introduce a sub-orbital passenger spaceflight service.

Mr Bezos is pursuing a different technological route. He has a booster and capsule system that goes straight up from a launch pad in West Texas.

The two components separate at altitude before then both making their way back to Earth under control.

The Amazon entrepreneur's New Shepard system regularly flies over 100km - the height most widely recognised as the lower boundary of space (although there is currently a lively scientific debate over whether this is the best classification).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47336617

 

 

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Have Dark Forces Been Messing With the Cosmos?

DENNIS OVERBYE

There was, you might say, a disturbance in the Force.

Long, long ago, when the universe was only about 100,000 years old — a buzzing, expanding mass of particles and radiation — a strange new energy field switched on. That energy suffused space with a kind of cosmic antigravity, delivering a not-so-gentle boost to the expansion of the universe.

Then, after another 100,000 years or so, the new field simply winked off, leaving no trace other than a speeded-up universe.

So goes the strange-sounding story being promulgated by a handful of astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. In a bold and speculative leap into the past, the team has posited the existence of this field to explain an astronomical puzzle: the universe seems to be expanding faster than it should be.

The cosmos is expanding only about 9 percent more quickly than theory prescribes. But this slight-sounding discrepancy has intrigued astronomers, who think it might be revealing something new about the universe.

And so, for the last couple of years, they have been gathering in workshops and conferences to search for a mistake or loophole in their previous measurements and calculations, so far to no avail.

“If we’re going to be serious about cosmology, this is the kind of thing we have to be able to take seriously,” said Lisa Randall, a Harvard theorist who has been pondering the problem.

At a recent meeting in Chicago, Josh Frieman, a theorist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., asked: “At what point do we claim the discovery of new physics?”

Now ideas are popping up. Some researchers say the problem could be solved by inferring the existence of previously unknown subatomic particles. Others, such as the Johns Hopkins group, are invoking new kinds of energy fields.

Adding to the confusion, there already is a force field — called dark energy — making the universe expand faster. And a new, controversial report suggests that this dark energy might be getting stronger and denser, leading to a future in which atoms are ripped apart and time ends.

© AFP New universe map unearths 300,000 more galaxies

Thus far, there is no evidence for most of these ideas. If any turn out to be right, scientists may have to rewrite the story of the origin, history and, perhaps, fate of the universe.

Or it could all be a mistake. Astronomers have rigorous methods to estimate the effects of statistical noise and other random errors on their results; not so for the unexamined biases called systematic errors.

As Wendy L. Freedman, of the University of Chicago, said at the Chicago meeting, “The unknown systematic is what gets you in the end.”

© Boyer/Roger Viollet, via Getty Images Edwin Hubble in 1949, two decades after he discovered that the universe is expanding.

Hubble trouble

Generations of great astronomers have come to grief trying to measure the universe. At issue is a number called the Hubble constant, named after Edwin Hubble, the Mount Wilson astronomer who in 1929 discovered that the universe is expanding.

As space expands, it carries galaxies away from each other like the raisins in a rising cake. The farther apart two galaxies are, the faster they will fly away from each other. The Hubble constant simply says by how much.

But to calibrate the Hubble constant, astronomers depend on so-called standard candles: objects, such as supernova explosions and certain variable stars, whose distances can be estimated by luminosity or some other feature. This is where the arguing begins.

Until a few decades ago, astronomers could not agree on the value of the Hubble constant within a factor of two: either 50 or 100 kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec is 3.26 million light years.)

But in 2001, a team using the Hubble Space Telescope, and led by Dr. Freedman, reported a value of 72. For every megaparsec farther away from us that a galaxy is, it is moving 72 kilometers per second faster.

More recent efforts by Adam G. Riess of Johns Hopkins and the Space Telescope Science Institute, and others have obtained similar numbers, and astronomers now say they have narrowed the uncertainty in the Hubble constant to just 2.4 percent.

But new precision has brought new trouble. These results are so good that they now disagree with results from the European Planck spacecraft, which predict a Hubble constant of 67.

The discrepancy — 9 percent — sounds fatal but may not be, astronomers contend, because Planck and human astronomers do very different kinds of observations.

Planck is considered the gold standard of cosmology. It spent four years studying the cosmic bath of microwaves left over from the end of the Big Bang, when the universe was just 380,000 years old. But it did not measure the Hubble constant directly. Rather, the Planck group derived the value of the constant, and other cosmic parameters, from a mathematical model largely based on those microwaves.

In short, Planck’s Hubble constant is based on a cosmic baby picture. In contrast, the classical astronomical value is derived from what cosmologists modestly call “local measurements,” a few billion light-years deep into a middle-aged universe.

What if that baby picture left out or obscured some important feature of the universe?

‘Cosmological Whac-a-Mole’

And so cosmologists are off to the game that Lloyd Knox, an astrophysicist from the University of California, Davis, called “cosmological Whac-a-Mole” at the recent Chicago meeting: attempting to fix the model of the early universe, to make it expand a little faster without breaking what the model already does well.

One approach, some astrophysicists suggest, is to add more species of lightweight subatomic particles, such as the ghostlike neutrinos, to the early universe. (Physicists already recognize three kinds of neutrinos, and argue whether there is evidence for a fourth variety.) These would give the universe more room to stash energy, in the same way that more drawers in your dresser allow you to own more pairs of socks. Thus invigorated, the universe would expand faster, according to the Big Bang math, and hopefully not mess up the microwave baby picture.

A more drastic approach, from the Johns Hopkins group, invokes fields of exotic anti-gravitational energy. The idea exploits an aspect of string theory, the putative but unproven “theory of everything” that posits that the elementary constituents of reality are very tiny, wriggling strings.

String theory suggests that space could be laced with exotic energy fields associated with lightweight particles or forces yet undiscovered. Those fields, collectively called quintessence, could act in opposition to gravity, and could change over time — popping up, decaying or altering their effect, switching from repulsive to attractive.

The team focused in particular on the effects of fields associated with hypothetical particles called axions. Had one such field arisen when the universe was about 100,000 years old, it could have produced just the right amount of energy to fix the Hubble discrepancy, the team reported in a paper late last year. They refer to this theoretical force as “early dark energy.”

“I was surprised how it came out,” said Marc Kamionkowski, a Johns Hopkins cosmologist who was part of the study. “This works.”

The jury is still out. Dr. Riess said that the idea seems to work, which is not to say that he agrees with it, or that it is right. Nature, manifest in future observations, will have the final say.

Dr. Knox called the Johns Hopkins paper “an existence proof” that the Hubble problem could be solved. “I think that’s new,” he said.

Dr. Randall, however, has taken issue with aspects of the Johns Hopkins calculations. She and a trio of Harvard postdocs are working on a similar idea that she says works as well and is mathematically consistent. “It’s novel and very cool,” Dr. Randall said.

So far, the smart money is still on cosmic confusion. Michael Turner, a veteran cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the organizer of a recent airing of the Hubble tensions, said, “Indeed, all of this is going over all of our heads. We are confused and hoping that the confusion will lead to something good!”

Doomsday? Nah, nevermind

© ESA - S. Corvaja Workers with the European Planck spacecraft at the European Space Agency spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in 2009.

Early dark energy appeals to some cosmologists because it hints at a link to, or between, two mysterious episodes in the history of the universe. As Dr. Riess said, “This is not the first time the universe has been expanding too fast.”

The first episode occurred when the universe was less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old. At that moment, cosmologists surmise, a violent ballooning propelled the Big Bang; in a fraction of a trillionth of a second, this event — named “inflation” by the cosmologist Alan Guth, of M.I.T. — smoothed and flattened the initial chaos into the more orderly universe observed today. Nobody knows what drove inflation.

The second episode is unfolding today: cosmic expansion is speeding up. But why? The issue came to light in 1998, when two competing teams of astronomers asked whether the collective gravity of the galaxies might be slowing the expansion enough to one day drag everything together into a Big Crunch.

To great surprise, they discovered the opposite: the expansion was accelerating under the influence of an anti-gravitational force later called dark energy. The two teams won a Nobel Prize.

Dark energy comprises 70 percent of the mass-energy of the universe. And, spookily, it behaves very much like a fudge factor known as the cosmological constant, a cosmic repulsive force that Einstein inserted in his equations a century ago thinking it would keep the universe from collapsing under its own weight. He later abandoned the idea, perhaps too soon.

Under the influence of dark energy, the cosmos is now doubling in size every 10 billion years — to what end, nobody knows.

Early dark energy, the force invoked by the Johns Hopkins group, might represent a third episode of antigravity taking over the universe and speeding it up. Perhaps all three episodes are different manifestations of the same underlying tendency of the universe to go rogue and speed up occasionally. In an email, Dr. Riess said, “Maybe the universe does this from time-to-time?”

If so, it would mean that the current manifestation of dark energy is not Einstein’s constant after all. It might wink off one day. That would relieve astronomers, and everybody else, of an existential nightmare regarding the future of the universe. If dark energy remains constant, everything outside our galaxy eventually will be moving away from us faster than the speed of light, and will no longer be visible. The universe will become lifeless and utterly dark.

But if dark energy is temporary — if one day it switches off — cosmologists and metaphysicians can all go back to contemplating a sensible tomorrow.

“An appealing feature of this is that there might be a future for humanity,” said Scott Dodelson, a theorist at Carnegie Mellon who has explored similar scenarios.

The phantom cosmos

But the future is still up for grabs.

Far from switching off, the dark energy currently in the universe actually has increased over cosmic time, according to a recent report in Nature Astronomy. If this keeps up, the universe could end one day in what astronomers call the Big Rip, with atoms and elementary particles torn asunder — perhaps the ultimate cosmic catastrophe.

This dire scenario emerges from the work of Guido Risaliti, of the University of Florence in Italy, and Elisabeta Lusso, of Durham University in England. For the last four years, they have plumbed the deep history of the universe, using violent, faraway cataclysms called quasars as distance markers.

Quasars arise from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies; they are the brightest objects in nature, and can be seen clear across the universe. As standard candles, quasars aren’t ideal because their masses vary widely. Nevertheless, the researchers identified some regularities in the emissions from quasars, allowing the history of the cosmos to be traced back nearly 12 billion years. The team found that the rate of cosmic expansion deviated from expectations over that time span.

One interpretation of the results is that dark energy is not constant after all, but is changing, growing denser and thus stronger over cosmic time. It so happens that this increase in dark energy also would be just enough to resolve the discrepancy in measurements of the Hubble constant.

The bad news is that, if this model is right, dark energy may be in a particularly virulent and — most physicists say — implausible form called phantom energy. Its existence would imply that things can lose energy by speeding up, for instance. Robert Caldwell, a Dartmouth physicist, has referred to it as “bad news stuff.”

As the universe expands, the push from phantom energy would grow without bounds, eventually overcoming gravity and tearing apart first Earth, then atoms.

The Hubble-constant community responded to the new report with caution. “If it holds up, this is a very interesting result,” said Dr. Freedman.

Astronomers have been trying to take the measure of this dark energy for two decades. Two space missions — the European Space Agency’s Euclid and NASA’s Wfirst — have been designed to study dark energy and hopefully deliver definitive answers in the coming decade. The fate of the universe is at stake.

In the meantime, everything, including phantom energy, is up for consideration, according to Dr. Riess.

“In a list of possible solutions to the tension via new physics, mentioning weird dark energy like this would seem appropriate,” he wrote in an email. “Heck, at least their dark energy goes in the right direction to solve the tension. It could have gone the other way and made it worse!”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/have-dark-forces-been-messing-with-the-cosmos/ar-BBU5wGH?ocid=chromentp

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

OneWeb satellite internet mega-constellation set to fly

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47374246  

London-based start-up OneWeb is set to launch the first six satellites in its multi-billion-pound project to take the internet to every corner of the globe.

The plans could eventually see some 2,000 spacecraft orbiting overhead.

Other companies are also promising so-called mega-constellations, but OneWebbelieves it has first-mover advantage with an operational system.

Wednesday's launch on a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana is timed for 18:37 local time (21:37 GMT).

Controllers at OneWeb's HQ in the UK capital will be waiting to pick up signals from the spacecraft when they come off the top of the Russian vehicle.

The platforms' most important task is to secure the frequencies needed to relay the coming networks' internet connections.

Assuming these pathfinders perform as expected, OneWeb will then begin the mass rollout of the rest of the constellation towards the end of the year.

This will see Soyuz rockets launching every month, lofting up to 36 satellites at a time.

To provide global internet coverage, there will need to be 648 units in orbit.

"We have a tonne of spectrum and we have it everywhere on Planet Earth," explained OneWeb CEO Adrian Steckel.

"We're going to connect lots of people who're not currently connected. We're going to start by focussing on connecting schools, connecting boats, connecting planes, and connecting huge swathes of the planet that don't make sense for fibre," he told BBC News.

Who's backing OneWeb?

The company was started by American telecoms entrepreneur Greg Wyler.

He'd previously founded another constellation called O3b, which stands for "other three billion" - a reference to that half of the planet without connectivity.

O3b operates a fleet of 16 satellites moving around the equator at an altitude of 8,000km.

OneWeb is Wyler's even grander vision - a much denser network that flies just 1,200km above the ground.

The satellites' nearness, their high throughput - over one terabit per second across the constellation - and global coverage promises to transform internet provision for those who are currently underserved, or simply un-served.

At least that's the view shared by OneWeb's partners, who include companies such as chip-maker Qualcomm, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, drinks giant Coca-Cola, satellite communications specialist Hughes, and tech financier SoftBank.

How big an undertaking is this?

Massive. Satellite technology is much, much less expensive than it used to be, and the large number of satellites needed for the network reduces the unit cost.

Even so, the spacecraft being turned out by OneWeb partner Airbus have a price of about one million dollars.

When you add in all the ground infrastructure needed to operate the system, the overall expense runs to more than three billion.

Some past satellite ventures that sought to build big constellations went belly up. Satphone companies like Iridium and Globalstar only exist today because bankruptcy proceedings relieved them of their debt.

Several other groups have registered their interest in competing with OneWeb, including Elon Musk's SpaceX company. Musk's engineers even have a couple satellites in orbit now to demonstrate technologies.

Commentators seem sure of only one thing: the market will not support all of the proposed mega-constellations.

What's the UK angle here?

OneWeb has based itself in west London. They're actually using offices vacated by the BBC. The company has about 70 staff now and expects to raise this to roughly 200.

The HQ has a satellite control room, although this function is replicated in the US as well.

Successive UK governments have tried to foster a business and regulatory environment that encourages space businesses to make Britain their home base - and they've succeeded, believes Mr Steckel.

"We think that the UK Space Agency (UKSA) has done a fantastic job, looking at what OneWeb could be as a disruptor in the satellite industry and in terms of expanding the use cases (for our services)," he told BBC News.

"And they've been working with us, hand in hand, in terms of going through the regulatory process. And they've been a great proponent."

The UKSA spends significant sums on satellite telecoms R&D. It does this through its membership of the European Space Agency.

Esa develops new technologies that will hopefully keep European companies globally competitive. And the UKSA has just put £18m into a programme that should benefit OneWeb's later generation of spacecraft, in particular in the way they interact and work alongside the terrestrial 5G mobile networks that are now being instigated.

Isn't space already too crowded for this?

This is a hot topic. There is something like 2,000 working satellites in orbit now, flying at various altitudes; and a slightly larger number of legacy spacecraft that have ceased operations.

If several mega-constellations are launched, it will significantly increase the orbiting population - and that has experts worried about the potential for collisions.

A recent study - sponsored by the European Space Agency and supported by Airbus - found that the new networks would need to de-orbit their old, redundant spacecraft within five years or run the risk of seriously escalating the probability of objects hitting each other.

OneWeb says it has taken this message fully onboard. Indeed, the UKSA, as the licensing body, has worked closely with the company to make sure its old hardware will come out of the sky very quickly.

"All successful applicants for Outer Space Act licenses must demonstrate compliance with established best practice in terms of safe and sustainable operations," a spokesperson said.

"This includes reliable end-of-life disposal of satellites, for example, by de-orbiting to minimise the potential for collisions and the creation of space debris."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47374246

 

 

[nudge+]

This photo of Jupiter's northern hemisphere is amazing:

Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

[Eco]

Just now, nudge said:

This photo of Jupiter's northern hemisphere is amazing:

Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Almost looks fake it's so stunning. 

Unreal. 

[nudge+]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

This photo of Jupiter's northern hemisphere is amazing:

Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Looks like a painting, doesn't it?..

[Eco]

8 minutes ago, nudge said:

Looks like a painting, doesn't it?..

Yes, it does. Has a bit of a van Gogh, Starry Night feel, but with more earthly tones, and another painting that I've seen but can't think of the name nor the artist. 

[nudge+]

7 minutes ago, Eco said:

Yes, it does. Has a bit of a van Gogh, Starry Night feel, but with more earthly tones, and another painting that I've seen but can't think of the name nor the artist. 

Funny that you mention Van Gogh... You might enjoy this article and the video in it: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/13/van-gogh-starry-night-fluid-dynamics-animation/

Or just the video for the lazy

 

 

[nudge+]

Big day tomorrow.

NASA and SpaceX are preparing for the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Demo-1 uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A is targeted for 2:49 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 2. This is the first launch of a space system designed for humans built and operated by a commercial company through a public-private partnership on a flight test to the International Space Station.

The dummy that will be on board of the Crew Dragon capsule for this first test mission is called Ripley in a nod to the Alien movies  The dummy is packed with a range of sensors that will measure forces and acceleration experienced by a future human passenger, as well as the environment around them during the journey to and from the ISS. 

[Rab]

I was so salty when I missed a SpaceX launch when I was in Florida. We were to come home on the Sunday and the launch was the Friday. It got rescheduled to the Monday.

Fu Elon.

[nudge+]

15 minutes ago, Rab said:

I was so salty when I missed a SpaceX launch when I was in Florida. We were to come home on the Sunday and the launch was the Friday. It got rescheduled to the Monday.

Fu Elon.

"Elon time" is not just a phrase you know  

[CaaC (John)+]

23 hours ago, nudge said:

Big day tomorrow.

NASA and SpaceX are preparing for the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Demo-1 uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A is targeted for 2:49 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 2.

Seen the launch on the early morning news, beautiful. 

 

Quote

SpaceX astronaut capsule demo for Nasa lifts off

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

The demonstration of a new US system to get astronauts into orbit is under way.

The SpaceX company has launched a capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida designed to carry people.

The mission is uncrewed for this flight, but if it goes well the American space agency is likely to approve the system for regular astronaut use from later this year.

Not since the retirement of the shuttles in 2011 has the US been able to put humans in orbit.

It's had to pay to use Russian Soyuz vehicles instead.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule lifted off from Kennedy's historic Pad 39A at the precise planned time of 02:49 EST (07:49 GMT).

The 11-minute ascent put the Dragon on a path to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday.

Who is this character Ripley?

Because this is just a demonstration, there are no astronauts aboard - but there is a "test dummy".

Dressed in a spacesuit and sitting next to a window, this anthropomorphic simulator is fitted with sensors around the head, neck, and spine.

It will gather data on the type of forces that humans will experience when they get to ride in the spacecraft.

SpaceX has nicknamed the dummy "Ripley" - after the Sigourney Weaver character in the Alien movies.

For the California company, this flight is a key milestone in its 17-year history. It was set up by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the specific intention of taking people beyond Earth.

"Human spaceflight is basically the core mission of SpaceX," explained Hans Koenigsmann, the company's vice president of build and flight reliability.

"There is nothing more important for us than this endeavour, and we really appreciate the opportunity from Nasa to do this."

The Dragon crew capsule is a variant on the ISS cargo freighter flown by SpaceX.

Upgrades include life-support systems, obviously; and more powerful thrusters to push the vessel to safety if something goes wrong with a rocket during an ascent to orbit.

It also has four parachutes instead of the freighter's three to control the return to Earth.

Dragon crew capsules will splashdown in the Atlantic not far from Kennedy.

How has Nasa changed since the shuttle?

The American space agency is essentially now contracting out crew transport to SpaceX.

Whereas in the past, Nasa engineers would have top-down control of all aspects of vehicle design and the agency would own and operate the hardware - the relationship with industry has been put on a completely new footing.

Today, Nasa sets broad requirements and industry is given plenty of latitude in how it meets those demands.

Agency officials still check off every step, but the approach is regarded as faster, more efficient and less costly.

"I fully expect we're going to learn something on this flight," said Bill Gerstenmaier, Nasa's head of human spaceflight.

"I guarantee that not everything will work exactly right. That's cool. That's exactly what we want to do.

"We want to maximise our learning so we can get this stuff ready so that when we put crew on, we're ready to go do a real crew mission, and it'll be the right safety for our crews."

How should this mission play out?

After being taken to orbit, the Dragon makes its own way to the station using onboard thrusters.

One of the big differences between this mission and standard cargo flights is the mode of approach and attachment to the ISS. Freighters come up under the orbiting lab and are grappled by a robotic arm and pulled into a berthing position.

On this occasion, we will see the crew version of Dragon approach the station at the bow and dock automatically, using a new design of connection ring. Arrival is set for 11:00 GMT on Sunday.

ISS astronauts will be watching closely to see that the capsule behaves as it should.

The Dragon is expected to stay at the station until Friday. The current plan has it undocking, firing its thrusters to come out of orbit, and splashing down at roughly 13:45 GMT.

Kirk Shireman, the manager of Nasa's International Space Station programme, said: "You'll hear us talk about this being a flight test; it absolutely is. Although, we view it also as a real mission, a very critical mission.

"The ISS still has three people onboard so this mission coming up to the ISS for the first time has to work; it has to work."

Nasa is also working with Boeing on crew transport. The company has developed a capsule of its own called the Starliner. This will have its equivalent demo flight in the next couple of months.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47414390

 

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by CaaC - John

[nudge+]

2 hours ago, CaaC - John said:

Seen the launch on the early morning news, beautiful. 

Yes, watched the live launch coverage when I was having my lunch! Absolutely stunning... Happy that both the launch and the 1st stage landing were successful but the mission is only underway and we still have the full automatic docking to ISS to look forward to. In case of a failure, it can pose a risk not only to the Crew Dragon but also to the ISS and the crew currently there... The Russians seemed to be very concerned about it and it took a while for them to agree on safety procedures with the Americans  If everything goes as planned though, the manned mission might be given green light as early as July already. Exciting times!

[nudge+]

Stunning photo...