Year: 2018

Perseid meteor shower this weekend

10:24 am

The annual Perseid meteor shower upcoming on August 12 is expected to be especially good this year because there will be no moon in the sky.

The Perseid meteors seem to come from a single point, the `radiant’, situated in the constellation Perseus, giving the shower its name. This is however just an effect of perspective, as the meteors move parallel to each other, much like drivers see when driving in heavy rain.

The radiant will be visible from around 10pm and at this time there will be the highest chance of seeing `Earth grazing meteors’. These are meteors that skim the Earth’s atmosphere and so have long, blazing tails.

Observers can expect to see a few tens of meteors per hour, or one every few minutes, once darkness has fallen on 12 August. The number of meteors will peak in the early hours of 13 August, when up to around seventy each hour should be visible.

It is worth it to find a nice dark place and stay up all night at least once in your life to watch this shower. Get a nice camp chair that allows you to lie back, make sure you are dressed comfortably, and sit back and enjoy.

1 comment

Company aims to sell its rocket engines to smallsat rocket companies

10:13 am

Capitalism in space: The new rocket engine manufacturer Ursa Major is aiming to sell its rocket engines to the new wave of smallsat rocket companies now emerging.

Ursa Major has taken up the challenge of trying to convince launch startups to outsource their engines rather than follow the models of SpaceX and Blue Origin. “The first gut response is ‘our engines are special and we don’t have a company without our engines,’ but if there is a way to increase their margin by flying someone else’s engines, most companies will be interested in coming around,” Ursa Major founder and CEO Joe Laurienti says.

Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Vector Space Systems — three frontrunners fielding dedicated smallsat launchers — are building engines in house. Currently, just two launch startups — Generation Orbit and ABL Space Systems — have gone public with plans to depend on Laurienti’s 26-person team in Berthoud, Colorado, to supply the engines for the satellite launchers they’re developing.

That we now have companies that have successfully raised investment capital for both building rocket engines in-house for their own rockets as well buying them from independent subcontractors is firm proof that the upcoming boom in smallsat rockets is real, and very robust. The 20s should be a very exciting decade for rocketry.

3 comments

Short of money, Planetary Resources to auction off equipment

10:02 am

Capitalism in space: Because its last fund-raising effort failed to hit its target, Planetary Resources is now auctioning off equipment from its headquarters.

The online auction will be conducted by James G. Murphy & Co. from Aug. 21 to 28, with a preview scheduled on Aug. 27 at Planetary Resources’ machine shop, lab and offices at 6742 185th Ave. NE in Redmond.

“We are preparing to sell some equipment that we’ve identified as not currently needed and easily replaceable,” Chris Lewicki, Planetary Resources’ president, CEO and chief asteroid miner, told GeekWire in an email. “This is a result of reducing overhead as we go forward with our smaller team.”

This could simply be an effort to maximize their financial resources as they reorganize. Nonetheless, it does not look good.

2 comments

Rocket Lab signs deal with UAE company for 10 Electron launches

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today announced the signing of a 10-launch contract with Circle Aerospace, a new UAE satellite company.

The agreement sees Rocket Lab selected as the sole launch provider and primary provider of associated mission services for Circle Aerospace clients. Circle Aerospace missions will primarily launch from Rocket Lab’s private orbital launch site, Launch Complex-1, in New Zealand. Launches may also be conducted from Rocket Lab’s US launch site as required.

Circle Aerospace appears to be positioning itself as a smallsat manufacturer for others, but it is unclear at this point who its customers are. What is somewhat clear is that the company has deep pockets, either from private UAE oil money or government money (which are usually the same thing in the Arab Middle East).

0 comments

Avi Avital – Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto in C Major

6:01 pm

An evening pause: He starts out by very carefully placing a score before him on his stand, but then never opens or looks at it during the entire performance. Instead, he plays the whole thing from memory, wielding his mandolin as if it is part of him. And he and the entire group is clearly having a great deal of fun doing it.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

0 comments

Rocket Lab and Ecliptic agree to use Electron kick stage as a payload platform

10:07 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has struck a deal with Ecliptic Enterprises, the company that provides the on-board launch cameras for ULA and others, for using the Electron upper kick stage as a platform for payloads.

For those missions designated by Rocket Lab to accommodate hosted payloads, Electron’s capable kick stage, proven on the Electron’s first successful launch to orbit in January this year (“Still Testing”), will serve as the platform for one to several hosted payloads per mission, providing a structure for payload mounting, power, command and telemetry functions and attitude control. Ecliptic will deliver fully integrated hosted payloads to Rocket Lab for final integration onto Electron’s kick stage. Once in orbit, Ecliptic avionics will control all hosted payload operations and related data handling; Ecliptic will also manage the end-to-end mission service and experience for its customers. Ecliptic’s U.S. domestic and international customers will be from commercial and government sectors, as well as from academia, media and non-profit arenas.

This is fascinating. The whole reason the smallsat rocket industry is booming is because smallsat builders no longer wanted to be secondary payloads on the bigger rockets. They needed smaller rockets specifically catered to their needs as the primary payload. Because of this, Rocket Lab and Vector and a host of other smallsat rocket companies are now racing to fulfill that need.

Yet, Rocket Lab is now going to offer space on its tiny Electron rocket for even smaller secondary payloads. Ecliptic will act to sign up and coordinate the secondary payloads.

There is money to be made in space, and this competition to make it is creating opportunities for everyone. If you build a very small, very cheap cubesat in your garage, you likely can now go to Ecliptic to arrange to fly it on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

5 comments

True color images of Pluto and Charon

9:24 am

The New Horizons science team has released mosaic global images of Pluto and Charon, calibrated to capture their true colors as closely as possible.

These natural-color images result from refined calibrations of data gathered by New Horizons’ Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC).”That processing creates images that would approximate the colors that the human eye would perceive – bringing them closer to ‘true color’ than the images released near the encounter,” said Alex Parker, a New Horizons science team co-investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

Because MVIC’s color filters don’t closely match the wavelengths sensed by human vision, mission scientists applied special processing to translate the raw MVIC data into an estimate of the colors that the eye would see. The colors are more subdued than those constructed from the raw MVIC color data, because of the narrower wavelength range sensed by the human eye.

Both images were taken as New Horizons zipped toward closest approach to Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015; Charon was taken from a range of 46,091 miles (74,176 kilometers) and Pluto from 22,025 miles (35,445 kilometers). Each is a single color MVIC scan, with no data from other New Horizons imagers or instruments added. The striking features on each are clearly visible, from Charon’s reddish north-polar region known as Mordor Macula, to the bright expanse of Pluto’s, nitrogen-and-methane-ice rich “heart,” named Sputnik Planitia.

I must add that these images show only one hemisphere, since the New Horizons flyby did not get a good look at the opposite hemisphere. We won’t know what the other half of both planets look like for many decades.

0 comments

The shrinking and growth of the poles of Mars

9:19 am

Using infrared data from several Mars orbiters over a period of a full Martian year, equivalent to two Earth years, scientists have created an animation showing the growth and retreat and regrowth of the carbon dioxide icecaps of the red planet’s two poles.

This animation shows a side-by-side comparison of CO2 ice at the north (left) and south (right) Martian poles over the course of a typical year (two Earth years). This simulation isn’t based on photos; instead, the data used to create it came from two infrared instruments capable of studying the poles even when they’re in complete darkness.

As Mars enters fall and winter, reduced sunlight allows CO2 ice to grow, covering each pole. While ice at the north pole is fairly symmetrical, it’s somewhat asymmetrical during its retreat from the south pole for reasons scientists still don’t understand. Scientists are especially interested in studying how global dust events affect the growth and retreat of this polar ice. Mars’ seasons are caused by a tilt in the planet, resulting in winter at one of the planet’s poles while it’s summer at the other.

I have embedded the animation below the fold.
» Read more

1 comment

Aristarchus Crater on the Moon

9:08 am

Aristarchus Crater

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced in resolution to post here, shows Aristarchus Crater, one of the more geological intriguing locations on the Moon. This oblique image was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), still operating in lunar orbit. If you click on the image you can see the full resolution image.

Aristarchus crater is 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter and 2700 meters (1.7 miles) deep, with a central peak that rises 300 meters (almost a thousand feet) above the crater floor. When LRO pointed back towards the Sun, LROC was able to capture this magnificent view highlighting subtle differences in albedo (brightness). Some of the albedo contrast is due to maturity (young material is generally brighter than older material) and some reveal true differences in rock type. The central peak shows the complexity of what lies beneath the now hardened impact melt sea that filled the bottom of the crater.

The best part however is the close-up they provided of the crater’s central peaks, posted below.
» Read more

11 comments

Tess captures comet, variable stars, asteroids, and Martian light

8:44 am

During its testing period prior to beginning science operations this month, the exoplanet space telescope TESS spotted in one series of images a comet, a host of variable stars, some asteroids, and even the faint hint of some reflected light from Mars.

Over the course of these tests, TESS took images of C/2018 N1, a comet discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite on June 29. The comet, located about 29 million miles (48 million kilometers) from Earth in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, is seen to move across the frame from right to left as it orbits the Sun. The comet’s tail, which consists of gases carried away from the comet by an outflow from the Sun called the solar wind, extends to the top of the frame and gradually pivots as the comet glides across the field of view.

In addition to the comet, the images reveal a treasure trove of other astronomical activity. The stars appear to shift between white and black as a result of image processing. The shift also highlights variable stars — which change brightness either as a result of pulsation, rapid rotation, or by eclipsing binary neighbors. Asteroids in our solar system appear as small white dots moving across the field of view. Towards the end of the video, one can see a faint broad arc of light moving across the middle section of the frame from left to right. This is stray light from Mars, which is located outside the frame. The images were taken when Mars was at its brightest near opposition, or its closest distance, to Earth.

The video that was compiled from these images is embedded below the fold.
» Read more

1 comment

SpaceX launches commercial satellite with first used Block 5 first stage

8:34 am

Capitalism in space: Last night SpaceX successfully placed a commercial communications satellite into orbit using a previously flown Block 5 first stage.

The turnaround for this first stage was only a little over two months. It successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic, and they plan to fly it a third time later this year. You can watch the launch here.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

22 China
15 SpaceX
8 Russia
5 ULA
4 Japan
4 Europe

China still leads the U.S. 22 to 21 in the national rankings.

3 comments
1 … 62 63 64 65 66 … 155