Year: 2024

Blue Origin signs deal to fly Nigerian on New Shepard suborbital flight

9:29 am

As part of what is now a general pattern of using New Shepard suborbital flights for feel-good public relations stunts, Blue Origin has now signed a deal to fly a Nigerian into space sometime this year or next.

A lot of government and charitable entities appear involved in this deal.

The Space Exploration & Research Agency (SERA) [private charity] and the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) [Nigeria’s space agency] have signed a partnership agreement to execute an exploration project that will send the first Nigerian citizen into space. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in Nigeria’s space exploration journey and opens new opportunities for scientific research and technological advancement.

Under this partnership, SERA, a global space agency dedicated to increasing access to space for all nations, will reserve a seat on an upcoming Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital spaceflight for a Nigerian citizen.

According to a statement shared with Technext, this is part of a broader SERA-led initiative, in partnership with Blue Origin, to send six individuals from nations historically underrepresented in space exploration.

In addition, a Nigerian non-profit, Learnspace, appears to have played a part in working out this deal. As for SERA, I suspect its funding mostly comes from Jeff Bezos or Blue Origin.

Either way, the deal appears to open the competition to any Nigerian citizen, with the final decision partly influenced by public voting.

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German rocket startup Isar raises another €65 million in investment capital

9:09 am

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has now raised an additional €65 million in investment capital, bringing the total invested in the company to €400 million ($428 million).

Interestingly, a major backer appears to be a governmental entity.

The funding round extension received significant involvement from the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), a venture capital fund backed by 24 NATO allies focused on addressing challenges in defence, security, and resilience.

…In addition to NIF, the funding round included contributions from G3T, 10x Group, Besant Capital, Finadvice Med HOLDINGS, LP&E, and existing investors Lakestar, Earlybird, Airbus Ventures, Bayern Kapital, and UVC Partners.

Isar has deals to launch its proposed Spectrum orbital rocket from French Guiana and from the new commercial spaceport in Andoya, Norway. The company however initially promised in 2021 that its first launch from Andoya would take place in 2022, with no launch occurring. In fact, of the three German rocket startups, Isar is the only one to so far not do a test launch of any kind, and it is presently unclear when that first orbital test launch of Spectrum will occur.

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Pro-Hamas lefty arrested for several arson attacks on UC-Berkeley campus

1:35 pm

Casey Goonan, a pro-Hamas activist arrested for arson
Casey Goonan, a pro-Hamas activist
arrested for arson

If you want to know the mentality of the pro-Hamas movement across America and largely centered on many “elite” campuses, you need only look at the story of Casey Goonan. Goonan is a 34-year-old long time leftist activist who was previously arrested in September 2023 for “felony vandalism & resisting arrest” (he had used a hammer to destroy the sign of a hotel at the protest site).

He has now been arrested again as the prime suspect in a series of four arson attacks on the UC-Berkeley campus in the past three weeks.

On Monday evening [June 17], Cal Fire announced the arrest of 34-year-old Casey Robert Goonan “in connection with the firebombing attack of a UC Berkeley Police Department vehicle and three other arson attacks on UC Berkeley campus during the month of June.”

Goonan was arrested Monday “following a comprehensive investigation” by Cal Fire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal Arson and Bomb Unit, UC Berkeley police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Goonan is now facing multiple felony charges, authorities said, including “the possession and use of destructive devices and multiple counts of arson.” He is in custody at Santa Rita Jail with a bail of $1 million, according to Monday’s statement.

In all these arson attacks, the firebomber (allegedly Goonan) released anonymous statements claiming credit. The first such statement, proudly admitted to firebombing a UC-Berkeley police vehicle and concluded as follows:
» Read more

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June 18, 2024 Zimmerman/Space Show podcast

10:12 am

David Livingston has now posted my two-hour appearance on the Space Show last night, with the podcast available for download here.

The show was especially enlivened by the many phone calls and excellent questions from listeners. Thank you.

I must also thank Charles Lurio (of the Lurio Report) for phoning me personally after the show to clue me into some centrifuge research on ISS that I was unaware of. Thank you Charles!

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Astronomers see a quiet galaxy become active for the first time

9:46 am

Using a number of space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have for the first time seen in real time what had previously been a very inactive and quiet galaxy become active and energetic, suggesting a major event at the galaxy’s center had taken place to change its behavior.

From the abstract of the paper [pdf]:

We conclude that the variations observed in SDSS1335+0728 could be either explained by a ∼ 10 6 M ⊙ AGN [a one million solar mass black hole] that is just turning on or by an exotic tidal disruption event (TDE). If the former is true, SDSS1335+0728 is one of the strongest cases of an AGN observed in the process of activating. If the latter were found to be the case, it would correspond to the longest and faintest TDE ever observed (or another class of still unknown nuclear transient). Future observations of SDSS1335+0728 are crucial to further understand its behaviour.

As noted in the press release:

Some phenomena, like supernova explosions or tidal disruption events — when a star gets too close to a black hole and is torn apart — can make galaxies suddenly light up. But these brightness variations typically last only a few dozen or, at most, a few hundreds of days. SDSS1335+0728 is still growing brighter today, more than four years after it was first seen to ‘switch on’. Moreover, the variations detected in the galaxy, which is located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, are unlike any seen before.

If the central black hole is switching from being quiet to active, this galaxy is providing astronomers critical information for understanding such changes. This is particularly important to us here in the Milky Way, which has a very inactive central supermassive black hole weighing about 4 million solar masses. It would be very useful to understand what would cause it to become active, especially because such an event might even have an impact — possibly negative — throughout our entire galaxy.

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Scientists release first image from Hubble in one-gyro mode

9:29 am

First Hubble image in one-gyro mode
Click for original image.

The Hubble science team today released the first image from the Hubble Space Telescope produced in its new one-gyro mode.

That image it so the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, and shows NGC 1546, a nearby galaxy in the constellation Dorado about 52 million light years away. The inset shows at full resolution the small red galaxy near the top, to give some sense of the telescope’s capabilities in this one-gyro mode.

The details astonish me, and prove my pessimism about this new mode to have been wrong. I expected future images to be more fuzzy, with Hubble’s ability to take sharp images largely limited. The resolution here is excellent, and bodes well for future science observations.

Nonetheless, the telescope is still working under major limitations:

Although one-gyro mode is an excellent way to keep Hubble science operations going, it does have limitations, which include a small decrease in efficiency (roughly 12 percent) due to the added time required to slew and lock the telescope onto a science target.

As previously noted, prior to the use of the fine guidance sensors, fixed head star trackers position Hubble’s pointing closer to the target. If Earth or the moon block two of the fixed head star trackers’ fields of view, Hubble must move further along in its orbit until the star trackers can see the sky and its stars again. This process encroaches upon science observation time. Second, the additional time the fine guidance sensors take to further search for the guide stars adds to the total time the sensors use to complete the acquisition.

Third, in one-gyro mode Hubble has some restrictions on the science it can do. For example, Hubble cannot track moving objects that are closer to Earth than the orbit of Mars. Their motion is too fast to track without the full complement of gyros. Additionally, the reduced area of sky that Hubble can point to at any given time also reduces its flexibility to see transient events or targets of opportunity like an exploding star or an impact on Jupiter.

When combined, these factors may yield a decrease in productivity of roughly 20 to 25 percent from the typical observing program conducted in the past using all three gyros.

It really is time for the astronomical community to get its act together and begin work on developing and launching more large optical telescopes into space. Hubble has shown us the potential of in-space optical astronomy. That astronomers have not flocked in the last three decades to build more such telescopes is puzzling beyond belief.

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Slovenia becomes 23rd member nation of the European Space Agency

9:05 am

Formerly part of Yugoslavia and largely aligned with the communist bloc during the Cold War, Slovenia has now signed on to become the 23rd member nation of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Slovenia has been working with ESA since 2008, when it signed a first Cooperation Agreement, followed by a European Cooperation Agreement. This cooperation was strengthened with its accession to associate membership in 2016, which it upgraded in 2020 with a new Agreement for an enhanced Association. This included a provision that after its expiration in 2025, Slovenia can apply for ESA membership.

Slovenia’s membership still needs to be ratified, but that is expected.

Increasingly Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine has proven to be incredibly stupid. It has not only trapped Russia in a quagmire that it can’t easily escape, with victory nowhere in sight, it has caused all of its other neighbors to look west, away from Russia, out of fear of getting invaded themselves. Slovenia is just the most recent example.

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SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

8:43 am

After a ten day pause in launches, which included one launch abort at T-0, SpaceX yesterday successfully launched 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The pause is noteworthy because it is possibly SpaceX’s longest pause in launches this year (I haven’t gone back and checked). Consider this fact: A ten day pause between launches would have once been considered a fast launch pace. Now it seems like something is wrong.

The rocket’s first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

63 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later today)
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 73 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 63 to 51.

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June 18, 2024 Quick space links

3:43 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

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