Search Results for: Saturn

Webb takes infrared image of exoplanet

9:32 am

Webb's image of exoplanet

Using the Webb Space Telescope astronomers have now successfully taken an infrared false-color image of Saturn-sized exoplanet orbiting a young star about half the mass of the Sun and about 111 light years away.

The image is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. The star, its light blocked out, is indicated by the circle with the star in the middle. The exoplanet is the orange blob to the upper right, sitting inside the blue accretion disk that surrounds the star, photographed in optical light by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

You can read the paper here. The scientists rejected the possibility that this was a background galaxy after doing computer modeling, based on the data available. From their paper:

Dedicated N-body simulations were conducted for a planet with a mass of 0.34 [mass of Jupiter], located at 52 au [astronomical units] around the 0.46 [solar mass] central star. This value is consistent with the measured projected separation, assuming that the planet and the ≈13°-inclined disk are coplanar. The simulation also included a disk of 200,000 planetesimals, distributed between 20 and 130 au. These parameters were selected to roughly match the boundaries of the observed disk.

Note too that the picture to the right has been significantly enhanced by the press department at JPL, based on the actual data shown in the paper itself. These fact underline the uncertainties involved in this discovery.

Nonetheless, it is a good result, and suggests we are looking at the formation process of a new solar system surrounding a very young baby star.

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June 11, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 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.

  • Sierra Space creates a division focused solely on military contracts
    The company is attempting to latch onto money coming from Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” project. It is also telling us indirectly that its space division might be having problems. The first launch of its Tenacity mini-shuttle remains endlessly delayed (for unexplained reasons that could be unfortunate) and its partner in the Orbital Reef space station project, Blue Origin, continues to disappoint. It could be that management is now going where the money is, even if it isn’t in space exploration.
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Scientists discover another exoplanet that theories say should not exist

10:20 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using telescopes both in orbit and on the ground have discovered a small red dwarf star with only 20% the mass of our Sun with a gas giant exoplanet with about half the mass of Saturn but a bit larger in size.

The problem is that the theory for the formation of such gas giants predicts that they should not form around small red dwarfs such as this star.

The most widely held theory of planet formation is called the core accretion theory. A planetary core forms first through accretion (gradual accumulation of material) and as the core becomes more massive, it eventually attracts gases that form an atmosphere. It then gets massive enough to enter a runaway gas accretion process to become a gas giant.

In this theory, the formation of gas giants is harder around low-mass stars because the amount of gas and dust in a protoplanetary disc around the star (the raw material of planet formation) is too limited to allow a massive enough core to form, and the runaway process to occur.

Yet the existence of TOI-6894b (a giant planet orbiting an extremely low-mass star) suggests this model cannot be completely accurate and alternative theories are needed.

You can read the paper here. The exoplanet orbits the star every 3.37 days, and each transit across the face of the star has been easily detected by numerous telescopes. Further spectroscopic observations using the Webb Space Telescope will be able to characterize the exoplanet’s atmosphere more fully.

One comment

May 14, 2025 Quick space links

3:10 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.

  • On this day in 1973 the last Saturn 5 rocket launched, carrying the first American space station, Skylab, into orbit
    Three crews in 1973 occupied the station, for 28, 59, and 84 days respectively. The first mission however had to do major improvised repairs to make the next two missions possible, because during launch a heat shield on the hull ripped off, destroying one solar panel and preventing a second from deploying. Astronauts on that first mission, led by Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad, had to install a new umbrella shield to control the station’s internal temperature, and during a spacewalk released the remaining solar panel. More details in Leaving Earth.
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Astronomers observe cloud changes above the northern polar lakes of Titan

10:15 am

Changes seen in Titan's atmosphere
Click for full resolution image.

Using data from both ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have now observed clouds rising in the thick atmosphere of the Saturn moon Titan.

The team observed Titan in November 2022 and July 2023 using both Keck Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. Those observations not only showed clouds in the mid and high northern latitudes on Titan — the hemisphere where it is currently summer — but also showed those clouds apparently rising to higher altitudes over time. While previous studies have observed cloud convection at southern latitudes, this is the first time evidence for such convection has been seen in the north. This is significant because most of Titan’s lakes and seas are located in its northern hemisphere and evaporation from lakes is a major potential methane source. Their total area is similar to that of the Great Lakes in North America.

The image to the right shows these methane clouds, indicated by the arrows, as seen by Webb on July 11, 2023 and then three days later by Keck. The clouds appear to have shifted downward during these observations.

The data suggests we are seeing one small aspect of Titan’s atmospheric methane cycle, where the liquid methane in the lakes evaporates to form clouds, which later than condense to rain back down. Though superficially similar to the water cycle here on Earth, the details suggest it will be very different on Titan.

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Twenty years of Hubble data map one long season on Uranus

9:09 am

Uranus over twenty years
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope multiple times since 2002 have now tracked the changes in its atmosphere during one quarter of its 84 year orbit around the Sun.

The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows Hubble’s views across several electromagnetic wavelengths. Uranus’s rotational tilt or inclination is almost 90 degrees, so that it literally rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. You can see this especially in the bottom two rows. From 2012 to 2022 one pole slowly shifted westward. From the press release:

The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.

Since we have not yet observed Uranus over one full year, there are a lot of uncertainties in any conclusions the scientists propose. For one, we don’t know the general atmospheric patterns across all four seasons. For another, any changes seen now might simply be the planet’s weather, random events not directly related to long term climate patterns.

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Webb images in the infrared the aurora of Neptune

9:30 am

The aurora of Neptune
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have captured the first infrared images of the aurora of Neptune, confirming that the gas giant produces this phenomenon.

The picture to the right combines infrared data from Webb and optical imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. The white splotches near the bottom of the globe are clouds seen by Hubble. The additional white areas in the center and near the top are clouds detected by Webb, while the greenish regions to the right are aurora activity detected by Webb.

The auroral activity seen on Neptune is also noticeably different from what we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth, or even Jupiter or Saturn. Instead of being confined to the planet’s northern and southern poles, Neptune’s auroras are located at the planet’s geographic mid-latitudes — think where South America is located on Earth.

This is due to the strange nature of Neptune’s magnetic field, originally discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989, which is tilted by 47 degrees from the planet’s rotation axis. Since auroral activity is based where the magnetic fields converge into the planet’s atmosphere, Neptune’s auroras are far from its rotational poles.

The data also found that the temperature of Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled significantly since it was first measured by Voyager 2 in 1989, dropping by several hundred degrees.

12 comments

March 25, 2025 Quick space links

3:02 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.

4 comments

Webb captures infrared images of five exoplanets orbiting two different stars

10:17 am

Four gas giants in infrared
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have taken two different direct false-color infrared images of exoplanets orbiting the stars HR 8799 (130 light years away) and 51 Eridani (97 light years away.

The image of the four gas giants orbiting HR 8799 is to the right, cropped, reduced, and slightly enhanced to post here. From the caption:

The closest planet to the star, HR 8799 e, orbits 1.5 billion miles from its star, which in our solar system would be located between the orbit of Saturn and Neptune. The furthest, HR 8799 b, orbits around 6.3 billion miles from the star, more than twice Neptune’s orbital distance. Colors are applied to filters from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), revealing their intrinsic differences. A star symbol marks the location of the host star HR 8799, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph. In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to the 4.6 micron light.

The Webb false color infrared picture taken of one of the exoplanets orbiting the star 51 Eridani is also at the link, showing “a cool, young exoplanet that orbits 890 million miles from its star, similar to Saturn’s orbit in our solar system.”

The data from the HR 8799 image suggests these gas giants have a lot of carbon dioxide gas, and thus might be growing by pulling in material from the star’s accretion disk.

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Astronomers discover 128 more moons around Saturn

9:01 am

Using a ground-based telescope, astronomers have now identified 128 new moons circling Saturn, bringing its moon count to 274, more than the total moons around all the other planets in the solar system combined.

Edward Ashton at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and his colleagues found the new moons with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, revealing dozens that have previously evaded astronomers. They took hours of images of Saturn, adjusted them for the planet’s movement through the sky and stacked them on top of each other to reveal objects that would otherwise be too dim to see.

All the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres in diameter and are likely to have been formed hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago in collisions between larger moons, says Ashton.

That Saturn has so many moons should surprise no one. Saturn actually has possibly millions, maybe even billions, of moons, if you count every particle in its rings. In fact, the gas giant poses a problem for astronomers in defining what a moon actually is. How small must an object be before you stop calling it a moon?

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February 25, 2025 Quick space links

3:16 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.

  • On this day in 1969, Mariner 6 was launched on a Mars flyby mission
    Like the previous fly-by mission, Mariner 4, and Mariner 6’s parallel mission, Mariner 7 and launched at approximately the same time, Mariner 6 focused on getting images of the dark areas of Mars as seen from Earth, which we now know are the Martian cratered highlands. Thus, all these missions suggested quite incorrectly that Mars was just like the Moon.
4 comments

February 21, 2025 Quick space links

4:39 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.

11 comments

January 14, 2025 Quick space links

3:25 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.

3 comments

New computer simulations suggest Saturn’s rings are not young but formed at the same time as the solar system

9:12 am

A bright spot in Saturn's rings
Click for original source.

The uncertainty of science: Scientists doing computer simulations now posit that Saturn’s rings are not young, between 100 to 400 million years old as has been believed for the last few decades, but formed instead when Saturn formed, 4.6 billion years ago.

You can read their paper here [pdf].

The young age had been based on data from the Cassini orbiter, which showed the ring particles to be very bright and clean. If old those particles would have been darker as they accumulated dust over time on their surface. The new computer simulations suggest a process whereby those particles get “cleaned,” thus making it possible for the rings to be very old, possibly as old as Saturn itself.

Must I point out the uncertainties? The paper itself admits in its abstract “uncertainties in our models that assume no porosity, strength, or ring particle granularity.” Seems these assumptions make the conclusions very uncertain indeed.

Then again, the previous young estimates of the age of the rings had many similar assumptions and uncertainties. Essentially, we don’t have enough information to make any definitive determinations.

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Freedom wins again: SpaceX completes the 6th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

3:50 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T+6 seconds

SpaceX today successfully completed the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy heavy lift rocket, only forty days after its previous test flight, the shortest turn-around so far, mainly because the FAA imposed no red tape to hold SpaceX back.

Before describing details of the flight, it is essential to note that this giant rocket, bigger than the Saturn-5 that sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon and intended to be completely reusable and being designed to be able to relaunch in mere hours, has been conceived, designed, built, and tested entirely by a private company and free American citizens, funded almost entirely by private investment capital hoping to make a profit from the rocket. The government and NASA has played almost no part, except possibly using its regulatory power improperly to slow development down by a year or two.

Even more important its development has cost a tiny amount compared to similar government programs, and has been accomplished in less than a third of the time.

Thus this rocket is a perfect example of freedom in action. Get the government out of the way and allow humans the freedom to follow their dreams, and they will do astonishing things.

As for the flight, Superheavy worked perfectly in getting Starship off the launchpad and on its way into orbit. However, engineers canceled a second tower catch attempt and instead diverted Superheavy to complete a soft splashdown just off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The booster touched down on the water quite softly, and then fell over into the water. Expect SpaceX to quickly do salvage operations to recover it.

Starship reached its orbit as planned, carrying for the first time a payload, a single plastic banana suspended by cords in the center of the Pez deployment payload bay where SpaceX hopes to soon begin deploying Starlink satellites. Though somewhat silly, the banana is being used by SpaceX and the FAA to certify future payload operations.

About 38 minutes into the flight engineers did the first re-light of one Raptor-2 engine while in orbit, the burn lasting about three-four seconds. This burn demonstrated that Starship is capable of doing a de-orbit burn so that in a future flight it can be launched into a full orbit and use the engines to bring it back to a precise location on Earth, including possibly a return to the launch tower for its own chopstick catch.

Starship splashing down vertically
Starship splashing down vertically

During re-entry the flight plan called for pushing Starship beyond its technical margins in order to learn exactly what those limits were. Even so, it appeared that — unlike the previous flights — there was very little evidence of damage to the flaps from the heat of re-entry. One flap appeared to have damage at one pointed end, and even that burn-through appeared far less than the previous flights.

During final descent and moving slower than the speed of sound they pointed the ship nose down in order to stress the flaps the most. Even so, the ship performed as planned, and splashed down softly and vertically in the Indian Ocean.

Though the flight plan for this Starship flight as well as the previous flights was purposely designed to bring it back to Earth before it completes an orbit, this was still essentially a successful orbital launch, and thus I am including it in my launch totals. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

118 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 136 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 118 to 97.

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Oh no! Starship/Superheavy is loud!

9:21 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after its October flight, safely captured at Boca Chica

Time for another Chicken Little report: A new study of the sound levels produced by SpaceX’s Superheavy booster during its fifth launch and landing at Boca Chica in October 2024 suggests that it produces more noise than predicted.

Overall … Gee et al. note that one of the most important conclusions from their data is the differences between Starship’s launch noise levels and those of SLS and Falcon 9. The team found that Starship produces significantly more noise at liftoff than both SLS and Falcon 9 in both A-weighted and Z-weighted (unweighted) noise metrics.

When compared to Falcon 9, the noise produced by a single Starship launch is equivalent to, at a minimum, 10 Falcon 9 launches. Despite SLS producing more than half of Starship’s overall thrust at liftoff, Starship is substantially louder than SLS. More specifically, one Starship launch is equivalent to that of four to six SLS launches regarding noise production. As has been hypothesized by numerous other studies into the noise produced by rockets, this significant difference in noise levels may be due to the configuration of first-stage engines on the rockets. For example, although the Saturn V produced less overall thrust than SLS, it produced two decibels more noise than SLS, which may be due to the clustered engine configuration on Saturn V’s first stage.

We’re all gonna die! Despite the doom-mongering of this study (which you can read here), the only issue noted by the paper from this noise was car alarms going off. And even here, the spread of the noise was asymmetrical, occurring in only one direction.

The concern about sonic booms has always been the annoyance they cause to residents near airports. In the case of Superheavy, it is very unlikely it will ever fly at a frequency to make its noise intolerable. More important, the nature of a spaceport versus an airport reduces the concern considerably, since a spaceport requires a much larger buffer area, and at both of SpaceX’s Starship launchsites in Florida and Texas almost everyone living close by works for the company or in the space business. They are not going to complain.

And while studying these noise issues is useful, we must not be naive about the real purpose of such studies. Underneath its high-minded science goals is a much more insidious one: finding a weapon for shutting down SpaceX. This concern of mine might be overstated, but remember, almost our entire academic community is rabidly leftist and made up of partisan Democrats. They hate Musk for his politics, and have been aggressively looking for ways to hurt him. This sound study is just another tool in that war.

9 comments

November 13, 2024 Quick space links

3:35 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.

12 comments

November 7, 2024 Quick space links

2:07 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.

Posting today will continue to be light. I am wearing bandaging on one wrist that makes typing very slow and extremely difficult. All will go back to normal tomorrow.

3 comments

Freedom: What Trump’s election will mean for America’s space policy

2:24 pm

The resounding landslide victory by Donald Trump and the Republicans yesterday is going have enormous consequences across the entire federal government. As a space historian and journalist who has been following, studying, and reporting on space policy for decades, this essay will be my attempt to elucidate what that landslide will mean for NASA, its Artemis program, and the entire American aerospace industry.

The cost of SLS
The absurd cost of each SLS launch

The Artemis Program

Since 2011 I have said over and over that the government-designed and owned SLS, Orion, and later proposed Lunar Gateway space station were all badly conceived. They all cost too much and don’t do the job. Fitting them together to create a long term presence in space is difficult at best and mostly impractical. Their cost and cumbersome design has meant the program to get back to the Moon, as first proposed by George Bush Jr. in 2004, is now more than a decade behind schedule and many billions over budget. Worse, under the present program as currently contrived that manned lunar landing will likely be delayed five more years, at a minimum.

For example, at present SLS is underpowered. It can’t get astronauts to and from the Moon, as the Saturn-5 rocket did in the 1960s. For the first manned lunar landing mission, Artemis-4, SLS will simply launch four astronauts in Orion to lunar orbit, where Orion will rendezvous and dock with the lunar lander version of Starship. That Starship in turn will require refueling in Earth orbit, using a proposed fuel depot that has been filled by multiple earlier Starship launches.

Once Starship is docked to Orion the crew will transfer to Starship to get up and down from the Moon, and then return to Earth in Orion.

You think that’s complicated? » Read more

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September 16, 2024 Quick space links

3:31 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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NASA IG: NASA’s effort to build new SLS mobile launcher is an epic disaster

12:20 pm

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

According to a new report [pdf] from NASA’s inspector general, both NASA and its contractor Bechtel have allowed the cost and schedule for the new larger SLS mobile launcher (ML-2) (on the right in the graphic) to go completely out of control, with the first launch on that platform to be delayed again until 2029.

NASA projects the ML-2 will cost over three times more than planned. In 2019, NASA estimated the entire ML-2 project from design through construction would cost under $500 million with construction completed and the ML-2 delivered to NASA by March 2023. In December 2023, NASA estimated the ML-2 project would cost $1.5 billion, including $1.3 billion for the Bechtel contract and $168 million for other project costs, with delivery of the launcher to NASA in November 2026. In June 2024, NASA established the Agency Baseline Commitment (ABC)—the cost and schedule baseline committed to Congress against which a project is measured—for a ML-2 project cost of $1.8 billion and a delivery date of September 2027. Even with the establishment of the ABC, NASA intends to keep Bechtel accountable to the cost and schedule agreed to in December 2023.

Despite the Agency’s increased cost projections, our analysis indicates costs could be even higher due in part to the significant amount of construction work that remains. Specifically, our projections indicate the total cost could reach $2.7 billion by the time Bechtel delivers the ML-2 to NASA. With the time NASA requires after delivery to prepare the launcher, we project the ML-2 will not be ready to support a launch until spring 2029, surpassing the planned September2028 Artemis IV launch date.

This quote actually makes things sounder better than they are. Bechtel’s original contract was for $383 million, which means the IG’s present final estimate of $2.7 billion is more than seven times higher. The contract was awarded in 2019 and was supposed to be completed by 2023, in four years. Instead, at best it will take Bechtel a decade to complete the job.

The IG notes that this contact was cost-plus, and considers this the main cause of these cost overruns. It also notes that NASA has had the option to convert the contract to fixed-price, but has chosen not to do so.

Possibly the most damning aspect of the IG report is its conclusion, which essentially admits that nothing can be done to fix this problem.
» Read more

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August 21, 2024 Quick space links

4:49 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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Webb infrared spectroscopy detects differences between morning and evening on tidally-locked exoplanet

9:36 am

Webb spectroscopic data
Click for original image.

Astronomers using Webb Space Telescope’s infrared spectroscopy have now detected distinct differences in the morning and evening atmosphere of a tidally-locked gas giant exoplanet.

The graph, cropped, reduced, sharpened, annotated to post here, shows the differences. From the caption:

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but similar mass to Saturn that orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth, is tidally locked to its parent star. This means it has a constant dayside and a constant nightside—one side of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.

Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the eternal morning and eternal evening on WASP-39 b, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the forever morning portion of the planet being likely cloudier than the evening.

The actual temperatures of each terminator are quite hot, approximately 1,150 and 1450 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Computer modeling suggests “the prevailing winds are likely moving from the night side across the morning terminator, around the dayside, across the evening terminator and then around the nightside,” with wind speeds thousands of miles per hour.

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Ed Stone, who ran the Voyager missions for a half century, passes away at 88

9:54 am

Ed Stone, who was the project scientist for both Voyager missions to the outer solar system and beyond for a half century, passed away at 88 on June 9, 2024.

From 1972 until his retirement in 2022, Stone served as the project scientist from NASA’s longest-running mission, Voyager. The two Voyager probes took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth on Jupiter’s moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus’ unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune’s moon Triton.

Stone was also head of JPL from 1991 to 2001, during the time it built and flew the Mars Pathfinder mission, which sent the first rover to Red Planet. That mission revitalized the entire American Mars exploration program for the next three decades.

Stone was one of the giants of American space exploration during its formative years. He leaves behind a legacy that will be difficult to match, highlighted most of all by both Voyager spacecraft, which outlived him.

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Hubble goes to one-gyro mode, limiting the telescope’s observational capabilities; NASA rejects private repair mission

9:59 am

Story Musgrave on the shuttle robot arm during the last spacewalk of the 1993 Hubble repair mission
Story Musgrave on the shuttle robot arm during
the last spacewalk of the 1993 Hubble repair mission

After the third safe mode event in six months, all caused by issues with the same gyroscope, engineers have decided to shift the Hubble Space Telescope to what they call one-gyro mode, whereby the telescope is pointed using only one gyroscope, and the remaining working gyro is kept in reserve.

The spacecraft had six new gyros installed during the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. To date, three of those gyros remain operational, including the gyro currently experiencing problems, which the team will continue to monitor. Hubble uses three gyros to maximize efficiency but can continue to make science observations with only one gyro. NASA first developed this plan more than 20 years ago, as the best operational mode to prolong Hubble’s life and allow it to successfully provide consistent science with fewer than three working gyros. Hubble previously operated in two-gyro mode, which is negligibly different from one-gyro mode, from 2005-2009. One-gyro operations were demonstrated in 2008 for a short time with no impact to science observation quality.

While continuing to make science observations in one-gyro mode, there are some expected minor limitations. The observatory will need more time to slew and lock onto a science target and won’t have as much flexibility as to where it can observe at any given time. It also will not be able to track moving objects closer than Mars, though these are rare targets for Hubble.

This NASA press release is carefully spun to hide the simple fact that in one-gyro mode, the telescope will simply not be able to take sharp pictures. » Read more

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Two of Voyager-1’s four instruments resume science operations

9:15 am

Engineers have resumed getting science data from two of Voyager-1’s four instruments for the first time since in November 2023, when corrupted computer memory caused the spacecraft to send only incoherent data.

The plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument are now returning usable science data. As part of the effort to restore Voyager 1 to normal operations, the mission is continuing work on the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument. (Six additional instruments aboard Voyager 1 are either no longer working or were turned off after the probe’s flyby of Saturn.)

Engineers hope to begin getting good data the other two instruments in the next few weeks.

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May 14, 2024 Quick space links

3:29 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also tipped me off to the Starliner and Ispace stories earlier today.

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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A planet with the density of cotton candy?

10:32 am

The uncertainty of science: According to data obtained from ground-based telescopes of a newly discovered transiting exoplanet, that planet has the density of cotton candy.

This new planet, located 1,200 light-years from Earth, is 50% larger than Jupiter but seven times less massive, giving it an extremely low density comparable to that of cotton candy. “WASP-193b is the second least dense planet discovered to date, after Kepler-51d, which is much smaller,” explains Khalid Barkaoui, a Postdcotral Researcher at ULiège’s EXOTIC Laboratory and first author of the article published in Nature Astronomy. Its extremely low density makes it a real anomaly among the more than five thousand exoplanets discovered to date. This extremely-low-density cannot be reproduced by standard models of irradiated gas giants, even under the unrealistic assumption of a coreless structure.”

Such a gas giant is not impossible. For example, Saturn’s density is so low that if you could find an ocean large enough it would float. The scientists theorize that this exoplanet is likly comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Nonetheless, there are phenomenon here that we certainly do not understand.

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FAA and Air Force initiate new environmental impact statements for Starship/Superheavy launchpads in Florida

12:08 pm

We’re here to help you! Really! Late yesterday, in a typical Friday story dump just before the weekend to reduce any notice, the FAA announced it has begun a new environmental impact statement (EIS) of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launchpad infrastructure being built in Florida, working in parallel with a similar environmental impact statement now being conducted by the Air Force.

The EIS will be the second environmental review involving SpaceX’s plans to use LC-39A for Starship launches. NASA completed an environmental assessment (EA) in 2019 of the company’s plans at the time to build launch infrastructure at LC-39A for Starship, finding it would have no significant impact. At the time SpaceX was planning up to 24 Starship launches from that pad annually. A new EIS, the FAA concluded, is needed because of changes in the design of Starship and its operations since the 2019 assessment.

The FAA claims a new assessment is needed because SpaceX is now planning as many as 44 launches. The Air Force has not said why its new assessment is needed. That EIS, which began in March, covers a launchpad previously used by the Saturn-1B and Delta-4 rockets from 1964 to 2022, another pad use by the Air Force’s Titan rocket from 1965 to 2005, as well as a new pad, dubbed SLC-50.

LC-39A meanwhile has been used for launches since the 1960s. The Saturn-5, the space shuttle, and the Falcon 9 all launched from this pad.

The dishonest absurdity of these impact statements can not be overstated. There is zero reason to do new assessments. All the pads have been in use for decades, with all kinds of rockets, some comparable to Superheavy/Starship. The environment and the wildlife refuge at Cape Canaveral have both thrived.

Moreover, to force completely new impact statements because the design and plans for Superheavy/Starship have changed somewhat (but not fundamentally) is even more stupid. This is a new rocket, being developed day-by-day and launch-by-launch. Will the FAA and the Air Force require new EIS’s every time SpaceX changes anything? It seems so.

This is clearly lawfare against Elon Musk and SpaceX by the White House and the administration state. It doesn’t like Musk, and it is now searching at all times for ways to block or damage him.

I confidently predict that neither statement will be completed by the end of 2025. Based on the timeline of most EIS’s, which when politics are involved are almost always slowed by the legal action of activists, the earliest either will be approved will be mid-2026, though likely later.

What is not clear is whether the FAA and Air Force will stop all work while this red tape is being unwound. If so, then the first operational launches of Superheavy and Starship cannot happen out of Cape Canaveral until well into 2027, which means NASA entire Artemis program will be seriously delayed. My previous prediction that the first manned lunar landing can’t happen before 2030 is becoming increasingly too conservative.

And remember this: If Joe Biden and the Democrats remain in power after November, all bets are off. At that point they are certain to ramp up the lawfare against those they see as political enemies, even if their targets are doing great things for the nation and the American people.

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NASA approves Dragonfly mission to the Saturn moon Titan

9:50 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has given final approval for the Dragonfly helicopter mission to the Saturn moon Titan.

With the release of the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, Dragonfly is confirmed with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. This reflects a cost increase of about two times the proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019. Following that selection, NASA had to direct the project to replan multiple times due to funding constraints in fiscal years 2020 through 2022. The project incurred additional costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain increases, and the results of an in-depth design iteration. To compensate for the delayed arrival at Titan, NASA also provided additional funding for a heavy-lift launch vehicle to shorten the mission’s cruise phase.

The rotorcraft, targeted to arrive at Titan in 2034, will fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a vehicle for science on another planetary body. The rotorcraft has eight rotors and flies like a large drone.

Be prepared for the project to go overbudget, as NASA’s biggests projects almost always do.

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