Category: Behind The Black

July 23, 2024 Quick space links

4:42 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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Everything connected to Washington and the Democratic Party stinks like a rotting corpse

1:00 pm

I didn’t post an essay yesterday because I could not figure out what to write. The insanity of the past week, with Trump’s near assassination, the horrendous incompetence of the Secret Service, the sudden disappearance of Joe Biden, and then his somewhat mysterious withdrawal from the candidacy of the presidency, all presented too many topics that were changing too fast to digest.

Vultures eating carrion

All I can now take from these events is an impression of a rotting corpse, the Democratic Party, that the voters should have buried decades ago. Instead, the voters have propped it up, allowing its stink to spread until it has poisoned everything related to American government and the noble but now dying principles that formed it.

For example, it now appears that the colossal security failure on July 13th during Trump’s Pennsylvania rally was the result of providing the Secret Service too few resources, forcing it to depend more on local authorities than normal. The Secret Service and the local police then showed themselves to all be utterly incompetent. It appears communications between these different government agencies was poor or non-existent. The local people were supposed to secure the top of the roof where the assassin eventually placed himself, but decided instead to go inside the building because the roof “was too hot.”

Unfortunately, it seems this decision wasn’t conveyed to the Secret Service properly. It therefore appears Crooks was able to station himself on the roof and fire at Trump because the Secret Service thought he was a local police sniper.

At least, that’s my interpretation of the facts, as presently understood. » Read more

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More great hiking on Mars

11:01 am

More great hiking on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image takes us to another place on Mars where future colonizers will find the hiking breath-taking. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The camera team labeled it merely as a “terrain sample,” indicating it was not taken as part of any specific research project request, but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When the MRO team does this, they try to pick interesting sites, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

In this case the image captured the sharp nose of a 2,100-foot-high mesa which to my eye immedately said, “I want to hike a trail that switchbacks up that nose!” Ideally, the trail would then skirt the edge of the mesa, then head up to the top of that small knoll on the plateau. Though only another 200 feet higher or so, the peak would provide an amazing 360 degree view of the surrounding terrrain.
» Read more

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New collection of X-ray false-color Chandra images

9:30 am

Chandra image of galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! As part of a PR campaign by NASA to convince Congress to give it more money to keep the Chandra X-ray Observatory funded, the agency this week released twenty-five new images, supposedly to celebrate the space telescope’s 25th anniversary since launch.

It must be emphasized that these photos are not solely produced by Chandra. They combine its X-ray data wth optical data from Hubble and infrared data from a number of other telescopes.

The picture to the right is of the galaxy NGC 6872 that is interacting with its nearby smaller neighbor. From the caption:

NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across, making it more than five times the size of the Milky Way galaxy; in 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil found it to be the largest-known spiral galaxy, based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This record was surpassed by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures 1.3 million light-years in diameter.

Chandra will get its funding to continue operations. NASA is simply playing its old game of bluff with Congress to force it to give the agency a boost in funding. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum, it cancels a successful project, citing funding shortages (even though those shortages are almost always because of mismanagement elsewhere in the agency), and Congress eventually gives in like a weak parent, raising NASA’s budget.

The big image release this week is part of that game. Nonetheless, the images are spectacular, and loaded with new information not otherwise available without Chandra’s X-ray capabilities. If Congress had any spine, it would force NASA to fully fund such successful projects and simply delete the failed ones (such as SLS and Mars Sample Return). It has no spine, however, and thus we have a national debt in the trillions that is bankrupting us.

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Russia releases timeline for its Russian Orbital Station to replace its ISS operations

9:03 am

Tabletop Model of Russian Space Station
A tabletop model of the station unveiled in 2022

Earlier this month Russia released a detailed timeline for the construction of its Russian Orbital Station (ROS) to replace its ISS operations once the older station is retired and de-orbited, with the first station module supposedly launched in 2027 and the station completed by 2033.

Russia is set to launch the future orbital outpost’s first research and energy module in 2027, Roscosmos said. Roscosmos also plans to launch the universal nodal, gateway and baseline modules by 2030 to form the core orbital station together with the research and energy module, it said. “At the second stage, from 2031 to 2033, the station is set to expand by docking two special-purpose modules (TsM1 and TsM2),” Roscosmos said.

The project is estimated at 608.9 billion rubles (about $6.98 billion).

This project has been discussed in Russia since the middle of the last decade, and as usual for Russian government-run space projects, it has limped along with little but powerpoint proposals and small demo models (as shown on the right) for years. The impending end of ISS and its replacement by commercial stations (that will not include any Russian participation) seems to have finally helped get the project started for real.

Don’t expect this above schedule however to meet its target dates. Russia’s track record since the fall of the Soviet Union is that such projects usually take two decades to launch, not three years.

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Astroscale wins contract to deorbit OneWeb satellite

8:50 am

The orbital tug company Astroscale has won a $15 million contract from both the UK and European space agencies to launch a mission to rendezvous, grab and then deorbit a defunct OneWeb communications satellite.

The company, originally from Japan, has established operations in both the U.S. and Europe in order to win contracts from those regions, and had already signed contracts with OneWeb, several UK companies, the the European Space Agency (ESA), and the UK Space Agency for this project. This new contract apparently releases the money from both ESA and the UK.

The mission, dubbed ELSA-M, is will fly no later than April 2026, will be built by Astroscale’s UK division in Oxford, and is a follow-up of the ELSA-d mission that in 2021 demonstrated rendezvous and proximity operations but was unable to complete a docking using Astroscale’s magnetic capture system because of failed thrusters. I suspect the reason this new deal was finally approved is because of Astroscale’s more recent successes in another mission for Japan’s JAXA space agency, ADRAS-J, rendezvousing and flying in proximity to an old abandoned H2A rocket upper stage.

The new mission will attempt once again to prove the practicality of Astroscale’s magnetic capture system, which it is trying to convince all satellite companies to include on their satellites.

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July 22, 2024 Quick space links

3:59 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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UK distributes cash to space sector to keep them in the UK

12:23 pm

The United Kingdom government today announced five different grants totalling $14 million to various institutions and companies in an effort to promote aerospace operations within the UK.

The biggest grant, $6.45 million, went to the German rocket startup Hyimpulse to help pay the cost of a vertical launch of its SR75 test suborbital rocket from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

Hyimpulse, which had originally planned to do its test launches from Saxavord, had been forced to do its first launch from the Southern Launch spaceport in Australia because of regulatory delays in the UK. Because of that red tape the company also signed a further agreement with that Australian spaceport for future test flights. It appears this grant is the UK government effort to get Hyimpulse launches back.

Nor is this the first such grant to Hyimpulse, or to a German rocket startup. Previously Hyimpulse had won two grants totaling almost $5 million. In addition, the UK has also awarded the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg just under $5 million.

Of the other four grants in this most recent award, the second biggest ($4.57 million) went to a Glasgow company, Spire Global, to develop better weather satellite forecasting technologies. The other three grants were all about a million dollars each, and went a variety of space sector institutions/companies in Scotland.

It is apparent that the red tape problems at Saxavord that has been driving rocket startups away from the UK has forced the UK government to reach into its wallet to try to keep them from leaving. For these companies, taking the money is a two-edge sword. The cash is nice, but if they can’t launch as planned it does them little good. I expect these deals require Hyimpulse and Rocket Factory to launch from Saxavord, but do not require them to do so first. This gives these companies the freedom to go elsewhere if necessary to meet their schedules.

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A classic spiral galaxy

8:53 am

A classic spiral galaxy
Click for original image.

Monday is always a slow news day in space, so we start the day with a cool image. The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a spiral galaxy about 100 million light years from Earth.

That NGC 3430 is such a fine example of a galactic spiral may be why it ended up as part of the sample that Edwin Hubble used to define his classification of galaxies. Namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, in 1926 he authored a paper which classified some four hundred galaxies by their appearance — as either spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical or irregular. This straightforward typology proved immensely influential, and the modern, more detailed schemes that astronomers use today are still based on it. NGC 3430 itself is an SAc galaxy, a spiral lacking a central bar with open, clearly-defined arms.

The bright blue indicates areas of star formation, while the reddish streaks indicates dust. The orange/reddish dots above and below the galaxy are distant background galaxies whose light has been shifted to the red because they appear to be moving away from us due to the expansion rate of the universe.

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NASA suspends all U.S. spacewalks on ISS due to water leak

9:03 am

Because of a water leak that occurred in an umblical cord at the beginning of a spacewalk on June 24, 2024, NASA has now suspended all U.S. spacewalks on ISS as it investigates the cause.

Tracy Dyson, a NASA astronaut, had a brief spacesuit leak a month ago while still in the hatch of the International Space Station (ISS). She and Mike Barrett had just opened the door for a 6.5-hour spacewalk for maintenance activities, when showers of ice particles erupted from a spacesuit connection to the ISS. The spacewalk was suspended, but the astronauts were never in any danger, NASA has emphasized.

“That spacewalk ended early because of a water leak in the suit’s service and cooling umbilical; that’s the site that’s connected to ISS,” station program manager Dana Weigel, of NASA, told reporters in a teleconference Wednesday (July 17). (Astronaut spacesuits stay connected to ISS life support systems via that umbilical until just before they exit the hatch.) “We’re still taking a look at the cause of the water leak, and what we want to do to recover,” Weigel added. “We’ll go look for the next opportunity for where we want to do the spacewalk. It’s not time-critical or urgent, and so we’ll find the best, logical place to put it.”

At this moment NASA has still not identified the cause of the leak, though astronauts on ISS have been inspecting the umblical cord as well as the entire suit, disassembling components where possible.

What really needs to happen is the delivery of newly designed suits, something NASA has wanted done for about fifteen years. The agency spent most of that time making powerpoint presentations and spending a billion dollars, with no new suits produced. It is now hoping its spacesuit contract with Axiom will get it new spacesuits.

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The Trump assassination attempt provides another illustration of our bankrupt press/media

3:11 pm

We can learn a lot about the press by watching how they react to breaking news stories, with the aftermath and questions about the Secret Service’s actions during the attempt on Donald Trump’s life on July 13, 2024 being a perfect example.

My goal is not to analyze the failures of the Secret Service that day. Others will do that far better than I. My goal here is to analyze the press itself, to illustrate who is really interested in finding out what really happened, to report the news, and who is not.

First we have Fox anchor Jesse Watters’ opening statement on July 15, 2024 at the start of the Republican National Convention, outlining great detail all the many many MANY questions that remain unanswered about the truly horrible job the Secret Service did in protecting Trump during that July 13th rally. His opening sentence illustrates his focus quite bluntly:

There is one burning question on all of our minds. Did Biden’s Secret Service almost get Trump killed? All evidence points to yes.

Watters then unreservedly without fear outlines all the known facts and the many failures, never flinching from the very ugly conclusions those fact suggest. As he concludes, “The minute we stop asking questions, they win.” Watch:
» Read more

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ESA’s Juice probe to Jupiter prepares for first Earth+Moon slingshot fly-by

10:35 am

Graphic showing Juice's upcoming duel fly-by
Graphic showing Juice’s upcoming duel fly-by.
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) first mission to Jupiter, dubbed Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) is about to do the first ever back-to-back fly-bys of the Moon and then the Earth immediately afterward in order to slingshot it forward on its long journey to the gas giant.

The graphic to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the plan. Juice will first fly past the Moon, shifting its path slightly, and then zip past the Earth one day later, its trajectory then under-going a much larger change.

The lunar-Earth flyby will see Juice pass just 700 km [435 miles] from the Moon’s surface at 23:16 CEST on 19 August and 6807 km [4230 miles] from Earth’s surface almost exactly 24 hours later at 23:57 CEST on 20 August.

Using the gravity of the Moon to slightly bend Juice’s trajectory first will improve the effectiveness of the much larger gravity assist at Earth. However, the dual flyby requires extraordinarily precise navigation and timing, as even minor deviations could send Juice in the wrong direction.

The engineering teams have already been doing simulations to make sure they get this complex maneuver right. If all goes right, the spacecraft will then do flybys of Venus in August 2025, Earth in September 2026, and Earth again in January 2029, arriving in Jupiter orbit in July 2031.

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Rocks broken by Curiosity’s wheels contain the first pure sulfur crystals found on Mars

10:16 am

Curiosity's robot arm about to take a close look at the ground
Click for original image.

Close-up of rocks on Mars
Click for original image.

When Curiosity completed a drive on May 30, 2024, subsequent images from the rover revealed that the wheels had broken apart some small rocks, revealing very bright yellow materials not normally seen on the planet.

I posted those images on June 7, 2024 — noting that such colorful and crystal-like surface features have been rarely seen by Curiosity — and post them again now, with the top picture showing the broken rocks, labeled as “target rocks”, just after the robot arm had rotated up and away from a close inspection and imaging of those rocks. The picture to the right is a close-up taken by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located at the end of the rover’s robot arm and designed to get close-up high resolution images of the ground that the arm is exploring. Everything in this image is tiny, in the millimeters in scale.

The science team yesterday confirmed that those unusual rocks are the first pure crystals of sulfur found on the red planet.

Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals — in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials — the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental, or pure, sulfur. It isn’t clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.

While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven’t associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it — an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed.

Analysis of samples taken from drilling into a nearby much more structurally solid rock is presently on-going. As for theories explaining the presence of this pure sulfur, those are being worked on as well.

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Astra goes private

9:56 am

The troubled rocket startup Astra has completed a purchase deal with its original two founders, with the company becoming a privately owned company entirely owned by those two individuals.

Under the terms of the definitive agreement for the transaction (the “Merger Agreement”) that was previously announced on March 7, 2024, Apogee Parent, Inc., (“Parent”), an entity formed by Chris Kemp, Astra’s co-founder, chief executive officer and chairman, and Dr. Adam London, Astra’s co-founder, chief technology officer and director, will acquire all of the outstanding shares of the Company’s Class A common stock, par value $0.0001 per share (the “Class A Shares”) not already owned by it for the right to receive $0.50 per share in cash, as more fully described in the Merger Agreement.

With the completion of the take-private acquisition, the Class A Shares ceased trading prior to the opening of trading on July 18, 2024 and will no longer be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market (“Nasdaq”).

Whether this deal can save the company remains unknown. It ceased launching its Rocket-3 rocket due to technical problems and the rocket’s overall small capacity, and has been very short of cash, hindering development of its proposed larger Rocket-4.

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China launches earth observation satellite

9:50 am

China today successfully launched an earth observation satellite, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in the north of China. Video clips of the launch can be seen here.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

71 SpaceX
31 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 83 to 47, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 71 to 59.

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NASA and Boeing complete ground static fire tests of Starliner

11:20 pm

According to a press announcement tonight from NASA, the agency and Boeing have now completed the static fire tests using a Starliner ground capsule to duplicate the engine burns required to bring the in-space capsule back to Earth, carrying its two astronauts.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

Engineers now need to complete a review of those tests, followed by a full review leading to a decision as to when the astronauts will return on Starliner. No dates have yet been set, but expect these reviews to be completed within two weeks, and that Starliner will likely be scheduled for return in early August, prior to the scheduled launch of the next Dragon manned mission in mid-August.

All this assumes the FAA will clear SpaceX to resume launches before then. SpaceX is apparently ready to resume this week, but we have no indication the FAA will go along.

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July 18, 2024 Quick space links

3:36 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.

 

 

 

 

  • Today in 1966 John Young and Michael Collins launched on Gemini 10

    • This mission completed the first entirely successful docking, followed by a rendezvous with a second target spacecraft. Gemini 8 had docked but had to abort shortly thereafter due to out-of-control thruster, and Gemini 9 couldn’t dock because the shroud did not release properly from the target spacecraft.

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Scientists: Biden has infused DEI and racial quotas throughout the entire federal science bureaucracy

1:39 pm

Joe Biden, allied with Hamas
Joe Biden, like the KKK in love with racist quotas

A new research paper just completed by a international group of scientists details at length how the policies of critical race theory and its “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” philosophy has been infused deeply into all levels of the entire federal science bureaucracy, influencing grant awards and hiring at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in ways that warp science and research and make good research impossible..

You can read the paper here [pdf]. From the press release:

The paper exposes how DEI has spread much further and more deeply into core scientific disciplines than most people, including many scientists, realize. This has happened, in large part, by presidential executive order (specifically, EO 13985 and EO 14091), implemented through the budget approval process.

The two executive orders listed were issued by President Biden in 2021 and 2023 respectively, with the first issued on his very first day in office. If you have the patience, it worth reading both, since they outline in great detail the goals of this administration to favor the hiring and promotion of “underserved communities,” which the first order lists as follows:
» Read more

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Columbia University donors fleeing because of its apparent willingness to tolerate bigotry and pro-Hamas mobs

1:03 pm

Columbia University's seal
The motto means “In Your Light [God],
We Shall See the Light.” Too bad no one
running Columbia now believes in this.

In the past two months Columbia University has discovered that there are real consequences for tolerating and sometimes even supporting the bigotry and anti-Semitism of its Marxist and pro-Hamas students and faculty.

First, in early June a very wealthy Columbia graduate donated $260 million to Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. Though the donor remains anonymous, these details were released by the university:

Not only did the donor make a point to tell onlookers he fought in a conflict entrenched in antisemitism, but he also reiterated how he graduated from Columbia.

It appears the donor wanted to make it very clear that Columbia had once been in the running for this donation, but its wishy-washy response to the riots committed on campus by pro-Hamas students caused him to reject it.

Nor has this been all. Another major donor to Columbia, Mortimer Zuckerman, announced earlier this week that he has cut off payments on a major $200 million donation he had initiated to Columbia in 2012, totaling millions.
» Read more

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Curiosity looks up Gediz Vallis as it starts its journey out

10:45 am

Curiosity panorama looking south on July 16, 2024Curiosity panorama looking south on July 16, 2024. Click for high resolution. Go here, here, here, and here
for original images.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Even as the Curiosity science team is beginning the rover’s journey out of the giant Martian slot canyon Gediz Vallis, they have on July 16, 2024 used its high resolution camera to gather a new mosaic of the surrounding terrain. I have used four of those images (available here, here, here, and here) to create a panorama, as shown above, focusing on the view looking south up into Gediz Vallis. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiousity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The white dotted line indicates Curiosity’s actual traveled route, while the red dotted line the planned route.

The peak of Mount Sharp is directly ahead in this panorama, out of sight and about 26 miles away and 16,000 feet higher up. To get a sense of how far away that remains, note that Curiosity in its dozen years of exploration on Mars has so far traveled just under 20 miles and climbed about 2,500 feet.

The plan is to back track downhill and circle around the nose of the western wall of Gediz Vallis and head south in a parallel canyon that is believed to provide easier traveling for Curiosity’s damaged wheels.

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Researchers discover an anti-aging drug that extends the lives of rats 25%

9:49 am

Researchers have discovered that by blocking the increase of a certain protein within the body, they can not only extend the lives of rats by about 25%, the rats overall health in old age was improved significantly.

You can read the original paper here and the press release from the researchers here. From that press release:

After establishing IL11’s role in aging, the team demonstrated that by applying this anti-IL11 therapy in the same preclinical model, metabolism was improved. The mice shifted from generating white fat to beneficial brown fat. Brown fat breaks down blood sugar and fat molecules to help maintain body temperature and burn calories. The researchers also observed improved muscle function and overall better health in their study, as well as an increased lifespan by up to 5 per cent in both sexes.

Unlike other drugs known to inhibit specific pathways involved in aging, such as metformin and rapamycin, anti-IL11 therapy blocks multiple major signaling mechanisms that become dysfunctional with age, offering protection against cardio-metabolic diseases, age-related loss of muscle mass and strength as well as frailty. In addition to these externally observable changes, anti-IL11 therapy also reduced the rate of telomere shortening and preserved mitochondria’s health and ability to generate energy.

According the paper, this drug is now in early-stage clinical trials for fibrotic lung disease, but its benefits — as seen in these rat experiments — could turn out to be far greater, across the board.

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Astronomers discover an exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found

9:41 am

Using the TESS space telescope, astronomers have discovered a gas giant exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found, circling a star about 1,100 light years away.

On Jan. 12, 2020, TESS picked up a possible transit of the star TIC 241249530. Gupta and his colleagues at Penn State determined that the transit was consistent with a Jupiter-sized planet crossing in front of the star. They then acquired measurements from other observatories of the star’s radial velocity, which estimates a star’s wobble, or the degree to which it moves back and forth, in response to other nearby objects that might gravitationally tug on the star. Those measurements confirmed that a Jupiter-sized planet was orbiting the star and that its orbit was highly eccentric, bringing the planet extremely close to the star before flinging it far out.

Prior to this detection, astronomers had known of only one other planet, HD 80606 b, that was thought to be an early hot Jupiter. That planet, discovered in 2001, held the record for having the highest eccentricity, until now.

The exoplanet’s orbit is presently 167 days long, at its closest stellar approach dipping 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is from the Sun, and at its farthest point zipping just beyond Earth’s distance.

Computer simulations suggest that in a billion years this orbit will decay into a more circular orbit close to the star, turning this gas giant into a hot Jupiter roasted by its star continually.

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Europe’s Gaia space telescope in trouble

9:34 am

Launched in 2013 and now functioning more than six years after the completion of its primary mission to measure precisely the distances to over a billion stars, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has experienced several major technical issues this spring related to a micrometeorite hit and a failure of the electronics of one of its CCDs.

The micrometeorite hit occurred in April.

The impact created a little gap that allowed stray sunlight – around one billionth of the intensity of direct sunlight felt on Earth – to occasionally disrupt Gaia’s very sensitive sensors. Gaia’s engineers were in the middle of dealing with this issue when they were faced with another problem.

The spacecraft’s ‘billion-pixel camera’ relies on a series of 106 charge coupled devices (CCDs) – sensors that convert light into electrical signals. In May, the electronics controlling one of these CCDs failed – Gaia’s first CCD issue in more than 10 years in space. Each sensor has a different role, and the affected sensor was vital for Gaia’s ability to confirm the detection of stars. Without this sensor to validate its observations, Gaia began to register thousands of false detections.

The cause of the electronics failure remains unsolved, though it is believed related to the major solar storm that swept by at about the same time.

As a result of these issues, the telescope’s data stream will be significantly reduced. How long it will remain in operation remains unclear. At some point the cost will outweigh the amount of data obtained.

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Update on Cape Canaveral work by multiple launch companies

9:24 am

Link here. The article provides a nice summary of the construction work by Blue Origin, Stoke Space, and SpaceX at the cape, all leading to future launches and greater capabilities.

Blue Origin is still pushing for a September 29, 2024 first launch of its New Glenn orbital rocket. SpaceX is continuing work on its new Starship/Superheavy facilities as well as installing upgrades to its Falcon launchpads. The most interesting tidbit however is was about Stoke Space and its proposed Nova rocket:

The first two flights of Nova are planned for 2025, while 10 flights are planned for both 2026 and 2027. Initial flights of Nova will be expendable, with full reusability of the first and second stages coming later.

Stoke’s primary goal has been to make this rocket entirely reusable. It apparently plans to begin launching and do recovery tests as it goes until it achieves that reusability later.

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