Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Scientists release infrared image of the Ring nebula, taken by Webb

10:23 am

The Ring Nebula, in false color by Webb
Click for original image.

Scientists yesterday released the first false-color infrared image of the Ring nebula taken by the Webb Telescope. That image, cropped to post here, is to the right. From the press release, which is heavy with platitudes but little information:

Approximately 2,600 lightyears away from Earth, the nebula was born from a dying star that expelled its outer layers into space. What makes these nebulae truly breath-taking is their variety of shapes and patterns, that often include delicate, glowing rings, expanding bubbles or intricate, wispy clouds. These patterns are the consequence of the complex interplay of different physical processes that are not well understood yet. Light from the hot central star now illuminates these layers.

Just like fireworks, different chemical elements in the nebula emit light of specific colours. This then results in exquisite and colourful objects, and furthermore allows astronomers to study the chemical evolution of these objects in detail.

It appears this image was produced using Webb’s near infrared instrument. Further data from its mid-infrared instrument has not yet been released. For a Hubble image of the Ring Nebula, in optical light that the human eye sees, go here.

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NASA agrees to let Axiom fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS

10:10 am

NASA and Axiom have now signed a new agreement allowing Axiom to fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS, tentatively scheduled for no earlier than August 2024.

Through the mission-specific order, Axiom Space is obtaining from NASA crew supplies, cargo delivery to space, storage, and in-orbit resources for daily use. The order also accommodates up to seven contingency days aboard the space station. This mission is subject to NASA’s pricing policy for the services that are above space station baseline capabilities.

The order also identifies capabilities NASA may obtain from Axiom Space, including the return of scientific samples that must be kept cold and other cargo, and the capability to use the private astronaut mission commander’s time to complete NASA science or perform tasks for the agency.

The company has already hired SpaceX to provide the transportation to and from ISS, using its Falcon 9 rocket and one of its fleet of four manned Dragon capsules.

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Despite good first images from Euclid, the orbiting telescope has a problem

10:05 am

Even though the first light images from Euclid have been sharp and exactly what astronomers want, the orbiting telescope designed to make a 3D map of billions of galaxies has an issue that will likely put some limits to that map.

When the telescope started booting up, ESA observers were concerned by the appearance of light markings on the first images relayed to Earth. This, it confirmed, was due to sunlight filtering into the telescope, “probably through a tiny gap”.

A correction to Euclid’s position was able to offset this issue. It means that while the ESA is confident Euclid will be fine to proceed with its mapping mission, particular orientations for the telescope may not be possible.

A limitation like this means that the telescope will not being able to look in some directions and get mapping images. Thus, the overall map will have gaps, though it appears at this moment that the scientists think those gaps will not seriously impact the telescope’s overall work. We shall see.

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Update on the technical progress at Boca Chica, preparing for the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test

9:59 am

Link here. Lots of progress had been made in getting the pad and the rocket ready for that next orbital test flight, with the first static fires tests of Superheavy using the launchpad’s new water deluge system are now expected in the coming week.

The company is also preparing additional prototypes of Superheavy and Starship for later orbital tests. even as it upgrades the assembly facilities, replacing temporary tents with actual buildings. More details, including videos, at the link.

Meanwhile, the only word from the FAA about SpaceX’s application for a launch permit has been a warning that it will not issue that permit until it is good and ready, suggesting the company should not expect to launch in August, as I have been predicting for months.

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August 3, 2023 Quick space links

3:47 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • Northrop Grumman to upgrade Cygnus freighter

    • The changes will increase its payload capacity, allow it to dock directly to a port rather than being berthed by a robot arm, and — most importantly — refine is ability to raise ISS’s orbit using its engines. This last capability replaces the Russians, and will be a need that future commercial stations will require.

 

 

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Pushback: Student wins against school officials who tried to suppress her first amendment rights

12:39 pm

Maggie DeJong
Maggie DeJong, fighting back hard and winning

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In April Maggie DeJong, a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), sued [pdf] three of the college’s faculty members for attempting in 2022 to both punish her and well as silence her from her first amendment right to speak, simply because some other leftist students complained they did not like her opinions. As I wrote in April when I first reported this story:

These officials issued three “no contact” orders against DeJong, forbidding her to have any contact with three co-students in her program, simply because she had religious and political opinions they disagreed with and did not wish to hear. This orders essentially blacklisted her from the program, because of its small nature, and were literally a priori gag orders on her right to freely express her opinions. The officials also admitted that DeJong had violated no school policy, nor did they provide her any due process before issuing the orders. When challenged by DeJong’s lawyers, the university quickly realized the utter illegality of these orders, and cancelled them.

Unlike most recent cases of blacklisting, DeJong did not sue the university but the individuals involved, making them personally liable. » Read more

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The dry and mountainous terrain west of Jezero Crater

12:00 pm

The dry and mountainous terrain west of Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Since my earlier update today about Perseverance and Ingenuity mentioned the very diverse and strange geology known to exist west of Jezero Crater and where the rover is eventually headed, I thought it worthwhile to post another cool image of that terrain.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled a “terrain sample” image, the location was likely chosen by the camera team in order to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so that they can maintain its proper temperature. Having a gap that put the spacecraft over this region to the west of Jezero was however a great opportunity to get another look at this rocky, mountainous, and very parched terrain, located in Mars’ very dry equatorial regions.
» Read more

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Perseverance snaps new close-up of Ingenuity

10:28 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity as seen by Perseverance on August 2, 2023
Ingenuity as seen by Perseverance on August 2, 2023.
Click for original image.

Cool image time! With Perseverance and Ingenuity in the past week getting close together for the first time in months, the Perseverance team naturally turned its high resolution mast cameras at the helicopter. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 2, 2023 by the rover’s left mast camera, showing Ingenuity only about two hundred feet away.

The blue dot on the overview map above shows Perseverance’s present location, with the green dot marking Ingenuity’s. The picture to the right is therefore looking almost due south. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s planned route, moving towards Neretva Vallis, the gap in the rim of Jezero Crater from which the delta had flowed, eons ago. The rover’s goal is to eventually enter that gap and explore the very diverse and strange geology known to exist outside the crater to the west.

We should also expect even better images of Ingenuity in the next week. Its 54th flight is scheduled for today, in which the engineering team wants to send the helicopter on a simple straight up and down hop of sixteen feet in order to better “localize” the helicopter. With Perseverance less than two hundred feet away, its cameras should be able to assemble a great movie of that flight.

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New software detects its first potentially dangerous asteroid

9:32 am

New software designed to detect asteroids, developed for use with the Rubin Observatory presently being built in Chile, has successfully discovered its first potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) using data from another smaller operational ground-based telescope.

The discovered asteroid is 600 feet long, large enough to pose a real threat should it ever hit the Earth. Fortunately, the data says that though its orbit can take it as close as 140,000 miles there is no impact likely in the foreseeable future.

When the Rubin telescope begins its planned ten year survey of the entire night sky in 2025, this software is expected to almost triple the number of known potentially-hazardous-asteroids, from 2,350 to almost 6,000.

Funded primarily by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, Rubin’s observations will dramatically increase the discovery rate of PHAs. Rubin will scan the sky unprecedentedly quickly with its 8.4-meter mirror and massive 3,200-megapixel camera, visiting spots on the sky twice per night rather than the four times needed by present telescopes. But with this novel observing “cadence,” researchers need a new type of discovery algorithm to reliably spot space rocks.

Thus, the development of this new software.

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China’s Long March 4C launches weather satellite; SpaceX launches communications satellite

10:09 pm

Two launches this evening. First China used its Long March 4C rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. No word on where the lower stages crashed within China.

SpaceX then used its Falcon 9 rocket to put an Intelsat commercial communications satellite into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their eighth and tenth flights respectively.

As of posting the satellites from both launches had not deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

52 SpaceX
31 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 60 to 31, and the entire world combined 60 to 51, while SpaceX by itself leads the world (excluding American companies) 52 to 51.

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Rosie Hodgson & Rowan Piggott – Dancing At Whitsun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I was listening to a different recording of this song by Gordon Bok, Ann Muir, and Ed Trickett from 1978 and thought it gives us a window into a gentle culture that is now dead. As the youtube webpage for the performance below states, the song was written as “a tribute to the women who took up morris dancing during the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent.”

It is the gentle quality of this song, its words and its sound, that is generally dead in today’s culture. Almost all modern music must be loud — shouted more than sung — with a rock beat that while energetic and enthusiastic is also somewhat harsh. Curse words are normal. It is rare to hear new popular music dedicated to expressing gentle soft love.

I post this as a memorial to that lost civilization.

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