Space, Planets and eclipses

[alexora]

Originally Posted by alexora

Unfortunately, this mission didn't work out as planned, but they are not giving up just yet...

UK rocket failure is a setback, not roadblock

Full story and video here:

http://bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64223882

Originally Posted by alexora

The mission failure was apparently down to a dislodged fuel filter:

Virgin Orbit: Dislodged fuel filter caused
failure of UK space mission

The company’s Start Me Up mission from Cornwall failed in January.

Source:

http://standard.co.uk/news/uk/virgin-orbit-atlantic-ocean-earth-newquay-b1060422.html

Look like Virgin is running out of money...

Virgin Orbit stops operations and
furloughs most staff

Satellite launch company hunts for funding lifeline following failed attempt from UK soil

Virgin Orbit has paused its operations and furloughed its workforce as it hunts for a funding lifeline.

The satellite launch company, based in California, will put all work on hold for at least a week with just a skeleton team remaining at work.

Bosses told employees at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday that the remainder of the workforce will be put on unpaid furlough, although employees can cash in annual leave.

The decision comes after Virgin Orbit’s attempt to make the first satellite launch from UK soil in January failed.

The company’s chief executive, Dan Hart, told staff that putting them on furlough would buy time to finalise a new investment plan, Reuters reported. Staff are expected to be updated next week.

The pause spooked investors, and sent shares down 18.8% to 82 cents. The stock, listed on the US Nasdaq exchange, is down 44% this year.

The company said: “Virgin Orbit is initiating a company-wide operational pause, effective March 16, 2023, and anticipates providing an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks.”

Thousands of people gathered near Newquay in Cornwall in January to witness the historic Start Me Up mission, which took off from Spaceport Cornwall, blasting nine satellites into orbit.

A converted Boeing 747 called Cosmic Girl took off but the rocket carrying the first satellites launched from British soil failed to reach orbit and was lost. Cosmic Girl successfully released its rocket, called LauncherOne, carrying a payload of nine satellites off the south coast of Ireland.

But shortly afterwards, Virgin Orbit announced that there had been “an anomaly” and the rocket failed to reach the required altitude. The rocket and satellites were lost.

Virgin Orbit said that its investigation into failure of the mission is “nearly complete” and that “our next production rocket with the needed modification incorporated is in final stages of integration and test”.

Virgin Orbit was founded by the billionaire Richard Branson and is 75% owned by Virgin Investments. Branson this month put a further $5m into the company, bringing his investments in the venture to $60m over the past four months.

Source:

http://theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/16/virgin-orbit-stops-operations-furloughs-staff-satellite

[ghost2509]

NASA unveils new spacesuit specially tailored for lunar wear

reuters.com
By Steve Gorman
Mr. 15, 2023

http://youtu.be/dOoPlvlC-R4http://

The big, puffy white moonsuits worn by Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo astronauts a half-century ago are out of fashion. Lunar haute couture now calls for something more form-fitting and appropriate for men and women alike.

NASA on Wednesday unveiled the first prototype for a newly designed next-generation spacesuit specially tailored and accessorized for the first astronauts expected to venture back to the moon's surface in the next few years.

The latest in moon-wear was displayed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston during an event hosted for the media and students by Axiom Space, the Texas-based company contracted by NASA to build suits for Artemis, successor to the Apollo moon program.

The Artemis I mission, the inaugural launch of NASA's powerful next-generation rocket and its newly built Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight around the moon and back, was successfully completed in December.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency plan to announce on April 3 the four astronauts chosen to fly as early as next year on Artemis II, another out-and-back mission.

That flight, if successful, will pave the way for a planned Artemis III astronaut expedition to the lunar surface - the first ever to the moon's south pole - later in the decade. It will be the first ever to send a woman to walk on the moon.

NASA promises that subsequent Artemis missions will include the first person of color on the moon.

The program, named for Apollo's twin sister from Greek mythology, is aimed ultimately at establishing a sustainable lunar base as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.

NASA chief Bill Nelson said the new spacesuits "will open opportunities for more people to explore and conduct science on the moon then ever before."

All 12 NASA astronauts who landed on the moon during a total of six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 were white men.

The outfits worn to the moon by Artemis astronauts will look very different from the bulky spacesuits of yore.

Branded by Axiom as the "Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit," or AxEMU for short, the new suits are more streamlined and flexible than the old Apollo get-ups, with greater range of motion and variability in size and fit.

They are designed to fit a broad range of potential wearers, accommodating at least 90% of the U.S. male and female population, NASA said. They also will incorporate advances in life-support systems, pressure garments and avionics.

The precise look of the suits, however, remained a closely guarded trade secret. Those on display came with an outer layer that was charcoal gray with dashes of orange and blue and Axiom's logo on the chest - intended to obscure Axiom's proprietary outer fabric design.

But the company said the suits to be worn on the lunar south pole by astronauts will be white because that is the best color to reflect the harsh sunlight on the moon's surface and protect the wearer from extreme heat.

Axiom said it collaborated with costume designer Ester Marquis from the Apple TV+ lunar series "For All Mankind" to create the custom cover layer using Axiom's logo and brand colors.

Houston-based Axiom is not the only designer label that Artemis astronauts will be wearing in the years to come.

NASA has also contracted with Collins Aerospace of Charlotte, North Carolina, to compete for construction of future spacesuits to be worn on the moon and during spacewalks outside the International Space Station.

[ghost2509]

A 'hole' 30 times Earth's size has spread across the sun, blasting solar winds that'll hit our planet by end of this week

Business Insider
yahoo.com
Rebecca Cohen
March 21, 2023

A giant black region on the sun, called a coronal hole, was spotted on Monday by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Despite the name, however, this isn't a physical hole in the solar surface. Coronal holes are cooler in temperature, so they don't glow as bright and therefore look black against the rest of the sun.

"The current coronal hole, the big one right now, is about 300,000 to 400,000 kilometers across," Alex Young, associate director for science at NASA Goddard's Heliophysics Science Division, told Insider over email. "That is about 20-30 Earths lined up back-to-back."

Coronal holes like these are common. There is "nothing unusual here," Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Insider in an email.

Holes like this are part of the sun's normal activity. However, they're "not well understood. Their origins are unclear," McIntosh added, calling these events "the 'dark side' of solar activity."

It's worth noting that these coronal holes are the source of rapid solar winds — reaching speeds of about 500-800 km per second, Young wrote to Insider. In this case, the solar winds from this coronal hole are scheduled to reach Earth by the end of this week.

"We will probably start seeing the effects of the high-speed wind on March 24," Young added. "When the high-speed wind reaches Earth, the particles and the magnetic field it carries will interact with Earth's magnetic field, effectively rattling it or like ringing a bell."

More powerful magnetic fields, like from a coronal mass ejection, could cause electrical blackouts or disrupt communication technology. But coronal holes — even large ones like this — are far less violent. So the main effect to look forward to this Friday is more vibrant aurora borealis, aka northern lights.

However, we are entering a new phase of increasing solar activity where coronal holes will be less the norm and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and powerful solar flares will become more common, Young said.

That can be a concern since the powerful magnetic fields from CMEs and solar flares have been known to surge power grids and fry satellites. However, these events are few and far between.

In reality, Young said that for him and other solar scientists, as solar activity increases, "it's gonna get more and more exciting and interesting."

[maxhitman]

Originally Posted by ghost2509

A 'hole' 30 times Earth's size has spread across the sun, blasting solar winds that'll hit our planet by end of this week

May I add, that some solar flares may dramaticly create havoc , or even
short-circuits, on Earths Satellites and land communications.
Also electricity and cable problems all over the globe.
It has happened before. Its in the history books.

[ghost2509]

NASA has its first detailed map of water on the Moon

The Weather Network
yahoo.com
Scott Sutherland
March 25, 2023

On one of its final flights, a unique NASA telescope just provided a key discovery that may secure the future of lunar and space exploration.

In February 2022, astronomers used NASA's now-retired SOFIA telescope — the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy — to scan an immense region near the south pole of the Moon. Based on the images collected, they produced a new map that covers over 230,000 square kilometres of the lunar surface, revealing an abundance of water trapped on the shady sides of mountains and in the shadowed parts of craters.

"When looking at the water data, we can actually see crater rims, we see the individual mountains, and we can even see differences between the day and night sides of the mountains, thanks to the higher concentration of water in these places, Bill Reach, director of the SOFIA Science Center at NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a NASA press release.

Reach is the lead author of a new study based on SOFIA's observations, published in mid-March.

The idea that there's water trapped in the perpetually shadowed regions of the Moon is not a new one. Previous studies have revealed hints of what was there, by detecting the presence of hydrogen and oxygen. However, there was no way at that time to determine if we were seeing actual water (H2O) or some other chemical combination of the two elements (such as the less-useful OH 'hydroxyl' molecule).

Observations by SOFIA back in 2020 confirmed the presence of actual water. These new observations reveal exactly where it is, and how much of it is there.

According to NASA, this is only the first of several lunar water maps that will come from these SOFIA observations. More are on the way, as the team focused on several future lunar mission landing sites.

"With this map of SOFIA data, and others to come, we are looking at how water is concentrated under different lunar environmental conditions," said Casey Honniball, a visiting scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who is working on the upcoming VIPER mission to the Moon. "This map will provide valuable information for the Artemis program on potential prospecting areas but also provides regional context for future science missions, like VIPER."

VIRER is NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, a robot that is expected to land at the lunar south pole sometime in 2024. Its target will be Mons Mouton, a mountain located in a region that will be detailed in one of the upcoming maps from SOFIA.

Following VIRER, Artemis III is expected to launch in 2025, with the intention to land astronauts near the Moon's south pole. This will be the first crewed mission to touch down on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. If the water discovered by SOFIA and investigated by VIPER is found to be a resource that we can easily extract, Artemis III could quickly become the start of a sustained human presence on the Moon.

[ghost2509]

Big Bang created everything. Or did it? Physicists propose a second ‘Dark Big Bang’

Miami Herald
yahoo.com
Brendan Rascius
March 24, 2023

Dark matter — an invisible entity that makes up much of the universe — has long been one of the most puzzling subjects for astrophysicists.

The term was coined by a Swiss astronomer in 1933 to describe hidden matter that appeared responsible for the peculiar movement of celestial bodies. Since then, scientists have disagreed on the properties and origins of the mysterious element.

“We don’t know what it is. It’s a 90-year-old problem,” Katherine Freese, the director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, told McClatchy News.

But a new theory, posited by Freese and her colleague, Martin Wolfgang Winkler, aims to explain where dark matter came from. In a study published in February, the pair hypothesized that a second big bang — a “Dark Big Bang” — brought dark matter into existence.

“People generally assume that (the Big Bang) created everything, but we realized we don’t have any evidence for the creation of dark matter,” Freese said. “Instead of just assuming everything is created at once, we wanted to investigate; can we have this second Big Bang? And the answer is yes.”

Their pioneering theory proposes that dark and visible matter are in fact “completely decoupled” aside from their connection through gravity.

The theory is born out of a fundamental discrepancy between dark matter and other elements in the universe: Dark matter is significantly younger than the other particles, including photons and quarks, meaning its genesis may have come after the Big Bang.

So, Freese and Winkler set out to determine just how late the Dark Big Bang could have taken place. Their conclusion? About 30 days could have passed between the Big Bang and the Dark Big Bang.

“When we talk about the universe we’re usually talking about fractions of a nanosecond or billions of years,” Freese said. “The timescale here is about a month, which is an interesting, human time scale.”

A month does not sound particularly long given the vastness of time, but it’s actually quite a significant delay, the authors write.

“We’re able to study the universe up to three minutes after the Big Bang and absolutely nail it,” Freese said. “I guess what I’m getting at is one month in that sense is quite late.”

This “alternative cosmology,” which calls into question conventional wisdom on the birth of the cosmos, could be bolstered in the future by the detection of “exciting experimental signatures” such as dark matter halos, according to the study.

[ghost2509]

Why the hottest place on Earth is being used to understand aliens

FOX WEATHER
yahoo.com
Angeli Gabriel
March 26, 2023

Home to many weather extremes, one national park stands above the rest for NASA scientists.

Near the California-Nevada border, Death Valley National Park is the hottest place on Earth, with summer temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. It is also the driest place in North America, with an average rainfall of fewer than 2 inches.

The harsh conditions and dry, largely barren landscape of Death Valley, however, have made the park an ideal place for research about another inhospitable – and alien – environment.

Mars, specifically 3 billion years ago, looked similar to the Death Valley National Park we know today, the NPS said. Because of this, scientists seeking to understand the Red Planet use the park as a testing ground for gear, equipment and hypotheses related to Martian missions.

For example, in May 2019, NASA tested an engineering model of the Lander Vision System (LVS) that later helped guide Perseverance to a safe touchdown on Mars. NASA said the LVS was an integral part of a guidance system that steered Perseverance away from hazardous areas on the Red Planet.

In addition to testing equipment at Death Valley National Park, scientists have also studied the park’s terrain to better understand the topography of Mars. Since the park has very little vegetation, its topographical features are exposed and accessible for research.

Some of those features include river or alluvial fans. In Death Valley, old river fans formed by water flowing out of a canyon and spreading sediment in a triangular or fan-like shape as it flowed down a steep hill.

NASA scientists have compared this erosion and movement in sediment to those that formed river fans in the Gale Crater on Mars.

Other features scientists have studied in Death Valley include the Ubehebe Crater, a 600-foot-deep volcanic crater, and the aptly named Mars Hill, which has basalt boulders left over from the valley’s volcanic past.

Both of which are geologic features that are similar to those on the Red Planet, which was once alive with volcanic activity.

[ghost2509]

China discovers strange glass beads on moon that may contain billions of tons of water

LIVE SCIENCE
yahoo.com
Ben Turner
March 28, 2023

Chinese researchers may have discovered billions of tons of water inside strange glass spheres buried on the moon, and they could be used as a future water source for moon bases, a new study suggests.

The tiny glass spherules, collected in lunar soil samples and brought to Earth by China's Chang'e-5 mission in December 2020, could be so abundant that they store up to 330 billion tons (300 billion metric tons) of water across the moon's surface, the new analysis, published March 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows.

The glass spherules, also known as impact glasses or microtektites, form when meteorites smash into the moon at tens to hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, blasting chunks of lunar crust above the moon's surface. Inside these plumes, silicate minerals heated to molten temperatures by the force of the impact combine to form tiny glass beads that are sprinkled like crumbs over the surrounding landscape.

The moon's soil contains oxygen, which means that the beads do too. When struck with ionized hydrogen atoms (protons) from solar wind, the oxygen in the molten spheres reacts to form water that is sucked inside the silicate capsules. Over time, some of the spheres become buried beneath lunar dust particles, known as regolith, and are trapped underground with the water still inside.

At the right temperatures, some of these beads release the water into the moon's atmosphere and onto its surface, acting as a reservoir that is slowly refilled over time, the researchers said. This could make these spheres an ideal source of water, as well as hydrogen and oxygen, for space agencies like NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) that want to build bases on the moon. The CSNSA expects its moon base project to be completed as soon as 2029.

"If we want to extract the water in impact glass beads for future lunar exploration, first we collect them, then boil them in an oven and cool the released water vapor. Finally, you will get some liquid water in a bottle," study co-author Sen Hu, a planetary geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics, told Live Science in an email. "Another benefit is that impact glass beads are [common] in lunar soils, from equator to polar and from east to west, globally and evenly."

China's Chang'e 5 mission, named for a Chinese goddess of the moon, was the fifth in a series of missions that aim to lay the groundwork for future human landings on the moon's surface. The mission landed on the moon to scoop material from its surface before returning to Earth in December 2020.

[ghost2509]

Here’s how NASA will replace the ISS after it deorbits in 2030

BGR
yahoo.com
Joshua Hawkins
April 2, 2023

Sometime within the next decade, the International Space Station will fall from orbit and plummet into the Pacific Ocean. At least, that’s the plan that NASA has for the aging space station that has helped fuel research and observational efforts for more than 20 years. But what will replace the ISS once NASA decommissions the space station? The plan right now appears to rely on other companies getting into space.

NASA doesn’t plan to launch another space station into orbit to base its operations on. At least, not in the same way that the ISS worked. While the ISS was a connected effort by many nations to further research and space exploration, NASA hopes to piggyback off commercial space stations as an ISS replacement in the future.

This huge set of plans is outlined extremely well by Will Sullivan in Smithsonian Magazine, who details some of the ways that NASA is working with companies like Axiom Space – the same company behind NASA’s new space suits – to continue research efforts after the ISS falls. Of course, part of the big problem with companies building space stations is they have to have some kind of customer base set up to use them.

If NASA wants to use commercial space stations as an ISS replacement, then they’re going to need to find ways to ensure that the companies they want to put stations into orbit have a reason to do so. It’s a bit of a complicated matter, as it also involves figuring out how many space stations can orbit Earth at one time – we still have China’s Tiangong space station, and other countries want their own, too.

Aside from nationally based space stations, some of the big players currently working towards creating stations of their own include Axiom Space, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, and a joint operation between Voyager Space and Nanoracks. Each company plans to approach its station differently, so NASA could very well end up with a nice selection of ISS replacements to work with.

Of course, NASA still has plenty of other big things in the works, including the construction of Gateway on the lunar surface, which will come after the successful launches of the Artemis II and Artemis III missions later this decade.

Ultimately, if things all go according to plan, NASA shouldn’t have a hard time replacing the ISS with operations on other stations. Of course, all of this relies heavily on Russia sticking around the ISS until it is decommissioned in 2030. Any early removal of Russia’s operations from the ISS could lead to a much earlier deorbiting, as Russia is responsible for several vital parts of the station’s current operational tasks.

[ghost2509]

India Performs Successful Flight Test of Prototype Spaceplane

GIZMODO
yahoo.com
Kevin Hurler
April 3, 2023

The Indian Space Research Organization successfully conducted a test yesterday of its Reusable Launch Vehicle, an in-development spaceplane that took flight from an air force helicopter at an altitude of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) and landed autonomously on a runway.

According to ISRO’s press release, the launch vehicle took off from the Aeronautical Test Range in Chitaradurga, Karnataka, at 7:10 a.m. IST (9:40 p.m. EST the previous day) as part of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission, or RLV LEX. A Chinook Helicopter from the Indian Air Force carried the RLV as an underslung load to an altitude of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers). The helicopter then released the RLV 2.85 miles (4.6 kilometers) away from the launch site and the vehicle made an autonomous landing back at the Aeronautical Test Range some 30 minutes later.

According to ISRO, this is the first time a winged craft has been carried to such a height by a helicopter and released for an autonomous landing on a runway. ISRO referred to RLV in the press release as “essentially a space plane” that approached the runway during landing at a high glide angle and fast speed (217 mph or 350 kmph in this test) due to a low lift to drag ratio. This particular test also involved on board systems developed by ISRO, including the Digital Elevation Model, which fed the aircraft accurate topographical information using radar.

ISRO previously tested the Reusable Launch Vehicle in May 2016 during the HEX mission. Unlike LEX, HEX saw the RLV launched on board an Hs9 rocket booster and landed during a controlled splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. The RLV was developed by ISRO to serve as a test bed for hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, and cruise flight. Future versions of the vehicle will be scaled up and serve as the first stage of a reusable two stage orbital launch vehicle in order for India to enable low cost access to space.