In recent days, China has quietly launched a secret reusable spacecraft, left it in orbit for two days and safely landed it back on Earth. And although the spacecraft is top secret—we’re not even privy to its design—there are some things that China apparently wants the world to know about it.

According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the launch took place on Friday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. The spacecraft was launched with a Long March-2F rocket, per the South China Morning Post, and successfully returned to its scheduled landing site on Sunday.

A Chinese military source confirmed to the Post that staff and visitors to the launch site had been warned not to film the lift-off or talk about it online.

“There are many firsts in this launch. The spacecraft is new, the launch method is also different. That’s why we need to make sure there is extra security,” the military source said.

The Post, citing Xinhua, reported that during its two-day flight, the spacecraft would test reusable technologies with the aim of “providing technological support for the peaceful use of space.”

And although details of the mission were scarce, the Chinese military source told the Post that it should “take a look at the US X-37B,” a reference to the U.S. Department of Defense’s top-secret space plane developed by Boeing. According to the U.S. Air Force, the X-37B is an experimental test program that aims to demonstrate “reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments, which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.”

The X-37B is a reusable vehicle that doesn’t require an onboard crew. It enters space on top of a rocket, stays in low Earth orbit and then re-enters the atmosphere. It even lands like a normal plane.

Source: China Just Launched and Landed a Secret Reusable Spacecraft

All the planets of our solar system are encased in a magnetic bubble, carved out in space by the Sun’s constantly outflowing material, the solar wind. Outside this bubble is the interstellar medium — the ionized gas and magnetic field that fills the space between stellar systems in our galaxy. One question scientists have tried to answer for years is on the shape of this bubble, which travels through space as our Sun orbits the center of our galaxy. Traditionally, scientists have thought of the heliosphere as a comet shape, with a rounded leading edge, called the nose, and a long tail trailing behind.

Research published in Nature Astronomy in March and featured on the journal’s cover for July provides an alternative shape that lacks this long tail: the deflated croissant.

An updated model suggests the shape of the Sun’s bubble of influence, the heliosphere (seen in yellow), may be a deflated croissant shape, rather than the long-tailed comet shape suggested by other research.

Credits: Opher, et al

The shape of the heliosphere is difficult to measure from within. The closest edge of the heliosphere is more than ten billion miles from Earth. Only the two Voyager spacecraft have directly measured this region, leaving us with just two points of ground-truth data on the shape of the heliosphere.

[…]

“There are two fluids mixed together. You have one component that is very cold and one component that is much hotter, the pick-up ions,” said Opher, a professor of astronomy at Boston University. “If you have some cold fluid and hot fluid, and you put them in space, they won’t mix — they will evolve mostly separately. What we did was separate these two components of the solar wind and model the resulting 3D shape of the heliosphere.”

Considering the solar wind’s components separately, combined with Opher’s earlier work using the solar magnetic field as a dominant force in shaping the heliosphere, created a deflated croissant shape, with two jets curling away from the central bulbous part of the heliosphere, and notably lacking the long tail predicted by many scientists.

“Because the pick-up ions dominate the thermodynamics, everything is very spherical. But because they leave the system very quickly beyond the termination shock, the whole heliosphere deflates,” said Opher.

The shape of our shield

The shape of the heliosphere is more than a question of academic curiosity: The heliosphere acts our solar system’s shield against the rest of the galaxy.

Our heliosphere blocks many cosmic rays, shown as bright streaks in this animated image, from reaching the planets of our solar system.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

Download from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Energetic events in other star systems, like supernova, can accelerate particles to nearly the speed of light. These particles rocket out in all directions, including into our solar system. But the heliosphere acts as a shield: It absorbs about three-quarters of these tremendously energetic particles, called galactic cosmic rays, that would make their way into our solar system.

Those that do make it through can wreak havoc. We’re protected on Earth by our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, but technology and astronauts in space or on other worlds are exposed. Both electronics and human cells can be damaged by the effects of galactic cosmic rays — and because galactic cosmic rays carry so much energy, they’re difficult to block in a way that’s practical for space travel. The heliosphere is spacefarers’ main defense against galactic cosmic rays, so understanding its shape and how that influences the rate of galactic cosmic rays pelting our solar system is a key consideration for planning robotic and human space exploration.

The heliosphere’s shape is also part of the puzzle for seeking out life on other worlds. The damaging radiation from galactic cosmic rays can render a world uninhabitable, a fate avoided in our solar system because of our strong celestial shield. As we learn more about how our heliosphere protects our solar system — and how that protection may have changed throughout the solar system’s history — we can look for other star systems that might have similar protection. And part of that is the shape: Are our heliospheric lookalikes long-tailed comet shapes, deflated croissants, or something else entirely?

Source: Uncovering Our Solar System’s Shape | NASA

The Mars 2020 mission with its Perseverance rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key Astrobiology questions about the potential for life on Mars. The mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. The Perseverance rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a “cache” on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples  to Earth.  That would help scientists study the samples in laboratories with special room-sized equipment that would be too large to take to Mars. The mission also provides opportunities to gather knowledge and demonstrate technologies that address the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars. These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.

Source: Overview – NASA Mars

Researchers have spotted large waves of martian sand migrating for the first time. The discovery dispels the long-held belief that these “megaripples” haven’t moved since they formed hundreds of thousands of years ago. They’re also evidence of stronger-than-expected winds on the Red Planet.

It’s pretty staggering that humans can detect these changes on Mars, says Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who was not involved in the research. “We can now measure processes on the surface of another planet that are just a couple times faster than our hair grows.”

Megaripples are found in deserts on Earth, often between dunes. Waves in the sand spaced up to tens of meters apart, they’re a larger version of ripples that undulate every 10 centimeters or so on many sand dunes.

But unlike dunes, megaripples are made up of two sizes of sand grains. Coarser, heavier grains cap the crests of megaripples, making it harder for wind to move these features around, says Simone Silvestro, a planetary scientist at Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics in Naples.

Since the early 2000s, Mars rovers and orbiters have repeatedly spotted megaripples on the Red Planet. But they didn’t seem to change in any measurable way, which led some scientists to think they were relics from Mars’s past, when its thicker atmosphere permitted stronger winds.

Now, using images captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Silvestro and his colleagues have shown that some megaripples do creep along—just very slowly.

The researchers focused on two sites near the equator of Mars. They analyzed roughly 1100 megaripples in McLaughlin crater and 300 in the Nili Fossae region. They looked for signs of movement by comparing time-lapse images of each site—taken 7.6 and 9.4 years apart, respectively. Megaripples in both regions advanced by about 10 centimeters per year, the team reports in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. That’s about how fast megaripples move in the Lut Desert of Iran.

It’s a surprise that megaripples move at all on Mars, says Jim Zimbelman, a planetary geologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum. Just a few decades ago, there was no evidence that sands on Mars were mobile, he says. “None of us thought that the winds were strong enough.”

[…]

Source: Giant waves of sand are moving on Mars | Science | AAAS

“Comet Neowise has been the brightest and most visible space snowball in a generation, but it’s also the first naked-eye comet to visit us in the new era of satellite mega-constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink,” writes CNET.

“In just the latest episode of Starlink ‘trains’ irritating astronomers, a number of images have been circulating of the satellites photo-bombing Comet Neowise glamour shots…”

Live Science explains: Visible just above the horizon right now, the comet appears faint and small to the naked eye, but can be seen clearly through cameras with long, telephoto lenses. Usually, when photographers capture objects like this in the night sky they use long exposure times, leaving the camera aperture open to collect light over the course of several seconds. But now comet-chasers report that a new fleet of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites is leaving bright smears across their NEOWISE snaps, as the shiny orbiters streak through their frames during long exposures.

Source: SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites Accused of ‘Photo-Bombing’ Shots of Comet Neowise – Slashdot

“A photo and film restoration specialist, who goes by the name of DutchSteamMachine, has worked some AI magic to enhance original Apollo film, creating strikingly clear and vivid video clips and images,” reports Universe Today: Take a look at this enhanced footage from an Apollo 16 lunar rover traverse with Charlie Duke and John Young, where the footage that was originally shot with 12 frames per second (FPS) has been increased to 60 FPS… And I was blown away by the crisp view of the Moon’s surface in this enhanced view of Apollo 15’s landing site at Hadley Rille… Or take a look at how clearly Neil Armstrong is visible in this enhanced version of the often-seen “first step” video from Apollo 11 taken by a 16mm video camera inside the Lunar Module…

The AI that DutchSteamMachine uses is called Depth-Aware video frame INterpolation, or DAIN for short. This AI is open source, free and constantly being developed and improved upon… “People have used the same AI programs to bring old film recordings from the 1900s back to life, in high definition and colour,” he said. “This technique seemed like a great thing to apply to much newer footage….”

DutchSteamMachine does this work in his spare time, and posts it for free on his YouTube page. His tagline is “Preserving the past for the future…” And he’s planning to keep it all coming. “I plan to improve tons of Apollo footage like this,” he said. “A lot more space and history-related footage is going to be published on my YT channel continuously.” He also has a Flickr page with more enhanced imagery. [And a Patreon page…]
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 calls it “similar to what Peter Jackson did with old World War I footage for They Shall Not Grow Old .”

Source: Historic Moon Landing Footage Enhanced By AI, and the Results Are Incredible – Slashdot

China has successfully launched a Mars probe.

The middle kingdom’s previous red planet effort, 2011’s Yinghuo-1, rode on a Russian rocket that failed to leave Earth orbit and therefore did not fulfill its orbital observation mission.

For this new mission, dubbed Tianwen-1, China has used its own Long March 5 heavy lifter and packed in an orbiter, lander and rover.

Chinese State media has confirmed the launch and a People’s Daily social media post includes video of a rocket heading upwards and says it’s Mars-bound.

China’s being typically cagey about the mission, which is believed to plan a landing with a combination of parachutes and airbags before the rover deploys a range of instruments capable of investigating Martian magnetic fields, geology and chemistry. The orbiter packs a camera capable of two-metre resolution from a height of 400kms, plus more magnetosphere-sensing kit.

If the mission succeeds, China will join the USA, Soviet Union, European Union and India as successful sponsors of Mars missions. Only the USA, Soviet Union and EU have landed rovers on the red planet.

Source: China successfully launches Mars probe that packs an orbiter, lander, rover • The Register

An international consortium has compiled the most comprehensive 3D map of the observable cosmos to date, significantly improving our understanding of cosmological history while raising new questions about the fundamental laws that govern the universe.

The updated map, made from data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), offers a detailed history of the cosmos, from the Big Bang and its early expansion phase through to the current era.

The latest phase of the project, called “extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey” (eBOSS), includes the positions and distances of more than 4 million galaxies and ultra-bright quasars surrounding supermassive black holes, according to a press release from EPFL, a Swiss research institute. The new results are showing how the universe evolved over an 11-billion-year period, filling an important gap in our knowledge.

“In 2012, I launched the eBOSS project with the idea of ​​producing the most complete 3D map of the Universe throughout the lifetime of the Universe, implementing for the first time celestial objects that indicate the distribution of matter in the distant Universe, galaxies that actively form stars and quasars,” Jean-Paul Kneib, a co-leader of the project and an EPFL astrophysicist, said in the press release. “It is a great pleasure to see the culmination of this work today.”

The eBOSS project has resulted in 23 new scientific papers (plus the new map), which were released today to the arXiv pre-print server.

Astrophysicists have previously chronicled the earliest days of the universe by calculating the abundance of elements created after the Big Bang and studying the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation—the cooled remnant of the universe’s first light. Scientists also have a good handle on recent cosmological history, as informed by galactic maps and distance measurements. But “there’s a troublesome gap in the middle 11 billion years,” said Kyle Dawson, a cosmologist at the University of Utah and the principal investigator of eBoss, in an SDSS press release.

To gaze back at this 11-billion-year gap, the scientists honed in on galaxies and quasars, looking for patterns in how they’re distributed across the universe. These observations were then combined with data gathered during previous phases of SDSS, dating back to 1998.

“Taken together, detailed analyses of the eBOSS map and the earlier SDSS experiments have now provided the most accurate expansion history measurements over the widest-ever range of cosmic time,” Will Percival, an astrophysicist at the University of Waterloo and eBOSS’s Survey Scientist, said in the EPFL statement. “These studies allow us to connect all these measurements into a complete story of the expansion of the Universe.”

The updated map shows empty voids and filaments that defined the universe a mere 300,000 years after the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago. By identifying ancient quasars—extremely bright galactic cores surrounding supermassive black holes—the researchers were able to map regions more than 11 billion years old. To map more recent periods, namely regions between 6 billion and 11 billion years old, the scientists tracked patterns in the distribution of galaxies, which subsequently enabled more accurate measurements of dark energy.

Source: New Map of the Universe Fills in Some ‘Troublesome’ Gaps

The United Arab Emirates has successfully launched a Mars probe.

The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) aims to orbit the red planet with a probe named “Hope” that will gather data to help humanity build a proper Martian weather map, characterise the planet’s lower atmosphere and offer an explanation of why Mars is losing Hydrogen and Oxygen into space.

Early on Monday, Hope was launched atop from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center atop a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket.

Moments that make history… The Emirates Mars Mission team participates in the first Arabic countdown from Japan… The countdown that ushers a new era for Arab space exploration. #HopeMarsMission #HopeProbe pic.twitter.com/PaKk75e5F9

— Hope Mars Mission (@HopeMarsMission) July 19, 2020

The mission appears to be in fine shape, as just a few hours after launch the probe was beaming back a signal.

The ground segment at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, has received and communicated the first signals with the #HopeProbe. #HopeMarsMission pic.twitter.com/1iFgd5248J

— Hope Mars Mission (@HopeMarsMission) July 20, 2020

Now comes the seven-month schlep to the Red Planet. On arrival Hope will conduct a 30-minute burn to slow itself from over 121,000 km/h to approximately 18,000 km/h. At the latter speed, Mars’ gravity should be sufficient to see the probe enter an orbit with a perigee that sometimes falls beneath 1,000km. Further operations will aim to settle the craft into its planned orbit for doing science, with a perigee and apogee of between 20,000km and 43,000km.

From that orbit Hope will use its infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, plus a 4:3 visible-spectrum imager packing a 12-megapixel 12-bit monochrome CMOS array, to gather data on Mars’ atmosphere. The probe will contact Earth twice a week for sessions lasting between six and eight hours. Mission scientists expect around one terabyte of data to flow during those connection windows and have planned for the probe to operate for two years.

Hope’s scientific payload is modest compared to NASA’s MAVEN or India’s Mangalyaan, but the mission is significant as it is the first interplanetary effort mounted by an Arab nation. As such it is the source of considerable pride.

Source: United Arab Emirates’ Mars probe successfully launched and phones home

On Sunday morning, local time in New Zealand, Rocket Lab launched its 13th mission. The booster’s first stage performed normally, but just as the second stage neared an altitude of 200km, something went wrong and the vehicle was lost.

In the immediate aftermath of the failure, the company did not provide any additional information about the problem that occurred with the second stage.

“We lost the flight late into the mission,” said Peter Beck, the company’s founder and chief executive, on Twitter. “I am incredibly sorry that we failed to deliver our customers satellites today. Rest assured we will find the issue, correct it and be back on the pad soon.”

The mission, dubbed “Pics Or It Didn’t Happen,” carried 5 SuperDove satellites for the imaging company Planet, as well as commercial payloads both for Canon Electronics and In-Space Missions.

“The In-Space team is absolutely gutted by this news,” the company said after the loss. Its Faraday-1 spacecraft hosted multiple experiments within a 6U CubeSat. “Two years of hard work from an incredibly committed group of brilliant engineers up in smoke. It really was a very cool little spacecraft.”

Before this weekend’s failure, Rocket Lab had enjoyed an excellent run of success. The company’s first test flight, in May 2017, was lost at an altitude of 224km due to a ground software issue. But beginning with its next flight, in January, 2018, through June, 2020, the company had rattled off a string of 11 successful missions and emerged as a major player in the small satellite launch industry. It has built two additional launch pads, one in New Zealand and another in Virginia, U.S., and taken steps toward reusing its first stage booster.

It seems likely that Rocket Lab will make good on Beck’s promise to address this failure and return to flight soon. His was the first commercial company in a new generation of small satellite rocket developers to reach orbit, and even now remains the only one to do so. Other competitors, including Virgin Orbit, Astra, and Firefly may reach orbit later this year. But Rocket Lab has plenty of experience to draw upon as it works to identify the underlying problem with its second stage, and fix it. There can be little doubt they will.

Source: After a second stage failure, Rocket Lab loses seven satellites

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has re-entered the space tourism market and this time will offer one person the chance to spacewalk.

The agency on Thursday announced a new deal with US outfit Space Adventures to take two people to the International Space Station atop a Soyuz rocket. One of the tourists, according to Space Adventures’ announcement, “will have an opportunity to conduct a spacewalk outside the space station, becoming the first private citizen in history to experience open space.”

The spacewalking tourist will be accompanied by a professional Russian cosmonaut.

The two companies have previously launched seven space tourists including Ubuntu daddy Mark Shuttleworth in 2002. Your correspondent interviewed him about the experience in 2005 and he was still clearly awed by the power of the Soyuz, weightlessness and the views from above, to the extent that he said a sub-orbital tourist flight with the likes of Virgin Galactic held little appeal.

The trip will see the pair of tourists spend 14 days in the Russian module of the ISS.

Source: Russia returns to space tourism and offers a first citizen spacewalk • The Register

China sent the last satellite to space on Tuesday to complete its global navigation system that will help wean it off U.S. technology in this area.

The network known as Beidou, which has been in the works for over two decades, is a significant step for China’s space and technology ambitions.

Beidou is a rival to the U.S. government-owned Global Positioning System (GPS), which is widely-used across the world.

Experts previously told CNBC that Beidou will help China’s military stay online in case of a conflict with the U.S. But the launch is also part of Beijing’s push to increase its technological influence globally.

Source: Beidou: China completes rival to the US-owned GPS system

The remote-sensing firm Planet operates more than one hundred satellites that constantly orbit the earth, collecting imagery of the world’s entire landmass each day. Now, to offer more clarity to its customers, it has flown a handful of its satellites 50 km closer to the Earth.

This literal zoom-in effort will allow the firm to offer imagery with a resolution of 50 cm of earth per pixel, an increase from 80 cm. In one example, that means that as well as seeing the shape of a car, analysts will also be able to clearly discern the position of its windshield.

By the end of the summer, the company plans to add six new satellites to its constellation, allowing it to take those higher resolution pictures of the same area twelve times a day.

“We felt like 50 centimeters was an important threshold, but where we are really pushing the envelope is on that revisit,” Jim Thomason, a Planet vice president, told Quartz.

The ability to view the same area repeatedly means customers will get their imagery sooner after they request it, and they may be able to see what is changing on the ground. That also means a higher chance of dodging the bane of optical space imagery: clouds.

Planet

Planet was founded in 2010 by former NASA scientists who wanted to leverage new advances in satellite technology and expand access to space data. Its customers include US intelligence agencies, the NGOs that second-guess them, agricultural conglomerates, and firms that use machine learning to gain insight from remote-sensing data.

Planet operates more than 150 satellites, most of which are Doves, toaster-oven sized craft that collectively “scan” the earth each day, producing imagery with a resolution about three meters per pixel. You may have seen the company’s widely-shared image of a new mural in Washington, D.C.

Source: Planet’s SkySats zoom in for a closer look at the Earth — Quartz

Three thousand light-years from Earth sits Kepler 160, a sun-like star that’s already thought to have three planets in its system. Now researchers think they’ve found a fourth. Planet KOI-456.04, as it’s called, appears similar to Earth in size and orbit, raising new hopes we’ve found perhaps the best candidate yet for a habitable exoplanet that resembles our home world. The new findings bolster the case for devoting more time to looking for planets orbiting stars like Kepler-160 and our sun, where there’s a better chance a planet can receive the kind of illumination that’s amenable to life.

Most exoplanet discoveries so far have been made around red dwarf stars. This isn’t totally unexpected; red dwarfs are the most common type of star out there. And our main method for finding exoplanets involves looking for stellar transits—periodic dips in a star’s brightness as an orbiting object passes in front of it. This is much easier to do for dimmer stars like red dwarfs, which are smaller than our sun and emit more of their energy as infrared radiation

[…]

Data on the new exoplanet orbiting Kepler 160, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics on Thursday, points to a different situation entirely. From what researchers can tell, KOI 456.04 looks to be less than twice the size of Earth and is apparently orbiting Kepler-160 at about the same distance from Earth to the sun (one complete orbit is 378 days). Perhaps most important, it receives about 93% as much light as Earth gets from the sun.

This is critical, because one of the biggest obstacles to habitability around red dwarf stars is they can emit a lot of high-energy flares and radiation that could fry a planet and any life on it. By contrast, stars like the sun—and Kepler-160, in theory—are more stable and suitable for the evolution of life.

[…]

Right now the researchers say it’s 85% probable KOI-456.04 is an actual planet. But it could still be an artifact of Kepler’s instruments or the new analysis—an object needs to pass a threshold of 99% to be a certified exoplanet. Getting that level of certainty will require direct observations. The instruments on NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope are expected to be up to the task, as are those on ESA’s PLATO space telescope, due to launch in 2026.

Source: Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun | MIT Technology Review

In yet another setback for Elon Musk’s beloved steel spaceship, a SpaceX Starship prototype has exploded on the pad during a rocket test burn.

Starship SN4 – designed to ferry astronauts to the Moon and Mars – was undergoing a static engine fire test on Friday when, in scientific terminology, it blew the hell up. Footage of the explosive experiment, captured by news site NASASpaceFlight and embedded below, appears to show the prototype’s rocket venting fuel, or some other material, shortly before a “major anomaly” occurred in which the craft rapidly scattered itself across the Boca Chica testing facility in Texas.

Fortunately, nobody appears to have been hurt, other than some feelings at SpaceX. And maybe possibly the US Federal Aviation Administration, which this week reportedly granted permission for suborbital Starship test flights.

“It looked to me like the lower tank began leaking after a static fire, probably caused a loss of pressure that then resulted in the tank being crushed by the mass in the upper tank,” surmised Scott Manley, an Apple software engineer and amateur astronomer.

“The failure of both tanks lead to ignition and RUD.” That’s rocket-speak for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, a term Elon Musk has used in a Pythonesque way before.

Nevertheless, the explosion was large enough to be picked up by the radar systems of local weather stations in the US state.

The smoke plume from #SpaceX’s SN4 explosion could be seen from the Brownsville, Texas Doppler radar site!

Although it may appear green on reflectivity (like the nearby rain showers) we can use Dual-Pol products to determine this was indeed smoke.#wx #sn4 #weather #space #txwx pic.twitter.com/JYDuuFFI7k

— Nash from Nashville (@NashWX) May 29, 2020

SpaceX could not immediately be reached for comment on the destruction of its prototype. Founder Elon was also absent any sort of statement; both have opted instead to focus on this weekend’s manned Dragon launch.

It should be emphasized that the SN4 prototype that detonated on Friday is not the same as the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule and Falcon rocket set to take off from Florida on Saturday with American ‘nauts onboard heading to the International Space Station. That combo, the Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule, has proven itself over several flights to be significantly less prone to fits of rapid unscheduled disassembly.

The crewed Dragon pod was slated to take off from Cape Canaveral on May 27, but had to be scrubbed due to bad weather. Saturday’s launch also faces the possibility of being called off by the weather.

The Starship craft, by comparison, is still in its prototype phase and undergoing early tests. These sort of blow-ups are not unheard of with craft this early in development: new rockets are hard at first, as you can see below.

The Falcon-lifted Dragon spacecraft are meant to be SpaceX’s commercial bread and butter, delivering crew to the orbiting space station using American-owned and launched rockets without having to go cap in hand to the Russians. Boeing, too, is taking a shot at the market, although its project is behind schedule.

Starship is seen as a more ambitious long-term effort to create a vessel capable of not only heavy lifts, but also flights to the Moon and Mars. When you’re dealing with rocketry on that scale, mistakes are going to happen – that’s why you make them on the ground first.

Still, this is not going to be something SpaceX will want to see less than 24 hours before the most significant launch in its history is scheduled to go off. Test or not, a rocket exploding on the pad is a bad look for many.

As for Saturday’s mission – an all American crew in an all American craft lifting off from American soil for the first time since 2011 – the forecast is changeable, so another scrub is possible. We’ll be watching and keeping you updating as it happens

Source: Watch SpaceX’s Starship SN4 prototype accidentally self-destruct in a rocket test burn • The Register

I would not have felt too happy sitting on that manned flight

The booster was released from under the wing of one of the UK entrepreneur’s old jumbos which had been specially converted for the task.

The rocket ignited its engine seconds later but an anomaly meant the flight was terminated early.

Virgin Orbit’s goal is to try to capture a share of the emerging market for the launch of small satellites.

It’s not clear at this stage precisely what went wrong but the firm had warned beforehand that the chances of success might be only 50:50.

The history of rocketry shows that maiden outings very often encounter technical problems.

“Test flights are instrumented to yield data and we now have a treasure trove of that. We accomplished many of the goals we set for ourselves, though not as many as we would have liked,” said Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart.

“Nevertheless, we took a big step forward today. Our engineers are already poring through the data. Our next rocket is waiting. We will learn, adjust, and begin preparing for our next test, which is coming up soon.”

Source: Sir Richard Branson: Virgin Orbit rocket fails on debut flight – BBC News

NASA has laid out a new set of principles that it hopes will inform how states and private companies will interact on the Moon.

The new guidelines, called the Artemis Accords, seek “to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for the benefit of humanity”.

The purpose of the Accords appears to be establishing a rough agreement on how space agencies and private companies conduct themselves in space without having to make a formal treaty, which can take decades to come into effect.

“With numerous countries and private sector players conducting missions and operations in cislunar space, it’s critical to establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space,” the space agency said.

Some of what the US space agency proposes in the Accords is already covered in previously established frameworks. For example, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 mandates that space be used for peaceful purposes and prohibits testing and placing weapons of mass destruction on the Moon and other celestial bodies.

The new agreement reiterates this: “International cooperation on Artemis is intended not only to bolster space exploration but to enhance peaceful relationships between nations. Therefore, at the core of the Artemis Accords is the requirement that all activities will be conducted for peaceful purposes, per the tenets of the Outer Space Treaty.”

But although the Outer Space Treaty says nations cannot claim or own property in space, it does not directly address newer space activities such as lunar and asteroid mining. Many states see the Moon as a key strategic asset in outer space, and several companies, including NASA, have proposed mining rocket fuel from planets and asteroids.

The Accords therefore clarify that space agencies can extract and use resources they find in space. “The ability to utilise resources on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids will be critical to support safe and sustainable space exploration and development,” the guideline reads.

The principle is consistent with an executive order that President Trump signed in April, signalling that the US would pursue a policy to “encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space.”

The Accords also seek to establish so-called safety zones that would surround future moon bases and prevent “harmful interference” from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity. How the size of these safety zones will be determined was not explained.

Agencies that sign the agreement will be required to publicly share their scientific data and be transparent about their operations, “to ensure that the entire world can benefit from the Artemis journey of exploration and discovery.” They’ll also be required to manage their own orbital rubbish, such as end-of-life spacecrafts. Historic sites, such as the Apollo landing site, would also be protected under the agreement.

But not everybody is happy about the new provisions. Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency has criticised Washington for excluding Russia from early discussions about the space explorations act. “The principle of invasion is the same, whether it be the Moon or Iraq,” he tweeted.

China, which is pursuing its own space program, told Reuters it was willing to cooperate with all parties on lunar exploration “to make a greater contribution in building a community with [a] shared future for mankind”.

The Artemis program aims to put the first woman and second man on the Moon by 2024. NASA is collaborating with several space agencies on the effort, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Source: NASA launches guide to Lunar etiquette now that private operators will share the Moon with governments • The Register

Blighty is preparing for take-off as Edinburgh-based rocket-botherer Skyrora test-fired its Skylark-L rocket from a location in the heart of the Scottish Highlands.

Those hoping to send a satellite to orbit from UK soil might have a while to wait, however. The Skylark-L is only capable of flinging a 60kg payload 100km up. The beefier Skyrora XL will be capable of carrying far greater payloads into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by 2023.

The test, which occurred earlier this month at the Kildermorie Estate in North Scotland, saw the Skylark-L vehicle erected, fuelled and ignited. The rocket was held down while engineers checked systems were behaving as they should.

The team made much of the fact that it had built a mobile launch complex and tested a rocket within five days.

[… snarky bit …].

Light the blue touchpaper, then stand well back Pic: Skyrora

Click to enlarge

A company representative told The Register that the five days also included digging the flame trench visible above.

[… more snarky stuff…]

the endeavour still represents the first complete ground rocket test in the UK since the glory days of the Black Arrow, some 50 years ago.Prior to the static firing, the 30kN engine had been through three hot fires before integration. It was fuelled by a combination of hydrogen peroxide and kerosene (to be replaced by the company’s own Ecosene, made from plastic waste). The Skylark-L itself was then mounted on a transporter-erector that was fixed to a trailer.

“It is very hard to oversell what we have achieved here,” said operations leader Dr Jack-James Marlow, before trying his hardest to do so: “The whole team has pulled through again to deliver another UK first. We have successfully static tested a fully integrated, sub-orbital Skylark L launch vehicle in flight configuration. This means we performed all actions of a launch but did not release the vehicle.”

While the test was indeed a complete success, and validated both the vehicle and its ground systems, there is still a while to wait before a Skylark-L is launched. The company put that first flight from a British spaceport as being “as early as spring 2021”. CEO Volodymyr Levykin added: “We are now in a full state of readiness for launch.”

Source: UK takes a step closer to domestic launches as Skyrora fires up Skylark-L • The Register

Good luck to them!

This new work represents a seamless, globally consistent, 1:5,000,000-scale geologic map derived from the six digitally renovated geologic maps (see Source Online Linkage below). The goal of this project was to create a digital resource for science research and analysis, future geologic mapping efforts, be it local-, regional-, or global-scale products, and as a resource for the educators and the public interested in lunar geology. Here we present the completed mapping project as unit contacts, geologic unit polygons, linear features, and unit and feature nomenclature annotation. The product overlies shaded-relief products derived from SELENE Kaguya terrain camera stereo (equatorial, ~60 m/pix) and LOLA altimetry (north and south polar, 100 m/pix). These data are not included with this download due to size considerations, but a readme in the “Lunar_Raster” folder provides the download links. This download page includes a PDF of the geologic map (right-side) with a brief Description of Map Units and Explanation of Map Symbols, as well as a JPG of the map for quick access viewing. This release is subject to update based on community feedback and peer-review.

Version 2 updates: Two errors were addressed in this update: (1) Large area polygons were offset from their contacts, likely due to user error. Polygons were rebuilt to fix the issue and post processing (dissolving, reattributing, etc.) to rectify the aesthetic of the map. (2) Contacts were not visible but should have been due to incorrect labeling as DND (do not draw). Those that needed to be drawn have been reattributed as “certain” those that are not drawn are labeled as “internal”. Additionally, in version 1 of this data, crater polygons with similar attributes had been dissolved and lumped into contiguous units. This has been changed so that all craters are now discrete units. This adds ~1000 units to the GeoUnits featureclass. There contacts are now visible and labeled as “certain”.

References:

Fortezzo, C.M., Spudis, P. D. and Harrel, S. L. (2020). Release of the Digital Unified Global Geologic Map of the Moon At 1:5,000,000- Scale. Paper presented at the 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX. https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2020/pdf/2760.pdf

Mimetype

application/zip

Filename

Unified_Geologic_Map_of_the_Moon_GIS_v2.zip

Publisher

Astrogeology

Publication Date

3 March 2020

Author

Corey M. Fortezzo (USGS), Paul D. Spudis (LPI), Shannon L. Harrel (SD Mines)

Originator

USGS Astrogeology Science Center

Group

PGM, MRCTR

Added to Astropedia

19 December 2019

Modified

24 April 2020

General

Purpose

The chief purpose of the 5M scale map is to summarize the current state of lunar geologic knowledge. Like terrestrial synoptic maps it provides a stratigraphic framework to be used for developing new theory and for determining the regional significance of surface exploration results. In addition to serving as a framework for interpreting surface exploration results, the effort to classify units into type and age by photogeology narrows the range of possible origins for many features.

Geospatial Data Presentation Form

Geologic Map

Edition

2.0, March 3, 2020

Native Data Set Environment

ESRI Arcinfo

Color

Color

Supplemental Information

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2020/pdf/2760.pdf

Source: Unified Geologic Map of the Moon, 1:5M, 2020 | USGS Astrogeology Science Center

After it launched on Tuesday and nailed a series of maneuvers, China’s future crewed spacecraft has made a successful desert touchdown. Built by China’s main space contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), the uncrewed prototype will ferry astronauts to China’s future space station and, eventually, the moon.

The crewed capsule (which doesn’t have a name yet), was lofted into an 5,000-mile-high orbit by China’s Long March 5B carrier rocket. During the mission, it underwent deep space trials similar to Orion’s 2014 mission, completing seven orbital adjustment maneuvers. Early this morning, the craft completed a deorbit burn, followed by separation of the crew and service modules. The three chutes deployed shortly after re-entry and it touched down in the Dongfeng desert area at 1:49 AM ET.

Designed to carry crews of up to six astronauts, the craft tested weighed 14 tons and is designed to be the primary transport to China’s future space station. CASC and the CNSA, China’s space agency, are also working on a 21.6-ton variant for deep space, designed to be used in future manned lunar missions. However, the CNSA has yet to nail down details for the larger craft and its moon missions are at least a decade away.

On top of doing orbital maneuvers, the prototype craft (with no life-support systems) conducted experiments on 3D printing of composite materials, high-definition image transmission and more. The mission was largely a success, apart from the malfunction of a cargo return capsule equipped with an inflatable heat shield.

Source: China’s next-generation crew spacecraft nails its test mission landing | Engadget

Russian rocket tanks used to launch a radio telescope have broken up into 65 chunks, littering Earth’s orbit with debris.

The tanks, dumped from the Fregat-SB upper stage of the Zenit-3SLBF rocket that took the Spektr-R radio telescope into orbit in 2011, disintegrated on Friday, Roscosmos said on Sunday. “According to reports, the destruction occurred on May 8, 2020 in the time interval 08:00 – 09:00 Moscow time over the Indian Ocean,” a statement reads.

It’s not clear what caused the break-up. The 18th Space Control Squadron (18 SPCS) of the US Air Force went public with details of the disintegration on Saturday, and noted there was no evidence it was caused by a collision

[…]

Roscosmos said it is counting up the exact number of fragments from the, well, rapid self-disassembly of the tank block. There are said to be at least 65 pieces whizzing round at thousands of miles per hour in an orbit with an apogee height of 3,606 kilometres, perigee height of 422 kilometres, and orbital inclination of 51.45 degrees.

As for the Spektr-R: it was declared defunct in early 2019 after going silent. At the time, it was Russia’s only space telescope publicly known to be operational.

Source: Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket’s tanks just disintegrated in Earth’s orbit

This simulator will familiarize you with the controls of the actual interface used by NASA Astronauts to manually pilot the SpaceX Dragon 2 vehicle to the International Space Station.

Source: SPACEX – ISS Docking Simulator

Turns out it’s quite easy in a sim 😀

The giant hexagon-shaped storm raging atop Saturn’s North Pole is made out of frozen hydrocarbon ice suspended in seven hazy layers stacked on top of one another, according to a study published in Nature Communications on Friday.

The swirling six-sided wonder, which El Reg once dubbed the hexacane, has perplexed scientists since its discovery in the 1980s by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. The strange vortex has sides measuring about 14,500 kilometres long – more than the diameter of Earth – and remains intact despite winds that reach 400 kilometres per hour rippling through the ringed giant.

Now, a group of astronomers have analysed images taken from NASA’s Cassini probe to reveal the hexacane’s tower-like structure in more detail.

“The Cassini images have enabled us to discover that, just as if a sandwich had been formed, the hexagon has a multi-layered system of at least seven mists that extend from the summit of its clouds to an altitude of more than 300 km above them,” said Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a physics professor at the University of Basque Country, Spain, who led the study. “Other cold worlds, such as Saturn’s satellite Titan or the dwarf planet Pluto, also have layers of hazes, but not in such numbers nor as regularly spaced out”.

A picture of the different layers in Saturn’s hexagonal storm
Click to enlarge … Image Credit: GCP/UPV/EHU/NASA/ESA

Each layer is estimated to be seven to 18 kilometres thick, and is made up of tiny micrometre-sized frozen hydrocarbon crystals, including propyne, propane, and diacetylene, and possibly acetylene and benzene at the top. Each particle is estimated to have a diameter of 0.07 to 1.4 micrometres. The layers appear hazy as the concentration of particles suspended in each one varies.

Source: There’s a world out there with a hexagon vortex over its pole packed with hydrocarbon ice crystals. That planet is Saturn • The Register