Space News and Discussions

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NASA to deflect asteroid in test of 'planetary defense'
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-nasa-defl ... fense.html
by Chris Lefkow

This artist's illustration obtained from NASA shows the DART spacecraft prior to impact with the asteroid Dimorphos.

In the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster "Armageddon," Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck race to save the Earth from being pulverized by an asteroid.

While the Earth faces no such immediate danger, NASA plans to crash a spacecraft traveling at a speed of 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph) into an asteroid next year in a test of "planetary defense."

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is to determine whether this is an effective way to deflect the course of an asteroid should one threaten the Earth in the future.

NASA provided details of the DART mission, which carries a price tag of $330 million, in a briefing for reporters on Thursday.

"Although there isn't a currently known asteroid that's on an impact course with the Earth, we do know that there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids out there," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer.

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China is planning a complex Mars sample return mission
by Andrew Jones — November 4, 2021
https://spacenews.com/china-is-planning ... n-mission/

HELSINKI — China is working on a complex mission to collect Mars rock samples and deliver them to Earth by building on the successes of recent moon and Mars missions.

The mission, likely to be named Tianwen-2, could launch as soon as 2028 with the goal of returning samples around 2030. Such a mission has never before been attempted.

A presentation from Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of the Tianwen-1 mission, at deep space forum in Shenzhen Oct. 18 indicates a shift in mission profile from a single-launch to using two launches within the same launch window.

Earlier statements on the mission suggested using a single future Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket. Instead the mission will likely use the established Long March 3B and Long March 5 launch vehicles.

Zhang’s presentation indicates the Long March 3B will launch a lander and ascent vehicle within an aeroshell attached to a propulsion module, with the orbiter and reentry capsule to be launched by the Long March 5.

China’s ambition to carry out the unprecedented mission has been stated previously and was included in the China National Space Administration’s plans for development across 2021-2025.

The mission is understood to have recently passed a milestone review and could, potentially, deliver to Earth the first samples of rock sampled from Mars. Such a mission would have tremendous scientific value, providing insights in the composition and geology of Mars and possibly even evidence of life such as fossils or biosignatures.

However there is a leading competitor in what could be seen as a race to Mars and back.

NASA and ESA are already collaborating to conduct a Mars sample return mission. The Perseverance rover touched down on Mars in February and in September collected the first samples for potential later delivery to Earth.

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Astronomers Decadal Survey 2020 Report Released
by John Kelvey
November 4, 2021

https://www.inverse.com/science/why-ast ... -telescope

Introduction:

(Inverse) WHAT’S ON THE ASTRONOMY COMMUNITY’S WISHLIST FOR THE NEXT DECADE? A big (6-meter), pricey ($11 billion) space telescope that looks a lot like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, but would see more visible light and launch in the 2040s. For starters anyway.

The “infrared/optical/ultraviolet (IR/O/UV) space telescope” was the top, but just one of many recommendations published Thursday in a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Known as the Decadal Survey, every 10 years a panel of astronomers surveys their field and scientific community and lays out strategic science and development goals for the next 10 years. The astronomy community recommended the James Webb Space Telescope in the 2000 Decadal Survey, and recommended what would become the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in 2010.

The 2020 Decadal Survey report — its release was delayed a year due to the global SARS-CoV-2 outbreak — makes recommendations for space and ground-based observatories and programs with an eye toward keeping up a steady stream of affordable, mid-range projects, in addition to flagship missions like the IR/O/UV space telescope.

The consortium targeted their recommendations to follow up on some of the biggest discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics in recent years, including exoplanets, dark energy, and the origins of the universe, questions that “have the potential to profoundly change the way that human beings view our place in the universe,” in the language of the report.

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Hunting for alien planets with a new solar telescope

by Suvrath Mahadevan, Sam Sholtis, and Jorge Salazar, Texas Advanced Computing Center
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-alien-pla ... scope.html

Thousands of alien worlds are known to orbit stars beyond our solar system. And many more worlds, possibly harboring life, lie waiting to be discovered. A new astronomical instrument called NEID, the NN-explore Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy, has come online in 2021 to help scientists hunt for new alien worlds.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is assisting the effort with supercomputer time and expertise in NEID's scientific search for new worlds.

The name "NEID" derives from the word meaning "to see" in the native language of the Tohono O'odham, on whose land Kitt Peak National Observatory is located. NEID is a spectrograph attached to the WIYN 3.5m telescope at the observatory in Arizona.

"We're proud that NEID is available to the worldwide astronomical community for exoplanet discovery and characterization," said Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and NEID project scientist. "I can't wait to see the results we and our colleagues around the world will produce over the next few years from discovering new, rocky planets, to measuring the compositions of exoplanetary atmospheres, to measuring the shapes and orientations of planetary orbits, to characterization of the physical processes of these planets' host stars."

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SpinLaunch Completes Prototype Flight Using Kinetic Launch System
by Aria Alamalhodaei
November 9, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/09/spinl ... ch-system/

(TechCrunch) SpinLaunch, a startup working on a kinetic space launch system, has successfully completed its first prototype flight. It’s a major milestone for the seven-year-old company as it works toward a test of its full-scale system.

The concept behind that system is pretty wild: essentially, SpinLaunch wants to get to orbit by using a large, vacuum-sealed chamber and a hypersonic tether to spin a spacecraft at a high enough velocity – up to 5,000 miles per hour – to escape the atmosphere. That means no rocket, no rocket engines. It’s a markedly different way of thinking about spaceflight, much more akin to a giant rail gun rather than a conventional launch system.

According to SpinLaunch, such a system is now possible thanks to advances in small electronics and high-strength materials like carbon fiber, which can harden both the launch vehicle and small satellites to high-G forces.

The prototype flight took place on October 22 at Spaceport America in New Mexico. In addition to launching the test vehicle at supersonic speeds using the accelerator, which was around one-third the size of the planned system (but still larger than the Statue of Liberty, SpinLaunch notes on its website), the startup also recovered the vehicle to reuse it for later tests.

SpinLaunch, which was founded in 2014, aims to conduct around 30 suborbital test flights over the next six to eight months, CNBC reported. The startup has been backed by Airbus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and GV.

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SpinLaunch Completes Prototype Flight Using Kinetic Launch System
by Aria Alamalhodaei
November 9, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/09/spinl ... ch-system/

(TechCrunch) SpinLaunch, a startup working on a kinetic space launch system, has successfully completed its first prototype flight. It’s a major milestone for the seven-year-old company as it works toward a test of its full-scale system.

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Scientists May Have Just Discovered the Moon's Large Adult Son
by Passant Rabie
November 10, 2021

https://www.inverse.com/science/did-ear ... n-one-moon

Introduction:

(Inverse) BENJAMIN SHARKEY, A PHD STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, began looking at a small, nearby space rock named Kamo'oalewa in 2017. At visible wavelengths, Kamo'oalewa was your average near-Earth asteroid. But once Sharkey began observing it in infrared light, things started to get weird.

“So when we were observing at visible wavelengths ... we're sort of saying, okay, this is an asteroid that we've kind of seen before,” Sharkey tells Inverse. “As we kept looking in the infrared, that was the process where we went, ‘Hold on, this is doing something weird.’”

Kamo'oalewa had similar light spectra to those of samples of the Moon brought to Earth by the Apollo mission. This suggests that the asteroid may have once been a part of Earth’s Moon, and was later ejected by an ancient impact.

The findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Nature.

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Near-earth asteroid might be a lost fragment of the moon
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-near-eart ... -moon.html
by University of Arizona

A near-Earth asteroid named Kamo`oalewa could be a fragment of our moon, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona.

Kamo`oalewa is a quasi-satellite—a subcategory of near-Earth asteroids that orbit the sun but remain relatively close to Earth. Little is known about these objects because they are faint and difficult to observe. Kamo`oalewa was discovered by the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii in 2016, and the name—found in a Hawaiian creation chant—alludes to an offspring that travels on its own. The asteroid is roughly the size of a Ferris wheel—between 150 and 190 feet in diameter—and gets as close as about 9 million miles from Earth.

Due to its orbit, Kamo`oalewa can only be observed from Earth for a few weeks every April. Its relatively small size means that it can only be seen with one of the largest telescopes on Earth. Using the UArizona-managed Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in southern Arizona, a team of astronomers led by planetary sciences graduate student Ben Sharkey found that Kamo`oalewa's pattern of reflected light, called a spectrum, matches lunar rocks from NASA's Apollo missions, suggesting it originated from the moon.

The team can't yet be sure how it may have broken loose. The reason, in part, is because there are no other known asteroids with lunar origins.

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SpaceX crew launch marks 600 space travelers in 60 years
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-spacex-cr ... years.html
by Marcia Dunn

A SpaceX rocket carried four astronauts into orbit Wednesday night, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.

The repeatedly delayed flight occurred just two days after SpaceX brought four other astronauts home from the International Space Station. They should have been up there to welcome the newcomers, but NASA and SpaceX decided to switch the order based on Monday's ideal recovery weather in the Gulf of Mexico and pulled it off.

"It was a great ride, better than we imagined," mission commander Raja Chari said shortly after the spacecraft reached orbit.

The launch was just as riveting for spectators at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, as well as along the East Coast, as the Falcon rocket thundered through clouds on its way to space, turning night into day.

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SpaceX launches 53 Starlink satellites into orbit
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-spacex-st ... orbit.html
by Alex Sanz

SpaceX expanded its constellation of low Earth orbit satellites on Saturday with the launch of 53 Starlink satellites from Florida.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:19 a.m. EST and deployed the satellites about 16 minutes after launch.

The rocket's reusable first stage, which has been used for multiple launches, including the first crewed test flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, successfully returned and landed on the "Just Read the Instructions" droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Starlink is a satellite-based global internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.

Earlier this week, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.

It took 21 hours for the flight from NASA's Kennedy Space Center to reach the glittering outpost.

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The longest lunar eclipse in centuries will happen this week, NASA says

by Maddie Capron
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-longest-l ... -week.html

You can see the longest partial lunar eclipse in hundreds of years this week.

The "nearly total" lunar eclipse is expected overnight Thursday, Nov. 18, to Friday, Nov. 19, NASA said.

"The Moon will be so close to opposite the Sun on Nov 19 that it will pass through the southern part of the shadow of the Earth for a nearly total lunar eclipse," NASA said on its website.

The eclipse will last 3 hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds, making it the longest in centuries, Space.com reported.

Only a small sliver of the moon will be visible during the eclipse. About 97% of the moon will disappear into Earth's shadow as the sun and moon pass opposite sides of the planet, EarthSky reported.

The moon should appear to be a reddish-brown color as it slips into the shadow, NASA reported.

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NASA Seeks Ideas for a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
November 19, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/nasa-see ... -the-moon/

Introduction:

BOISE, Idaho (AP via Courthouse News) — If anyone has a good idea on how to put a nuclear fission power plant on the moon, the U.S. government wants to hear about it.

NASA and the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab on Friday put out a request for proposals for a fission surface power system.

NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade.

“Providing a reliable, high-power system on the moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp,” Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the lab, said in a statement.

If successful in supporting a sustained human presence on the moon, the next objective would be Mars. NASA says fission surface power could provide sustained, abundant power no matter the environmental conditions on the moon or Mars.

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NASA 911 for Asteroids
by Miriam Kramer
November 23, 2021

https://www.axios.com/asteroid-redirect ... c3619.html

Introduction:

(Axios) SpaceX is set to launch a NASA spacecraft on a mission to learn how to change the course of an asteroid in deep space.

Why it matters: The mission — called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — will test the technology needed to redirect a dangerous asteroid if one is ever found on course with Earth.

Driving the news: The SpaceX Falcon 9 is expected to launch DART to space at 1:21 a.m. ET Wednesday.

• NASA will air live coverage of the launch starting at 12:30 a.m. ET Tuesday, for all you night owls.

How it works: Once in space, DART will make its way to a tiny asteroid called a "moonlet" named Dimorphos that orbits the larger asteroid Didymos.

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Space Law Hasn’t Been Changed Since 1967 – but the UN Aims to Update Laws and Keep Space Peaceful
by Michelle L. D. Hanlon and Greg Autry

https://theconversation.com/space-law-h ... ful-171351

Introduction:

(The Conversation) On Nov. 15, 2021, Russia destroyed one of its own old satellites using a missile launched from the surface of the Earth, creating a massive debris cloud that threatens many space assets, including astronauts onboard the International Space Station. This happened only two weeks after the United Nations General Assembly First Committee formally recognized the vital role that space and space assets play in international efforts to better the human experience – and the risks military activities in space pose to those goals.

The U.N. First Committee deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community. On Nov. 1, it approved a resolution that creates an open-ended working group. The goals of the group are to assess current and future threats to space operations, determine when behavior may be considered irresponsible, “make recommendations on possible norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors,” and “contribute to the negotiation of legally binding instruments” – including a treaty to prevent “an arms race in space.”

We are two space policy experts with specialties in space law and the business of commercial space. We are also the president and vice president at the National Space Society, a nonprofit space advocacy group. It is refreshing to see the U.N. acknowledge the harsh reality that peace in space remains uncomfortably tenuous. This timely resolution has been approved as activities in space become ever more important and – as shown by the Russian test – tensions continue to rise.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty

Outer space is far from a lawless vacuum.

Activities in space are governed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which is currently ratified by 111 nations. The treaty was negotiated in the shadow of the Cold War when only two nations – the Soviet Union and the U.S. – had spacefaring capabilities.

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Mysterious Chernobyl Fungus Could Protect Future Astronauts
by Scott Allan Johnston
November 22, 2021

https://www.inverse.com/science/chernobyl-fungus-iss

Introduction:

(Inverse) A LACK OF EFFECTIVE radiation shielding is one of the biggest challenges still to be overcome if humans are to embark on long-term voyages into deep space. On Earth, the planet’s powerful magnetosphere protects us from the deadliest forms of radiation — those produced by solar flares, and galactic cosmic rays arriving from afar — that stream through the Solar System.

Astronauts on the International Space Station, some 408km above the Earth, receive elevated levels of radiation but are close enough to Earth that they still receive some shielding, and can stay in orbit for up to a year. The same can’t be said for astronauts traveling further out, to the Moon, for example, or, someday, to Mars. Future deep space voyagers will need to bring their own shielding with them — or, as a new paper suggests — grow it along the way.

According to the paper, published in pre-print format on BioRxiv earlier this month, a special type of fungi that thrives in high radiation environments called Cladosporium sphaerospermum could form a living shield around astronauts in space. The fungus not only blocks radiation but actually uses it to grow, through a process call radiosynthesis: it pulls energy from radiation, just as most plants pull energy from sunlight via photosynthesis.

These radiation-loving fungi survive on Earth in extreme places, like the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. In space, they do just as well. In 2019, researchers flew some of the fungi to the ISS, watching how it grew over a period of 30 days, and measuring the amount of radiation that passed through it, as compared to a control sample with no fungi.

The experiment showed that radiation levels beneath a 1.7mm thick bed of fungus were about 2.17 percent lower than the control. Not only that, but the fungus grew about 21 percent faster than it does on Earth, meaning that the fungi’s ability to act as a protective shield for astronauts could actually grow more robust the longer a mission lasts.

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One in Five Early Galaxies May Be Hiding in Space Dust
November 23, 2021

https://www.futurity.org/hidden-galaxie ... t-2661682/

Introduction:

(Futurity) Astronomers have discovered two previously invisible galaxies 29 billion light-years away from Earth.

The discovery suggests that up to one in five such distant galaxies remain hidden from our telescopes, camouflaged by cosmic dust. The new knowledge changes perceptions of our universe’s evolution since the Big Bang.

The two galaxies have been invisible to the optical lens of the Hubble Space Telescope, hidden behind a thick layer of cosmic dust that surrounds them. But with the help of the giant ALMA radio telescopes (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) in Chile’s Atacama Desert, which can capture radio waves emitted from the coldest, darkest depths of the universe, the two invisible galaxies suddenly appeared.

The two hidden galaxies have been named REBELS-12-2 and REBELS-29-2. The light from the two invisible galaxies has traveled about 13 billion years to reach us on Earth. The two are now located 29 billion light years away due the universe’s expansion.

“We were looking at a sample of very distant galaxies, which we already knew existed from the Hubble Space Telescope. And then we noticed that two of them had a neighbor that we didn’t expect to be there at all. As both of these neighboring galaxies are surrounded by dust, some of their light is blocked, making them invisible to Hubble,” explains Pascal Oesch, an associate professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

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New Russian Module Launched to International Space Station
November 24, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/new-russ ... e-station/

Introduction:

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian rocket blasted off successfully on Wednesday to deliver a new docking module to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled at 6:06 p.m. (1306 GMT) from the Russian launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, carrying the Progress cargo ship with the Prichal (Pier) docking module attached to it.

The craft successfully entered a designated orbit nine minutes after the launch and is set to dock at the station on Friday, hooking up to the new Russian Nauka (Science) laboratory module that was added to the station in July.

The new spherical module with six docking ports will allow potential future expansion of the Russian segment of the station.

Earlier this week, the Russian crew on the station started training for Prichal’s arrival, simulating the use of manual controls in case the automatic docking system fails.

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Beads of glass in meteorites help scientists piece together how solar system formed
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-beads-gla ... piece.html
by University of Chicago

Ever since scientists started looking at meteorites with microscopes, they've been puzzled—and fascinated—by what's inside. Most meteorites are made of tiny beads of glass that date back to the earliest days of the solar system, before the planets were even formed.

Scientists with the University of Chicago have published an analysis laying out how these beads, which are found in many meteorites, came to be—and what they can tell us about what happened in the early solar system.

"These are big questions," said UChicago alum Nicole Xike Nie, Ph.D.'19, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science and first author of the study. "Meteorites are snapshots that can reveal the conditions this early dust experienced—which has implications for the evolution of both Earth and other planets."

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Astronomers observe a new type of binary star long predicted to exist
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-astronome ... -star.html
by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have observed a new type of binary star that has long been theorized to exist. The discovery finally confirms how a rare type of star in the universe forms and evolves.

The new class of stars, described in this month's issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was discovered by postdoctoral fellow Kareem El-Badry using the Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory in California and data from several astronomical surveys.

"We have observed the first physical proof of a new population of transitional binary stars," says El-Badry. "This is exciting; it's a missing evolutionary link in binary star formation models that we've been looking for."

A New Type of Star

When a star dies, there's a 97 percent chance it will become a white dwarf, a small dense object that has contracted and dimmed after burning through all its fuel.

But in rare instances, a star can become an extremely low mass (ELM) white dwarf. Less than one-third the mass of the Sun, these stars present a conundrum: if stellar evolution calculations are correct, all ELM white dwarfs would seem to be more than 13.8 billion years old—older than the age of the universe itself and thus, physically impossible.