Space News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

China ready to launch first crew to new space station
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-china-rea ... ation.html
by Ludovic Ehret and Poornima Weerasekara
A Long March-2F rocket will carry the first crew to China's new space station.

The first crew for China's new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing's ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power.

The mission is China's first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with a propaganda blitz.

A Long March-2F rocket carrying three astronauts in the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft is slated to lift off from a base in northwest China's Gobi desert on Thursday, according to experts with knowledge of the matter.

They plan to spend three months on the Tiangong station, China's longest crewed space mission to date, with spacewalks among their tasks.

[Yuli Ban]

If we ever encounter aliens, they will resemble AI and not little green martians
By Seth Shostak

I’m an astronomer at the Seti Institute, a non-profit research organization in California’s Silicon Valley. My colleagues and I look for extraterrestrial life, including intelligent beings – or in the vernacular, aliens. It’s exciting times for people like me, because extra-terrestrial life is being widely discussed now in the lead-up to the Pentagon’s highly anticipated report on so-called unexplained aerial phenomena.

Yet I should say straight away that I am not expecting any big revelations out of the report. I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that aliens are present in our galaxy. But I don’t believe they’re hanging out in our airspace. Not now, and not in historic times.

Any aliens that trek to our planet are unlikely to be carbon-based life forms, either hirsute or hairless. Their cognitive abilities will probably not be powered by a spongy mass of cells we’d call a brain. They will probably have gone beyond biological smarts and, indeed, beyond biology itself. They won’t be alive.

[weatheriscool]

Mystery of Betelgeuse's dip in brightness solved
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-mystery-b ... tness.html
by ESO

When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, became visibly darker in late 2019 and early 2020, the astronomy community was puzzled. A team of astronomers have now published new images of the star's surface, taken using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), that clearly show how its brightness changed. The new research reveals that the star was partially concealed by a cloud of dust, a discovery that solves the mystery of the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse's dip in brightness—a change noticeable even to the naked eye—led Miguel Montargès and his team to point ESO's VLT toward the star in late 2019. An image from December 2019, when compared to an earlier image taken in January of the same year, showed that the stellar surface was significantly darker, especially in the southern region. But the astronomers weren't sure why.

[weatheriscool]

Computer trouble hits Hubble Space Telescope, science halted

by Marcia Dunn
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-hubble-sp ... alted.html

The Hubble Space Telescope has been hit with computer trouble, with all astronomical viewing halted, NASA said Wednesday.

The orbiting observatory has been idle since Sunday when a 1980s-era computer that controls the science instruments shut down, possibly because of a bad memory board.

Flight controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland tried to restart the computer Monday, but the same thing happened. They're now trying to switch to a backup memory unit. If that works, the telescope will be tested for a day, before the science instruments are turned back on and observations can resume.

For now, the cameras and other instruments are in a so-called safe mode.

[Time_Traveller]

China sends three astronauts to new space station in first crewed mission for five years

Thursday 17 June 2021

China has launched its first crewed mission in five years, sending three people to its new space station.

The astronauts are travelling in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship which was launched by a Long March-2F Y12 rocket.

They blasted off at 2.22am UK time from the launch centre on the edge of the Gobi Desert in the north of China.

There to see them off were the commander of China's manned space programme, military personnel and children waving flags and singing patriotic songs.

The trio - Nie Haisheng, 56, Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45 - waved as they entered the elevator which took them to the spaceship.

https://news.sky.com/story/china-sends- ... s-12334514

[weatheriscool]

Boeing’s Second Starliner Test Flight to Launch in July, NASA Says

By Ryan Whitwam on June 17, 2021 at 10:01 am
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/323 ... -nasa-says

For several years, SpaceX and Boeing were neck-and-neck in the race to send astronauts into space, but then Boeing encountered a few setbacks. That has left SpaceX as the sole private space firm launching both people and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Boeing has been toiling throughout the pandemic to get its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft ready for a do-over test flight, and NASA believes that will happen next month.

The Starliner looks like a larger, more luxurious version of the Apollo command module. It has room for a crew of seven, but it has yet to carry anyone. In late 2019, Boeing attempted an uncrewed test similar to the one SpaceX aced several months before. A software glitch caused the spacecraft to end up in the wrong orbit, unable to rendezvous with the space station. Following this partial failure, NASA decided Boeing should attempt the validation flight again and formed an Independent Review Team to ensure Boeing made the necessary changes to the Starliner.

[weatheriscool]

NASA reports trouble with Hubble Space Telescope

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nasa-hubb ... scope.html
This photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on August 25, 2020 shows Jupiter and its moon Europa, captured when the planet was 653 million kilometers (405 million miles) from Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been peering into the universe for more than 30 years, has been down for the past few days, NASA said Friday.

The problem is a payload computer that stopped working last Sunday, the US space agency said.

It insisted the telescope itself and scientific instruments that accompany it are "in good health."

"The payload computer's purpose is to control and coordinate the science instruments and monitor them for health and safety purposes," NASA said.

An attempt to restart it on Monday failed.

NASA said initial evidence pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer problem.

[wjfox]

Insane to imagine physical interactions on this scale.

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Astronomers discover largest known spinning structures in the universe

By Charles Q. Choi 6 days ago

Tendrils of galaxies up to hundreds of millions of light-years long may be the largest spinning objects in the universe, a new study finds.

Celestial bodies often spin, from planets to stars to galaxies. However, giant clusters of galaxies often spin very slowly, if at all, and so many researchers thought that is where spinning might end on cosmic scales, study co-author Noam Libeskind, a cosmologist at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, told Space.com.

But in the new research, Libeskind and his colleagues found that cosmic filaments, or gigantic tubes made of galaxies, apparently spin. "There are structures so vast that entire galaxies are just specks of dust," Libeskind said. "These huge filaments are much, much bigger than clusters."

Previous research suggested that after the universe was born in the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago, much of the gas that makes up most of the known matter of the cosmos collapsed to form colossal sheets. These sheets then broke apart to form the filaments of a vast cosmic web.

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the scientists examined more than 17,000 filaments, analyzing the velocity at which the galaxies making up these giant tubes moved within each tendril. The researchers found that the way in which these galaxies moved suggested they were rotating around the central axis of each filament.

https://www.space.com/largest-spinning- ... discovered

[weatheriscool]

Space tourism startup test flies its gigantic balloon 20 miles over Florida that is on track to carry explorers to the stratosphere in 2024

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... orbit.html

Space tourism startup Space Perspective successfully completed its first unmanned test flight Friday of a gigantic balloon that will soon take humans to the edge of space.

The company launched a prototype of its stratospheric balloon 20 miles over Florida at 5:23am ET, putting in on schedule for the first commercial flight in 2024.

Its Neptune Once spaceship test vehicle took off from the Space Coast Air and Spaceport in Cape Canaveral and hit its planned altitude of 108,409 feet where it hovered for six hours before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.

With this flight, Space Perspective became the first space launch operator to fly from the Space Coast Spaceport, and put its on track for its first crewed test flight in 2023.

[weatheriscool]

Take 2: Spacewalking astronauts install new solar panel

by Marcia Dunn
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-spacewalk ... panel.html

Spacewalking astronauts equipped the International Space Station with the first in a series of powerful new solar panels Sunday, overcoming suit problems and other obstacles with muscle and persistence.

It took two spacewalks for French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough to install and unfurl the panel to its full 63 feet (19 meters) in length.

The solar wing unrolled like a red carpet once the final set of bolts was released, relying solely on pent-up energy. The slow but steady extension took 10 minutes, with station cameras providing live TV views.

"It is beautiful," Pesquet called out.

[caltrek]

Mysterious 'Great Dimming' of Giant Star Betelgeuse Finally Explained

https://www.cnet.com/news/mysterious-gr ... explained/

Extract:

(c/net) Before COVID-19 exploded and dominated global headlines, the possibility of nearby giant star Betelgeuse literally exploding captured its own share of attention. Betelgeuse went through a historically sudden and drastic period of dimming over several months in late 2019 and early 2020, leading some to wonder if the gigantic star might be preparing to go supernova. New research suggests it would be premature to write an obituary for the red supergiant.

During the so-called Great Dimming of Betelgeuse, the star was 10 times darker than usual, Miguel Montargès from the Observatoire de Paris, France and colleagues report in a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

….Red supergiants are the largest stars in the universe, representing a stage in the evolution of giant stars in which they expand outward, begin to cool and lose mass as they progress toward going out with a big blast in the end.

The observations of Betelgeuse seem to show the Great Dimming was actually caused by just such a mass loss incident. The star expelled a clump of gas near a region on the southern portion of its surface that developed a cold patch shortly thereafter. This cooling of the ejected gas allowed it to condense into literal stardust.

"This process generated a dense southern dust cloud that temporarily blocked much of Betelgeuse's light, giving us what we saw as the Great Dimming," explained University of Washington astronomer Emily M. Levesque, who was not a part of the research team, in a companion commentary published in Nature.

[weatheriscool]

'Pack ice' tectonics reveal Venus' geological secrets
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-ice-tecto ... gical.html
by North Carolina State University

A new analysis of Venus' surface shows evidence of tectonic motion in the form of crustal blocks that have jostled against each other like broken chunks of pack ice. The movement of these blocks could indicate that Venus is still geologically active and give scientists insight into both exoplanet tectonics and the earliest tectonic activity on Earth.

"We've identified a previously unrecognized pattern of tectonic deformation on Venus, one that is driven by interior motion just like on Earth," says Paul Byrne, associate professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University and lead and co-corresponding author of the work. "Although different from the tectonics we currently see on Earth, it is still evidence of interior motion being expressed at the planet's surface."

The finding is important because Venus has long been assumed to have an immobile solid outer shell, or lithosphere, just like Mars or Earth's moon. In contrast, Earth's lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates, which slide against, apart from, and underneath each other on top of a hot, weaker mantle layer.

[weatheriscool]

NASA's Webb Telescope will use quasars to unlock the secrets of the early universe

by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nasa-webb ... crets.html

Quasars are very bright, distant and active supermassive black holes that are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Typically located at the centers of galaxies, they feed on infalling matter and unleash fantastic torrents of radiation. Among the brightest objects in the universe, a quasar's light outshines that of all the stars in its host galaxy combined, and its jets and winds shape the galaxy in which it resides.

Shortly after its launch later this year, a team of scientists will train NASA's James Webb Space Telescope on six of the most distant and luminous quasars. They will study the properties of these quasars and their host galaxies, and how they were interconnected during the first stages of galaxy evolution in the very early universe. The team will also use the quasars to examine the gas in the space between galaxies, particularly during the period of cosmic reionization, which ended when the universe was very young. They will accomplish this using Webb's extreme sensitivity to low levels of light and its superb angular resolution.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

FAA Clears Virgin Galactic for Commercial Astronaut Space Flight
by Darrell Etherington
June 25, 2021

Entire Article:

(TechCrunch) The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given Virgin Galactic the green light to begin transporting commercial passengers to space aboard its VSS spacecraft. This is an expansion of the company’s existing license, which had granted it permission to fly professional test pilots and astronauts to space using its spaceplane. The updated license comes on the heels of Virgin Galactic’s successful test flight on May 22.

This means that the way is cleared for Virgin Galactic to being operating as the first official ‘spaceline’ — which is like an airline, but for space. The company aims to provide regular service for space tourists and researchers to suborbital space, with an experience that includes unparalleled views of Earth and a few minutes of weightless during the roughly 2 hour trip.

The FAA’s approval is a big step, but it’s not the final one before Virgin Galactic begins its actual regular service flights for paying customers: The company still needs to complete three remaining test flights before that happens. These will be the first flights of the Virgin spacecraft and its carrier plane while carrying a full crew, and at the goal is still to fly the first of those sometime “this summer,” according to CEO Michael Colglazier.

A report from earlier this month claims that Virgin Galactic backer Sir Richard Branson could fly on the next test flight, and that it might occur as early as the coming July 4 weekend, which would mean he makes it to space faster than his billionaire rocket riding rival Jeff Bezos, who is set to make a trip on his own Blue Origin New Shepard spaceship on July 20. Virgin Galactic hasn’t said officially when its next test flight would occur, however, and sources confirm that the Parabolic Arc report is incorrect.

Image Credit: Virgin Galactic

[caltrek]

NASA, Nelson Push for Annual Moon Landings for 'a dozen years'

by Paul Brinkmann
June 23, 2021

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/0 ... 624456945/

Introduction:

June 23 (UPI) -- NASA needs crewed lunar landings every year for "a dozen years," the agency's administrator, Bill Nelson, said in a House of Representatives committee hearing Wednesday.

Nelson, who became administrator May 3, said Congress hasn't appropriated enough money for the nation's coming lunar aspirations.

"We want to have these sustained landings over a dozen years, and that's gonna cost some more money," Nelson testified to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Members of the committee, including Chairwoman Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, pressed Nelson for more detailed plans to use lunar exploration as a springboard to prepare for astronaut journeys to Mars.

Known as the Artemis program, its goal was first outlined by NASA under the Trump administration.

[Yuli Ban]

Dreams Come True: First-Ever Luxury Space Hotel Nears Launch
The first prototype for an orbital hotel with artificial gravity may launch as soon as 2023

The Orbital Assembly Corporation, a space construction firm run by NASA veterans, announced in a press statement today, June 24, that it has successfully demonstrated its technology for developing the world's first space hotel.
The company carried out the demonstration during the official opening of its Fontana, California Facility, which will serve as its main headquarters as it aims to make luxury space holidays a reality before 2030.

Large-scale space constructions built by semi-autonomous robots

Orbital Assembly, which pegs itself as the "first large-scale space construction company," is developing semi-autonomous robot builders that will eventually be sent to space to build large-scale structures, such as its planned Earth-orbiting space hotel.

[Yuli Ban]

China reveals plans to colonise space with a Mars base, cargo fleets, alien cities, and a ‘sky ladder’

China’s plans for the future of space exploration include a Mars base, planetary development, and a ‘sky ladder’ to transport cargo.

The first of a three-step plan involves androids launched to take samples of Mars and look for the location of a Mars base site, said Wang Xiaojun, head of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) at the Global Space Exploration Conference, as reported by Global Times.

Following that will be a manned Mars mission to develop the base, while the third stage will be transporting cargo fleets from Earth to Mars to construct a community on the planet; the current timetable schedules these launches approximately every two years from 2033 until 2043.

A potential fourth stage – a “sky ladder” that could reduce the cost and time spent travelling to Mars – is also being developed, but it is unclear how much progress has been made yet.

[Yuli Ban]

Virgin Galactic stock jumps 39% in best day ever after FAA approves passenger spaceflight license

• Virgin Galactic announced Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company the license it needs to fly passengers on future spaceflights.
• “The commercial license that we have had in place since 2016 remains in place, but is now cleared to allow us to carry commercial passengers when we’re ready to do so,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told CNBC.
• The company cleared the final two FAA milestones of that program with its spaceflight test last month.

[weatheriscool]

NASA completes additional tests to diagnose computer problem on Hubble space telescope

by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nasa-addi ... space.html

NASA is continuing to diagnose a problem with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope after completing another set of tests on June 23 and 24. The payload computer halted on June 13 and the spacecraft stopped collecting science data. The telescope itself and its science instruments remain in good health and are currently in a safe configuration.

The spacecraft has two payload computers, one of which serves as a backup, that are located on the Science Instrument and Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. There are various pieces of hardware which make up both payload computers, including but not limited to: