Space News and Discussions

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NASA Mission Captures Incredible Close-Ups of Mercury
But it'll take another two years for the BepiColombo probe to reach orbit.
By Ryan Whitwam January 13, 2025
https://www.extremetech.com/science/nas ... of-mercury

Europe's BepiColombo mission will enter orbit of the solar system's first planet in about two years, but it's been whizzing past Mercury regularly as it lines up its approach. The ESA reports that BepiColombo has completed its final gravity assist maneuver around the planet, and it snapped some great images of the sun-scorched world on its way past.

BepiColombo passed a mere 295 kilometers above Mercury's surface at 6:59 CET on Jan. 9. The flyby began on the planet's frigid night side. Seven minutes later, the probe emerged from the shadows over the North Pole. This area was bathed in light, allowing it to capture a stunning visage with its monitoring cameras (M-CAMs).

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SpaceX Launched Firefly Lunar Lander
January 14, 2025 by Brian Wang

SpaceX launched Firefly’s lunar lander. The lander will take 45 days to reach the moon. It will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, on the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/01/s ... nutes.html

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NASA's Exoplanet-Scanning Pandora Spacecraft Begins to Take Shape
With the spacecraft bus complete, NASA is on track for a fall 2025 launch.
By Ryan Whitwam January 17, 2025

https://www.extremetech.com/science/nas ... take-shape
There was a time within living memory that exoplanets were entirely hypothetical. Since the first alien worlds were spotted in the 1990s, astronomy has advanced considerably to reveal thousands of planets outside our solar system. However, directly analyzing the properties of these distant worlds is still a major challenge. NASA is one step closer to scanning exoplanet atmospheres with the Pandora mission. This satellite is well on its way to completion, with NASA announcing the completion of the Pandora spacecraft bus.

NASA hopes to launch Pandora this coming fall, and the completion of the spacecraft bus is a big step toward making that a reality. According to Elisa Quintana of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the bus is like "the brains of the spacecraft." It contains all the components that handle navigation, data processing, and communication with Earth. Without the spacecraft bus, the satellite isn't really a satellite.

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NASA Confirms It Will Use SpaceX to Bring Home Stranded Astronauts 'As Soon As Practical'
Despite Trump’s demands, SpaceX is still the lag on recovery.
By Jon Martindale January 30, 2025
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/n ... ts-as-soon

NASA has confirmed its approach to bringing home two US astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS) "as soon as practical," despite US President Donald Trump suggesting he would expedite the process through direct talks with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. While Trump declared that "Elon will soon be on his way," the current strategy remains unchanged, with the astronauts scheduled to return in March, as previously arranged.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams flew to the ISS in the summer of 2024 for a routine eight-day test mission. However, due to problems with the propulsion system of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, they’ve since been stranded on the ISS for the best part of a year. SpaceX was contracted to bring the pair home on its Crew-9 capsule that docked with the ISS in September, retaining empty seats for its planned return flight.

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Property and Sovereignty in Space − as Countries and Companies Take to the Stars, they Could Run into Disputes
by Wayne N White Jr

January 31, 2025

Introduction:

(The Conversation)Private citizens and companies may one day begin to permanently settle outer space and celestial bodies. But if we don’t enact governing laws in the meantime, space settlers may face legal chaos.

Many wars on Earth start over territorial disputes. In order to avoid such disputes in outer space, nations should consider enacting national laws that specify the extent of each settler’s authority in outer space and provide a process to resolve conflicts.

I have been researching and writing about space law for over 40 years. Through my work, I’ve studied ways to avoid war and resolve disputes in space.
Property in space

Space is an international area, and companies and individuals are free to land their space objects – including satellites, human-crewed and robotic spacecraft and human-inhabited facilities – on celestial bodies and conduct operations anywhere they please. This includes both outer space and celestial bodies such as the Moon.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits territorial claims in outer space and on celestial bodies in order to avoid disputes. But without national laws governing space settlers, a nation might attempt to protect its citizens’ and companies’ interests by withdrawing from the treaty. They could then claim the territory where its citizens have placed their space objects.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/property-a ... s-245334

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NASA Targets March 12 For Stranded ISS Astronaut Rescue Launch
Pending mission and flight readiness preparations.
By Jon Martindale February 12, 2025

NASA has announced it will attempt to launch the Crew-10 Dragon Capsule to the International Space Station on March 12, to safely return stranded astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Assuming all mission and flight readiness preparations go off without a hitch, this would see the pair return to Earth alongside fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, a few days later.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been “stranded” aboard the international space station since last Summer, when the planned return aboard the Boeing Starliner spacecraft was scrapped due to a problem with its propulsion system. An alternative solution was sought, and it was decided to bring them back on the next-scheduled SpaceX Dragon capsule launch, Crew-10. However, that was pushed back due to problems with its battery system, allegedly as far as April. NASA’s secondary backup plan then came into effect, and it will now bring the pair home on the refurbished Crew-7 capsule.

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/n ... cue-launch

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3D Printed Hydrogel Could Protect Astronauts From Radiation Exposure
Water is a fairly effective radiation shield, but it sloshes around too easily on its own.
By Adrianna Nine February 14, 2025

Ever since scientists figured out how to put humans in space, they've been working to protect those humans from exposure to excessive radiation. High-energy particles from the Sun and from cosmic rays threaten anyone who exits Earth's protective magnetosphere, leading to tissue deterioration, increased risk of cancer, acute radiation sickness, and other undesirable health effects. While spacecraft can shield astronauts from non-ionizing radiation, ionizing radiation—the kind with enough energy to break an electron away from its atom—punches through most protective material.

A fairly simple substance could be the secret to protecting astronauts from harmful rays. Researchers at Belgium's Ghent University have developed a water-based gel that deflects ionizing radiation, protecting the material (or skin) beneath from high-energy particles. Though the hydrogel hasn't yet been outside of Earth, it offers a promising path toward safer space travel.

https://www.extremetech.com/science/3d- ... n-exposure

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NGC 6505! Einstein Put a Ring on It
by Phil Plait
February 17, 2025

Introduction:

(Bad Astronomy Newsletter) Euclid is a European Space Agency astronomical mission that is surveying the cosmos, mapping galaxies over an incredible 1/3rd of the sky. It does this at very high resolution as well, about 0.1 arcseconds — the full Moon is 1800 arcseconds wide on the sky, so Euclid can see astonishingly small details. It also is phenomenally sensitive, able to see very faint objects. It needs to: its goal is to look at dim, distant galaxies to help us understand the nature of dark matter, the 3D structure of the Universe, and how the cosmic expansion is accelerating. Those are all big deals.

Because it’s looking at such a huge area of the sky, it sees objects closer to us as well, and sometimes catches a surprise. With NGC 6505, it really did: Euclid images of this elliptical galaxy show a clear and bright Einstein ring, the effect of strong gravitational lensing!

Whoa. NGC 6505 dominates the image, a huge elliptical galaxy with a bright core that fades away with distance. But look again: right in the center, circling the core, is a perfect circle of light.

That’s the ring. And it’s not really in NGC 6505 at all: it’s actually an entirely separate elliptical galaxy far, far in the background. This more distant galaxy’s light has been amplified and warped into a ring by the gravity of all the stars in the middle of NGC 6505, acting like a lens. We call this phenomenon a gravitational lens, in fact.

NGC 6505 is about 590 million light-years form Earth, but the galaxy being lensed is 4.4 billion light-years from us, over seven times more distant [link to journal paper: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full ... ing-on-it .

Read more here: https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/ein ... ng-on-it

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You know it's bad when a usually impartial science news outlet starts mourning

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New Horizons Probe to Cross Termination Shock Zone 20 Years After Voyager 1
Instruments aboard the much newer spacecraft should give us new insights.
By Jon Martindale February 24, 2025

https://www.extremetech.com/science/new ... er-voyager

The New Horizons probe, which delivered stunning images of Pluto in 2015, is set to cross the “termination shock” on the boundary of the Sun’s heliosphere over 20 years since Voyager 1 first made the transition. Since it was launched in 2006, though, New Horizons carries far more modern scientific equipment that could yield exciting new science on the nature of our solar system and how various forces interact on its extreme edge.

The sun’s solar wind expands outward at around 250 miles per hour. But when it meets interstellar winds from other galactic forces, it slows dramatically to subsonic speeds (relative to the sun). That creates a shockwave, termed “termination shock,” and presents a fascinating opportunity to gather unique data about the edges of our solar system, interstellar winds, and the Kuiper belt.

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You know it's bad when a usually impartial science news outlet starts mourning

Loserterianism is the most pointless fucking thing. Think about it...We spend billions making something possible and right in the middle of the mission these idiots cut and gut it. The vast majority of the money is spent on making the mission, building and launching but now we need to cut just because? dumb.

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NASA Accesses Earth's GPS From the Moon in Historic First
This could be a game-changer for future missions that require precise navigation.
By Adrianna Nine March 6, 2025

https://www.extremetech.com/science/nas ... oric-first
NASA has achieved a global (and beyond) first by accessing the Earth's GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) from the Moon. This development, which makes it possible to receive precise navigation data on the Moon from established Earth technologies, could be a game-changer for future lunar missions that require exact, real-time mapping.

NASA's success is owed to the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), which it developed alongside the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in 2022. The payload consists of a GNSS receiver capable of picking up on very weak signals, a high-gain L-band patch antenna, a radio frequency filter, and a low-noise amplifier that gives each received GNSS signal a boost. Together, these technologies allow the payload to receive and process GNSS signals in fairly precarious locations, like the Moon.

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SpaceX Dragon successfully splashes down, returning NASA astronauts back to Earth

NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore - who gained international attention as their planned short stay in space stretched into a more than nine-month, politically fraught mission - are finally home.

Williams and Wilmore, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET.

The crew's highly anticipated return came after the crew climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET.

After the vehicle hits the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby will work to haul the spacecraft out of the water, and Williams and Wilmore will exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months

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https://abc7.com/post/nasas-suni-willia ... /16044681/

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Trump suggests paying overtime to astronauts back from space

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... rtime-pay/

Stopped clock moment