Tillyer’s News From The High Frontier

OCTOBER 2024

Going to Europa – the Europa Clipper mission is on its way at last and we can all settle in and get comfortable because it’s not going to be there until 4/30. This is a highly anticipated mission designed to determine if an environment amenable to life exists under the ice in the oceans of Jupiter’s moon. But before we delve into the mission itself, let’s look at the wait time. Even with the powerful rockets we have right now, going out into the solar system takes time. But originally the trip was to only require three years? What exactly happened? Well, the three-year time frame was based on a rocket we didn’t have at the time the mission was planned. In 2015, NASA was going to use the SLS, Space Launch System to boost the probe on its way. There was a small hitch there because of delays in developing the SLS and the fact that it was primarily designed for the Artemis Moon missions, meant that Clipper was going to move to the bottom of the priority list. NASA’s budget indicated that the mission was to be launched by 2025, so using a commercial alternative was the best solution. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy which carried the probe on Monday 10/14/24 was running in what’s known as its fully expendable mode, meaning that it did not conserve fuel to allow for a guided landing. The difference between the two rockets propulsion is just one reason for the additional time required for the flight. Without the extra velocity of the SLS, the Clipper mission will acquire more speed through several slingshot maneuvers. Clipper will flyby Mars in 2025 and then return to Earth for another flyby in 2026 in order to gain the necessary velocity.

Clipper itself is a very ambitious project. It’s the biggest planetary probe built so far. Deployed, its solar panels extend almost 100 feet. It weighs in at 13,000 pounds. The Clipper is the beginning of the exploration of Europa in that its mission is to collect data about the moon. NASA expects the probe to measure the thickness of the moon’s ice, look at the water in the ocean for evidence it could support life, review the surface to find areas where a recent breach could bring water to the surface. The mission’s primary task is to look at the environment to see if it could sustain life. The next probe in line will probably be given the task of penetrating the surface to reach the ocean below. An extended series of flybys after arrival will allow scientists to first consider the side of the moon facing away from Jupiter in 2031. Two years later, Clipper will review the Jupiter side. The probe is expected to continue gathering data until 2034, at which point, NASA plans to decommission the probe by crashing it into Ganymede. Why there? Well, Ganymede is felt to be unlikely to have indigenous life and therefore safe to dispose of any potential contamination from Earth.

(It’s probably a question of fuel, rather than dumping the probe into Jupiter itself.)

            The Clipper probe also carries with it a message from Earth as part of the Message in a Bottle Program. A small chip was engraved with the names of 2.6 million people and the outside of a panel which protects the sensitive instruments of the probe has a poem on it. The poem is by the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon and is entitled “In Praise of Mystery.” The words are etched onto the panel in Limon’s own handwriting.

            Clipper has already deployed its solar panel array, and scientists are very happy with the progress of its journey. So, back to waiting. In fact, if we truly consider this mission, another Presidential election will have come and gone before Clipper even makes it to Jupiter. Good things come to those who wait and perhaps the answers to some of our deep questions are waiting out there.

            New lease on life – CAPSTONE – Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology – a lunar spacecraft about the size of a toaster oven has been approved for additional mission time. Weighing in at a little more than 50 lbs., the cubesat is owned by Advanced Space, Colorado and is in a near-rectilinear halo orbit about the Moon. Boasting a new AI system, CAPSTONE has put in more than a 100 orbits around the Moon. It will continue experiments in navigation now until 12/25 thanks to the extra funding. It’s also in an important spot since NASA’s Gateway station would also be placed in a similar orbit. The station would be a steppingstone to lunar exploration and the eventual construction of a base at the south pole.

            In the aftermath of Helene and Milton, SpaceX has provided access to the Starlink satellite network to areas damaged by the hurricanes. 10K kits were distributed and monthly fees were waived for the service in order to allow residents to reconnect. The system also provides access to emergency alerts. Originally, planning on a month of free service after Helene and in the wake of Milton, SpaceX extended the service until the end of the year. (Service usually costs $120/ month) Those who did receive a kit can purchase a receiver and still get the free service. Receivers cost about $349. In a deal with T-Mobile, low band access texting for emergency service is also available. The Starlink constellation currently is comprised of around 6000 satellites.

SEPTEMBER 2024
Humanity is not particularly good at picking up after itself. Scientists exploring
the ocean in the Mariana Trench, at the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of the
Earth, found an intact green glass beer bottle. Here at the utmost extreme, we’ve still
managed to litter. Now, there’s also the fact that a glass bottle managed to survive in
conditions that would easily crush a human being that has a few folks scratching their
heads. Most believe that the open nature of the bottle allowed the pressure to
balance. A plastic grocery store bag was also found. Beyond that plastic is showing on
islands that haven’t even been visited by humans. Possibly from the giant gyre of trash
in the Pacific.
The Carlsbad Cavern system of caves recently experienced a similar incident
that caused a brief change in the biosphere of the cave. Due to the lack of natural
light, limited amounts of water, and a consistent temperature, adding a bag of
Cheetosto the mixture can cause sudden changesdelicate webs of life. The corn in the
snack created a breeding ground for molds and fungi, which in turn provided food for
insects, who in turn attracted spiders. In what is typically a sort of food desert,
Cheetos created a brief oasis. Caves are delicately balanced environments (similar to
the environment of a spaceship, balanced with limited resources). Never mind the fact
that areas of the caves that receive visitors receive additional light, heat, and whatever
is tracked in on the shoes of the public. The Cheetos are a good example of how one
small change can have larger effects.
Then there’s Mars, the Moon, Jupiter, and our Lower Earth Orbit. For every
probe we’ve sent out, or satellite we’ve placed in orbit there seems to be little thought
about their ultimate fate. Now, if things fall into the atmosphere there’s a good
chance that they will burn up on re-entry, but there’s plenty of evidence that they
won’t in some cases too. All of our rover probes are not designed to be
“biodegradable”. They are all sitting right where they’ve failed. In fact, we’ve designed
some of them so well that they’ve gone on way past their expiration dates and keep
on going. Pretty sure that this is good evidence they have a lifetime in the hundreds of
years before breaking down completely. Right now, dust, cosmic radiation, and solar
heating are the only things working on breaking down the landers, rovers, and a flag
we left on the Moon. Maybe one of the Artemis missions down the road will be to pick
up after ourselves. That’s unlikely, because bringing back our trash costs energy and
fuel. Remember the closed environment of the cave? That’s Artemis in a nutshell.
Cheetos are not the answer here. Finally, there’s all of the loose trash that’s in orbit
around the Earth. This creates a navigational hazard and creates the possibility of
impacts on missions, satellites, and even the ISS. We’ve been living in a throw-away
economy for a long time. The evidence is all around us, literally. It’s not tremendously
efficient and it’s not sustainable. Maybe we can start at home and then do better
about this when we go visiting.

AUGUST 2024

            -Well, that didn’t go as planned – on June 30^th, China’s Tianlong-3 rocket changed a static test fire into a dynamic launch with unfortunately destructive results. Beijing’s Space Pioneer company’s test in Gongyi plans went awry when the anchoring mechanism on the rocket failed. The flight was short and was terminated by a nearby hilly area. Luckily there were no injuries as a result of the accident. In 2023 Space Pioneer had a successful trip to orbit with their Tianlong-2, making them the first private company in China to accomplish this goal. Hopefully, they will be able to get back on track.

-Space-X on the other hand, used their Falcon 9 to place 116 satellites into orbit. 70% of the payload was devoted to the Starlink system. One of the experiments will test the Nvidia Jeston Orin NX Chip protected by a nanoparticle infused polymer which will be used on the hardware of the Transporter 11 mission.

-The astronauts of the Boeing Starliner mission were originally planning on spending 10 days at the International Space Station. They’ve been there more than 70 now. NASA’s not willing to let them return in the Starline until issues with the propulsion and thruster systems are resolved. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were trained to take on many of the tasks on the ISS, so they’ve been far from bored. How they are getting back to Earth may be decided very soon. NASA is looking at two options currently: adding seats to the cargo area of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which is currently at the station, or launching a Crew-9 with half the crew, leaving two seats open for the astronauts.

–Internet has been full of aurora pictures recently and the phenomenon was visible locally. The light shows are a result of the Sun’s active solar cycle and this one’s been hitting several highs. Right now, observers are recording hundreds of sunspots, areas that appear dark against the bright surface of the Sun. The places have strong magnetic fields and can create solar flares that fling energy and mass into space. The cycle runs every 11 years with the activity peaking in the middle. Keep an eye out for advance warning of imminent solar storms and more auroras may be in our future.

-Not exactly what was advertised in the brochure – pieces of a SpaceX Crew Dragon ended up on a trail at The Glamping Collective in Canton, NC. After it was reported, NASA had a look and confirmed that this piece and several others, that showed up in people’s yards, were from the “trunk” part of the vehicle and expected to burn up on re-entry. Unfortunately, other incidences are indicating that the trunks do not always completely burn.

JULY 2024

            The Moon we see every night is a definite reminder of what we can be achieving in space. The historic series of Apollo missions, which proved we can reach our satellite, has given other countries impetus to reach out and explore as well. India’s recent successful mission is a good reminder of that Russia and China are not the only one’s capable of reaching the Moon. While Russia was once a major competitor in the race to space, it is now China who is actively pursuing goals that are remarkably similar to those of the U.S.’s Artemis Program. Artemis is a step-by-step plan to not only return to the Moon but establish a permanent presence there. China’s Chang’e spacecrafts are definitely designed to accomplish similar purposes. After its initial landing near the south pole on the far side of the Moon, on the 2^nd of June, the Chang’e 6 sent back almost 2 kilograms of material from the area around the rim of Apollo crater on June 25^th. Just like Artemis, China would like to establish a presence on the moon and the south pole is prime real estate. Establishing the International Lunar Research Station will be a combined effort of Venezuela, Egypt, Russia, and South Africa. It’s obvious that China has plans to create and expand an economy based on the exploration and use of space resources. Both the U.S. and China are focused on the area around the rim of the Shackleton crater for their lunar bases since the crater has shown reservoirs of water ice. That ice can supply oxygen, water, and fuel for future long-term bases. The samples brought back will provide China with information about the stability of the rim areas of craters near to Shackleton and influence the building and placement of permanent structures. Artemis has its own partners with 43 countries signing up to the Artemis Accords which seek to become a blueprint for the usage of lunar resources. However, while China is celebrating successes, Artemis’s timeline has fallen behind several times and continues to do so. The Artemis 2 mission, during which a crew will orbit the Moon, is now scheduled for September of 2025 and the third portion featuring an actual landing will not happen until 2026. It’s no surprise that Artemis 3’s landing site will be on the rim of Shackleton as well and not just any spot either. There is a spot on the crater which receives constant illumination making safe landings possible. There will definitely be some sort of agreement in the works about who is going to land since this will be the destination of the Chang’e 7 (set for 2026). Unlike before, this is now a real estate race as well as a space race.

JUNE 2024

            Still rolling, Perseverance is heading towards a river channel on the surface of Mars. It’s a little challenging to plan for a drive on another world so many miles away, but the NASA team is ready to move on to some new terrain. What’s peaked scientific interest in this particular area, nicknamed Bright Angel, is the outcrops, which are lighter in color than their surroundings. These appear to be rocks that were revealed by the long-gone river and could therefore be much older than the surface material. The decision about the destination was not without its problems. Boulders in the way brought the speed of the transit to a crawl as the AutoNav system onboard tried to find safe passage.  Perseverance was redirected to another path taking it through dunes instead. That’s not without its problems, since other rovers have gotten stuck in them, but fortunately, these were much smaller dunes. Once again up to speed, the rover was able to make good time to the target. This is a good reminder that even though it hasn’t made big splashes in the news recently, the Mars exploration program continues to make daily progress and new discoveries.

            While Earth was enjoying auroras brought about by the recent solar storms, it was a strong reminder that on Mars things are a bit different. Now mind you, there were still auroras on Mars as well, but the lack of a magnetic field, which on our world tends to deflect charged particles emitted by the Sun, makes for a different outcome. The light show was planetary instead of limited to Northern regions and Mars got plenty of incoming radiation. NASA has plenty of working devices to measure this. The MAVEN orbiter recorded incoming particles from the storm. The solar storms caused the atmosphere to heat and expand as well. Even the Curiosity rover’s cameras showed streaks as charged particles fell through the much thinner atmosphere of Mars. Just to give you an idea of the incident radiation, if you stood next to the rover, you would have received as much radiation as taking around 30 x-rays. Pictures from devices on the planetary surface all degraded due to the streaking caused by in falling charged particles. The Odyssey orbiter was briefly offline when the camera it relies upon to maintain its orbit was overwhelmed. Scientists are of course studying the data they have gathered since it will help them determine the possible effects of such storms on long-term habitation. Potential safe areas include lava tubes and cliffsides could help shield humans on Mars. There is also a concern about the amount of damage done to plants colonists might farm. People in transit from Earth to Mars would bear the brunt of such a storm and ships would require additional shielding. All of these are things that we probably weren’t considering when looking at the pretty lights in the sky …

May 2024

India wants a chunk of the Moon and their Chandrayaan-4 mission is set
to grab it for them, with some help. The new mission which is aimed at
returning the spot of Chandrayaan-3’s successful lunar landing will be much
more complex. In this case there will be two launch vehicles carrying the survey
crafts and the return portions of the operation. A lunar lander and an ascender
module with carry out the survey portion acquiring data and the actual samples,
as well as returning the payload to orbit. The ascender will rendezvous with the
other two elements the transporter and the reentry vehicle. From there the
samples will be returned to Earth. In the process, there will be two hand offs of
the samples from one element to the other by robot arms. The ISRO, Indian
Space Research Organization has also announced that there will be many
opportunities for involvement by the private sector. There are several
companies in the country vying for opportunities for commercial launch and
transport. As many as 30 launches are possible over the next year and a half.
These reflect a new policy introduced in 2023 focusing on increasing India’s
presence in the space industry. The Chandrayaan-4 mission is not expected to
launch before 2028. India has stated that it wishes to land astronauts on the
surface of the Moon by 2040 and establish a moon base by 2047.

April 2024

-Boeing’s space suits for its Starliner missions are getting good marks from astronauts. If the blue color wasn’t a winner, the flexibility of the gloves is often remarked upon. The helmet also attaches to the back of the suit and is out of the way of the astronaut. These are not exterior use suits but rather mission wear. They will be getting a trial soon as Boeing and NASA plan to run a crew flight test of the Starliner before May 6^th. This will be a 10 hour flight to the ISS which will allow them to review the systems of the spacecraft. While SpaceX has been consistently running missions to the Space Station, Starliner has taken longer in its development and testing phase. Confident at last in its product, Boeing is willing to put it to the test. Ultimately, the goal is to have at least two methods of reaching the ISS. Given the recent issues with Russia and the Ukrainian war, we can no longer depend upon them for transport. As always, anything that we learn from the mission can be applied to future ones including Artemis. Longer missions, up to six months, are planned for 2025.

-One of the most recently discovered stellar collapse black holes turns out to be somewhat local and also possibly one of the largest in the Milky Way. The European space telescope Gaia picked out this discovery by noting the orbit of a star circling it. Annotated as Gaia BH3, it is located about 2,000 light years away. (Might not sound right next door but the Milky Way is more than 100,000 light years across, so it’s relatively close or as of now, the second closest known black hole to Earth) After confirmation by other observatories, data was compiled to determine the objects mass while worked out to a massive 33 times that of the mass of the Sun. You might have noticed that this is called a stellar collapse black hole and that describes its origin as the result of the natural life cycle of stars of a certain mass. There is one much more massive black hole in the galaxy and that is the one at the center of the Milky Way. Sag A* is the result of the accretion of stars and other black holes and is located at the center of the galaxy. The closest known black hole to Earth was also discovered by the Gaia scope, Gaia BH-1 is more than 1,500 light years away and is more than nine times more massive than our Sun. The real lesson here is that there are black holes that are scattered throughout our galaxy waiting to be discovered.

March 2024 The Eclipse – Basics

-Sorry we’re not in the right spot – yes, you really want to be in the line that the eclipse is visible to achieve the experience of totality (complete coverage of the Sun by the Moon, with exception of the corona). Erie and Ohio are your closest possibilities for proper positioning and the best is at the center of the shadow line. But wait, you can still see the eclipse, only your experience will be of a partial eclipse. Philadelphia will see 88% coverage, which is better than the previous eclipse in 2017, so it’s definitely worth being outside.

Solar Eclipses – Interactive Google Maps – Xavier Jubier (free.fr)

-If you are travelling, plan ahead – as in you should have already done it. This is an event that will cause people to travel. Areas experiencing totality probably have had their housing options rented long in advance. Ohio and Texas have both issued warnings to residents to stock up on water and fuel because of the influx of visitors who will be expecting to purchase these essentials.

-Where outside are you planning on viewing the eclipse? The best spots are areas that provide a completely clear view. Hills are great options. Some scenic views can also offer good possibilities. If you are planning on experiencing the eclipse from start to finish, you will want a comfortable portable seat, water and possibly snacks. A good book is also a great companion in the lead up and wind down of the eclipse.

-Think about when you want to arrive and adjust. More people are going to be travelling on the day before the eclipse. Leave yourself some time to arrive early and get settled. The last thing you want to do is miss out. Just like the end of a sporting event or a concert, traffic will probably be the heaviest after the eclipse.

-Filters or indirect viewing – your eyes are delicate and important. Looking directly at the eclipse or the Sun at any time can cause them damage. Hobby shops or science websites can help you out. When considering glasses make sure that they have the ISO 1232-2 stamp and are in good condition with no scratches. Don’t wait too long, it’s not long until April 8^th. If you are using a camera, read up first. The plate that captures the light for electronic images is also delicate, and you will want a filter for your camera as well. It should go without saying that observing through a telescope absolutely requires a filter since the device is designed to capture and magnify light. Don’t let your eye be the ant under the magnifying glass!

https://bestreviews.com/electronics/binoculars/best-eclipse-viewing-glasses

-Adjust your expectations – the eclipse in our area will achieve its best coverage at around 3:23PM. The actual eclipse will last longer. Even if you do go to Erie, totality will last about 3 minutes 24 seconds. Folks in Mexico’s totality will be more like 4 and a half minutes. The arc of the shadow’s journey across the sphere of the Earth distorts the shadow of the Moon changing its coverage of the ground. So, be prepared, your picture taking time is limited.

-What happened to my phone? Locally, cell phone networks in the path of totality could be strained as everybody and their brother tries to post their pictures and videos on Instagram, facebook, and tiktok. Lower your expectations as far as your cell service.

-Why is this eclipse better than the last one? 2017’s eclipse was during the quieter period of the Sun’s activity cycle. Coronas were still visible to viewers in totality. 2024 is a different story because the current state of the Sun is the opposite. As we are closer to the solar maximum, viewers may see streamers and prominences due to the activity of the magnetic field. It’s even possible with really good timing a coronal mass ejection may occur where the sun actually throws off a portion of its atmosphere.

-Observe the moment. No matter how close you are to line of totality interesting things are going to happen during the peak of the eclipse. The obvious part is the change in the light. Of course, if you are in the path, you will find all of the common unusual effects, darkness, chill in the air, change in sound and others. These obviously occur at lesser degrees outside of the path of the eclipse. It’s easy to keep clicking away with a phone or a camera, but your senses are also great ways to capture the experience. How ever you choose to view, enjoy it because there will not be another total eclipse whose path crosses the continental US until 2044.

Great American Eclipse

Total solar eclipse 2024: Everything you need to know | Space

Eclipsophile | Climatology and weather for celestial events

February 2024

Due to their ability to absorb literally everything, what we know about black holes is all done by inference and theory. What we know about the mysterious Buchdahl stars is even less. While they have many of the same characteristics as a black hole, these stars are missing one key element – an event horizon. The event horizon of a black hole is the point where information cannot escape. It’s the key reason black holes are black because the horizon is the point of no return for everything including light. So, how can Buchdahl stars, which are the densest objects in the universe this side of black holes, exist? Hans Adolf Buchdahl created a model star in order to determine the point at which stellar remnants must become black holes. The result, known as the Buchdahl Limit is 9/4 times the objects mass, multiplied by the gravitational constant and then divided by the speed of light squared. (Observant readers will recognize that final term from e=mc-squared) If a star collapses below this radius, its fate is sealed. However, objects that live just outside of the radius can surpass even neutron stars in density and exhibit some of the characteristics of black holes. Follow along as we try to wrap our minds around the recent findings of Naresh Didhich, physicist from Pune, India who has been hunting Buchdahl stars. When stars collapse two forms of energy occur. One is the gravitational potential energy, which since gravity itself is attractive, is considered negative. On the other hand, the interior of the star gains kinetic energy as decreasing volume increases the collisions between atoms occupying less space. Didhich’s work suggests that there can be an equilibrium reached when the kinetic energy is equal to half of the gravitational potential. This theory has parallels with others where forces of various types balance out gravity. Now we have a theory that explains how a theoretical star can exist – why do we care? Let’s go back to the beginning and remember everything we know about black holes is from inference. What we could learn from Buchdahl stars could be directly observed because there is no event horizon to keep things secret. It is even possible that probes launched at such a star could actually escape its gravitational pull. It all sounds like exactly what astronomers would love. There’s just one problem – the Buchdahl stars still remain theoretical at this point. Astronomers are still looking for the key to discovering these strange objects and until then, their secrets are just as safe as if they were hiding behind an event horizon.

January 2024

Vacuum sealed for your protection takes on a new meaning as NASA struggles to unlock the specimens taken from asteroid Bennu. The OSIRIS-Rex mission which captured samples of the asteroid using the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, returned to drop off the sample in September last year. In order to properly review the contents, the container had to be kept completely sealed throughout the journey, through the landing, and the resulting travel to a NASA clean room. To make that happen, the sample container has 35 fasteners. Two of which decided they did not want to cooperate. That left the scientists with a problem. Their standard tools didn’t work. They had something pretty much irreplaceable in a vacuum box that was of a limited size. So, they had to create new tools to get those last two fasteners off and that took three and a half months. In the meantime, the scientists did get a bonus. There was debris lodged in the scooping mechanism and they could analyze that while waiting on the rest. One of the things that they discovered is that the asteroid contains hydrated clay material which indicates the presence of water. The point of our interest in samples from Bennu is the ability to look back in time to the coalescence of the Solar System. Scientists believe that the water currently on Earth came from collisions with asteroids. The presence of water on Bennu helps to prove their case. Obviously, they are all very interested in the rest of the sample as well. The preliminary samples also indicated a presence of carbon. This element is essential along with water to promote the evolution of life. Later this year, portions of the Bennu sample will be distributed through the scientific community of the world to allow for global study. After completing its 2.8-billion-mile journey to Bennu and back, OSIRIS-Rex is off again. This time its destination is the asteroid Apophis to gather more samples for further investigation.

OCTOBER 2023

Recently astronomer Diane Turnshek was interviewed on NPR concerning her DarkSky* work promoting a turn against urban light promotion. It was a very timely talk considering new developments which are even now causing trouble for people whose work depends on observing the sky and others who simply enjoy looking at the stars. AST Space Mobile’s new Bluewalker 3 satellite is now brighter than most stars in the sky. Sent up in September of 2022, Bluewalker 3 is designed to provide 5G connectivity for phones and is encompasses 693 square feet of surface that is reflective. This puts it in the range of Antares (15^th) and Spica (16^th) among the brightest stars visible at night. Already astronomers are seeing this object as a streak of light across plate images. Of course, this is merely the first of 100 such satellites that the company plans to launch to create a cellphone service that would work from orbit. Add one hundred new stars to the sky. But wait, all of this data transmission back and forth as planned may have another effect because we have a number of sensitive radio telescopes on Earth that might experience interference suddenly. Unlike AST Space Mobile, SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are now equipped with a visor that can be dropped down to shade their antennas, as part of the VisorSat program. Bodies of the satellites are also painted with non-reflective paint. Finally, the visor itself is radio transparent. Starlink also causes what is called a ‘satellite train’ as they pass overhead post launch and ascending to their final orbits. Space.com offer this advice on how to observe Starlink –Starlink satellite train — How to see and track it | Space. Ultimately, SpaceX hopes to deploy 12,000 Starlink satellites in what is called a megaconstellation. Out of the 8,261 satellites currently listed in orbit, only 4,852 are still operational, which brings us to our next piece of news, where the FCC fined DISH network $150K for not properly disposing of their EchoStar-7 satellite. With regards to properly disposing of the satellite, they should have deorbited it by pushing it up to an area about geostationary orbit. Since it ran out of fuel, EchoStar-7 missed its target by 100 miles. The satellite now becomes part of the 36k pieces of debris larger than 4” in orbit, so it’s definitely time that the FCC decided to start enforcing rules on space garbage.

*Q&A with DarkSky Advocate Diane Turnshek from Pittsburgh, USA | DarkSky International

SEPTEMBER 2023

What’s shaking? Well, it could be the one place we thought wouldn’t – the moon and even better, it could be our fault. One of the reasons that the Earth experiences seismic activity is that the core of our planet is still molten. Unlike us, our satellite overhead has no such activity going on under the surface, so why are we detecting seismic rumbles on the Moon? While it is quiet in one way, the Moon does, however, experience something the Earth doesn’t that can trigger some reactions. Without an atmosphere, the Moon goes through some truly epic temperature changes from night to day transitions. Dropping to as low as negative 208 degrees Fahrenheit in the shadows, temps can rocket all the way up to 250 in the sunlight. That’s a heck of a rollercoaster ride to put the surface through. We’ve known this for a while, since Apollo 17, when the mission left behind seismic meters that relayed readings for almost a year. This information allowed scientists to predict the waves produced by the expansion and contraction of the heating. Other waves are believed to be caused by the impact of meteors. With the creation of a moonbase as part of the Artemis plan, it’s important to know just how structurally sound we would have to create our buildings. It’s a very different matter when we have to be focused on keeping the air in as well as the walls upright. But we mentioned being at fault for some of the moonquakes? Scientists realized that after reviewing the Apollo data there were quakes that were not the result of the thermal expansion of the Moon, but rather of something closer. Closer to the detectors that is, in fact it was the expansion of the discarded lunar module creating its own set of readings. At about 5-6 minutes apart, these mini-quakes showed up proving that the neighborhood value of everything decreases when humans leave their stuff around. It is a good reminder that not only do we have to take into consideration the naturally occurring seismic activity of the Moon but also the kind we are generating. Building a base directly on the surface could mean that heating of the structure could cause instability in the very ground it is set up and that’s going to be important moving forward.

AUGUST 2023

Skipping Reentry – it’s not what it sounds like. The Artemis series of missions is an updated version of our previous visits to the Moon and scientists are going to use a number of innovations to make things easier. Previously, with the Apollo missions, reentry was the result of a direct drop through the atmosphere. That meant that the craft could end up almost 1.7k miles from the entry point. So, unlike the pinpoint accurate landings of SpaceX ships, Apollo returns were all over the map. This required the navy to scatter ships over the target area and then proceed to see “how things turned out”. Artemis, with its Orion Crew Capsule, however, is a targeted return with an expected landing area about 50 miles out to sea from San Diego. Obviously, this saves time and expenses in terms of deploying recovery craft. But how do they achieve this? This is where the “skipping” comes in and what we mean is the Orion capsule comes in on an angle and skips off of the upper atmosphere several times to decrease velocity and also achieve a specific entry point. There’s a history to this idea and we’ll come back to that. There are other pluses to this method besides accuracy. Skipping allows the Orion to extend its range giving the capsule the ability to fly 5.5k additional miles. It also means that the heat endured by the capsule based on a sustained reentry at speed can be lessened by discarding velocity with each skip. Finally, instead of a sustained high g maneuver, with a decrease in speed, the crew is subjected to less stress. So, why weren’t the Apollo missions doing this? At the time, the navigational systems were simply not up to the calculations required to successfully pull off this kind of reentry. Last year’s uncrewed mission proved that concept can be used to guide in the Orion and this year in April, NASA teams performed a test run on recovering an Orion in the ocean. All of this is in preparation for next years crewed Artemis mission to loop around the Moon and safely return to Earth. But where did this idea of skipping off the atmosphere come from? Would it surprise you if I said Nazis? During WWII, the Silbervogel proposal, created by Eugen Sanger and Irene Bredt in 1941, was the basis for a bomber designed to exit the atmosphere, return using its wings to skip, bomb New York and then finally land in the Pacific. Postwar, the US acquired this concept via Operation Paperclip and created our own version of the idea called the Bomber Missile or BoMi, ten years later. The idea was further developed into three programs: RoBo -Rocket Bomber, Brass Bell – long range reconnaissance, and Hywards – prototypes designed to further the previous two programs. Sputnik’s launch in 1957 put the fire under the development brought everything together under a single project with a name that just was too punny not to use. Since the concept was dynamic soaring, the builders dubbed it the Dyna-Soar. Using the previous three concepts and under the pressure of keeping up with the Soviets, developers converted Hywards into a research testing vehicle, Dyna-Soar I; Brass Bell into a reconnaissance vehicle, Dyna- Soar II, and RoBo into a strategic bomber, Dyna-Soar III. Initial tests were hoped to be flown in 1963 achieving a velocity of Mach 18. Boeing was given the development contract in 1959. Launched from a Titan booster vertically, the Dyna-Soar has a very familiar delta shape and up-turned tips to short wings – all of which look very similar to a first try at a space shuttle. In fact, designs and the work on the project would influence the shuttle program in the future. But, the Dyna-soar much like its pun namesake did not have a future. Cost and the issues with determining the best method of putting the craft into the appropriate orbit eventually caused the project to be cancelled before it was actually built. You might even recognize the name of one of the men picked to pilot the Dyna-Soar when it was ready for testing – Neil Armstrong. He left the program in 1962 and obviously went on to greater things. The Dyna-Soar program was designed to be both a research and a military program. Interestingly enough, the Air Force’s X-37B, an unmanned space plane, which flies top secret military mission and was also built by Boeing completed a two-year flight mission in 2019. Atmospheric skipping is something that would allow such a vehicle to continue in orbit for extended periods of time. It could be that Artemis is not the only mission taking advantage of the idea…

JULY 2023

Organic molecules on Mars? Yes, according to Perseverance. In the past, scientists have discovered organic molecules in pieces of Mars that made their way to Earth, as well as in the Gale Crater explored by Curiosity, so this isn’t completely surprising. Now our rover is finding similar ones in the Jezero Crater. Scientists are quick to point out that such molecules can also occur naturally, so while they are considered the “building blocks of life”, they do not imply life. In all ten samples considered, organic signals were detected. Their presence in this location means that the molecules are not limited to one area. Sadly, scientists are not able to identify exactly which molecules are present because that would require samples to be returned to Earth. That part of the plan has quite been realized, but NASA has ideas in the works. In the meantime, Perseverance will continue to explore.

How long until Betelguese blows up? Astronomers believe it could only be decades. Separated from us by 650 Light Years, the red giant is an object of intense observation as it continues through its remaining years. Located at the left shoulder of the constellation of Orion, this former O-type star has been causing some consternation as it first dimmed in 2019. This event is thought to be the result of the star emitting some sort of dark cloud that obscured our view. This year, Betelguese did the opposite and grew 1.5 times brighter than normal. This odd behaviour has astronomers both fascinated and confused. O-type stars have short lives and Betelguese could be as young as 10 million years. One of things that observers are still trying to nail down is an accurate measure of the size of the star. Before, astronomers believed Betelguese to be about 800-900 times the radius of our own Sun. This gives them clues about the point the star is in its lifecycle as older stars go through series of expansions and contractions before reaching their end state. New evidence suggests that radius measurement could be more like 1300 times that of the Sun. This would imply that the outer layers of the star are pushed further from the core and that the processes at the center of Betelguese are moving faster than predicted, eating up the fuel and leading to the inevitable stellar collapse and outwards explosion of a nova. That’s great news for astronomers who are looked forwards to using modern telescopes and instruments to explore the results of a nova. Fortunately, we are a comfortable 650 LY away, so the Earth is in now immediate danger from resulting incoming radiation. The real mind bender is that given the distance from Earth, it is possible that the nova has already taken place and the light front simply hasn’t reached us yet. It’s also possible that Betelguese could fool us all and continues to shine for years to come. Currently, the star inhabits a strange Schroedinger’s Cat kind of existence – possibly it has already gone nova and possibly it hasn’t. We’ll simply have to wait to find out.  

Could metallic clouds cause an exoplanet to shine like a mirror? Apparently, the answer is yes. LTT9779b kicks back 80% of the light that falls on it from its parent star. Even though our world is covered with an excess of water, Earth only reflects back about 30% of the Sun’s light. The placement of the planet so close to its star creates an environment where metals are boiled off into floating clouds which creates its reflective atmosphere. LTT9779b even beats out Venus with its 75% reflectivity. Found by the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission, 264 light years away and about five times the size of the Earth, the exoplanet is so hot that it could have titanium rain falling from silicate clouds.

Strangest for last – is it possible that gravity can turn into light? Researchers are starting to think so under very specific conditions. At the quantum level there are virtual particles that come into existence simultaneously with their opposite counterparts and then disappear. So, something arriving from what appears to be nothing is not unknown. The Standard Model does not go along with the translation of massless particles into those with mass. But smacking a photon (massless) into an atom with a large atomic mass can make it split into an electron and a positron, particles with mass. How does that get us to gravity? First, we have to go back in time to post Big Bang eras where the energy of gravitational waves created at the beginning were much more energetic. These waves would have traveled through the hot dense area and there bouncing back and forth would have agitated the electromagnetic field of the early universe. This built up a resonance that pumped energy into things until it was possible to have it expressed as light. Of course, given the expansion of the universe post big bang this could only go on for so long. As noted earlier, the resultant photons could then also be converted into particles with mass. Yet another interesting glimpse into the workings of the past of the universe.

JUNE 2023

This September, we’re getting a package from the sky seven years in the making. Samples from the mission to the asteroid Bennu will be arriving, dropped off by the spacecraft of the OSIRIS-Rex mission. These will give scientists the opportunity to learn not only about the composition of the asteroid, which could perhaps one day be a danger to the Earth, but also about the composition of asteroids in general. On the 24^th, Utah’s desert will be the target for the landing of the samples. Computers will assist in modeling weather to ensure that the capsule is able to hit its mark for recovery. Parachuting down, the payload will need to be protected from excessive heat, vibration and contamination. A new lab is being readied at the Johnson Space Center in Huston to examine the material from Bennu. Team members are practicing unboxing containers in glove boxes in order maintain a pristine sample. Contamination by any Earthly substances will render the material relatively useless. The sample is expected to be about a cup’s worth of material. The recovery team will also be sampling the area around the landing so that comparisons can be made with the Bennu material to rule out the possibility of contamination. From the landing site, the sample will be helicoptered to a portable clean room that will allow scientists to remove portions of the landing craft to gain access to the sample canister. This will then be transported to Huston for analysis. Once its delivery is complete, the OSIRIS mission will convert over to OSIRIS-APEX, realignment of the spacecraft will head it towards its next target, the asteroid Apophis.

            On June 18^th, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. The STS-7 crew of the shuttle Challenger, launched from the Kennedy Space Center, ran experiments using the Shuttle Pallet Satellite and also launched communication satellites. STS-7 was also the first five-person crew. STS-7 was forced to land at Edwards Air Force Base on their return due to weather.

MAY 2023

Scary Barbie is a funny name for an event where the immense amount of energy being released is a thousand times more powerful than a supernova. What lies at the center powering this explosion – a super massive black hole and an unfortunate star. But before we go into the mechanics of this, why call it Scary Barbie? Originally designated as ZTF20abrbeie, one can see that a little bit of manipulation of the letters can lead to the ‘barbie’. Discoverer, Dan Milisavljevic said its characteristics are so out of the ordinary as to be terrifying, hence the ‘scary’ part. Identified by an AI engine designed to scan the skies for stellar objects of interest using the data supplied by observatories and observers around the world, Scary Barbie was in a typically ignored portion of the sky, which explains why initial observations were logged in 2020. Milisavljevic and colleagues had definitely found something worth investigating and his typical interest in supernovae made this worthwhile. After verifying the information with several real-world observations using telescopic data, he was stuck with the question of just what he was looking at which was so incredibly bright. The current theory is that a massive star passed close to the accretion disk circling a super massive black hole and was captured by the gravitational pull. Inevitably headed toward demise by falling into the hole, the star was subjected to a worse fate being stripped apart and its gases then spread over the already hot accretion disk of matter also circling to its final fate. The resulting explosion is the largest observed so far. Here’s another way to look at things from the ‘barbie’ point of view, rather as a barbeque or grill. Imagine that the rocks and debris in the accretion disk are the same as what you would find at the bottom of your grill. Take the gas supplied from the star and compare it to that from your propane tank. Supply ignition and truly scary barbeque on an interstellar level. Right now, as long as there is still gas infalling from the remainders of the star, the explosion will continue. It should be pointed out that the infalling star hit the bullseye for an orbit that would allow it to be peeled of its gases over a period of time. Astronomers believe that Scary Barbie may continue for some time and are taking advantage of not only all of the previously filed data but additional observations to try to understand this immensely powerful event.

APRIL 2023

            A local scientist from Bucknell University and her team have found proof of exoplanets with magnetic fields. Just like gravity and the rotation of the Earth, humanity spends very little time concerned about our world’s magnetic field. Without it, our world would bear similarities to Mars, a world whose atmosphere has mostly been stripped away by the energies emitted by the Sun. Jackie Villadsen and her team used observations from the Very Large Array in New Mexico to view a rocky exoplanet in orbit about YZ Ceti, a red dwarf located about 12 light years away. Even though the VLA is very sensitive, a magnetic field at that distance would be difficult to detect if we were looking at a situation similar to our own. YZ Ceti b however is in an orbit so close to its star that a year’s orbit takes about two of our days. Even though the star is not as hot as ours, at this distance life as we know it is not possible. But, since the exoplanet is so close to YZ Ceti, the magnetic field of the planet interacts with the gases of the star’s outer layer causing auroras which we can detect as radio waves via the VLA. Studies like this give us another tool in confirming the viability of exoplanets to potentially support life similar to ours by applying similar observations to newly discovered worlds. Sebastian Pineda of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a co-author of the study, is hopeful that continuing observation will not only verify the results but also give us more information about extra-solar space weather. We are already familiar with the effects of some of this weather in the form of auroras that light up the night skies in northern climes. Magnetic fields are also present on other planets in our solar system such as Jupiter. There, the massive field actually produces effects on the planet’s many moons.

            How did our magnetic field come into being? There are some scientists that believe that the rotation of the Earth and the continuing rotation of the liquids in the molten core were initiated by the impact of a protoplanet in the past. That very same impact is believed to have been the origin of the Moon. Other worlds may have acquired theirs due to the rotational energy from the collapse of their accretion disks as the planets formed. In both cases, the continuing rotation of either a liquid metal or metallic hydrogen core elements results in a magnetic field.

MARCH 2023

What time is it really on the Moon? Pretty soon this is going to be a thing. Currently, if the Chinese, the Americans or anyone else is running a mission on the Moon, at this point mostly rovers of course, then they are using their own time zone. Obviously, it’s not mattering to anyone else at the moment. However, as we begin to expand our presence on our satellite, suddenly it could be important if you were planning on dropping a lander and someone else was too and your clocks didn’t match. In November of 2022, space agencies reached an agreement that there needed to be a standard set and a effort was launched to find a common time frame. NASA’s Gateway Station in the works will be the steppingstone for a permanent base at the South Pole of the Moon. These folks on the lunar ground will need to have an established time frame since their resupply missions will also be coinciding with European Space Agency cubesat insertions and other activities. Helping to keep all of this on track will be the ESA’s Moonlight lunar communication and navigation service and NASA’s Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation System – both a spatial version of GPS and flight control. All of which sounds awesome, except they need to agree what time it is before any of these are truly effective. That’s easy right, just pick a time and go, one would think, but there are some other considerations. Accuracy in lunar and spatial navigation is a step beyond getting to your friend’s house in an unfamiliar city. New elements such as velocity effects and even the Moon’s specific gravity cause changes that creep into the accuracy of guidance and timekeeping. Clocks on the Moon will gain about 56 millionths of a second per day and much like Earth orbital time will differ from surface time. Before we forget, the Moon has a different day and night cycle from the Earth as well because depending on where you are on the surface a day there equals 29 and a half Earth days. This of course is just the beginning, because its going to be a different time on Ceres, Venus, Mars, etc. While we grapple with the problem of agreeing on a two body time reference system, just like non-Newtonian physics, we’ll have a multibody problem ahead of us. Just how will we establish a solar system time frame? Right now we’ll work out things close to home and go from there.

February 2023

Our galaxy does not float alone in the void. Aside from the Magellanic Clouds, we’re often told that Andromeda is our closest neighbor, well it’s not exactly true. Our closest neighboring galaxy didn’t win the fight with the Milky Way. About 5.7 billion years ago, the Sagittarius galaxy collided with ours. The main body of the smaller galaxy lost stars in a stream that fell into orbit around the Milky Way but did not fall into the galaxy. Instead, they formed a streamer that created a sort of halo. The main body of the Sagittarius galaxy, much smaller now, continued to orbit our galaxy. Astronomers have found evidence that three more collisions have occurred continually stripping away from stars from Sagittarius. Maps of stars in the Milky Way created by the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe reveal a history of stellar birth resulting from these collisions. Given the age of our Sun it is even possible that our own star is the result of these waves of star creation. Sagittarius’s most recent pass was about one billion years ago. So, this galaxy, which now only exists as a streamer of stars behind the remaining main body, has actually been a factor in the development of the state of the Milky Way. The Gaia probe continues its mapping of the galaxy and may eventually reveal the location of the remnants of the main body of Sagittarius.

    Now astronomers have also found evidence of a similar immigration of stars in the Andromeda galaxy. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) that is attached to Kitt Peak’s Nicholas U. Mayall telescope used by NSF’s NOIRLab brought to light data that indicates our neighbor has experienced a galactic collision very similar to that of Sagittarius and the Milky Way. Astronomers measured the motions of stars that are part of the inner halo of Andromeda and discovered the evidence of another impact creating more stellar migration. This collision is believed to have occurred about 2 billion years ago. The observations also indicate that Andromeda also experienced a wave of stellar formation in the wake of the event very similar to the Milky Way. It took the fine tuning possible by DESI, which was initially created to measure the effect of dark energy and how it causes the expansion of the universe, to confirm the motions resulting from the impact. The instrument is able to measure spectra from as many as 100k galaxies in a single observation session. These allow the creation of a map of nearby galaxies and quasars whose locations aid in the determination of the state of the universe and its expansion. Astronomers will likely turn the telescope and DESI toward other potential candidate galaxies to peer into their past.  

January 2023

It’s time to get out and look at the sky- comet ZTF C/2022 E3 is already in the heavens. A breakdown of the name, C means that the comet is not periodic, this may mean we only see it once or it may take longer than 200 years for it to reappear. 2022 was the year of discovery, found by three sources and reported around March 2^nd. E indicates the half month of the discovery and 3 means it was the third object discovered in the time period. From here on out, we’re going to refer to it as ZTF though, which comes from the source Zwicky Transient Facility, whose telescopes found the comet. On January 12^th, ZTF made its closest pass to the Sun, around 1.11 AU or a little further out than the Earth’s distance from Sol. Now, the comet’s magnitude is about 6.5 but may increase to as much as 5.1 on February 1^st at its closest approach to Earth (0.28AU) making it visible through binoculars or depending on your viewing location, the naked eye. When observing ZTF, the best opportunities will exist in areas with very limited background light. Avoid light sources, such as your phone before looking and allow your eyes to adjust properly. Also adjust your expectations, comets with full on obvious tails are uncommon. Comets can also be fuzzy balls of light depending on the orientation of the tail. Remember that the tail is always oriented away from the Sun since it is caused by the Solar radiation striking the cometary nucleus and ablating away material. Putting the motion of the comet, the motion of the Earth around the Sun altogether doesn’t always equal prime viewing. All of that aside, merely locating the comet in the sky is another consideration. You can use apps like Star Walk 2 (Easily Identify Stars At Night | Mobile Stargazing | Essential Guide To Astronomy | Star Walk) or Sky Tonight (Night Sky Tonight From My Location — Stargazing App | Planets Visible Tonight | Vito Technology) and searching for C/2022 E3 to help. The following websites also provide up to date information for observing: Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) | TheSkyLive.com, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) | astro.vanbuitenen.nl. Aerith.net also provides you with several other possibilities to look for as well Weekly Information about Bright Comets (2023 Jan. 14: North) (aerith.net). Currently, ZTF is located in the constellation Corona Borealis and will come to prominence in Camelopardis. ON February 12^th, the comet will pass close to Mars in the sky and then on the night of the Watch the Skies meeting will be near the star Aldebaran. Happy viewing!

November 2022

   The Bermuda Triangle has given up a piece of tragic history. Divers from the History Channel working on a new series, “The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters” have discovered a piece of the Challenger shuttle that lie on the ocean floor since 1986. This is one of the largest pieces found, about 15’ by 15’ or so in size and only represents the area not covered by sand. Images show divers looking at the tile covered surface. Other pieces of Challenger have been found like the two wing portions which washed ashore ten years after the tragedy. All told about 47% of the vehicle has been recovered since the accident. These recovered sections of the Challenger are currently in abandoned missile silos at Cape Canaveral. The first fatal accident inflight of an American spacecraft, the Challenger explosion occurred at about 46,000 feet and 73 seconds into the mission. Ultimately, the failure of the o-ring seals in the booster on the right booster were to blame for the disaster. The crew of seven, including the first schoolteacher to go to space, were all killed. The remaining shuttles were grounded and gone over to determine what safety measures might be required to prevent a reoccurrence. The space shuttle Endeavour was built to replace Challenger. With regards to Columbia about 38% of the shuttle was recovered. The some of the debris was recovered from fields in Texas and then stored in parts of the Kennedy Space Center Hangar. The FBI has been instrumental in the search for the remains of the shuttle and continues to receive phone calls from concerned citizens who have or believe they have found pieces of the Columbia. Since it was the History Channel that made the discovery, it should come as no surprise that there will be documentary on the finding of the Challenger fragment, set to release 11-22-22.

            NASA is set to try again for the Artemis 1 mission with a scheduled launch time of 1:04 AM 11-16-22. (As of press time for WTS, we will be unable to report on the status of this launch window). The mission is to orbit the rocket several times around the Moon as a proof of concept and shakedown cruise for the Artemis system, which will ultimately be the U.S.’s return vehicle for lunar exploration. At this time, the hope is to return to the Moon as early as 2025 with the ultimate goal of establishing a physical presence there. Tuesday coverage will begin as the fueling starts. NASA is making a big deal out of their program including such stars as Jack Black and Chris Evans. Hopefully, this is the one as several previous attempts have been blocked by weather and other concerns.

October 2022

After the successful impact of the DART probe on the asteroid Dimorphos and the images received from the cubesat, LICIACube, scientists are studying the resulting information to determine the amount of their success. DART, the Double Asteroid Deflection Test, was sent to impact the smaller of two asteroids in orbit about each other. After crashing down and creating a plume of debris, the kinetic energy of the impact is expected to change Dimorphos’ orbit. How much is the question on everyone’s mind. While the two bodies represent a fairly simple system, the energy imparted to Dimorphos’ has changed not only the speed of its orbit (an decreased by 73 seconds) but also its libration or the regularity of its orbit. Fired like a bullet at over 4 miles per second, DART is designed to see if it is possible to redirect a body similar in size to those that could potentially threaten the Earth due to their impact. Small additions of impetus could shift an object away from a potentially dangerous orbit. Piggybacking along on the mission was a small cubesat that was launched to view the event. Now after the September 26^th collision, the cubesat has drifted away and observation has been taken over by Earth based and orbital telescopes. They will bring in the data that scientists will use to determine the true amount of success of the mission. Right now, launching, targeting and impacting are all big wins. The European Space Agency hopes to launch a follow up mission, called Hera, in 2024 to the asteroids for a more direct observation of the results in 2026. So right now, we know that we can hit an incoming rock, only the careful observation over time will tell us if we can hit it hard enough to deflect it.

   But Dimorphosis isn’t the only rock we are watching carefully. Asteroid Phaethon has gained interest recently when astronomers realized that that the rate of its spin was decreasing. Phaethon is a near Earth asteroid and a potential hazard. That made it a target for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, who intend to use their Destiny+ mission for a flyby. Since it was a destination, study of the asteroid became more intense revealing the shift in spin. Ten other asteroids have been observed making similar changes. Now Phaethon’s decrease is 4 milliseconds per year, which is miniscule but just why is it happening? Any changes like this can cause other effects and the more we know the more we are able to predict future behavior that may cause dangerous interactions.

September 2022

How soon is now and how long ago does something have to occur to warrant study by an archaeologist? Well, believe it or not, there are archaeologists who are studying the history of space stations. If you thought exobiologists were an odd thing since we’ve never discovered extraterrestrial life, then someone interested in the past of living in space is right there as well. It does however make a sort of sense. Things that are 25 years old can be considered antiques and we’ve been living in space since 1971. The Russians have that milestone locked down with the Salyut mission which lasted for 24 days. In fact, the Zvezda module of the ISS is the result of developing the Salyut and improving it. But these archaeologists are not just studying the past, they are involved in a very forward-looking project called Brick Moon. A consultancy firm designed to use the knowledge gained over 50 years of the occupation of space, Brick Moon is committed to helping to improve all aspects of the development and maintenance of future space stations. Created by Joe Walsh, Alice Gorman, and Fred Scharmen, who are involved with the ISS Archeological Project, and named for the first science fiction story to mention a space station, Edward Everett Hale’s “The Brick Moon”, the consultancy sees its mission as a practical application of the research and data they have collected. The ISSAP is ongoing and will keep collecting observations, but Walsh, Gorman and Scharmen want to take things one step further and aid those planning on making the next round of history. With the advance of private industry into the development of Low Earth Orbit, Brick Moon can offer methods to improve design, longevity, recycling and many other factors. They can help companies like Axiom Space who are already developing modules for NASA, which will be tested by attaching them to the ISS, with the ultimate goal of developing an independent structure. NASA is also in cooperation with Northrup Grumman and Maxar and their Gateway station is planned to orbit the Moon. Blue Origin and Sierra Space at work on the Orbital Reef concept could also benefit as well. Brick Moon incorporates a variety of assets including architects and social scientists hoping to cover a number of needs from how to build as well as how to coexist well in future habitats and stations.

        Brick Moon (brickmoonspace.com)

August 2022

-Bigger may not always be better. The trend in exploration devices sent to other worlds is to increase their size so that they can carry a greater payload of experiments and sensors. But what if we went with a smaller version instead, especially if it was only going as far as the Moon? Enter Lunar Zebro about the size of a sheet of paper and weighing in at five and half pounds. While they were at it, Delft University of Technology students, decided to skip the wheels as well. Lunar Zebro will have legs instead- Zebro comes from the Dutch meaning six legged. The rover has legs that are curved, which allows it to navigate a variety of terrains. The Zebro group came together in 2013 and was at that time mostly focused on Earthly aspirations, but it didn’t take them too long to imagine sending their robot to the Moon. They would like to send up a demo version of Lunar Zebro for a 14-day mission to evaluate its possibilities. Ultimately, the rovers would be deployed as part of a swarm to cover a greater area. More than 100 Delft students have participated in the project. With the help of the European Space Agency, they hope to be the first Dutch rover on the Moon.

-It does snow underwater and that may help us understand the conditions on the distant Saturnian Moon, Europa. Long considered to be one of the most likely places to harbor life in the solar system, Europa has inspired a number of potential exploration missions. But before we send a device to explore, it would certainly make sense to prepare for the environment. Frazil ice and congelation ice are two forms that occur underwater. Frazil occurs in supercooled water columns, while congelation occurs under an ice shelf. Both processes drastically reduce the salinity of the resulting ice. It’s important to note that when we discuss salinity, it also refers to the many dissolved chemicals and not just the sodium chloride, which produces the saltiness we taste. The mixture on Europa could be very different. But the icing processes increase the purity of the water and that means that any life that forms there could be more similar to us than that which lives in the sea. The Europa Clipper mission will be designed to perform more than 40 flybys of the moon carrying equipment to measure the magnetic field and temperature, as well as radar and cameras. A priority would be to confirm the existence of the ice plumes and verify their contents. The European Space Agency is also launching an exploration mission called JUICE that will look at Callisto, and Ganymede as well as Europa. Originally scheduled for June of 2022, JUICE is expected to launch in April of 2023 with an expected arrival in 2030.

July 2022

Could two companies out race SpaceX and Elon Musk to Mars? Relativity Space and Impulse Space will combine their efforts and their product for a mission to Mars to launch as early as 2024. Relativity Space will provide the propulsion with their Terran R rocket, a 3D printed rocket at that. For the onsite work, Impulse Space would then provide the Martian Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander to round out the mission. SpaceX has stated that they want to have a commercial mission to Mars by the end of the decade. While SpaceX is following a rigorous program of testing and successful flights, neither of the other two have so far put a vehicle into space. Maybe they are talking big or maybe they are on to something. Relativity Space has already gathered funding to the tune of 1 billion dollars. The methods they are developing in 3D metal printing allows them to avoid potential supply chain issues as they create new methods for making items such as the engine and fuselage. This also cuts down on the time in the development curve since they are not farming out these builds. It’s estimated that a rocket can be printed in as little as 60 days. The Terran R rocket will be 216 feet tall and have a lift capacity of 44.1k pounds. Seven Aeon R engines will provide propulsion. Relativity already has a footprint at various NASA and Airforce facilities. Impulse is a smaller company, but their CEO, Tom Mueller, believes that they are up to the task of developing a lander that will be robust enough to survive atmospheric entry. Mueller was previously a member of SpaceX, leading the propulsion department before leaving to pursue the development of his own company. Impulse designs vehicles to survive the last miles of the mission and deliver payloads safely.

            2024 could prove to be a big year as NASA decides to delay the launch of its Viper Moon rover. Pushed back a year after requests for further testing, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was originally intended to be sent to the Moon in 2023 during Novembers. NASA has some concerns about the lander that would be delivering the device to the Moon, the Griffin. Astrobiotic, the developer for Viper, signed the contract in 2020 for almost 200 million dollars. SpaceX was chosen to lift the rover. First choice for the launch was set for December 2022 and then rescheduled a year later. This delay was set to allow improvements of the lifetime of the device as well as increase its ability to preform certain tests. Viper is designed to look for the presence of water on the Moon, specifically in the south polar region.

June 2022

-Sometimes you have to watch the quiet ones because they are accomplishing amazing things in the background – the Gaia space telescope is just such a case. It’s not an easily recognizable name like the newly stationed James Webb telescope, the Hubble or the Spitzer, but Gaia since its launch in 2013 has daily sent us data on our own galaxy that continues to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Funded and maintained by the European Union, the Gaia is different the other telescopes because its actually two scopes oriented to view 106 degrees from each other     whose light is composited onto a billion-pixel camera. About seven and a half feet across, Gaia is hidden behind a sun shield over 30 feet in diameter and parked at the L2 Lagrange point in the ballpark of one and a half million kilometers distant. Here it is protected from the interference caused by the Sun and able to view the universe around us. But Gaia’s focus is mainly on our galaxy. It takes two months for Gaia to scan the whole heavens and its telescopes are more concerned with the fine details of the Milky Way rather than capturing spectacular images. Gaia’s photometers allow astronomers to gauge the age of stars as well as their compositions and the radial spectrometer allows them to track their motions. Each day, Gaia downloads anywhere from 20 to 100 gigs of data to Earth. Astronomers comb through this to build new and more accurate maps of the Milky Way. So far there have been four “data dumps” from the telescope released and each comes with a better map and more understanding of the galaxy we live in. It’s estimated the information received from the telescope generates as many as five scientific papers every day. The most recent data dump was on June 13^th. What else have we learned? Well, being able to track the motion of stars over time allows us to extrapolate their former positions. This means that like a planetarium, we can generate a virtual version of the galaxy and rewind it to points in time to create a window into the past. Such activities have allowed us to prove that 10 billion years ago, the Milky Way collided with a smaller galaxy. This gave rise to a number of the stars that comprise the Milky Way’s halo. Other observations revealed that another galactic collision threw our galaxy out of a stable orbit, and it now wobbles and is not completely disc shaped. Gaia is expected to continue to operate until sometime in 2025 when it will run out of fuel. Until then, hopefully it will continue to provide data that allows us to learn more about our galactic home.

May 2022

-On 5-17, NASA is planning on a live update to their InSight Mars Lander program. It looks as though the news will not be good. A resident of the Red Planet since November of 2018, the lander, designed to measure the seismic activity of Mars, has served well past its expected term of 687 days (a Martian year). Insight recorded over 1300 separate quakes so far. Even though it is outperforming expectations, like most machines on Mars, it runs on solar power and since its stationary the dust storms have not been kind. NASA has already put the lander into safe mode due to limited amount power it is receiving and now Mars is headed out to the farthest point in its orbit putting it even farther from the Sun and weakening infalling solar radiation. NASA warned last year that this could be it for the lander and they might be planning on pulling the plug on the mission.

-Those of you who wanted to watch the Super Flower Blood Moon Eclipse locally were probably disappointed due to the cloud cover. However, everyone else who could take pictures was busy filling up facebook with images the morning after. One person had a really unique point from which to view the event and their images were stunning for a slightly different reason – the fact that they were taken from the International Space Station. Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shared her special images on twitter which included segments of the ISS in the background and even the Earth. The ISS was in a unique position to observe the event because the station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes providing a unique view each time with no atmospheric interference. For those of us who didn’t luck out with the weather, it’s going to be awhile for another chance. The next eclipse is in November but in this case favors the Pacific Ocean and Western United States with the best viewing.

-5-19 Rosie the Rocketeer hopes to ride the Boeing Starliner’s OFT-2 test into history. The dummy, named after the famous WWII icon, will be seated in the command seat as part of an unmanned mission to the ISS. Rosie has been waiting patiently since 2019 after a series of setbacks made Boeing wait and wait as it tried to prove that the Starliner was ready to begin ferrying astronauts up to the ISS. Mae Krier, a real-life Rosie the Riveter, who helped assemble planes during the war, is responsible for creating Rosie the Rocketeer’s facemask. The dummy also will be wearing the easily recognizable red polka dot headscarf as well. With fifteen built in sensors, Rosie will take readings throughout the mission and teach us more about what astronauts will experience aboard the Starliner.

APRIL 2022

-That star is out of here – the monster black hole at the center of our galaxy doesn’t always eat the nearby stars. In fact, one of the reason that we know about black hole is due to the observation of the perturbations of the stars that orbit about its mass. Nothing escapes a black hole. We’re told that over and over again and, in most cases, it’s true. Scientist Kate Alexander described black holes as “messy eaters” on the other hand. Due to something called the Hills mechanism, the black hole may sometimes end up getting half its meal. This happened about 5 million years ago to a binary star system containing a star now known as S5 – HVS1. The pair were drawn into the grip of the hole and when one got too close it was engulfed. Its companion was then catapulted away at a velocity of 1800 km/s. Astronomers discovered S5 – HVS1 and were able to trace its history and path back to the center of the galaxy. The star has slowed down some in the passing years and races along at a mere 1755 km/s or around 4 million miles/hour. The fate of S5 – HVS1 is to become an intergalactic explorer.

-Sierra Space and Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef plan for a space station in Low Earth Orbit has completed a design review by NASA. As part of the Space Act Agreement, NASA gave the companies an award of 130 million dollars for developments in their planned Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program. This is a first step in a program where Blue Origin would provide lift as well as modules and its partner would be bringing in cargo vehicles as well as an expandable module. Boeing and Red Wire Space are also part of the project as well. Initially proposed in 2021, the Orbital Reef would include scientific laboratories as well as accommodations. The Reef is not the only project to receive money from NASA. Similar plans were submitted by Lockheed Martin and Nanoracks for their station Starlab and Northrup Grumman as well, utilizing their Halo module and Cygnus cargo craft. All of these are hoping to be destinations that can take over as the deadline for the decommissioning of the ISS in 2030 looms ahead.

-Astronomers and scientists continue to search for definitions and proof of dark matter and dark energy but what if the proof itself were the answer? Dr. Melvin Vopson has latched onto the idea that information itself could what we are searching for. It’s believed that information can even survive a black hole and remain trapped in a layer inside the even horizon, so this component, which has never received the same amount of attention that mass and energy have, could be something we’ve missed. Early theorists like Shannon and Wheeler paved the way with information theory, but Vopson is taking it farther. According to him, if there is a link between information and thermodynamics, which means it is connected to energy and mass. The scientist is working to develop an experiment to prove digital information has mass. But he’s also spent some time calculating out information content of the universe in comparison to that of the visible universe and guess what, the difference works out to be very close to the missing energy and mass we associate with the dark parts missing in action. Is information another state of matter? Only time will tell.

March 2022

-Perseverance is rock hounding once again on Mars. The rover recently picked up its seventh drill sample as part of its ongoing mission to explore Mars and collect samples for future return to Earth. Jezro Crater, where Perseverance is exploring, is believed to have contained a lake and a river delta in the past making it an excellent spot to search for life, the rover’s second task in addition to sampling. Since its landing in February last year, Perseverance has been studying an area named for SF&F author Octavia Butler. One more sample is planned before the rover moves on the ancient river delta. That will mean returning to the area around the touch down site and then moving onward. Right now, the team driving Perseverance uses its partner experimental drone, Ingenuity to help plan routes. So far, the drone has flown 20 flights and has been shifted from a “technology demonstration” footing to an ongoing part of the mission. Ingenuity would have been considered a success if it completed five flights. Much like some of our other technology, for example many of the Mars rovers, it continues to function well and outperform expectations. Therefore, its missions are extended. Perseverance’s rock collection is for a purpose. NASA and the European Space Agency hope to be able to recover the samples as early as 2035, perhaps with a manned mission to Mars.

-So, the rocket stage the was predicted to strike the Moon is down, having impacted on March 4^th. WTS has been following this story for the past few months. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will hopefully be able to locate the resulting crater in the next few months. However, the mystery of just whose or which rocket stage fell down continues. It was originally thought to be the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket. Then after some research, observers linked the stage to the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar launch in 2014. After making the announcement, officials at the Chinese Foreign Ministry disputed the claim indicating that the upper stage of the Chang’E 5-T1 burned up in the upper atmosphere one year after the launch. Trackers of near-Earth objects find this unlikely. While this is the first time something has accidentally crashed on the Moon, we, as humans, have a history of littering on our satellite. In addition to several unsuccessful probes and spacecraft that crashed into the Moon, NASA also deorbited several third stages from Saturn V rockets.

-A series of several Solar storms are expected at the beginning of this week. These will all be in the G1 to G2 range (G5 being storms with the greatest potential for damage). A recent coronal mass ejection from the Sun caused these flare ups of electromagnetic energy, which can cause radio interference and occasionally issues with the power grid. Storms occurred on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Another effect of the storms is an intensification of aurora activity. The Northern Lights could be visible as far South as New York due to the storms. Scientists report that the Sun typically produces upwards of 2000 Solar storms a year and that we are actually in a period of low Solar activity at the moment.

February 2022

-Royal Caribbean launch-blocked a Space-X rocket. It’s just what happens when you stick a giant cruise ship in the way of a scheduled lift off. Space-X, like any of the other independent agencies working on becoming the preferred way into orbit, has to follow numerous safety guidelines. One of these is an exclusion zone designed to save ships at sea from potential falling debris. When the third largest cruise ship in the world ends up where it’s not supposed to be, officials had to cancel the launch originally scheduled for Sunday January 30^th. In fact, between weather and other incidents, SpaceX didn’t get its Falcon 9 into orbit until Monday night. The Italian Space Agency’s satellite was successfully inserted into its new orbit just a little late, where it will measure shipping traffic and climate change.

-Privately funded ventures are now part of the future of space exploration and a new company called Axiom Space not only has big dreams but also big plans already in motion. Their first mission will be on the ISS. Ferried there by a SpaceX Dragon capsule, the four-man team intends to conduct a number of ambitious experiments during their ten day stay. Lead by Michael Lopez-Alegria, an experienced astronaut and the Vice President of Axiom Space, the team will look into Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular syndrome, an effect that causes a loss of visual acuity among astronauts, senescent cells which do not die at the same rate as other cells and are potentially linked to aging effects, as well as online activities to be shared with Earth- based students. As reported before in WTS, Axiom Space has other ventures in mind such as creating their own Low Earth Orbit space station, so obviously a visit to the ISS will allow them to study a successful model. The team is currently in training and is expected to be sent up on March 31^st. Originally, the launch was planned for late 2021 and the team would also have included Tom Cruise and a camera crew who planned on shooting in the ISS. Various delays have obviously changed plans. However, a successful mission would be a good sign for other companies seeking to become involved in space ventures. With NASA considering decommissioning the ISS in the future, finding more corporations interested in space exploration could allow them to not only cut down on their expenditures but also possibly farm off the station to continue its operation.

-Space Anemia. Yes, it is about as bad as it sounds, and it’s been an ongoing problem for astronauts. For unknown reasons, the blood in the veins of space travelers tends to break down more quickly than naturally. In ordinary anemia the issue is when the rate of death of cells far exceeds the birth of new ones. The result is hemolysis, where the blood cell breaks down and releases the hemoglobin, the oxygen carrying agent, into the body. But why is it happening to Astronauts? It’s a proven fact that spending an extended periods in space causes a lowering of bone density. Inside the bones is the marrow which produces red blood cells. How this all ties together is puzzling researchers. After all, long trips, such as Mars missions could be a real problem is space anemia cannot be controlled

January 2022

“All I got was a rock.” China maybe echoing the sentiments of one Charles Brown after trick or treating. Their new rover, Yutu 2, after trundling off of its lander on the dark side of the Moon in 2019, had a look around. After months of exploring, something came into view that certainly didn’t look like it belonged there. A strange block with a dark rectangular shape on the front appeared on the horizon, and it puzzled the Chinese scientists. Immediately, after sharing the image, all sorts of speculation began to rage about the object and its purpose and origins. Since, they had a mystery on their hands, the scientists decided to move in for a closer look, which on the Moon is easier considered than done. When it was spotted in November of 2021, the Mystery Hut, as it became known, lay about 260 feet distant from Yutu 2. It would take the next two and half months for the rover to work its way around the debris on the surface of the Moon to make a more detailed observation. At which point the mystery became a lot less mysterious and definitely more common place. The Hut was a rock. More than likely, it was thrown up by an impact. But why with all of the technology that we have do we keep on seeing these strange things in unlikely places and assuming they must be something of great import? Why do we keep seeing the Face on Mars? Or the rat or squirrel next to a rock? For that matter why canals? It’s same thing that happens in internet memes like putting googly eyes on geodes, so they remind us of the Cookie obsessed muppet from Sesame Street. We see Jesus in toast and other things because our brains are constantly searching for patterns. We’re wired that way from our deep past. Back in humanity’s hunter/gatherer days, we were most likely to survive if we could pick out prey or predator animals from the leaves in the forest or amongst the fields of grass. We’re still looking for patterns and those who has design logos are well aware of this. There is a psychological phenomenon, know as Pareidolia, the makes it likely for people to discern patterns when the stimulus is random. Faces are a common result of this. But it can also lead to finding something ordinary, like an open room in a structure very far away on our satellite. We are trying to find a way to connect with something we’ve never seen before, and our psychology may be taking advantage of us. Yutu 2 continues its mission of exploration and has already found an odd substance that resembled a gel. This also turned out to be the result of an impact which melted lunar rock into the strange material. It will only be a matter of time until it comes across something else new and fascinating. In the meantime, we’ll become enthralled by the two storms on the bottom of Jupiter that look like eyes…

November 2021

NASA, and the rest of us, should be worried about the rocks in the sky, because eventually they tend to tumble down. Comet Encke, or rather it’s remains, provided a rare “earthgrazer” on November 9th that traveled through the atmosphere for about 186 miles in a long streak of fire. Sadly, overcast weather limited the number of people who could see the meteor. In the Fall, the Earth’s orbit brings it through a haze of rocks thrown off the by the comet after it fell apart. Most infalling material burns up in the atmosphere too quickly to be noticed or provide any danger, but sometimes things make it through. The earthgrazers are a bit more spectacular since they are not headed straight for the planet, but rather skimming the atmosphere as the name implies. In rare cases, the incoming rock may actually even escape back into space. The clock is ticking with regards to the likelihood of a major impact – it’s only a matter of time. While the dance of the planets about the Sun may seem an orderly ballet, the influence of their masses on the numerous asteroids and other rocks in the Solar System is much less tidy. Massive Jupiter moving thought its orbit disrupts asteroids whose new wandering paths can lead them toward planetary collisions. So, NASA started looking for ways to protect the Earth from potential disaster. Numerous plans were considered, and a mission called DART was put together to study the feasibility of using an impact to redirect an incoming asteroid. DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is set to launch of November 23^rd on its way for an eventual rendezvous with the asteroid Dimorphos in October of 2022. Why choose Dimorphos? It is conveniently in orbit around yet another asteroid called Didymos. The plan is to slam DART, which is about the size of a Coke machine into Dimorphos, which is about the size of an Egyptian pyramid, in the hopes that the collision would move the asteroid enough that, were it headed toward the Earth, the deflection could cause it to veer away. Working in a two-body system makes similarities easier to consider and also scientists can watch what happens to any of the dust or debris that is kicked up by the impact. In order to get a good view of the proceedings, ten days before the event, DART will drop a cubesat to provide video of the impact. It is hoped that the experiment will show that a controlled effort like this will be effective rather than a more chaotic one, such as attempting to blow up the asteroid. A solution such as that could cause a rain of debris to fall on the Earth or put even more material into Low Earth Orbit creating navigational and safety issues. This is a real concern as the amount of free-floating material in orbit continues to rise. Recently, the Russian government decided to test an anti-satellite weapon on one of their defunct spy orbiters. While the test was a success, it created a cloud of debris that the International Space Station swept through putting the astronauts on an emergency alert and making them shelter in their vehicles. The test created more than 1500 trackable pieces of debris and hundreds more below that size. Now we need to find a way to deflect that, or scientists say it could be a danger for over a hundred years.

October 2021

In the Cold War days, it was typical to blame the Russians for quite a few things. Recently they have been responsible for a couple of slip ups with regards to the International Space Station. Last Friday, a test firing of the rocket motor of the Soyuz capsule attached to the station continued for longer than it should have and tipped the station out of its ordinary orientation. Astronauts were ordered to follow emergency procedures and with NASA and Roscosmos working on the issue, the station was re-oriented after 30 minutes. The capsule had brought up a Russian film crew and actress who were shooting a movie on the station. The Soyuz and its passengers returned safely to Earth on Sunday. It’s interesting to note that the ISS is also taking advantage of the commercial opportunities of space as well as Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virigin Galactic. But that’s not the first time that something like this has happened. As a matter of fact, in July, the Russian Nauka module, a 23-ton science lab, fired its thrusters moving the station out of alignment. Astronauts began firing thrusters on the service module in order to counter the force. Once again NASA and Roscosmos went to work and were able to re-establish control and resume station keeping for the ISS. The football field sized structure was jogged 45 degrees out of alignment by the incident. Nauka itself had a history of issues before docking with the ISS. Originally designed in 1995, it faced launch delays and reconfigurations after missing its original 2007 insertion slot. Even after finally being launched, Nauka, after successfully opening its solar panels, ran into communication and thrust problems. Roscosmos came up with a work around using the secondary thruster system and the science module continued on its journey. While some of these recent issues can be attributed to Russian spacecraft, it should also be noted that Russia is also responsible for many of the successes of the ISS as well, including pioneering the modular design of the station. Their own space station, Mir, which operated from 1986 through 2001, was build up piece by piece. It was continuously occupied for twelve years, typically with a crew of three. Russia, along with several other European countries, also helped China establish their new space station, Tiangong, in April. On October 16, the second three-person crew was sent up to Tiangong. During their stay, the crew will accomplish several spacewalks into to continue work on the station, giving their female crew member, Wang Yaping, the opportunity to become the first Chinese woman spacewalker.  Two more modules are expected to be added to the station over the course of the next two years, Mengtian and Wentian, attaching to the Tianhe living module. Coming back around to the ISS, it is possible that the station could be retired as soon as 2024. NASA hopes that commercial interests would then take over similar developments in Low Earth Orbit and they would back these remaining as an anchor service.

September 2021

Inspiration4, SpaceX’s next flight is an interesting mix of science and propaganda. This mission’s four passengers are going it alone without an expert along for three days in orbit about the Earth – or are they really? The mission commander is a billionaire who paid for the flight and then proceeded to pick three others for his crew. They then went through rigorous training to prep for the mission. Oddly, the press continues to refer to these folks as “civilians,” which seems to imply that they are perhaps less prepared for what might occur. Unlike NASA, SpaceX can turn quickly in terms of preparation since Inspiration4 was put together only six months ago. SpaceX also points out that their Crew capsule is mostly automated, so the “crew” are really expected to be passengers. On the other hand, Jared Isaacson is a pilot familiar with many high-speed aircraft having flown with the Black Diamond Jet team. Geophysicist, Sian Proctor is assigned the pilot position. She’s participated in several NASA projects including the four-month Mars simulation and tried out for the astronaut program in 2009. Chris Semprowski will be a mission specialist (he’s a data engineer) and he got his seat after a friend won one a sweepstakes and gave it to him. Hayley Arceneaux, from St. Jude’s Hospital, is onboard as the medical officer and will become the youngest American in space so far as well as the first with a prosthesis since parts of her leg bones were replaced in her battle with bone cancer. It should be pointed out that this mission is also designed to be a fund raiser for St. Jude’s Hospital as well as a flight to continue the focus on space tourism and private industry spaceflight. This is SpaceX’s response to recent flights from Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. While they continue to work in the practical realm of moving astronauts and specialists to the ISS as well as providing supplies, Musk’s company certainly has never forgotten the space tourism angle. Inspiration4 will fly to a higher orbit than the ISS, although its mission will be less complex since there will be no docking maneuvers and orbital matching. Already, SpaceX has plans for further space tourism and they include partnering with another company called Axiom, which has already chartered flights that could start as soon as January. These Crew Dragon flights will include a former NASA astronaut such as Peggy Whitson who holds the record for the American with the most time in space at 665 days as the expert on the spot. The destination is the ISS. But Axiom is thinking big, their ultimate goal is to have their launch system and eventually their own space station so that they can do their space tourism without the assistance of SpaceX. Much like the Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flights, the launch this Wednesday night will garner a great deal of attention. Success will point the way towards more investment in the growing industry. (In a side note, Virgin Galactic, while having successfully pulled off their mission, ran into some trouble as several caution and warning lights went off as the VSS Unity drifted from the planned course. The pilots were able to recover, and the New Yorker magazine later ran an expose article on the event.)

August 2021

-Whatever happened to the other space capsule program? We’ve been seeing success after success for the SpaceX Crew Dragon, but what happened to Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner? NASA decided from the start that it did not want to go with a single provider for its crewed space missions going forward. 2016 found the organization doling out 6.8 billion dollars to start the program in an unequal split to Boeing (getting almost twice as much of the pie) and SpaceX. However, since then, the tables have turned the other way as SpaceX continues to outpace its competitor leaving NASA with a situation they didn’t want. Recent news indicates that more troubles are occurring for Boeing. December 2019 found them trying to send an unmanned capsule to the International Space Station. An error in engine sequence firing caused it to miss its docking with the station. After that, Boeing continued to work on ironing out the bugs. On the 3^rd of August, Boeing was ready to try again with the capsule set up on top of an Atlas V rocket. This time valves in the capsule’s propulsion system were stuck closed. Boeing workers spent ten days attempting to salvage the launch and, on the 13th, accepted defeat. At this point, the capsule with be brought back to the factory in an attempt to discover the issues at the heart of the stuck valves. This also means that Boeing will once again have to work through the scheduling problems of acquiring another rocket and time on the launch pad to try another test. On the other hand, SpaceX has demonstrated that it can accomplish the required tasks with the Crew Dragon Capsule. After logging multiple successful flights, the company can continue to refine its program while Boeing is dealing with the Starliner’s issues. It could be that in the future NASA may decided that it is fine with just one capsule. It should be noted that Boeing has over 4 thousand orders for planes and many defense contracts that it has agreed to fulfill, so failure of this project is definitely not a serious blow to the company.

-NASA was playing “where’s rover?” with recent images taken by the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. On its 11^th flight, Ingenuity began to do part of its mission to help map out the terrain ahead of the Perseverance. Flights of the helicopter were initially proof of the concept and also helped the mission controllers to discover the best methods of using the drone like device. Now that they are more confident it is capabilities, Ingenuity will start getting down to work. The recent flight with a duration of a little over 2 minutes took the helicopter up almost 40 feet in the air and not quite a third of a mile ahead of the rover. From this height, NASA scientist are able to get a better look at the terrain in the rover’s immediate area and can look for areas that might be difficult to drive through or perhaps are worth a second glance due to interesting features. Before this, mapping would have been done by one of the orbiters and local views available only at the level Perseverance could raise its camera. Now the two can work in tandem for greater efficiency. The area that of Jezero Crater that Ingenuity flew over is known as South Seitah and NASA scientists expect to do at least one more overflight during the mission.

July 2021

-We’ve spent quite a bit of money on putting things in orbit, including recent flights by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. We also put satellites up to stay in orbit, however a Scottish company, Skyrora has plans to snatch one back. Skyrora has its sights set on the Prospero satellite, the only British made and British launched device. Originally put into orbit by the Black Arrow Rocket program, which was spun off from the missile defense program, in 1971 from Australia, Prospero represents a historic achievement of the UK. Using a rocket fueled by kerosene, made from non-recyclable plastics, the company definitely has an environmental outlook that considers not only the Earth but also space. Skyrora is one of many companies looking at ways to mediate the excess junk in orbit and it recently received a grant of 3 million euros from the European Space Agency to aid in development. The task itself is rather daunting and the company has asked for ideas and help. A possible partner or contributor is Astroscale, from Japan, which is already involved in a space junk removal program currently in progress with its ELSA-d mission. It’s very easy to look at this as a good stunt to gain public approval, but let’s look beyond that for a moment and consider the next step. If Skyrora is successful in locating, capturing and retrieving Prospero, then they can consider the next step – going into the satellite grabbing business. There are constant growing concerns about the way near Earth space is filling up with junk that includes defunct satellites. Most of these have no way to set up a controlled re-entry to ensure that they do not come down over populated areas. Consider the recent event of the Chinese piece of space junk which kept sky watchers busy until it luckily fell into the Indian Ocean. Three quarters of the Earth is covered by water, but that other quarter has a fair amount of humanity on it.

-Doing the work does pay off – an amateur astronomer has discovered another new moon for Jupiter by review previous astronomical images taken by several telescopes. Kai Ly found an asteroid that travels in tandem with a larger previously identified moon Carme. Jupiter’s has plenty in orbit around it from large moons like the Galilean satellites to many smaller asteroid type bodies. Carme moves in a retrograde orbit in opposition to the direction of Jupiter’s rotation and also a sharp tilt versus the plane of Jupiter’s orbit. At about 14 miles in diameter, Carme is the largest object in the group associated with it. Ly has found a new companion, as yet unnamed. By reviewing information gathered by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in 2003, Ly located the new moon and then also compared this with views from the Subaru telescope. Comparisons revealed that the object is bound to Jupiter by gravity. NASA says that the currently designated EJc0061 while eventually be given a name ending in “e”, indicating a retrograde orbit moon. Ly was given credit for the discovery in a recent Sky and Telescope magazine and described their work as ‘a summer hobby’.

June 2021

NATO

During a recent meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization the members took up the cause of responding to attacks in space. There is a part of the treaty stating an attack on any member is the same as an attack on all members. During the course of the summit the leaders intend to expand the definition in their “all for one” clause that will make it clear they will defend form space-based attacks as well (you may in fact want to WATCH THE SKIES).

PennLive Article

NASA NASA has stated they intend to put humans back on the moon within this decade. While flights to the international space station (and other parts of orbit) have become quite common in the news, there have been no humans to step foot on the moon since the 1970s. In order to get to the moon, a significant increase in power is needed. NASA has been working toward getting an appropriately sized rocket ready to go. The first version of this new rocket will be called Block 1 SLS and will be taller than the Statue of Liberty. Personally, I can’t wait to see a monster like that launch! Check out the indepth coverage from the BBC here: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54156798

May 2021

With the loss of the Arecibo Radio Telescope, NASA may want to reconsider an idea that was highlighted in the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program – using a crater on the far side of the Moon as a replacement. The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope or LCRT is the brainchild of Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, scientist with an interest in robotics. Chosen for phase one of the NIAC program, Saptarshi received $120,000 to work on developing the concept. Why the far side of the Moon? Well, we humans are a bit noisy, the ionosphere of Earth, and even Solar radio interference makes it difficult to measure radio waves with longer wavelengths – the type necessary to see far back into the early days of the universe. With a crater one already has a shape similar to the Arecibo Telescope in order to gather and focus incoming radio waves. But how do you construct something like this on the Moon and deal with the fact that the surface of the crater will never be perfectly smooth. That’s where Saptarshi’s robotics background comes into play. He’s designed a set of robots called DuAxels who can string up a giant spider’s web to catch signals. The LCRT is expected to be 3-5 kilometers in diameter created from a mesh of cables strung by the DuAxels. Unsurprisingly, the robots consist of a two axels and tires of a ribbed open construction that will about it traverse rough terrain. The mission would play out something like this: first, after identifying an appropriate crater, two landers would be sent to the Moon; the telescope bearing lander is sent to the center of the target crater; the second land bearing the DuAxels lands outside of the crater and then deploys the robots; the telescope lander opens to release guide wires; DuAxels move to appropriate positions, anchor and then send one of their axel assemblies into the crater to the telescope lander; these axels attach themselves to the guide wires and are then hoisted by the anchored axel above, all the while playing out the wire mesh of the telescope from inside the lander. Concept versions of the DuAxels are already being tested and improved. Several other obstacles need to be overcome as the project moves forward. The identification of a suitable target crater means scouring maps of the Lunar surface trying to not only find a well-situated crater, but one with the classic rounded shape and if possible, less internal structure and smoother terrain. The telescope itself will be about the size of a solar sail. What would be the best construction material to achieve the maximum sensitivity? Also, how can the telescope be placed inside the lander so that it can be pulled out and deployed by simultaneous towing from the DuAxels, while avoiding tangles and damage? Obviously, this is why the LCRT is only at the Phase one of the selection process by the NIAC board, but the idea is exciting and could provide unique scientific observations.

April 2021

-SpaceX is given the green light to go to the Moon in a historic decision by NASA. The Human Landing System or HLS project has been given solely to SpaceX. In other instances, NASA has kept other companies competing for cargo capsules to resupply the ISS and also in the development of the Crew Program. That’s where some things went wrong and possibly influenced this new decision. The spaceship to carry crew was continually denied adequate funding by congress holding back both Boeing and SpaceX. Boeing still is behind and cost almost 60% more than the Crew Dragon. Cost is definitely a factor regarding the HLS and SpaceX actually adjusted their bid for the program to 2.89 billion, thoroughly undercutting both Blue Origin and Dynetics, the other contenders. It appears NASA is betting that it won’t receive the proper amount of funding to be able to run more than one contender for the HLS. However, by choosing SpaceX, they are backing the only corporation currently actively testing the hardware to accomplish the task. It’s also because out of 3.4 billion requested for their budget, congress has given NASA 850 million for the current year. It is expected that SpaceX will be tasked with landing astronauts on the Moon in this decade.

-While the current mission on Mars is enjoying successes, another one is jeopardy. In 2018, the Mars Lander mission came down in Elysium Planitia. Since then, it has successfully completed detection of Mars quakes, dust devils, and worked to help measure the planet’s core. But the weather on Mars has the same sort of unpredictability as on the Earth and Winter is becoming hard on the Lander. Other missions have fortunately been experiencing winds that tend to clear dust from their solar panels, but the Mars Lander hasn’t. That means that the Lander hasn’t been able to properly recharge. In February, the panels were only operating at 27% of their capacity. Mission control is considering putting the Lander into hibernation mode until the situation changes. Right now, everything is tied to the weather. A strong storm could damage the Lander or clear the dust from the panels. The Mole portion of the operation has already been shut down. The ground at the site turned out to be harder than expected and the drill was not working as planned. Scientists are of course disappointed at this failure, since 10 years of research went into the development of the device. One of the primary pieces of information that scientists were looking for was the heat flow from the interior of Mars. This could reveal how Mars has changed over time, some of the structure of the interior, and also the quantity of radioactive materials present inside the planet. These could allow scientists to compare the nature of the interior of the planet with what they know about Earth. However, since the Mole does require a fair amount of power and given the current situation, it makes no sense to continue. The arm of the Lander is functioning properly though and if things change, scientists are happy to have it available in the future. The next two to three months are critical to the continued survival of the Mars Lander.

March 2021

It may be true that a lot of thought didn’t go into the name, but Farfarout now holds the title of most distant piece of planetary real estate in the system. This little icy object is 12.2 billion miles from the Sun, or four times farther out than Pluto. Observations since 2018 have confirmed its planetary status. At 250 miles in diameter, it definitely smaller than Pluto, so why are we throwing around the “p” word here? One of the reasons that Pluto was demoted was the fact that it was not independent in its orbit. Now all of the planets have some sort of interaction gravitationally but maintain discrete orbits. Pluto however is tied to the orbit of Neptune and its gravitational influence, so therefore it loses the label. Farfarout, in its thousand-year orbit, is not under the consistent influence of another planetary body and therefore up for consideration. Using the Gemini North and Magellan telescopes, astronomers continue to learn more about Farfarout’s orbit. Right now, we know that it travels a rather unusual path the swings out to 175 astronomical units and back in again to 27 AU. That puts it inside the orbit off Neptune. Once again, the gas giant is throwing its weight around. The eccentricity of the orbit leads scientists to believe that Farfarout has run afoul of Neptune in the past and is most likely to do so again in the future. Since it is so far out from the Sun, solar radiation is unlikely to have boiled off certain volatiles which convinces astronomers Farfarout has an icy makeup. The discovery of Farfarout was part of an ongoing investigation into the outer solar system in an attempt to discover the mythical ninth planet astronomers suspect of rearranging the orbital dynamics of the bodies in the outer reaches of the solar system. This mystery world would need to be four times as massive as Earth in order to account for the effects observed in the Kuiper belt. Planet Nine could take anywhere from 10k to 20k years to circle about the Sun. Amusingly enough, Farfarout got that moniker because it is actually farther out than Farout, also discovered in 2018.

Mining on the Moon could be a bit more shocking than we imagined. We know that the regolith of our satellite could contain useful materials, but how do we get at them? In the past such ideas as thermal ablation, or the heating of rocks, in order to release water were considered. The resultant steam would then be cooled, and condensation allowed the water to be captured. But idea, proposed by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts or NIAC, would instead send electricity across two electrodes forming arcs of lightning to release the water. This method can also be used in order to free various metals as well. The electricity would break down the sought-after materials in to ionized particles. The generated electric fields could be used to set these aside in resource chambers. Experimenters are working on a system that could extract 22k pounds of water in a year. Two challenges are immediately apparent to this new technique. It takes a lot of energy to create the arc of electricity necessary to create the disassociation necessary. Secondly, the process would need to be automated for the time being, as there is no workforce on the moon to over see the venture. The scientists continue to pursue the best methodology developing a technology that could eventually make it not only feasible to live on the moon but develop long term bases there. This could allow provide a launching point for subsequent Mars missions.

February 2021

What if Mars threw a party and everyone showed up? Right now, three missions from countries around the world are gearing up to begin exploring the Red Planet after successfully making the journey from Earth. (It’s not a big surprise they are all there at the same time, since there are few windows of opportunity to travel the shortest distance between the two worlds).

First to arrive, was the United Arab Emirates Hope mission, which entered Martian orbit on 2/9/21. Hope is designed to do in-depth research into the planet’s atmosphere. The orbiter will spend two years considering how the atmosphere has changed and allowed the loss of surface water. This is the UAE’s first interplanetary mission and was executed in half the time of a typical one and at half the cost. Riding atop an H-IIA rocket of Japanese design, Hope was launched on 7/19/2020, spending seven months journeying to the Red Planet. At last Hope has settled into its first orbit. Here it will power up various sensors and perform readiness tests. The UAE expects that by May they will be ready to move Hope to its permanent orbit and begin observations in earnest.

             China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft entered Martian orbit on 2/10/21 and some of the subsystem cameras sent back video that showed the planet’s surface and the curve of its horizon. The high-powered cameras will come into play later and so will the lander and rover which are expected to be sent down between May and June after a suitable landing spot has been determined somewhere in the area of Utopia Planetia. China has practiced for this with three Moon landings by unmanned probes. Both the orbiter and the rover will utilize radar to investigate the surface. The lander is also equipped with a panoramic camera. Tianwen-1 is China’s first interplanetary mission as well.

A little late to the ball is NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, expected to land on the surface on 2/18 /21 at about 3:55PM. The new lander will be settled down with a sky crane landing similar to Curiosity. There’s lots of moving parts involved in the descent and NASA called the descent by Curiosity “seven minutes of terror”. Everything has to go just right and is all controlled by the lander since the time lag would be too great. Perseverance is ten foot by nine and seven feet tall. The mission’s destination is Jezero Crater. Underneath the lander is a unique experimental solar powered rotorcraft called Ingenuity. This a first for Martian exploration and could lead to new ways to retrieve scientific data. Finally, the lander will also drill rock cores and deposit them where they can be retrieved by later missions.

Mars has been visited by probes from six different countries now: the U.S., the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India, China and the United Arab Emirates. With every mission, we come closer and closer to unlocking the mysteries of the Red Planet.

JANUARY 2021

-In an attempt to going one better than landing your rocket stages independently, SpaceX now wants to catch the booster stage of their Super Heavy rocket at the landing tower so that it can be quickly redeployed. People were skeptical about the remote landing option, so of course this new concept is causing so raised eyebrows. The idea is to use the arm on the launch tower to catch the grid fins on the booster. That sounds a little ridiculous at first, but let’s also consider that the Super Heavy will probably be coming in under a controlled descent, so that instead of the arm catching the full weight, it will instead be a guide to allow the rocket to land where it started. You might think, how can the arm take the blast from the rocket exhaust? Don’t forget that the arm also was there when the rocket lifted off as well. Consider this, if it were to be accomplished, the booster for your next launch could be ready as soon as an hour after the first launch. At least that is what SpaceX is shooting for. The Super Heavy is the workhorse to get the Starship module into orbit. From there, the Starship module is designed to carry crew, freight and more for missions to the ISS, the Moon and hopefully also to Mars. SpaceX is looking forward to a point where the efficiency of being able to quickly relaunch, will allow the to create a schedule to allow multiple missions to occur daily. This is the kind of thinking that can enable orbital and lunar settlements who would require restocking in a timely fashion.

-After the development of the nuclear bomb, where to test the resulting weapons became a very important questions. Several small islands in the South Pacific had the dubious honor of Earthbound testing as well as a few aerial tests. A few eyes turned farther afield, and the Moon was briefly considered as a test area. Let’s leave aside the issue of the cost of a rocket to launch the device, there are still plenty of good reasons to drop the idea before you start. The most important being the lack of atmosphere. While the blast is occurring, it is constantly fighting against the pressure of our atmosphere. This causes a number of things to happen, the least of which is limiting the potential range of the effects of the weapon. The pressure of the air also causes the resulting fireball to rise up into the air (hence the resulting mushroom cloud). On the other hand, the damaging shockwave traveling through the air causes additional damage. The oxygen feeds and sustains fires that were caused. Since the Moon has no atmosphere, these two last items do not occur. However, the absence of air means that the explosion is not lifted above the surface and instead propagates outward. The blast wave continues longer and farther proceeding to melt the dust of the lunar surface into glass. Since the radiation of the blast is not damped down by an atmosphere is continues longer and farther with higher intensity. The lower gravity of the moon means that material shot up into the air would not only eventually fall back down onto the moon great distances from the origin point, it would also fall down to Earth (although most would burn up in the atmosphere). The smaller size of the Moon means that the resulting shockwaves could be very damaging to anything on the surface. All in all, not a good idea. German science channel Kurzgesagt has a very cool video that covers the issues of a lunar nuclear explosion with oddly cheerful animation.                        https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60

November 2020

NASA was all set for a front row seat to a collision between a pair of neutron stars and got way more than they bargained for, a kilonova. Once a gamma ray beacon alerted astronomers in May, they made preparations to observe using Keck Observatory, the Very Large Array, the Swift Observatory in orbit and the Hubble Space Telescope. Initial results immediately showed an increase in the infrared radiation. Astronomers have believed for some time that neutron star collisions were responsible for seeding heavier elements throughout the universe, as well as producing gamma ray bursts. But the observations indicated something else was happening – the collision formed a magnetar. These rare stars have immensely powerful magnetic fields due to their mass and the speed at which they rotate. Previously, it was believed that the explosive deaths of massive stars could create objects with excessive rotational speeds creating massive magnetic fields, the magnetars. These are the results of a situation where things were not massive enough to create a black hole but still beyond the situations that produce typical neutron stars. The further a star is compacted, the further it pulls inward. This process also boosts the stars angular momentum and its spin, which then increases its magnetic field. Here’s a look at how much of a magnetic field we are talking about. Right here on Earth, our magnetic field works out to 1 gauss. When we stick you into an MRI, that machine requires about 10,000 gauss to operate properly. At our current technology we can’t make machines that generate anything over several hundred thousand gauss because the resulting field causes things to break down. The typical neutron star, named because its nature breaks down matter into its component parts until neutrons are the most stable unit, has a field that measures a trillion gauss. At last we come to the magnetar, whose field strength ups things by 1000 or 1 quadrillion gauss. We’ve heard about the hostile environments around black holes, whose gravity disassembles matter. Well, the magnetar’s field causes molecules to unzip at the bond level taking apart chemistry. Atoms stretch out since the charges within them respond to magnetic fields and we’re not even going to mention the radiation a magnetar tends to throw off. Until now, no one really suspected that a neutron star merger could possibly create a magnetar, but the evidence seems to bear it out. Overall, the energy put out by the collision was ten times greater than a typical gamma ray burster, phenomena that can be seen in some of the farthest galaxies. The Hubble observatory was able to take exposures over time that indicate the explosive event was gradually cooling. Data is being reviewed now with the intent to publish about this amazing event.

October 2020

-Last month we talked about NASA paying money for Moon dust and this month, they are after something a bit more rare – asteroid dust. The OSIRIS-Rex mission, on October 20^th, took a historic step towards understanding asteroids and the formation of our solar system. This project has been one of slow and steady progress. Launched in 2016, the probe was sent toward the asteroid Bennu. This is a small rock about 500 meters in diameter covered in large boulders, some close to the size of a house. In 2018 OSIRIS-Rex arrived and set up station keeping. Since then, its been going over the surface of the asteroid in fine detail looking for the perfect spot for a snatch and grab of material. Of course, the team is also looking for interesting samples as well. They settled on a crater named Nightingale because it appears recent, which means that material there will not have been exposed to cosmic rays and other radiation altering its composition. Also, it makes sense that a crater would possibly be more level than the rest of the rugged exterior of Bennu. Originally, the team hoped to have an area of 50m to set up the landing, but conditions left them with an area only 8m wide. Suddenly, it became like parking the van sized probe in an area about a little over two parking spaces. Not only that, there is an 18-minute delay in transmission rate, so the entire maneuver has to be performed by the onboard computer to allow for necessary last-minute corrections. At 6:12PM, OSIRIS-Rex zoomed in to allow its sampling arm to contact the surface of Bennu. During the ten seconds of contact, pressurized nitrogen was blasted into the area to stir up dust that was then picked up the by the sampling head. The NASA team hopes to have collected about 5.3 ounces but could have also gotten as much as 8 pounds of material. Pictures of the collection portion of the mission are expected to become available on 10/21/20 or thereafter. The hitch is it expected to take up to 10 days for NASA to determine their haul. Fortunately, if things come up short, there is a backup site. Finally, if that also fails, there are a total of three cannisters onboard, so a third area could also be attempted. In a perfect world, with a full collection bin, OSIRIS-Rex would be set to begin its journey home in March 2021. That puts its arrival in September of 2023. From there, samples would be sent down from orbit in a specially designed return capsule. Eager scientists will then be able to delve into the secrets of Bennu’s composition. OSIRIS-Rex is the first asteroid collection mission by NASA. In the past, two Japanese missions have performed similar tasks and returned smaller samples from other asteroids.  

September 2020

-NASA is willing to pay good money for dirt, but they are going to be very specific about where it’s coming from. So, before you plan on setting up a deal, get ready to take a trip to the moon. It is a clever way of encouraging private companies to continue their pursuit of lunar exploration – put a price tag on returning with soil samples. Jim Bridenstine, a NASA Administrator, explained that they were willing to shell out the money just to prove that the acquiring it could be done. Here’s how it works. NASA will pay out $15k to $25 based on the size of the sample transported to them from 1.8 ounces up to 18 ounces. Companies will receive 10% at signing, 10% after the launch of the crafts and 80% upon delivery. NASA isn’t even requiring that these entrepreneurs bring the dirt back down from orbit. It must merely be deposited at a site of NASA’s choosing. Remember, the idea here is to spur the exploration and industry. NASA has plenty of Moon rocks since the Apollo project brought back more than 840 pounds. Of course, any successful company doesn’t have to sell all of their collected material solely to NASA – they can sell it to anyone. Private collectors will certainly shell out money for a piece of the Moon. Luring private companies into mining the Moon is just a part of the Artemis Program which is designed to establish a permanent Lunar presence, with the hopeful timeline of completion before the end of the 20’s.

-SETI’s search could finally be recognized as benefiting all. New funding has spurred new growth in an astronomical field that’s been in existence since the 60’s – the search for other intelligent life. SETI has been quiet for some time and its research has been tied to mostly philanthropic donations allowing the purchase of limited amounts of radio telescope time with which to search for the evidence of other life. Breakthrough Listen is a new project, privately funded and designed to run for ten years with 100 million dollars in funding. Now there are plenty of opportunities to observe and that’s creating some changes. Breakthrough posts its results in public forums, which means that astronomers who are looking for other things than intelligent life can also take advantage of the data. Those looking at fast radio bursts and searching for dark matter particles don’t have to hunt for observational time, they can review the work of Breakthrough. The program has also seen a turn about in terms of attitudes. Now some journals are accepting their papers written about potential signatures of technology in other star systems, whereas these publications often considered SETI workers cranks or amateurs. Now their available data proves otherwise.

AUGUST 2020

The latest rover has a companion that will take us into the skies of Mars. On February 18^th, 2021, the Perseverance rover and its companion rotocopter, Ingenuity are expected to land on the red planet. After a six month journey the two will begin exploring. The first challenge Ingenuity faces is the density of the Martian atmosphere. Perhaps we should say the lack of density, since the atmosphere is about 1% of ours on Earth. So, your quadcopter isn’t going to cut it. Rotating at 2400 RPM, Ingenuity’s 4-foot counter rotating blades have been tested in a chamber at JPL approximating the conditions the copter will face. At only four pounds it’s light enough to be easily lifted by the blades. Hopefully, a successful flight could pave the way for inclusion of aerial probes with other missions. A paired series could see drones scouting the best paths for rovers as well as studying land formations and weather from a unique viewpoint.

DragRacer Satellites and Terminator Tape really are just clever use of monikers to entice you, but the concept they are testing could certainly have value in the future. Millennium Space Systems has come up with an idea that uses an attached tether to speed up the re-entry of a satellite once its life is over. The duo of satellites known as Alchemy (bearing the tether bearing one) and Augury (the baseline satellite) will be hopefully be launched this fall. Augury will be allowed to deorbit unassisted and is expected to take as much as nine years to re-enter and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Alchemy on the other hand will deploy a 230-foot-long tether and is expected to return in as little as 45 days. Both are cubesats, so they are small and will easily burn up in the atmosphere. If this works, future satellites may have a tether integrated into them to allow them to be de-orbited much more quickly than merely depending on gravity. Doing this helps to limit the amount of free-floating uncontrolled junk in Low Earth Orbit, a growing concern to numerous space agencies.

JUNE 2020

Sometimes the experiments done over our heads, really are a bit over our heads. Astronauts on the International Space Station have successfully created a Bose-Einstein condensate – a form of exotic matter. If that sounds familiar, but you’re not sure why, think back to Spin State by Chris Moriarty that we read a while ago. There Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) were being mined for their quantum connections allowing instantaneous communication. We are a long way from that, but by studying the reactions of the condensates, we can observe quantum interactions we have had to infer before. First, let’s consider what the condensates are composed of. They are formed when a low density gas of bosons is forced to almost absolute zero (bosons are force carrying subatomic particles like photons or gluons, as opposed to particles exhibiting physical aspects we are more familiar with like quarks composing protons or neutrons). Most of the bosons end up at the lowest quantum state and suddenly events which were previously only known about through complicated maths become observable. The BECs are sometimes referred to as the fifth state of matter. The first BEC was created in 1995, but because it was done on Earth, only existed for milliseconds. The ISS’s experiment, using equipment known as the Cold Atom Lab was able to create BECs that lasted for more than a second. So why is it easier in orbit? Microgravity, that’s why. Gravity itself gets in the way of measuring something as small as the bosons making up the BEC. While the condensate allows scientists to observe quantum effects, it’s really not helpful unless they can make accurate observations. One of the simplest effects observed is the interference between the wave-particle duality. Not only that, but it takes less energy to trap the BEC particles in orbit and the colder the temperatures in the experiment, the more pronounced the quantum reactions. The Cold Atom Lab was sent into orbit in May of 2018 and it certainly sounds as if its five-year expected run time is paying off in a big way. Some of the things we could develop as a result of these experiments include exceptionally sensitive quantum detectors, which in turn could be used for navigation or monitoring planetary gravity. BECs are a very specific form of exotic matter, which also includes degenerate matter, dark matter or particles that defy typical laws of physics such as exhibiting negative mass or negative energy.

May 2020

May 27^Th is a very big day for the US Space Program. For the first time since 2011, the US will be launching astronauts to the International Space Station using our rockets and capsules. Let’s be clear though, the transport is being supplied by SpaceX instead of Russian lift systems. So, while it is homegrown, it’s very much an independent contractor rather than NASA that is making this work. On the flip side though, the launch will occur from a familiar place, Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. You might recognize that name from prior Apollo and space shuttle missions. This is very much a SpaceX show. The Falcon 9 rocket is a reusable and is planned to make a powered landing on a droneship. The 27’ tall Crew Dragon, while it is designed to handle up to seven, will have two passengers, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. The capsule is an adaptation of the Dragon which has ferried cargo up to the ISS. After a successful mission, the Crew Dragon will be certified for passengers. Yes, you heard me right this mission is referred to as Demo-2 and it is designed to demonstrate the capsule’s abilities as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Boeing is also part of this program as well and is also designing a crew capsule. Being proactive and hopeful, NASA has already planned the first operational mission for the Crew Dragon, to occur later in the year. Not only is SpaceX providing the transport, they are also gearing up the astronauts. Behnken and Hurley will be wearing newly designed Spacex spacesuits. Set your reminders now, launch is planned for 4:33PM EST, with a prelaunch beginning at 11:29AM EST to be televised on NASA Live. Astronaut Bob Behnken is no stranger to space having logged 37 hours of space walk time and 708 hours total above the Earth. Doug Hurley is certainly familiar as well being one of the crew members from the final shuttle mission, which brings things back around as he will be one the first to go back to space from the US. The two will stay aboard the ISS for an as of yet undetermined time to perform tests on the Crew Dragon. Once they and NASA are satisfied with the state of the vehicle, they will return to Earth to splash down in the Atlantic.  

April 2020

          They say don’t put all of your eggs in one basket – but what if you only have one egg? Things are tough for Space startups sometimes, especially when there’s only one source of funding. Stratolaunch Systems Corp. lost its founder and funder, Paul Allen, in January 2019. Since then the company has desperately cut back its operations and ceased development on a rocket powered space plane as well as two rockets for satellite launches. Sometimes the changes are of a different nature as the goals of the companies realign. Virgin Galactic has laid off workers as its interest changes toward exploiting space tourism. In a similar fashion, SpaceX also cut back on its work force as it focuses on the Mars rocket and Internet satellites. The specialization is not necessarily a bad thing, rather a natural result of the development of the business. Since there are around 400 companies currently working in the space industry, it makes sense to find a niche.

            If it wasn’t tough enough to stay solvent, sometimes your rocket just doesn’t want to work. SpaceX is facing another disappointment as its Starship Platform SN3 model collapsed on the pad while its fuel tanks were being filled with liquid nitrogen. The SN3 is a very ambitious concept with an amazing lift capacity -around 100 passengers. After the failure of the MK1 and the SN2 versions of the design, hopes were high for the newest version. Cryogenic pressure tests seem to be the bane of this rocket design as the MK1 popped the top off and the SN2 blew out the bottom. Maybe it was just time for the middle to fail since they’d fixed both ends. The SN3 is also interesting because it’s the second stage of the platform. A SpaceX Super Heavy rocket provides the initial launch and the SN3 would then follow up, as well as provide the motive power to operate as an independent ship once in orbit. The current state of affairs also means that all of the planned tests, such as stationary firing and hops are on a hold. Initially, SpaceX hoped to be able to move on to orbital tests later in the year.

            As a final thought, consider how things are for astronauts Jessica Meir, Drew Morgan and Oleg Skripochka who are facing quarantine after returning to Earth from the International Space Station on April 17^th. The astronauts are familiar with isolation and have arguably been in one of the safest places until now. Their replacements will lift to the station on April 9^th, so there will be a little overlap. As the current crew thinks about their return, Meir is quoted as saying she would be returning to a completely different planet. The crew has been in orbit for six months and essentially watched the entire Covid-19 situation develop from a bird’s eye view. If nothing else, this puts things in perspective. Yes, we are all living in highly unusual times, but that still doesn’t stop us from achieving amazing things like having a presence in orbit on the ISS.

February 2020

Apparently, astronauts on the ISS have a hankering for a hunk of cheese. When you can look down and see your home below you, but can’t enjoy the comforts of it, it is understandable that you might just want something more than easy cheese. Up until now, the only option has been “shelf stable cheddar cheese spread”. But getting cheese from Earth to orbit has its own set of problems. First, you have to get it fresh, because the trip to orbit takes about a day, and then you have to find a way to keep it that way. Since some fruit was already going along for the ride, packers of the Northrup and Grumman Cygnus NG-13 cargo craft found a way to bump their perishables down the list so they could be stowed about later than everything else. That give the supply people time to run out to a local supermarket and acquire some Fontina, Parmesan and Wisconsin Cheddar for the good folks in orbit. Now cheese isn’t the only thing that went up this time, there was plenty of scientific equipment as well. One of these items was the first scanning electron microscope to be sent into orbit. The idea is to give the space station personnel the opportunity to perform analyses in real time instead of having to wait for reports from Earth. If we are planning to go back to the Moon having something that can determine the composition of samples in orbit makes a great deal of sense. The unmanned cargo craft brought up 7500 pounds of supplies. As a final note, the expedition 62 crew also received some candy in addition to the cheese.

-The race is on to put satellites into orbit and bring the internet everywhere. SpaceX has 242 satellites in orbit and OneWeb and Amazon are chomping at the bit to add more in an attempt to gain a piece of the giant pie overhead. SpaceX is even said to have plans to send up as many as 42,000 over the next ten years. There is however something missing from the process—laws and standards for cybersecurity for the satellites. There’s a tremendous amount of dependence on GPS and a hacker could wreak chaos by altering its data or simply shutting it down. Let’s not forget the fact that satellites with maneuvering gets can rapidly become kinetic missiles if they are deorbited. Smaller satellites, like the cubesats, are often built with easily accessible materials allowing hackers the opportunity to study them before attacking. Companies owning the satellites also can farm out the communications and operations to other specialized organizations who have less security. Satellites are typically controlled from the ground and these centers represent another area where hackers can gain access. Think it can’t happen? It already has. In 1998 the ROSAT X-Ray satellite was taken over and turned so that its solar panels focused on the Sun destroying its battery. 1999 saw UK SkyNet satellites taken over and in 2008 and 2018 concerted attacks by Chinese hackers went after NASA defense satellites. Obviously, there need to be some changes made, but keeping an eye on expenditure instead of security seems to be the trend.

January 2020

-Right now, it seems the more we learn about the intense flashes of energy known as Fast Radio Bursts (or FRBs), the less we understand. Quicker than a camera flash, FRBs blast out the energy output of a Sun like ours in thousandths of a second. Originally identified in 2007, scientists have been watching for these bursts since then and, like all good sleuths after a mystery, seeking their explanation. At first the FRBs were assumed to be one off events, but in 2016 one was identified that repeatedly gave of random blasts of energy at random times from the same location. Now astronomers could perhaps zero in on the cause. This candidate came from a galaxy 3 billion light years away, which makes finding about the cause rather difficult. They were however able to determine that this galaxy had two unusual aspects: a nebula that was active in the radio spectrum and also a higher than usual rate of star formation. Backs were patted and the astronomers assumed that they had learned something vital about FRBs. But since the phenomena was identified, more observers knew what to look for and information about non-repeating FRBs became available. These came from larger than normal galaxies with comparably fewer amounts of stars forming. So, were the repeating FRBs and the non-repeating FRBs linked to these differences? In July 2018 a series of radio telescopes in British Columbia, part of the Canadian Hydrogen Mapping Experiment, known as CHIME, caught an exceptionally low frequency event which had all the hallmarks of an FRB and then it repeated. While FRBs aren’t its primary focus, CHIME is really good at detecting them and this one upset most of the established ideas. The source for the 2018 FRB turns out to be a spiral galaxy, not unlike our very own- so no exceptional radio nebula or extra stellar formation. Also, this galaxy is only 500 million light years away, making this the closest FRB observed. Astronomers were not only able to capture a visual image it but also able to identify the region that the FRB originated from. That information cast down on several of the theories scientist had begun to formulate about the FRBs origins. Since this was a repeater and now that we have its location, we can only hope that CHIME can continue to capture additional observations.

-While the inevitable collision with the Andromeda Galaxy looms in our future approximately 5 billion years from now, we may have something to worry about sooner. In 13 million years the largest structure in the galaxy, known as the Radcliffe Wave, may just roll over us like a tsunami. Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is responsible for a recent 3D map of the Milky Way and it revealed something that was in front of us the whole time- fortunately for now, about 500 light years in front of us. 100 years ago, observers noted a ring-shaped cloud of stars and gas that became known as the Gould Belt. The Sun lies inside this Belt, so when the 3D map was created, astronomers wanted to know how it related to the rest of the galaxy. But the topography was much more interesting than that because it turns out it wasn’t really a belt, rather a portion of the larger structure of gas and stellar nurseries that stretches for 9,000 light years. The Radcliffe wave starts about 500 light years below the galactic ecliptic and rises upward in an arc a similar distance and is about 400 light years thick composed of around 800 million stars and massive amounts of gas. But we may not have as much to worry about as I’ve implied. After all, 13 million years ago, our Solar System passed through the Radcliffe wave. Imagine the wave as the blast of air from an immense rotating fan that our Sun keeps pulling us through. Having said that, there are a lot of stars and gas in the Radcliffe Wave, neither of which would be healthy for us to experience too much of – so plan accordingly.

November 2019

-Why exactly would you want to try to bio-print beef on the ISS? Well, hardworking astronauts are probably ready for something tasty. What Aleph Farms accomplished, unfortunately for the crew, while successful, was more of a proof of concept rather than a repast. While Aleph agrees that there are certainly more people on Earth who would benefit from the technology, there were certainly some convincing reasons to try out the technology in orbit. One is rather simple, to be truly effective, the bioprinting shouldn’t be dependent on an excessive amount of resources in order to be successful. Want to limit your resources—space is certainly the place. Another reason is zero gravity. Most 3D printing on Earth takes place in layers and its not to say that Aleph’s process doesn’t work that way, but rather that the layers are not horizontal. Zero gee allows for the cells to be added from all sides simultaneously. Take all of this one step further and suddenly we’re talking about burgers on your space yacht, ok since we said yacht, perhaps filet mignon instead. Here’s good news, it’s not all yeast and algae for you! Perfecting the process not only presents an opportunity for food for long trips in space, it may also increase our ability to feed the hungry on Earth.

-As we think about going into space and staying longer, we’ll probably need to consider whether or not some of our favorites might make the transition. To that thought (and certainly with a bit more practical intent), the astronauts aboard the ISS will be baking 5 chocolate chip cookies. Now, it’s more about the oven than the cookies, since every bit of food sent up to the station is already prepared for them and heated by food warmers. The space oven is the result of cooperation between cookie makers Double Tree, space-outfitter NanoRacks and a small New York company called ZeroGKitchen, who hopes to pioneer zero g ovens. Most of our cookies are baked using convection where the hot air rising off of the heating coils brings the oven area to a temperature that allows things to bake. The convection idea falls apart when there’s limited amounts of gravity. The space over heats by contact instead where the cookies are inside of a cylindrical oven where the baking space is heated by electrical coils. That means that each of the five cookies planned to be baked will be done one at a time. Instead of one sheet, the cookies will be baked between to silicon trays and there is some speculation and curiosity regarding their final shape since gravity won’t be there to make them flatten out when they are done.  Of course, just like the beef article above, experiments in space can always teach us about new ways to do things on Earth. Finally, the sad part—nobody up there is going to enjoy those cookies. Three will be sent back down for review and two will be put in the garbage. Nobody wants the crew literally tossing their cookies. On the bright side though, Double Tree will be sending up prebaked cookies!

October 2019

-While the landing aspect of the Chandrayaan-2 mission was not a success, the orbiter is already sending back information of import. However, it ‘s not quite as expected. Chandrayaan-2 has two instruments, the Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) and the Solar X-Ray Monitor, which are used in conjunction to observe the interaction between X-rays and the lunar surface. These interactions can then be view spectroscopically to determine the composition of areas of the moon’s surface. Since technology tends to improve over time, the Solar X-Ray Monitor is actually better at detection than some of the instruments currently in space designed to monitor X-rays from the sun. Because of this, it caught flares coming off the Sun between the last day of September and the first of October that other probes like the GOES-15 weather satellite only registered as tiny variations. Scientists are interested in these flares because the Sun is currently in a quieter phase of the Solar Cycle and flares are more unusual. The only downside to this is that the instruments of Chandrayaan-2 are not pointed in quite the right direction to discover the effects of the X-rays from the flares. Hopefully, we’ll be luckier in the future.

-We have quite a few satellites and probes in orbit – how are we going to keep them there and keep them functioning? Nothrop Grummand built the Mission Extension Vehicle-1, MEV-1, a satellite servicing craft. MEV-1 was recently launched into orbit from Baikonur Cosmodrome via a Proton rocket along with the Eutelsat 5 West B, a communications satellite. The mission is to have the robotic repair craft find the communications satellite Intelsat 901 and refuel it. Intelsat has been in orbit since 2001. Refueling would increase Intelsat 901’s life by five years. Astronauts on Shuttle missions were dispatched to occasionally do similar work, but this would be the first instance of an unmanned craft accomplishing the task. The MEV-1 is designed to have a fifteen year life and if its first mission is successful, it is expected to be tasked with the refueling of other satellites. While it maybe the first to do this, the idea isn’t new, and others are pursuing it. NASA has its own mission, Restore-L set up to refuel a government satellite. Made in Space, based in California, has their own design for a repair craft called Archinaut (previously mentioned in WTS), which can not only be used for maintenance but also for construction. DARPA has worked on this since 2007 in a project called Orbital Express and their latest effort is something known by the less than surprising moniker, Robotic Servicing or Geosynchronous Satellites.

-Virgin Orbit, a division of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is working to put satellites into orbit. But what really is interesting is how they plan to do it. Virgin Orbit is using a rocket (LauncherOne) dropped from a 747(Cosmic Girl). They began tests in July and hope to be able to eventually provide 24 hour turn around time upon mission requests. LauncherOne when dropped at an altitude of 35k feet will turn on its booster and lift into orbit. The rocket is designed to carry loads up to 1,100 pounds. The plane to orbit strategy is also what Virgin uses to loft SpaceShipTwo. This Spring Virgin began the process of moving its development and testing to Spaceport America in New Mexico. The Space Ship Company, which is responsible for the manufacturing end of the business, will remain in Mojave, California.

September 2019

-From now until Halloween, the European Space Agency is entertaining ideas from the world about how to design robots to explore the cave of the moon. Since NASA has set its sights on putting a man back on the Moon, the ESA seems to be looking a little further ahead to ways to keep explorers on site for longer. Entrants can share their ideas on the Open Space Innovation Platform. Robots would not only be looking for potential sheltered areas to build in but also for frozen water and information about the lunar geologic past. As a whole, the design should be able to land on the surface, identify the cave entrance, enter, explore within and transmit back its findings. So if you’re feeling brilliant, be sure to get your idea in on time.

-Previously, WTS reported on the Chandrayaan-2 from India and its lunar mission, however things did not go as planned. Communication was lost with the Vikram Lander in the last bit of the landing. The Indian Space Research Organization is still attempting to re-establish a link with the probe, but time is running out. Prior to this, the Israelis also lost another mission. So, with two recent failures, the scientific community is reviewing all of the data with hopes to avoid future issues with landing on the Moon. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will over fly the area where the Vikram Lander came down on September 17th and hopefully will be able to provide more insight into the issues which have caused the communication black out. But wait, what about the orbiter that was part of Chanrayaan-2? The orbiter appears to be a success having accomplished most of its expected tasks.

-NASA’s broadcast of the SpaceX Demo-1 flight was awarded the Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Program. They were recognized for their use of live video, social media and pictures to cover the event. NASA also won an award last year as well. The Demo-1 was a proving flight for the Crew Dragon Module designed to ferry passengers to the International Space Station. NASA also won for its coverage of the InSight landing on Mars last November.

-Their egos aren’t the only thing expanding over at NASA as tests begin on the inflatable Bigelow Aerospace Habitat. The two B330’s which will go through a series of test and habitation by four astronauts for four weeks. Called B330’s because of the 330 square feet of volume they contain, the habitats are designed to maintain four astronauts indefinitely and include propulsion as well. Bigelow has stated that if NASA approves of their design, a B330 could be ready in 42 months.

August 2019

-With our next planet hunter telescope in the works, attention is once again focusing on the TRAPPIST-1 system 39 light years away in the hopes of confirming a world with both water and oxygen. The James Webb telescope is set for launch in 2021 and will provide us with more detailed information on the seven worlds orbiting this relatively nearby star. But one thing that might slow down our hunt for proof is the same thing that annoys Earthbound astronomers—clouds. However, in this case, the clouds are the ones in the potential atmospheres of the TRAPPIST worlds. The James Webb will have an instrument onboard called the Near Infrared Spectrograph which will allow us to gain information about these distant worlds. When the planets pass in front of their sun, the telescope is able to use this device to look at their spectrums and even the spectrums of their atmospheres. This light then provides clues to the make up the areas of the planets from which it is emitted. Scientists feel confident that they can have reliable results on the spectrums of the planets and their atmospheres within as few as ten passes in front of their primary. There’s just one little caveat there—if the atmosphere of the world contains clouds, which disperse the light passing through, it could take as many as thirty transits before there is a sufficient data. Recently one of the astronomers from Kitt Peak was commenting on the clouds on the horizon potentially making their observations that evening difficult. So there you have it—clouds being a pain in the ass to astronomers even if they are 39 light years distant. Since their discovery, astronomers have re-evaluated their conclusions about the TRAPPIST-1 planets and now feel that one only is actually inside the Goldilocks Zone, TRAPPIST-1e. It will take the James Webb telescope to determine if it is as interesting as it sounds. Of course, the observations will also provide more data about the other worlds in the system as well. But there’s one other point that should be made, the transits we are talking about only happen once in that planet’s year. Don’t assume immediately that TRAPPIST-1e’s year is the same as one of ours. Its primary is actually an ultra-cool star, so the Goldilocks Zone is much closer to the star and therefore the orbits are tighter making for a shorter “year”, which essentially means it won’t take ten years of observations in the best case scenario. Right now, all of this is the result of computer modelling based on the expectations of the James Webb’s capabilities. The James Webb is currently under construction at Nothrop Grumman’s facility in Los Angeles.

July 2019

-We’ve had a destination over our heads since the first time we opened our eyes and India is the next nation to starting their voyage to land on the Moon. Their first mission was the orbiter Chandrayaan-1 which helped scientists confirm the presence of water on the Moon in 2008. The Chandrayaan-2 is much more ambitious since it comprises three parts. First is another orbiter designed to circle at 100km and will study the South Polar region where the evidence for water was found. Next is the lander called Vikram, in honor of the founding father of the Indian Space Program. This solar powered probe will make a 15 minutes descent from orbit to a soft landing near the South Pole. From this point about four hours after landing, the Vikram will launch the lander, Pragyan. Both devices on the moon are expected to spend about 14 days investigating their surroundings. Chandrayaan-2 was launched into orbit on 7-14-19 and is expected to spend 16 days in orbit about the Earth. From there, it will make the five-day trip to Lunar Orbit. Once established there, Chandrayaan-2 will spend 27 days orbiting the Moon before launching the Vikram lander on September 6th. India hopes to become the fourth nation after the U.S., Russia and China to achieve a soft landing on the Moon.  (note as of 7/15/19, the launch of Chandrayaan-2 was delayed due to technical difficulties)

-NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan, announced on June 27th is starting to make people think about what might be there when we arrive. A team of scientists at Southern Methodist University are performing experiments in a unique fashion that may give us a glimpse of what probes like Cassini haven’t shown us so far.  Researchers are building glass containers with the elements present on Titan in an attempt to understand what organic molecules may be present on the surface called “Titans in a jar”. The mini-Titans start out as water which is induced to freeze. The next layer is ethane, mimicking the lakes observed on Titan. Finally, Nitrogen is added to provide the atmosphere. With their mini-Titan prepped, the scientists can now add various molecules and see how they interact. The hope is that by observing these experiments, not only can NASA narrow down where they might look, but also how they might look in order to determine the presence and type of organic molecules expected to be present on Titan’s surface. Dragonfly is scheduled for launch in 2026 with an expected arrival at Titan in 2034. The rotorcraft probe will be used to visit about 24 locations in the hope of discovering possible life on the surface.

June 2019

Fusion. Our world is lit by its light and warmed by its energy, yet it still remains outside of our reach. We are capable of fusion, as the hydrogen bomb shows, but what we’re not capable of yet is controlled and continuous fusion that does not operate at a power deficit. In other words, we should get more energy out of the reaction than we put in and with fusion, it could be quite a bit of energy. Developers of the Direct Fusion Drive or DFD believe that the reaction will not only solve some of our energy issues but also give us greater access to the solar system. Optimistic researchers believe that an operating DFD could be in the testing phase as early as 2028. They believe that a DFD could drastically cut transit times for probes of other worlds reaching Saturn in as little as two years and Pluto as quickly as five. Our most recent survey missions took 6.75 years to reach Saturn and 9.5 years to reach Pluto. In the drive, the magnetic bottle contains a plasma of the Tritium and Deuterium variants of hydrogen, which fuse to generate energy. Some of the heat of the reaction is absorbed by a propellant and ejected to generate thrust. From the remaining heat, electricity is generated using a Brayton cycle engine. So, not only does the system provide plenty of thrust, it also provides a cheap source of energy for the various needs of the probe. This would provide greater flexibility and the power could even be beamed via microwave to rovers and other exploratory devices. The DFD also provides power by a process that creates a very limited amount of radioactivity. The unit is expected to be about the size of a small van and the plasma is heated using a radio-wave antenna. All of these things make it different than the standard tokamak model this is often used to try to generate fusion and therefore scientists believe the DFD should be easier to achieve than standard fusion models. NASA has already put money behind the concept and so has ARPA-E, Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy. But where is the next step to get us fusion? The DFD is a modification of a reactor concept called the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration. Since the early 2000s, scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have experimented on this model. At the PPPL, the PFRC-1 was tested from 2008-2011 and PFRC-2 tests are being conducted now. Researchers believe that when they reach PFRC-4, they will be able to produce the reaction they are seeking. The plan is to accomplish this as early as the next decade. The DFD is obviously the next step. The drive that could open up the solar system, could just as easily take us to Mars to plant a colony.

May 2019

Last month, we looked at plans for a Moon village and the building designs have an interesting similarity to the design the AI SpaceFactory used to win the NASA competition to 3D print space habitats. Like the Lunar Village, the winner, named Marsha, is tall and conical. AI SpaceFactory says they chose this particular orientation because not only does it mean that a large flat surface is no longer required initially, but also the design is optimized to deal with structural stresses and internal atmospheric pressure. In this case, the design is printed by a arm attached to a rover laying down concentric double layers of material. Various windows, airlocks and a skylight at left as openings and then inserted with material printed around them to provide an airtight seal. In the contest, only the exterior shell of the habitat was printed. The company imagines that the interior will contain labs, living area and even a garden. Exterior airlocks will provide access to vehicles and suits for exploration will attach directly to the exterior of the habitat with the explorers crawling into them and then detaching. The material used for printing is a mixture of basalt fiber, which could be extracted from Martian rocks and bioplastic, which would come from plants grown on Mars. So setting up a garden in Marsha does more than just feed us. The competition is broken up into three ten hour segments of build time with examination by the judges. Habitats were built to one third scale and the printers must be primarily automated requiring minimal human interaction. AI SpaceFactory just finished the habitat with seconds to spare. When team AI SpaceFactory attempted to install the skylight, it fell through. Since they were out of time, they were unable to repair it. However, the strength of their design was evident in test where a front end loader pressed down with its bucket on the top of the Marsha habitat. After the judging, AI SpaceFactory was awarded $500k for their work. They then packed up the remains of the habitat to ship back to their New York Base. The material of Marsha is designed to be recycled and re-printable. AI SpaceFactory plans to use the same material to print an Earth habitat they are calling Tera as display model. Tera should be available for viewing this month. It looks to have the same egg-shaped design as Marsha but with perhaps more windows. Tera will also display the interior printed sections, stairs and partitions left out of the contest print. Find out more here—https://www.aispacefactory.com

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

April 2019

-Sometimes it takes a village—even when you’re planning on living on the Moon. Building a home on Earth’s satellite has long been the realm of fiction, but the European Space Agency has decided we should have a foothold and not just footprints. To further that idea, they partnered with the architectural design agency of Skidmore, Owings and Merril and MIT to create plans. Intended to be located at the rim of the Shackleton Crater close the Lunar South Pole, the Moon Village would be designed to overcome various unique problems such as radiation, pressure differentials and of course the lack of air. The crater locale was chosen due to the presence of water in the shade of the depression and also the continuous sunlight to power solar panels. The primary component of the village would be modules, which are three or more stories in height and are pressurized from within. The three-sided modules are then covered with regolith from the surface of the Moon in order to provide both protection as well as insulation. The overall plan of the village shows the modules laid out in a sort of hexagonal pattern similar to a honeycomb. Before it was an idea and now it’s a plan. Things are moving forward toward living on the Moon.

-It is just possible that NASA’s ride-along experiment aboard the Israeli lunar lander, Beresheet, may have survived the crash that occurred on April 11th. Due to technical issues, the main engine of the craft shut down for just long enough that when the technicians were able to restart it, they were unable slow the lander enough for a touchdown. LRA, or the Lunar Reflector Array, is a series of eight mirrors in a dome shaped frame smaller than a donut. In a sad case of irony, the LRA is designed to be a marker to aid in precision landings of spacecraft. Despite the crash, the LRA is designed to withstand a number of potentially destructive issues and may still be functional. Also, since its designed to be detected, we could still perhaps find it. The folks at NASA believe that LRA may have detached from Beresheet but could be found since it had a 120 degrees of detection and only one of the mirrors is necessary for them to find it. However, the LRA does still remain a needle in a pile of moondust. NASA plans to use the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to search for the missing experiment. NASA hopes to use the LRA devices as markers on the surface of the Moon for future missions—perhaps to even help lay out the designs of the Lunar Village or provide guidance for incoming flights of materials.

February 2019

It may be hard to believe it, but we’ve been landing space probes on asteroids for 18 years. In February 12th, 2001 NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft was brought down on the asteroid 433 Eros. This was supposed to be it for the probe, the completion of the mission and the end of the line. Much like our Martian rovers, NEAR-Shoemaker didn’t know when to quit and continued to transmit information for several more weeks allowing NASA to study the asteroid from the surface. NEAR-Shoemaker’s initial mission was a yearlong study of 433 Eros*. During its flight to 433 Eros, NEAR-Shoemaker also performed a flyby of 253 Mathilde. 29 years ago, the Galileo probe made history by performing flybys of the asteroids Ida and Gaspra, which lead to a series of asteroid centric missions. Galileo discovered that Ida had its own small moon later named Dactyl. The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa was the first mission designed to land on an asteroid and return with samples. The mission was fraught with difficulties and even though Hayabusa landed on asteroid 25143 Itokawa, retrieved samples and returned samples in June 2010, it took five months before the scientists were able to gain access to the rocks from the asteroid. The ESA Rosetta mission was primarily comet oriented, but the probe did also do some asteroid flybys. In 2007, NASA launched the Dawn mission to investigate both asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Dawn continued to send back information about Ceres until fall last year when its hydrazine fuel ran out. The Hyabusa2 is an ongoing mission around the asteroid Ryugu, which is expected to send samples back to Earth in 2020. Finally, the OSIRIS-REx mission entered orbit around the asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve. The mission will study the asteroid until July 2020 looking for landing sites.  However, landing is certainly not what NASA has in mind. OSIRIS-Rex has something called a Touch-And-Go-Sample Acquisition Mechanism that will allow the probe to “kiss” Bennu and suck up a sample. The probe is expected to stay in orbit around Bennu until 2021 and not return until 2023.  Proposed new asteroid missions include DART, which would use the impact of the probe on the moon of the asteroid Didymos, known as Didymoon, to determine if asteroids can be moved away from possible impacts with Earth. With the interstellar object Oumuamua gathering attention, scientists are considering missions to investigate such objects.

*Yes, for you watchers of the TV show, The Expanse, that is the same Eros.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

January 2019

-SpaceX just finished out their contract with Iridium Next and may have inadvertently set in motion two things that are written about in science fiction, if you believe in that stuff. The final 10 communications satellites for the update to Iridium Next were emplaced by a Falcon 9, which contained a reused rocket stage from a prior launch. They also successfully completed their landing of the spent first stage on a drone ship. A total of 75 satellites were put into orbit and this will allow Iridium Next’s new broadband service to create more connectivity to the Internet of Things. Before we go haring off after these two potential results, let’s just give SpaceX their due for creating a system which is rapidly becoming the workhorse of moving things into space. On the other hand, they did happen to name their drone ship, “Just Read the Instructions”. The trope of interesting ship names is one often found in SciFI, but seldom to the degree of Iain Bank’s Culture novels or Neal Asher’s Polity books. Has SpaceX set a precedent that could make more Boaty McBoatface’s likely in the future? One can only hope. Let’s turn back to that Internet of Things. The idea that all of your appliances will not only be connected but will know you well is one that SciFI authors have explored in depth, however it is the connectivity that is the point. At what point does that reach a point where it might give rise to consciousness? Did Iridium Next provide the substrate for something like the entity in Robert Sawyer’s WWW series or perhaps is Skynet born in the sky instead of on Earth?

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

November 2018

-Mars, Mars, Mars is all you are going to hear about for awhile considering InSight’s successful landing and recent pictures—so lets look at something else. Let’s talk about the probes that aren’t going to Mars, the MarCO project. MarCo consists of two cube sats that trailed InSight on its way to Mars. The two satellites transmitted to Earth the information from InSight as it landed and then as planned went on their merry way. About the size of a briefcase, the cube sats flew within 4.7k miles of Mars, snapped one parting picture and then continued onward. So what happens to them now? MarCO A&B will assume an orbit about the Sun and continue to send back information to Earth allowing scientists to study the longevity of their designs. Mission specialists even hope that they may be able to do flybys of asteroids.

-Sometimes the paperwork gives you away—SpaceX’s filing for communication licensing with the FCC reveals some details about their next project believed to be the reusable spacecraft known as Starship. The license would cover communications with a craft capable of vertical
takeoff and landing, which would ascend to a low altitude and then return to the launch spot. Starship is expected to fly several tests a week. There will be multiple low tests of ascents to around 500 meters and weekly tests ascending to 5k meters. Starship will be the upper portion of the Big Falcon Rocket and the booster will be known as the Super Heavy. Tests could begin as soon as late 2019. The license was requested for two years and this would parallel the development schedule used for the Falcon 9 rocket.

-Looking for a gift for your space enthusiast? NASA has created a set of pens that capture the look of the space race rockets. Retro 51 makes the pens, which bear the markings of the Mercury-Redstone, the Gemini-Titan II, and the Saturn V rockets. Issued in cooperation with the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, the pens are stainless steel and silkscreened with the graphics for each rocket. The set was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing next year. The pens are a limited edition with only 1958 of each manufactured and retail for $50 each for the Mercury and Gemini, $60 for the Saturn V and $170 for the entire set.

-Speaking of the historic Moon missions, a new book Mission Moon 3D: A New Perspective on the Space Race, provides a unique look through stereoscopic images. Archival images are presented in pairs and take on a 3D aspect when the viewer slightly crosses their eyes. Clear up whose footprint is in that famous photo as well as learn about the Soviet space race. Queen guitarist, Brian May, a stereoscopicphile, compiled the images for the book. This also makes another excellent gift suggestion.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

October 2018

-NASA hopes to have the Hubble up and running again soon. The space telescope was sidelined when a gyroscope failed and the telescope was placed in “safe mode” to evaluate the issue. Scientists attempted to activate a backup gyro but were unable to bring one on line. Hubble operates with 6 gyros to stabilize the positioning of the telescope. Three is ideal with the others serving as replacements. Astronauts replaced all of the gyros during a service call in 2009. Since then, three of them have failed. The team working on the issue has taken a very optimistic look at things. They are certain that the Hubble can resume work even if they are forced to reprogram the system to use only one gyro. In this case, they would still have another one left for backup. Hubble itself has several servicing missions and was initially only expected to be functional for 15 years. Currently, the space telescope is in its 28th year of viewing, so it has definitely outlasted its expiration date. The real issue of course is that without the shuttle program, we currently have no means of reaching Hubble and replacing the gyros. NASA however remains optimistic that they can solve the issue.

-On October 11, what should have been an ordinary Soyuz flight, developed a problem that caused an emergency landing. Nick Hague and Lexi Ovchinin were enroute to the International Space Station when at 2 minutes and 47 seconds there was a failure with the main booster after separation of the four support boosters. Roscosmos now believes that during separation one of the 4 subsidiaries damaged the core stage, which triggered the abort. The onboard computer detected the incident and triggered the launch of the escape system. Both astronauts survived the landing and are in good health. Roscosmos is investigating, but all of those concerned indicate that they still are very positive about the nature of the Soyuz and that not only do accidents happen, but the computer and the emergency systems performed well.

 

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

SEPTEMBER 2018

-Sometimes science wins—NASA recently received a Creative Emmy award for the online video of the final plunge of the Cassini probe into Saturn. Cassini, whose mission lasted 20 years, with 13 years of observation of the Saturn system was decommissioned in rather spectacular fashion and continued to take readings as it flew into Saturn. The resulting video was watched 2 million times and the site received 3 million visits during the series of events surrounding Cassini’s Grand Finale. The Creative Emmy award was given for the most outstanding original interactive program. The Grand Finale beat out online virtual reality experiences for the following movies: Coco, Spiderman Homecoming and Blade Runner 2049 as well as a short by Google called “Back to the Moon”. The Emmys were awarded on September 8th and will be shown on September 15th, which is highly appropriate given that Cassini’s Grand Finale occurred on September 15th, 2017. The show that NASA put together was a very fitting tribute to the probe. Cassini discovered information that leads scientists to believe the Rings of Saturn are much younger than we thought. It also found other Ring anomalies such as odd waves and propeller structures. Cassini also investigated the 60 moons of the Saturn system. One last thought– I’m sure some of you are wondering why destroy this piece of technology that was so long lasting when we continue to use other older devices like the Martian rovers? Firstly, Cassini was running out of fuel and since Cassini was able to prove that there are hydrocarbon seas on Titan and water geysers spewing from Enceladus these areas could potentially harbor non-terrestrial life, it was felt important to not contaminate them with microbes from Earth. Therefore Cassini’s de-orbit into Saturn was the most efficient method of ensuring the safety of these moons. Now that is forward looking.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

AUGUST 2018

-What if you could explore your favorite spot just like we’ve been exploring Mars? NASA just made available the plans for the Open Source Rover. Based on Curiosity’s design, the Open Source Rover can be put together for about $2500 from off the shelf parts. Here’s a great opportunity for schools and museums to create something that can be a hands-on learning device for students and visitors. The idea is not unique because NASA has already released plans for earlier model called ROVE, but the OSR is more affordable and is a 6 wheel design that incorporates “rocker boogie suspension”. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory published the plans of the website GitHub. The plans are designed to be customizable and can give the builders a sense of what the technicians go through as they make decisions about which science experiments, sensors and devices to include. While the dust storm rages on Mars and our ability to explore is limited, we can be learning about Curiosity in a new way.

https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover

-Microbes are everywhere, including inside you and keeping them happy, keeps you healthy. Right now all of the microbes in our guts are used to life on Earth, but what happens whenever we put them in a different situation, such as the space? The health of our gut bacteria can have drastic effects on the health of our entire body. Long-term exposure to microgravity could cause problems. Rodent-Research-7 is a program being carried out right now on the ISS, where mice bacteria are being studied to see if there are changes occurring in their microbes. Fun fact, there are more microbes in your internal biome than there are cells in your entire body – a lot more. So obviously, it makes sense that we will want to be able to look out for potential side effects from life in space.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier
July 2018

-All it takes is one neutrino and the world pointed their telescopes to discover a source that’s been raining cosmic rays down on us. The universe is a noisy place in terms of particles, but much as a loud speaker can overwhelm other sources of sound, so can a blazar overwhelm other sources of particles. There are a lot of pieces to this story, so lets start with the source—a galaxy more than 4 billion light-years distant called TXS 0506+056. Unlike the Milky Way, this galaxy has a very active supermassive black hole at its center and this creates jets of ejected material and energy, which emerge from the disk of the galaxy. The resulting configuration is known as a blazar. Earth just happens to be falling under the spray of its accelerated particles. The energy from the blazar reaches us in a number of different ways, but most of it has been deflected or altered by its trip. So only recently have scientists been able to point out this blazar as the source of a received neutrino and confirm it using other means. So lets have a look at that neutrino- well you can’t, they aren’t known as weakly interactive for nothing. In fact that’s why its actually made the trip all the way to here. Nothing really stood in its way, since it can travel through nearly anything. But we can observe its passage however and to do that we need something exceptional, like the IceCube Neutrino Detector. The Detector is built under the surface at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It uses the ice there, which has exceptional clarity, to detect particle interactions. When our neutrino passed through the ice, it struck atoms and the resulting transference of energy created Cherenkov radiation (very similar to the blue glow in nuclear reactors). IceCube’s detectors are on the watch for this and were able to infer from it the direction the neutrino was traveling. Now if it wasn’t enough that a detector on the South Pole found this one particle that interacts with practically nothing, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope also found an increase in energy emissions from a particular blazar we mentioned earlier. Sometimes science is a perfect storm. Other observatories were able to confirm the event. This is however only the tip of the iceberg, because the IceCube Detector has been running for 10 years and accumulating data that indicates more than 70,000 neutrino interactions, so could any of those other neutrinos have also come from this source? A recent paper published in the Science Journal indicates that there is significant evidence to be found of other neutrinos from the blazar. The scientists are quick to point out that less than 1% of the detected neutrinos are from astronomical sources, while most are the result of energetic interactions in the atmosphere due to solar radiation. However, reviewing the data shows that there are a number of neutrinos of lesser energy arriving from the same blazar confirming it as the source.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier
June 2018

-Tom Hanks had a beach ball to talk to but Astronaut Alexander Gerst will have a bit more with CIMON(Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) when he is at work on the ISS this summer. It may look like the soccer ball with a screen on the front but CIMON is actually an autonomous drone with AI programming that is using IBM’s Watson tech designed not only to accompany an astronaut and provide information upon request, but also be aware of their moods and interact with them. The face on the front is reminiscent of both GERTY, from the film Moon, as well as the Emoji bots from last season’s Doctor Who. However, that aside, the screen can put all kinds of information at the astronaut’s fingertips and since it floats in the air, it leaves both hands free. Multiple ports allow CIMON to jet about and cameras around its surface allow for it to look in many directions. Since the environment is weightless, this creates a unique opportunity to give the drone greater mobility requiring less energy. Developers believe that CIMON has many potential applications off of the space station, but it makes sense to start things where CIMON isn’t fighting gravity. Since CIMON has been attached primarily to astronaut Gerst, he was given the opportunity to choose the voice for the bot. Together they are scheduled to perform three specific tasks: solving a Rubik’s cube puzzle (with CIMON providing video help), a crystal experiment and a medical experiment where CIMON will document things as an independent camera.

-Is it a secret or is it just as mysterious as the EMF drive? SpinLaunch is a company that’s been lurking on the edges of the orbital launch crowd since 2015. News broke recently that they had acquired a total of $40 million dollars in funding. GV(Google Ventures) and Airbus Ventures have contributed to the pot. But what exactly are they buying into? SpinLaunch hasn’t been talking. The CEO made a statement that the launch vehicle would be accelerated to hypersonic speeds using electricity. There was also mention of a rotational acceleration method using angular momentum. It sounds like a non-linear accelerator. What if you could send your launch package (designed for medium sized satellites and smaller) through something similar to a particle accelerator, gradually ramping up the speed and then shunting it off into a barrel that would shoot it into orbit? Take Elon Musk’s hyperloop and turn it into a nonlinear accelerator, imagine that. Since it’s electric and there’s not real moving parts, except to the payload, the system is easily reset to move on to the next scheduled launch. SpinLaunch estimates that its service will cost about $500,000 per launch and expects to begin service some time in 2020. The physical plant for the launch site is still under consideration with prospective areas in four US states.

 

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

May 2018

On the 5th, the most recent Martian probe, InSight was launched from Vandenberg Air Forcce Base, California. On November 26th, the lander is expected to set down on near the Martian equator. As with any interplanetary exploration, the InSight mission contains a number of firsts, is packed full of as many experiments as possible and is based on a number of technologies that we’ve already proven work well. InSight’s focus is primarily geologic and will focus on the ultra-precise measurements to gain perspective on the structure and composition of the interior of Mars, measure marsquakes and even measure the heat from 16’ below the surface. The probe’s robotic arm will place several
experiments, such as the SEIS or Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure on to the ground. SEIS will be covered with a shield to protect the delicate instrumentation. Another experiment, RISE, the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, will use the exact tracking of the InSight to look for any deviations in the orbit of Mars to reveal evidence about the core of the planet. This may also provide data about the creation and accretion of rocky worlds, evidence which may have existed on Earth but is long since gone due to our planet’s active geology. InSight’s probe package also has two additional passengers, the Mars Cubesats, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, affectionately dubbed “Wall-E and Eva” by their creators. These two will serve as a proof of concept that cubesats can be useful in interplanetary exploration. The cubesats will be launched into Mars orbit before InSight’s landing and tested by beaming data about InSight’s descent to controllers. If they fail, they will be backed up by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. While these are all new and exciting experiments that can help to not only explain more about Mars but can also help with future expeditions, there are certain aspects about InSight’s mission and design that are tried and true. InSight has a distinct resemblance to the Phoenix lander, which was sent to the Martian North Pole. The current mission will also use a series of engine firings in combination with parachutes to achieve a landing as the Phoenix did. A number of the avionics and instrumentation on InSight are similar to that of the MAVEN orbiter. It makes good sense to fall back on the tried and true when the hard work has already been done. On a side note, the mission was the first interplanetary probe to be launched from the West Coast. Primarily, this was due to the amount of traffic scheduled for the East Coast sites. InSight is expected to continue its observations and transmission of data until
November 2020.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier
March 2018

-Don’t you believe it … so last month we told you about the astronaut who thought he grew while he was in space. Well, 7% of Scott Kelly’s DNA didn’t change while he was in space when compared with the DNA of his twin. The truth is actually a little stranger. 7% of Scott Kelly’s DNA did not reset to its normal behavior when he returned from space. Scientists are already aware that there are certain genes and sequences of DNA that are affected by space travel. What’s import here is that the change is in the way that Kelly’s DNA is expressed or how it goes about its job of instructing cell replication. This is all part of something known as the Twin Study which was instigated to determine the long term effects of life in space. While Scott was away at the ISS, Mark Kelly remained on Earth, essentially becoming the control in the study. Experts have pointed out , after the initial news barrage, that if Scott’s DNA was 7% different, he would be another species. (For the
record, chimpanzees and humans are only separated by a 4% difference) Scientists are of course digging into this revelation are finding they need to work even harder to stay ahead of the flood of disinformation caused by news sources who are leading with the sensational instead of the proven. Like all good researchers, those in charge of the Twin Study want to be thorough and accurate. It’s a shame the press isn’t willing to give them the time.
-Did SpaceBees escape? The FCC is not pleased at all with Swarm Technologies who managed to get 4 unapproved cubesats aboard an Indian rocket, which dropped them in orbit with several other small cubesats. The SpaceBees are 4”x4”x1.1” and are too thin for easy detection by the Space Surveillance Network. What causes real concern is that they have a 4-9 year life span and then will fall in towards Earth. So these are suddenly undetectable little missiles. Swarm’s initial intent was to create an orbital network to allow connectivity of the Internet of Things to areas that have to access to wifi or internet connectivity. Swarm in its documentation offered to create larger versions of the cubesats (which are planned to be launched next month) as well as adding a reflectors for Ku-Band radar, but the FCC felt that these were not enough and nixed the program. Everyone seems sort of surprised that the satellites actually got launched and it sets a concerning precedent.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier
March 2018

-Right now when astronomers announce the discovery of a new exoplanet they are basing their guesses on what the nature of the planet might be like on observations. We are only just beginning to be able to take visible light images of other worlds, so how do we know if there is another spot out there that has life? Astronomers often talk about the Goldilocks zone (not too hot, not too cold, just right) or the Habitable Zone. A physicist (Tobias Muller) and an astrophysicist (Nader Haghighipour) sat down an wrote a new computer program call the HZ calculator which puts a picture to what a solar system’s Habitable Zone looks like. The HZ calculator can certain figure out boring little one sun systems, but where things get interesting is when you star adding more star to the mix. Astronomers have already found planets in orbit around binary stars and the best places for life to be found definitely change when the stars are in close orbit or if they radically affect each other’s orbits. Suddenly things are no longer a simply ring but can become rapidly changing shapes and that’s without even adding a third mass to really perturb things. The HZ Calculator shows the Goldilocks zone as dark green ring where the best conditions are and a lighter grin ring where life maybe possible. The Calculator is also available to the public and researchers and can be found here—http://astro.twam.info/hz/ (these are static models, but the website also includes movies of dynamic ones). It’s certainly fun to play with and some others have already started modeling fictional systems like Tatooine with its double suns and less than hospitable climate. Right now there are 92 current observed planets that fall within their systems habitable zones and you can find out more about them here at the Habitable Zone Gallery (www.hzgallery.org). There are of course plenty of reasons that a planet inside a habitable zone orbit could still not be suitable for life (see Mars and Venus as backyard examples) and scientists are also beginning to believe that our definition of “just right” may also need some adjusting. Gas giant moons like Enceladus and Europa are now considered viable locations due to heating by tidal stress. Titan may also harbor life that does not conform to our text book definition. The next generation of telescopes are coming soon which will help us in further identifying exoplanets that may have biosignatures and planned expeditions to the moons of the gas giants may find interesting things closer to home.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

January 2018

-Halley’s comet comes to visit more often than every 76 years—well parts of it do. The Orionid meteors, which generally occur in October and November, with a peak frequency during mid October have to come from somewhere. Apparently, Halley’s cometary tail is responsible for a portion of the debris. The meteor show is due to the passage of the Earth through the celestial contrail left by the comet. Even though Halley’s has moved on, it’s tail, composed of material boiled off from the comet’s surface due to the heat of the Sun and the Solar Wind continues to linger on its path. Year after year the Earth rotates back through the remainders of the tail. The Orionids are know for the location of the sky in which they appear to originate, in this case the constellation Orion. Also as material boils off of a comet, the reaction can sometimes have long reaching effects. When Comet 41P was recently observed it underwent so drastic changes in its stability. The material boiling off of the surface often is visible as jets. By measuring how long it takes for the comet to turn to make these jets visible time after time, astronomers can work out how fast the comet rotates, how regularly it rotates and if it rotates consistently. Unlike Halley’s Comet, 41P is a fairly regular visitor with a period of 5.4 years. During its recent visit, 41P showed some very
drastic changes in its rotation when observed by both the Discovery Channel Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. At first, astronomers found the comet’s rotation was about 20 hours. A month later the comet’s rotational rate was 46-60 hours. Researchers believe that the loss of mass is causing the comet to decelerate to a rotational speed which will cause it to become unstable in its rotation. 41P is going to develop a wobble. Consider that the comet is similar to a top. High speed rotation causes a gyroscopic effect where as lower speeds mean the comet is susceptible to more outside
influences. The comet may wobble enough to leave its path or even break up.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

November 2017

-The Dream Chaser Space Plane, constructed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, successfully completed a free flight drop test on 11/11/17. The unmanned vehicle, very similar in design to the space shuttles, was dropped from a Columbia 234-UT Helicopter at a height of 12.5 thousand feet and then made a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base. The Dream Chaser is about 30 feet long, capable of carrying a payload of up to 12,000+ pounds and will be used to carry cargo to the International Space Station. United Launch Alliance will build the Atlas V rockets to carry the Dream Chaser into orbit. Upon completion of the mission, the vehicle will re-entry in a fashion similar to the space shuttles. Sierra Nevada expects to have video of the flight posted by 11/13/17. While testing is done unmanned, the Dream Chaser is capable of carrying a crew of seven. Sierra Nevada is contracted for a minimum of six cargo missions to the ISS between now and 2024.
-Could a rebuilt NERVA be what we need to get to Mars? The rocket type, based around nuclear reactions heating the propellant rather than chemical, was abandoned in 1972 due to budget cuts. With a renewed interest in reaching Mars. Scientists are revisiting the idea of nuclear propulsion, which could get us to Mars in half the time of projected voyages by chemical rockets (3-4 months). Nuclear Thermal Propulsion, or NTP uses the reaction to heat hydrogen which becomes the propellant. Since one doesn’t require the oxygen for the reaction or the fuel, the required payload is much lighter. One of the best reasons to reconsider nuclear is that the ground work is already there. While the NERVA project was cancelled, all of its research is still valid and available to be easily built upon. Also the NERVA research was based on using highly enriched uranium, up to 90%, which would make it weapon grade. However scientists believe that efficient travel can be made with as little as 20% enrichment. This means that the nuclear material does not have to be government regulated and opens the door to privately owned companies.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

October 2017

-Not only do the Canadians have a cool Prime Minister with nerdly leanings, their newly sworn in Governor General, Julie Payette, is a former astronaut. In fact her newly created coat of arms reflects her missions beyond the bounds of the Earth. The motto at the bottom, “Per Aspera As Astra” means “Through hardships to the stars”. There is a space helmet at the crest, a wing on the center of the shield (or field for those in the know), a representation of the Earth at the bottom and a sigma breaking up the motto. All of these point toward an interest in science, exploration and the quest for knowledge. Payette participated in two shuttle missions to the International Space Station in 1999 and 2009. She has the honor of being the first Canadian to visit the station and spent a total of 25 days in space. Payette was also known for designing her own personal mission patch for the 1999 flight. The her coat of arms will appear on the Governor General’s Academic Medal which is awarded to Canadian students with exceptional scholarly achievements.
-There’s gold in them thar’ Neutron Stars. A typical star will burn through various phases until it reaches a point where it is trying to fuse iron and things go awry. But where do the heavier elements come from? It’s quite a ways from iron to uranium on the periodic table. Scientists theorized that supernovas produced energies capable to creating heavier elements, even gold. However astronomers decided that the process wasn’t efficient enough to create the amount of heavy materials observed. While most people are excited about the detection of gravitational waves as the result of a merger of neutron stars, others were looking at the spectra emitted and found that there was evidence of the production of heavier elements. With the observation of the collision at GW170817, scientists not only found evidence, but were also able to define quantities—up to 10 Earth masses of gold an platinum were created.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

September 2017

-What would you receive for 13 years of service? I’m going to guess that a suicidal plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn was not what you had in mind. But there are good reasons for the final fate of the Cassini probe and we’ll explore them briefly, a little further on. After its seven year voyage to Saturn, the school bus sized space probe arrived in 2004 and has been hard at work ever since. However, its fuel was limited and so was Cassini’s life span. During that years of Cassini’s operation it sent back massive amounts if information about the second largest planet and its moons. Among this was the proof that both Titan and Enceladus could possibly support life. Cassini also took many pictures of one of Saturn’s most distinctive features the massive rings, their structure, the shepherd moons and even some anomalies that are still puzzling scientists. On September 15^th, Cassini was directed into a dive that took it into Saturn’s atmosphere while it still had fuel enough to accomplish the maneuver. Scientists were concerned that if the probe were left adrift in the Saturn system that it might eventually impact with either Titan or Enceladus and contaminate them with any Earth microbes that had stowed away on the mission. Cassini was however not done. It continued to beam out information and pictures until the last moment. Julie Webster, Cassini’s ops manager was quoted as saying, “The spacecraft did everything we asked it to do….”

-It’s very easy to forget that we do have stellar neighbors who could potentially have very massive effects on life, as we know it. We often look at the tremendous distances from our world to the closest nearby star and consider it similar to worrying about the possibility of someone on another continent affecting our lives. The European Space Agency’s telescope, Gaia is looking at the stars of the Milky Way to build a model of our galaxy. Astronomers calculate that if neighboring stars were to come within 37 trillion miles of the Solar System, that they might potentially dislodge comets and debris from the Oort cloud that could cause catastrophic damage to the planets. From the data collected so far there are 16 potential disturbing forces that will pass near us in the upcoming 5 million years. Much as asteroids are watched as their motions bring them close to the Earth, the ESA is now watching the motions of Gliese 710. This local star is expected to pass within 1.6 trillion miles from us in 1.3 million years. While it is obvious we will have some time to react to any potential threat, there are some other disturbances that local stars might cause that would give very little warning and could cause even more damage. Gamma Ray bursters are the result of super or hyper novas and may even create collimated jets, which direct the massive energetic output. The burst varies in length between several seconds and a maximum of around 2 hours and the energy involved can be as great as the output of the Sun over its entire lifetime. These events essentially scour the planetary systems near them and gradually decline in intensity over distance and time. However, it is entirely possible that even a relatively nearby star could at its collapse release enough energy to sterilize the Earth and our Solar System. As the ESA is watching Gliese 710, astronomers are also watching Eta Carinae, which has been tagged as a potential supernova. Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

August 2017

Rovers could be phoning it in soon on the lunar surface. How does that happen? Well, Part Time Scientists, a German company, plans on putting up a cell tower on the Moon to communicate with its rovers, as soon as late next year. A Competitor in the Lunar X Prize, PTS wants its rovers to really have the spotlight since they are planning to visit the Apollo 17 site. The plan is to use a Space X Falcon to carry their spacecraft, Alina, to a geostationary orbit, from which Alina will then proceed to the Moon. After landing, PTS will launch two rovers, the Audi Lunar Quattros (who recently appeared in Alien : Covenant). These will then drive to the Apollo site. Playing it smart, PTS will use the Alina as a relay since a direct link from each rover to Earth would require much more power from each rover. Also why not use a proven technology like an LTE network, it’s not like anyone’s tying up the bandwidth up there. Unlike their Martian counterparts, the Audi rovers are not expected to be able to survive the extremes of the lunar night, so the mission will be short-lived. However, all of the data gathered will of course be used to improve the next set of rovers. While the rovers will certainly be the highlight of public attention, it is important not to forget about the Alina. With the ability to carry up to 220 lbs., this spacecraft could be a future workhorse for lunar flights and will be carrying additional payloads besides the rovers during its maiden flight. PTS believes it will be the first private to reach the moon and also believes that it will have a impact in providing infrastructure for the delivery of materials to the Moon as well as their retrieval. PTS is working with the European Space Agency towards their lunar village concept to establish a permanent presence on the Moon. They hope that their experiments with the LTE network will show that the technology is just at home on the lunar surface as it is on Earth in can then be incorporated in the village concept.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

July 2017

-Recently the Coast Guard took NASA’s Orion capsule for a little ride in the Gulf of Mexico and dropped it in the drink. Currently NASA is testing the methods that returning astronauts can use to evacuate the capsule if things do not go as planned. Since the Orion is expected to be put to use in the next 4-6 years, it makes sense to use the time to consider when trouble might arise. One of the safety measures included on the capsule is a self-righting system that will inflate balloons designed to tip it over on its bottom in case of rough seas. Ideally, once the capsule is down in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts merely wait for the retrieval boat. However, if there were a fire or a leak, astronauts who have recently spent significant time in space will not be able to immediately adapt to the Earth’s gravity and will need the easiest way to escape. Astronauts were ferried out to the Orion as it rode the waves in a dinghy and then proceeded to test out several escape methods.
-Asteroids are not as we’ve imagined. Recently scientists and some of our exploratory probes have begun to undermine our conception of asteroids as giant masses of solid rock. Instead they actually are more typically conglomerations of matter held together by their mutual gravitic attraction or the might be the result of mud. Now in space that sounds highly unlikely. But as the solar system formed from dust and ice some of the dust was actually radioactive. We know from observation that there are several moons in the solar system that have active interiors due to radioactive heating. So new theory is that asteroids may have muddy interiors due to the melted ice at their cores. The cooling of the exteriors could account for the solidification of the outsides of the asteroids and impacts with other bodies could also have created additional heat that would have melted layers as well. Scientists are finding that starting models with mud gives them results that are closer to the observed natures of asteroids.

 

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

June 2017

-Follow the water and you might find the history of the Moon’s poles. The Lunar Prospector mission was used to detect neutrons that were emitted from the surface. But finding the particles with the slowest speed, scientists were able to find evidence for hydrogen and water on the moon. What was unusual was the location of the water, which was frozen into ice– it was all close to the poles of the Moon. But it wasn’t exactly at the poles of the Moon instead it was offset by about 5.5 degrees in the north and in the south. The problem is that nobody initially noticed that both deposits were offset by the same amount from each pole. Suddenly, it became apparent that the water must have originally
accumulated at the poles and the poles actually shifted. That’s when things start to get interesting, because if this is the case, then that ice has been there for a long time. One theory that’s been put forth is that an eruption event occurred, which ultimately formed the lunar feature known as the Oceanus Procellarum. This event may have caused a wobble in the Moon’s orbit, moving the poles away from their original
configuration. Now some scientists are countering this assertion with the belief that the event itself would have melted and vaporized any ice present. Others argue that ice near the poles could be protected beneath insulating regolith or even present as hydrated minerals. There are even other theories that imply that the poles of the Moon have actually wandered a significant distance about the surface. The age of the water is something that would interesting to know as scientist have in the past conjectured that it was the result of asteroidal impacts or even produced by the solar wind. The implication that the water is ancient could mean that it might provide us with information about the nature of the Moon in the time closer to its formation. This certainly may provide an impetus to launch sampling expeditions to determine more about the ancient ice.

-It’s a Total Eclipse and we might not be ready for it. It’s been almost 40 years since the last time the path of the solar eclipse included the U.S. It will be a unique experience, since the last time something like this occurred, a coast to coast eclipse path, was around the end of World War I. As a country, we were obviously focused on other things. The eclipse 40 or so years ago, only covered several states in the Northern Plains and the Northwest. This years eclipse will traverse 14 states and the path will be around 68 miles wide. So that means there are a lot more opportunities to view the eclipse and in that case a lot more people who will be interested. In fact, there will probably be some major traffic issues that will occur in the totality path. There are around 12 million people who live in the eclipse’s path. But here’s the big picture, about 2/3’s of the population of the US lives within 500 miles of the path and could road trip. So if they wanted to, a significant portion of the population could road trip to the path of the eclipse. The problem is, no one really knows how many will actually go. Add to this, that the eclipse will be occurring during the time when most people tend to schedule their Summer vacations. Transportation experts expect that August 21st could generate more travelers than the Holidays. USDOT has issued material concerning the event and suggests that travelers reach their viewing destinations several hours before totality and also be aware that there maybe another traffic surge once totality has passed. They also point out that local and state Transportation Departments will be out in force to keep the peace as it were with the traffic. Finally, if anyone is planning this kind of trip, it will certainly pay to use common sense and assure that you have enough water and plan accordingly to have access to bathroom facilities and gas. Estimates for views now range from 1.85 million to 7.4 million. These cannot include anyone who decides to drive out at the last minute. So when the sun is blacked out in the sky—drive safe!

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

May 2017

 

-Martian bricks could be pretty amazing. We are planning on going to Mars. We’ve been talking about staying there. But some people have been doing more than just that with surprising results. Taking soil that is very similar to that of Mars, scientists are making bricks that are stronger than steel reinforced concrete. The important part is they are only using compression to make these bricks. That means that all of the worries about the costs of moving materials to Mars, using exotic methods or chemicals to produce building materials could be replaced by—pressure. But why does that work? Apparently, the iron oxide (which is the reason Mars is so reddish colored) acts as agent to bond the soil particles together. Over the years many artists have imagined many fanciful ideas for our future outposts on Mars, oddly enough most never considered bricks as the building blocks…

 

-Made in Space has a new tool that could help us build structures in space called an Archinaut. Their first version, the Ulisses will have a 3D printer and three arms with various instruments and tools built into them. The idea is that Ulisses prints the building blocks of the structure: struts, connectors, etc from its central printer. The arms built attached around the outside of the central mass then assemble the pieces. Since this is being done in zero gravity, there will be some challenges built the benefits quickly out weigh them since we can built very large structures. Also since the pieces will be printed, they will have data and electrical connections and wiring already built in. The cost of importing the materials for printing is still a consideration, but imagine an army of these Archinauts at work. We could end up with one of 2001’s rotating wheel colonies. But Made in Space doesn’t want to stop there; they have another model call ed the Dilo. This unit will assemble piece by piece a large reflective parasol with itself at the center using its single arm. There are a number of possible uses: radio dish, solar reflector (soletta), or perhaps even a solar sail. If Made in Space sounds familiar, it’s because they were the manufacturer of the first 3D printer taken to the International Space Station. It’s obvious they haven’t just been resting on their laurels and also because NASA gave them a 20 million dollar contract to develop some of their Archinaut concepts.

April 2017

-DeeDee might seem like an unlikely name for a recently discovered potential dwarf planet, but you could be stuck calling it UZ224. Astronomers found DeeDee (their pet name) as part of a survey looking into information about Dark Energy. Turns out that while you’re looking for one of the most elusive phenomena in cosmology, plenty of other objects that are much closer happen to show up in your observations. Now closer is a very relative term because DeeDee is actually the second most distant observed object in orbit about the sun (about 3 times farther out than Pluto, but not quite as far out as Eris) New observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array or ALMA has allowed observers to find out more about this distant body. After measuring DeeDee’s diameter, about 635 km, astronomers now believe it is large enough to be spherical. At DeeDee’s great distance from the Sun, it takes about 1100 years to complete an orbit and its surface temperature is estimated at 30 degrees Kelvin, or just a tad over absolute zero. But why call it DeeDee. Once it appeared on a number of different observations, astronomers shortened the appellation of “Distant Dwarf” to DeeDee. While its observable characteristics fall in to the category, at this time, DeeDee is still waiting to be confirmed as a dwarf planet.
-Astronomers have every right to be pleased with themselves as they announce the first confirmed discovery of an atmosphere around an Earthtype planet. While GJ1132b is actually 1.4 times the size of the Earth and believed to be signficantly hotter, the confirmation of another atmosphere in another solar system is big news. Astronomers noted several bands visible when GJ1132b occulted its sun and are using these to learn more about this world’s atmosphere. The next step of course is to determine the elements making up the atmosphere of this distant world. It may take the advent of new telescopes, like the James Webb, to reach a definition that can bring this information to us. Another important aspect of an atmosphere on this distant world has to do with the nature of the sun it orbits. Low mass stars of this type are subject to magnetic activity generating ultraviolet and x-ray energy that can strip a world of its atmosphere. Since GJ1132b still has an atmosphere, astronomers are now believe that there maybe other atmosphere bearing worlds in spots that they had previously discounted. At a distance of 39 light years and orbiting a low mass star, GJ1132b is very similar to the TRAPPIST-1 planets that made big news after NASA’s recent announcement. It’s obvious that any observational techniques used on GJ1132b will definitely be helpful in identifying and confirming the presence of atmosphere’s on the TRAPPIST-1 worlds.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

February 2017

-Where to land, where to land, where to land? NASA has started looking at where they might place their latest rover on Mars and have come up with three possibilities: Columbia Hills, Northeast Syrtis and Jezero Crater. Each spot has something unique to offer and represent a narrowing of the field of potential options. Initially 30 possible locations were designated, then cut down to eight in 2015. A recent meeting has brought forth the final three. The primary mission of the 2020 Rover is to search for ancient Martian life and Jerzero Crater looks interesting because it shows signs of a river delta that indicates the area was filled with water and drained. The Columbia Hills destination would put the rover in familiar territory since it is located in the Gusev Crater, which was partially explored by the rover Spirit. Since Columbia Hills was the only location that Spirit found signs of water, it makes sense that NASA would want to investigate further. It is also possible that at one time Guzev Crater may have also contained a lake. Northeast Syrtis, the final choice, is one the outskirts of the Syrtis Major
system of volcanoes. It’s thought that the vulcanism could have melted ice and produced hot springs that would be provide conditions to encourage life. The Syrtis site also features access to Martian bedrock and other interesting minerals. The rover’s ultimate destination will be determined in either 2018 or 2019 and the rover is expected to launch in July of 2020.
-Mars isn’t the only “M” world getting a visit soon, Mercury’s BepiColombo mission is expected to take off in 2018. The joint European and Japanese project will take a leisurely tour using gravity assists from Earth, Venus and even Mercury itself until it settles into its final orbit in 2025. At this point the Mercury
Transfer Module will launch two orbiters: the European Mercury Planetary Obiter and the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. During the MTM’s flight the Japanese orbiter will be dormant and the European orbiter will fulfill the communication duties as well as ordering the launch into orbit for both spacecraft. This mission has been a long time coming, first conceived in 1993 and approved in 2000. BepiColombo also has had its share of delays based on concerns about the completion of certain parts such as the solar array systems, a major electrical fault in the MTM and other issues, which delayed the initial 2014 date, the 2016 date and the 2017 date. Scientists are still hopeful that they will launch in October of 2018.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

January 2017

-Could the dark streaks in Venus’s upper atmosphere be proof of life? The streaks have been observed since the 60’s and also proved the exceptional speed of rotation of our sister planet’s atmosphere. Since then, we still are no closer to identifying these streaks composition or origin. They have been observed absorbing ultraviolet radiation. Another interesting aspect is their location. The streaks are in a layer of the atmosphere that is actually closer to Earth’s temperatures ranging from 86 degrees to 158 degrees fahrenheit. Even the air pressure is similar to that of Earth, unlike Venus’s surface which experiences temperatures up to 864 degrees and 92 bars of atmospheric pressure. Venus has always been an area of interest for the Russians who have launched more successful missions to the planet than the US. Looking ahead to 2025, plans are beginning to be put together for a joint NASA/Roscosmos
mission to explore Venus with not only a lander but also some sort of aerial device as well. Scientists are considering either a balloon or a UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and they will certainly want to explore those enigmatic streaks. Venus is so well known for its inhospitable conditions that it would be amazing to discover life there.
-Could we soon be calling Pluto something else? After being demoted to a dwarf planet, Pluto could be reclassified once again due to its companion moon Charon. Charon is actually more than half the mass of Pluto and their close relationship means that instead of Charon rotating around Pluto, the two bodies actually rotate around a common point called the “barycenter”. Now scientists are wondering if they should call the pair a binary planet instead. Another interesting aspect of their relationship is that Pluto actually shares some of its atmosphere with Charon. It’s thought that Charon’s close proximity to Pluto changes the nature of the impact of the solar wind on Pluto. Scientists actually believe that there is less atmospheric degradation on Pluto due to this interaction. However, when the atmosphere is stripped from Pluto due to the Solar Wind, a number of particles are deposited on Charon due to its proximity.
Scientists believe that the darker elements discovered at Charon’s poles by the new Horizon probe are the result of this atmospheric sharing.
-Breakthrough Starshot—the mission to use swarms of miniature solar sail driven probes, just announced that they would help fund renovations to the ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) VLT (Very Large Telescope) in order to boost the scope’s efficiency. In return the ESO will devote more time investigating the closest star system to Earth including Alpha, Beta and Proxima Centauri. Breakthrough Starshot hopes a detailed view can help them fine tune their destination since a rocky world was recently found around Proxima Centauri. Breakthrough also plans to possibly launch their own space telescope, Project Blue, dedicated to researching the Centauri system.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

November 2016

Super Moon, Super Moon, SUPER MOON—was it really worth all the hype? Locally, clouds and late evening rain made viewing difficult. That however, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t enjoy most of the effect on Monday or Wednesday as well. As most of you’ve probably guessed, the Super Moon occurs at the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth. By nature, the orbits of the solar system are elliptical, so it should come as no surprise that there will be a closest point. In the grand scheme of things, there also has to be a Full Moon at the same time in order for the best effect. That explains why there hasn’t been a similar occurrence since 1948. The visual difference will be an increase in brightness by 16% and size by 15%. There’s a small problem here that may not be immediately obvious. If you’ve been looking at the Moon over the past week, you are already seeing it at an expanded size, it’s not going to be huge overnight. Unless you happen have an amazing memory, you really won’t be able to compare the size of the moon on the fly. In most cases, just because you know it’s a Super Moon, it will appear larger. If you really want to see something that looks super, try to catch the Moon at Moonrise or Moonset. Here the visual effect of the light bent by the horizon will magnify the image of the moon. This is an optical illusion, so attempts at photography will reveal the truth. November’s Super Moon is actually the middle of three that occur in 2016 with the October and December full moons also receiving the benefit of the closeness of our satellite. December’s Full Moon will cause amateur astronomers some problems because it occurs at the same time as the Geminid Meteor shower. Any Earth based astronomer will tell you that it is all about the light. The light you are trying to observe can easily be drowned out by stray light from nearby homes and cities or in this case the extra bright Super Moon. This time around the meteors will be drowned out by the Moon. Speaking of dark places, Cherry Springs, PA has recently become a haven for amateur astronomers because of its lack of stray light. Closer to home, Muddy Run Park is in the process of building its own observation area. The park’s location along the Susquehanna in Southern Lancaster County puts it away from urban sprawl. Finally, the conjunction of time and space that has brought us the November Super Moon will not re-occur until November 25th, 2034.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

October 2016

-You can become a part of the first nation in space—ASGARDIA. Named for the Norse city in the sky, this concept was developed by a group of space scientists who wish to create a place in orbit that will exist outside of the laws of the Earth, will provide opportunities to mine asteroids and evolve a system to protect the planet from impacts from asteroids as well as space debris. Asgardia’s first act will be to establish a foothold in space in the form of an independently owned space station set to be launched between 2017-2018. Asgardia’s web site—http://asgardia.space/ – will not only allow you to register as a member but also has information about a contest seeking a design for a flag, an insignia and a national anthem. The contest is open until       1-20-2017. But can you just set up a nation in space? WTS has looked at space legislation before with regards to the mining of asteroids. These are laws set up by the United Nations, but it should be mentioned that not all of the members are signatories to this legislation. If nothing else, this effort will put to the test if it is possible to establish a free haven in orbit literally above the laws.
-Asteroid hunters using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii have just found a second moon in orbit around the Earth. Now 2016 HO3 is not much of a moon and not really spherical measuring about 37.5 meters across and 91 meters wide. It doesn’t even do a good job orbiting the Earth since it travels along in an ellipse , where it’s closest approach is 14 million KM from us and ranges out to 40 million KM. Astronomers refer to 2016 HO3 as a “quasi satellite”. Since it travels with the Earth, 2016 HO3’s year is very similar to ours at 365.93 days versus the Earth’s 365.24 days, which shouldn’t be too surprising since it is traveling along with the Earth. There are other asteroids which travel along with the Earth in its travels about the Sun that are known as NEOs—near Earth Objects. The asteroids, however, do not orbit about the Earth, which makes 2016 HO3 a rather interesting object. Could we use this as we begin to explore space? Certainly, it now becomes a destination for exploration and possibly mining.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

September 2016

-Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year’s winner Yu Jun has produced an image that is stunning on several levels and it looks nothing like any of the other astronomical photographs you’ve seen before. The image is a composite pictures of the limb of the moon during a solar eclipse both before and after totality. Until you know what it is you can visualize it as a side lit slinky on either side of a black circle. It looks like modern art, but it’s also a highly technical piece of work composed of more than 40 exposures at taken at exactly the right time to show how totality occurs. Yu’s picture also shows a phenomenon called Bailey’s Beads where small bits of sunlight appear along the edge of the moon during the final moments of the eclipse before totality. Along the top is a small red mark that repeats across the images on the left hand side. This is a solar prominence large enough that it shows over the edge of the moon. Yu Jun received a $13,000 reward for his groundbreaking photo.

-The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation continues to tell us more about the beginnings of the universe. At about 380 million years after the Big Bang when atoms were first forming photons could be scattered and these became the origins of the Background Radiation. Because they have traveled so far so long, these photon’s wavelengths have dopplered all the way into the microwave range. There was another point in the history of the universe where it became ionized a second time and that has a lot of scientists wondering. Over time astronomers have continued to try to establish a timeline for this reionization as well as a reason. Up until now most believed that it occurred closer in time to the Big Bang. Now the scientist believe it occurred about 700 million years after the big bang after the death of the very first generation of stars. Since the universe was still relatively small in size, the novae and disruptions of the first generations of stars would have changed the state of the matter in the universe. This resulted in a polarization of the Cosmic Background Radiation, which tipped off scientists in the first place.

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Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

August 2016

-There are plenty of Science Fiction stories that are set on the worlds of the closest stars Alpha and Proxima Centauri, but astronomers have just given us the first proof of such a planet around Proxima Centauri. Not only is it a rocky world but also it lies within the Goldilocks zone of the star. Before we get too excited about our new neighbor there a few things to keep in mind, such as the very nature of their sun, which is an M dwarf. These stars have long lives and are very common, but since they are smaller than our Sun, their habitable zone lies closer in, much closer. Proxima B is scorchingly close to Proxima, ten times closer than Mercury lies in comparison to the Sun. These stars daily spew out radiation and flares all of which can be inimical to life. Finally, it’s easy for worlds in this situation to become tidally locked with one side facing the sun perpetually. This produces a number of issues that make it difficult for life to arise. Proxima B experience massive amounts of UV and X-Ray radiation 400 times greater than Earth.

Scientists have been driven to all kinds of speculation about Proxima B since the announcement of its discovery. An
interesting line of speculation was brought up about biofluorescence, which allows animals and plants to absorb harmful radiation and then re-radiate it at ordinary wavelengths. So other life could benefit from a relationship with biofluorescent life. There is also a comparison to plants inferring that organisms might be able to convert the UV directly into energy or even radiate away the excess energy as heat. There is even a really out there theory that says that life either re-radiating or bioflourescing would actually cause a flash visible to our next series of telescopes.

The other surge of interest focuses on the simple fact, how do we get there and find out? Breakthrough Starshot was initially aimed at Alpha Centauri, it certainly shouldn’t take to much to aim the swarm at Proxima instead. Here is a perfect target for this project.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

July 2016

-This past Monday, the latest Space-X Dragon capsule carried up the IDA-2, a docking collar designed to allow a variety of transports to attach themselves to the International Space Station. As the number of private industries with the ability to bring payloads into orbit increases, the Space Station will benefit from being able to dock with different styles of ships. Currently, the American cargo vessels that approach the station have to be grappled into position. The IDA-2 will alleviate the problem and also allow the Russian ships to connect as well. The connector will be attached to the location of one of the former shuttle docks. This was the second attempt to bring up the IDA-2. The first failed when the Falcon-9 rocket broke up three minutes into its flight. Since they can be used with a variety of craft it makes sense to outfit upcoming missions like the Orion to ensure that most spacecraft can dock in case of an emergency.

-With the private industries moving forward into space, there is some concern about attempting to establish property rights on bodies other than the Earth. After the launch of Sputnik, the United Nations formed a committee called COPUOS, the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to define principles that could guide the countries of the world in the use and exploration of space. There are 5 main treaties in place regarding the presence of humans in space: the Outer Space Treaty, the Rescue Agreement, the Liability Convention, the Registry Convention and the Moon Agreement. The Outer Space Treaty is comprised of three main points : Space is free, there are no sovereign claims and exploration will be used to benefit all; Nuclear weapons are not allowed off the Earth; and the launching state or country is responsible for damage caused by what they launch into space. With regards to the other treaties, the Moon Agreement has the most to do with property rights in space as it expands upon the details outlined in the Outer Space Treaty. It is however only signed by 16 of the participating nations, none of whom are primary explorers of space. Even though these agreements and treaties are on the books, there is no real methodology in place to punish any nation that might contravene them with the exception of economic sanctions. So far we’ve been discussing nations, what does that mean when it’s private companies? Discussions have suggested that space be treated in the same fashion as Antarctica, a place purely for scientific research. But current treaties would also allow private companies to remove ore and other items from areas while not claiming the locale exclusively. Obviously, there is a need for more definite treaties and legislation to deal with the instances.

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

June 2016

-Some of us are old enough to remember Skylab and the concerns that it caused about where it might land after re-entry. It sounds as though next year, unless measures are taken, we all might be watching the skies once again as China’s Tiangong-1 comes down to Earth. The spacelab, which was originally built as a docking test station and stepping stone to a larger permanent station scheduled for 2020. Observers have noted that Tiangong-1’s orbit will begin to decay unless it is boosted back up into a more stable position. As an observation station, Tiangong-1 provided large amounts of data on geologic and mineral locations to China, even helping to observe the Yuyao flood. Satellite watchers also hint that they believe China may have lost control of the spacelab and are concerned that this news will not be shared until the last moment making it difficult to correct the orbit.
-NASA Advanced Concepts Award winner Christopher Walker thinks balloons are the answer to better telescopes both near Earth and in space. Walker’s idea uses a dual balloon structure where half of the interior is covered in reflective aluminum to gather light and the exterior layer is similar to a stratosphere balloon providing both lift and protection to the inner components. The exterior should allow the telescope, referred to as the Large Balloon Reflector or LBR, to ascend to a projected height of 120,000 feet where the telescope would be able to observe outside of typical atmospheric conditions which limit Earth bound observatories. Walker also has plans for another model, the Terahertz Space Telescope or TST which would operate in space. After leaving Earth’s atmosphere, the telescope would shed its outer envelope. Unlike the LBR, the TST would not be subject to the forces of gravity and will be able to maintain the hemispherical shape of the reflector allowing for greater light gathering and accuracy. Walker believes that the LBR will help us scan into the far infrared and that the TST could observe galaxy formation.

 

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

May 2016

 –Boeing just got a little closer to piecing together their crew carrier module, the Starliner, by joining together the two halves of the Structural Test Article. The STA will be subjected to various kinds of abuse to ensure that it will maintain integrity as well as not subject its crew to any lethal elements. The bottom half of Boeing’s first working crew module, Space Craft One, is already on site at the former Shuttle construction plant where the assembly is taking place. The top half of the unit is in Florida right now with an expected arrival before the end of the month. Boeing initially hoped to test the module in a crewed run in December 2017 but some set backs and changes in the docking software necessary to allow the capsule to mate with the International Space Station will delay the maiden flight until February. The capsule is designed for a re-entry with a touch down in the Southwest and that’s an interesting aspect. With the exception of the Shuttles, US re-entries have been done over water. It appears that the Starliner will be designed to imitate Soviet capsules that have been doing hard landings for quite some time. Also Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX continues to work on its rocket and transport project as well.

-Our little Curiosity just turned 2, in Martian years. There’s an ongoing meme on the web that Mars is the only planet in the solar system inhabited only by robots and it’s true. Our plucky little rovers have out lived everyone’s expectations and continue to send us back information that let’s us learn more and more about our neighboring planet. As far as Curiosity goes, to put things in perspective, a Martian year is approximately 687 days. The rover just passed its 1337th day on Mars, which means that our little one is just heading into the terrible two. If you do the math, you would find that Curiosity is about 3 and 2/3s years old with regards to Earth. We’ve been very lucky not to have to deal with any long distance tantrums from any of our faraway little explorers.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

April 2016

Recently there’s been so much good news that it’s difficult to figure out where to begin, so instead of covering everything—we’ll just hit the highlights. On April 8th, SpaceX dropped their Falcon 9 right on the money and pulled off the landing they were aiming for on the barge at sea. After a flight to launch the Dragon cargo ship to the ISS, fifth attempt to land the reusable Falcon was a success. On April 12th, the Breakthrough Starshot program was announced in a press conference featuring Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, Mae Jamison, Peter Wordnen and Yuri Milner, the primary funder. Using swarms of nanocraft with light sails as tiny as a postage stamp, the project intends to propel the probes with pulsed laser light up to 20% of the speed of light to make the flight to Alpha Centauri. This is a big step forward but it also has a lot ogf caveats built into the possibility of its success. First, our technology needs to improve—but fortunately not a lot as we already have many of the materials necessary to do this. Second we need to build that 100 gigawatt laser array, power it and then be able to focus it on these very tiny sails. The expected time frame for the project is about 30 years. Looking at it though, the experimental phases will begin to yield valuable information almost right away. The processes needed to focus the laser can be used to increase the abilities of our current telescopes. The test phases of the swarm flights will take place in the solar system and allow us to visit places in days or hours instead of years. There are a great many issues to overcome, the least of which is that data received from the probes will be coming in kilobits and traveling with significant time lag. All the same, it’s big news. So speaking of big let’s take things up an order of magnitude to the discovery of Crater 2, a galaxy that’s been orbiting the Milky Way that we just discovered. In fact, astronomers are a little perturbed they hadn’t noticed it sooner since it is not exceptionally far from our galaxy and is the fourth largest galaxy orbiting ours. What Crater 2 is though is one of the dimmest galaxies ever discovered so far. This is just another find reminder that there is still a great deal to be discovered even in our universal backyard. Finally, let’s jump the magnitude one more time and look at the discovery of a group of super massive black holes whose galactic jets all show the same alignment. So this is unheard of since we are looking at the most massive single item in a galaxy and its attendant enormous jet and then finding that they are similar to others due to an event, which is more than likely from the
creation of the universe itself. Never mind the fact that each is in a separate galaxy and separated by typical intergalactic distances. Aside from being really cool, this also offers us the opportunity to consider the cause of such as situation and then make conjectures about the early state of the universe. This a wonderful opportunity to encourage us to observe and learn more.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

March 2016

-ExoMars started its voyage to the Red Planet on 3-14-16 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 5:31AM EDT. The mission consists of two craft: a lander- the Schiaparelli and an orbiter- the TGO or Trace Gas Orbiter. After a successful launch and a check in ten hours later, after the deployment of the solar arrays, the European Space Agency is rightfully pleased at their mission’s progress. The next mission critical step will be the separation of the two elements on October 19th. At this point the orbiter will settle into an orbit about 250 miles from the surface and begin serving as a communication link, a photographer to help choose future missions sites, as well as its primary function, the search for methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane is often the byproduct of organic life, and the TGO will search out sources as well as investigate the processes which create them. In the past Curiosity has identified spikes in the methane levels on Mars and the TGO will help to identify their cause. TGO is hoped to operate for five years. Sadly, the lander Schiaparelli is expected to only remain viable until its batteries die- only a few days. Mostly, Schiaparelli is a proof of concept and design to prepare the ESA for their next mission, hopefully as early as 2018. The ESA has in the past had limited success on Mars. Their Beagle 2 arrived as planned but never sent any information back from the surface. Since NASA dropped out of the project in 2012, Russian Roscosmos has stepped up to provide the launch vehicles, instrumentation and upcoming rover’s landing platform.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

February 2016

                In ancient times in Rome there was graffiti on the walls of the buildings. When monks were illuminating manuscripts occasionally they would add some extra commentary to the books. Apparently, our astronauts are not a whole lot different. Apollo 11’s astronauts were just following a long tradition but the fact that they wrote on the walls of the capsule was a secret until recently. Apollo 11’s capsule was covered in a plexiglass skin until curators decided to move the capsule to a new exhibit “Destination Moon”. The move provided the opportunity to look over the interior in greater detail and allow a team to scan the inside to create a 3D model. The scanning itself was accomplished by running the cameras on booms since it was determined that people were not allowed into the interior. In the future the Smithsonian plans to make the results available to allow visitors a glimpse of what it might be like to sit in the capsule itself. The story could end right there but the scanning crew found some surprises—messages by the crew. A series of numbers were written on the inside of the capsule that referenced certain navigational data. In another spot someone had drawn a calendar checking off each of the days. Michael Collins is well known for writing “Best Ship to Come Down the Line, God Bless Her” on the command module after splashdown. However, in a typical fashion, more attention will be paid to the lines “Smelly Waste” and “Launch Day Urine Bags” because, well we are human after all.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

January 2016

-Should we be more worried about the potential safety issues as the Mars mission develops? The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has been keeping an eye on the plans for the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule. The dream is real but the reality is that budget cuts and time limitations are creating concern not only about the ability to produce but the safety of the end result. There are three factors that are the raising the most flags: the life support system, the launch abort system and the heat shields on the Orion. Every new project problems, but the question here is do they have time to properly test out the systems and effect repairs? Also will their testing put the crewmembers in danger? Issues with the design of the heat shield when tested in 2014 created the need for a redesign. The trouble here is there’s one test and then a live mission, hopefully in 2018. That’s not a lot of wiggle room. The life support system literally goes live with a live crew on board and finally there’s no scheduled test as of yet for the launch abort system. Our Mars missions will be longer than any other and sadly in that case have a greater opportunity to fail. Travel in space is always a risk, but we may need to ask how big a risk is worth the lives of the crew.
-There’s a picture making the rounds on the net of a small zinnia flower. Now granted since it’s winter here, that’s a little unusual but the truly special part is that the bloom is from the International Space Station. Let’s call this the more public face of the VEG-01 project which was put together to investigate growing sustenance in space. After all it’s a pretty flower and people are responding to it and sharing it perhaps more than a mere tomato. That is however, not the end of the story because the astronauts almost accidentally killed the plants before they bloomed. There was a little problem with water. The zinnias were grown out of plastic bags and that can mean little to no evaporation of extraneous water. Trouble was evident when water droplets were seen on the leaves. The astronauts turned a fan on the plants because they already had a spacewalk scheduled that couldn’t be postponed. Things went from bad to worse though as mold appeared on the zinnias. Now not only were the plants in danger but also the astronauts because mold spores are good for anyone. The affected areas were removed, sterilized and set aside for later study. After that something surprising happened. Much like in the Martian, the ground crew had their ideas about how often the zinnias needed to be watered and the astronauts disagreed, although they were finally given the go ahead to use their best guess. In the end two plants died but the other two grew enough to produce buds and finally one bloomed on January 16th.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

November 2015

-When we look to the heavens with our exoplanet hunting telescopes we’ve been hoping to find another pale blue dot. Scientists believe we should be looking for something in the orange range to identify worlds that are on their way to becoming Earthlike. It’s not necessarily the color of the world in question but what the world gives off from its atmosphere, which may prove whether or not it has the ability to support life. The haze is a result of sunlight taking apart methane molecules and creating hydrocarbons. The early Earth had this haze and it protected the surface from harmful UV radiation before the advent of oxygen producing organisms. Finding hazy worlds circling other stars is a step toward identifying worlds similar to Earth and the nature of the haze may even provide clues about any life existing there. However, scientists also point out that in our own solar system, Titan is an excellent example of an orange haze that is the result of an abiotic process. So we’ll need to keep defining the process until we can determine if it is life producing the haze.

 

-A machine-learning system could offer cosmologists and astronomers galaxy models in a fraction of the time it would ordinarily take. The University of Illinois produced a system that makes approximations of calculations that typically take immense amount of supercomputing time. This new system is not 100% accurate but comparisons to previously created models show a variation that is so small as to be insignificant. These models are known as hydrodynamical N-body simulations and are created by considering the presence of dark matter and matter under the influence of gravity and allowing the reaction to occur over time. The presence of dark matter guides the flow of gas into structures where stars can form. The machine-learning algorithms are developed by observation of a full scale super computer run where the system learns to develop projections of expected data. In this case a machine-learning program can run a galactic simulation in minutes instead of the prohibitive amount of time the supercomputer might take.

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

October 2015

-The true “goldilocks” age of the universe is probably in the future—we simply came around too early. With all of the planetary search missions we’ve been running using both Hubble and Kepler, scientists have taken the resultant information and looked at it in a new way. They were trying to see where the Earth fits in the grand scheme of things of the developing universe. The results are a little surprising. According to astronomers, there is still plenty of material out in the universe that can eventually coalesce to form new planets. Early on, most of the material in terms of hydrogen and helium was tied up in the production of stars. The excess material and resultant creation of heavier elements over time is what allowed the creation of planets. Our own galaxy could have as many as 1 billion worlds about the same size as ours currently. This is a number, which could increase in the future dramatically. However, places like our home galaxy are not going to see a planetary boom because the excess material is tied up in existing stars. In other areas like dwarf galaxies and big galactic clusters there’s more free material. These could be the new planetary nurseries. It may be a great time to be alive, but apparently there could be a lot more opportunities for life in the future.

-One thing that can truly make these potential worlds more Earthlike would be the presence of life. Scientists have recently found new evidence that life actually started even closer to the formation of the Earth than we thought. Geochemists located evidence that puts the emergence of as early as 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million years earlier than prior signs. Cubic zirconium can be the poor man’s diamond but they are also time capsules that hold vital clues to the presence of life on the early Earth. Like diamonds they are resilient enough to last until we could find the proof. Scientists also believe that the Earth was more similar to our current state than the dead, hot, dry environment originally hypothesized. This doesn’t mean that life survived the massive bombardment that caused the cratering of the far side of the moon. It should be seen as proof of the resilience of life.

 

Tillyer’s News From the High Frontier

September 2015

Scientists are looking for ways to get a glimpse of one of the birth of one of the strangest objects in the night skies—a black hole. The problem lies in the properties of the hole itself. By definition, the attraction of the hole is so great that light cannot escape from it, so therefore you’re going to need something else to observe the actions of the stellar collapse that creates such denizens. In fact,
scientists are planning on using particles that are almost as difficult to quantify. If the black hole is the ultimate, inescapable presence then the neutrino is the ghost at the banquet. These particles pass through ordinary matter with little to no reaction; however, they are produced in large quantities during the final collapse stages of a super nova. One end result of a super nova of a star ten times greater than the mass of the sun is a black hole. Right now we have a few neutrino detectors currently in action like the DUNE or the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. DUNE is located in an abandoned goldmine one mile underground and consists of large tanks of argon with detectors that observe the interactions resulting from inbound neutrinos. Right now the only super nova DUNE has seen was in 1987 and that event allowed the detector to find 19 neutrinos. So that gives you an idea of not only the limited amount of neutrinos that make it to Earth from a distant event but also the difficulty in detecting them. Scientists still remain hopeful because of the sensitivity of the DUNE system that they will be able to one day see the inbound flux of neutrinos that occurs when electrons and protons are crushed together resulting in neutrons where some of the excess energy is emitted as neutrinos. The researchers
speculate they could observe as many as 10,000 neutrinos in such a collapse. The key piece of evidence of the formation of a black hole would be a sudden cutoff in any emitted particles due to the
gravitational collapse of the black hole. Right now DUNE remains one of the most effective neutrino detectors, but there are plans for others in the works like JUNO in China and Hyper-K in Japan. By comparing data from all three detectors, scientists could develop a more thorough understanding of the pre-black hole collapse.
Additional information could come from the LIGO gravitational
detector. Finally, the event will also give us more neutrinos to study as well.

July 2015

-New Horizon’s big moment was yesterday. After nine years of transit time, a trip of 3 billion miles and a last minute hiccup that had everyone holding their breath, the probe meets up with the most distant planetary object in the solar system (excepting the Oorts of course). Already new pictures are showing us the variations that exist on the surface of Pluto and the differences between its appearance and that of its moon Charon. Pluto is referred to as “beige” and has a number of colorations that make up formations referred to jokingly as “the brass knuckles” and “the heart”. On the other hand, Charon is darker and much more gray in coloration. Starting at 11:30AM, NASA TV will begin broadcasting updates of the flyby. The data resolved will provide scientists information to study for years while New Horizons continues its journey
outward into the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
-Students of the University of California have successfully tested a 3D printed rocket engine. Their engine is about a foot tall and took one and a half years to envision and print.The
Ignus is an alternative to traditional engines but still follows most of the typical designs. However because the parts are created in the printing process, it is easier to make alterations to allow the team to experiment. It is possible to print the
reaction chamber as a single piece but the students decided to do it parts to allow them to review the state of the engine
after firing. There are some issues that had to be overcome, like the presence of the additional particles left over from the printing process that needed to be thoroughly cleaned from the engine before testing. Fired on April 18th the rocket
performed admirably generating the expected 750 pounds of thrust. The only glitch was that the data cable had come
unseated and no information was captured. Not giving up, the students re-attached the line, re-fired the rocket and captured the necessary data. In the future they hope to increase the size of the motor to the point that they can begin to launch micro satellites into orbit.