space

New Glenn

Blue Origin was successful on its first test launch of the New Glenn rocket! Official statement:

“New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective. The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well. We lost the booster during descent. We knew landing the first stage on the first try was ambitious. We'll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch in the spring. We're thrilled with today's outcome.”

Learn more here: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-glenn-ng-1-mission

To The Moon

Two of my short stories, APOGEE and SOLATIUM, are trying for the moon again! Overnight, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket carrying (among numerous NASA and commercial payloads) the Lunar Codex, Samuel Peralta's passion project, a beautiful collection of stories, art, music and more. I am honored beyond words to have my these stories reach the stars and find a home on the moon!

It'll be a little while before Blue Ghost attempts a lunar landing, however. It will spend the next 25 days in Earth orbit, undergoing a variety of systems checks and gathering data. It will then conduct an engine burn and hopefully reach the moon 4 days later, where it will orbit for 16 days before attempting a touchdown in Mare Crisium.

If the landing is successful, Blue Ghost will deliver the Lunar Codex to its home on the lunar surface. Then it spend 2 weeks capturing imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions, before retiring with the lunar night.

The Horizon of Earth

This might be the most beautiful photograph ever taken from the ISS. Snapped by astronaut Don Petit this weekend, it features the Milky Way, Zodical light, Starlink satellites as streaks, stars as pin points, the atmosphere on edge showing OH emission as burned umber, the soon to rise sun, and cities at night as streaks - all in one image.

Source: https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/1878900589238923290

Predictions Progress Report

Five years ago, at the dawn of 2020 (not forseeing the crisis that awaited us in a mere two months), I made the following predictions (and asked for your thoughts on Facebook):

We're in the 2020s now, and this had damn well better be the decade where some mind-blowing technological advances happen. With that in mind--

Which of the following do you think we are MOST LIKELY to have in 2030:

(1) A fully functioning lunar base, where astronauts live and work on the surface for 6+ months at a time and (rich) tourists visit.

(2) Boots on Mars, and not the robotic kind.

(3) Effective anti-aging/life-extension medication or treatments - not to make us immortal (yet), but to extend our *healthy* lifespan well into the 100s.

(4) Practical brain-computer interfaces - chips in our brains, or at least subcutaneous/on-skin hardware that communicates with our brains.

(5) Discovery of microbial alien life in our solar system and/or confirmation of a clear technological signature (advanced alien life) out there.

5 years later, #1, #2 and #5 (microbial) are looking reasonably likely to be achieved by 2030. #3 and #4 are moving a little more slowly, but I’m hopeful we’ll see the beginnings of them within a decade.

You know what wasn't on this list of mine? Artificial General Intelligence. Leaving it off * might * have been an error on my part....

Ice Clouds Over a Red Planet

From NASA / Astronomy Picture of the Day:

“If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer, Perseverance. The orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The blue tint near the rising Sun is caused by blue light being preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and appear high in the Martian atmosphere. The shapes of some of these clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.”

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241203.html

Europa Clipper is on its way

It's a busy week for space enthusiasts (have you spotted Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS?). The long-anticipated Europa Clipper mission is officially underway. The craft launched Monday morning on a Falcon Heavy rocket, bound for that most beguiling of icy Jupiter moons, Europa. It will arrive at its destination in 2030 (!?! We seriously need faster spacecraft engines pronto - or engines that use much less fuel, thus are able to take more fuel and travel faster....)

Once there, Europa Clipper will hunt for organic chemicals on the icy surface, as well as other signs of a habitable environment and evidence for the ingredients of life. It will also characterize Europa's ice shell in detail. This work could identify good spots at which a life-hunting lander could touch down and operate - BUT IT WILL ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

...not yet.

Starship and the Future of Rapidly Reusable Rockets

In an absolutely incredible feat of engineering, SpaceX has caught Starship's Super Heavy booster in the Mechazilla arms on the first try! What a sight.

After a succesful launch and orbit, Starship itself completed a planned soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean as well. All in all, a hugely successful 5th test flight of Starship.

One day soon, this will all be routine. Like we do now with the hundreds of Falcon 9 launches and booster landings, we'll go, "Oh, did Starship launch again today? Another moon trip, maybe?" And I look forward to that day.

But for now, WOW.

Cartwheel Galaxy

The latest from the Webb Telescope:

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.”

https://www.nasa.gov/universe/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/

Note: There are 3 versions of the image. The composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the MIRI-only image are shown in the article, and the NIRI-only image is shown below and in this NASA tweet.

Saturn's Rings

It’s your periodic Cassini Appreciation Post (no, Cassi, it’s not about you!).

From Jason Major: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured with Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom; the even smaller Atlas is on the left along the outer edge of the A ring. Saturn's shadow falls across the rings at upper right.”

Directly Imaging Exoplanets

What's that giant blue blob in the bottom left quadrant? It's an exoplanet. I haven't done the digging to confirm, but it feels like this is the highest quality direct imaging of an exoplanet we have achieved so far.

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching in 2027, is going to bring another huge leap forward in finding and imaging exoplanets, but this is already really impressive. Being able to see these planets is going to change everything.

"This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star. The observations were made using NACO, the adaptative optics instrument for the VLT in infrared light, and using a technique called differential imaging, which improves the contrast between the planet and its dazzling host star. The star itself has been removed from the picture during processing to enhance the view of the faint exoplanet and its position is marked. The exoplanet appears at the lower left.

The blue circle is the size of the orbit of Neptune in the Solar System."

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1324a/

Starship Soars In Test Flight #4

Starship's fourth test flight went so beautifully! As before, it cruised around the planet for around 40 minutes. This time, the SuperHeavy booster not only survived re-entry, but completed its landing burn and a soft splashdown in the ocean, intact.

And the big news: the ship survived re-entry through the atmosphere, completed its flip and landing burn and splashed down as well. Now, the trip down was spicy AF, and it landed beat up, with the landing flaps hanging on by a thread. But it made it, which is *more* than SpaceX was expecting today (the focus was on making it through the atmosphere without, well, exploding).

Every test has achieved so much more than the last; the iteration SpaceX is able to achieve is incredible.

Solar Eclipse

I was so jealous of the people who grabbed a spot beneath totality; the videos were incredible. I’m definitely visiting my old residence of Colorado Springs in 21 years when the next one comes around!

Here’s a couple of my favorite pictures from the eclipse (though there were so many).

Credit:

Image 1: Joshua Intini (https://twitter.com/Intini_WX/status/1777428414560932136)

Image 2: Erik Kuna (https://twitter.com/SuperclusterHQ/status/1777504797890854927)

Image 3: Peter Forister (https://twitter.com/forecaster25/status/1777434179136819497)

Image 4: NASA (ISS) (https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1777822160087818714)

Starship Soars

Welcome to the future of spaceflight, everyone! This week, in its third test flight, Starship made it to space, oribiting the planet for around 40 minutes before heading home. No, it didn’t make it all the way to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but that’s what testing is for, and it traveled so much farther, for so much longer, than ever before. I was a little twitchy after the second explosive test, but I’m now very optimistic for the future of this spacecraft and what it means for our journey to the moon, then onward to Mars and throughout the solar system.

Now enjoy these absolutely stunning photos of the flight:

Odysseus

For the first time in 52 years, an American craft has landed on the moon. And for the first time EVER, it's a private, commercial craft. The company is Intuitive Machines, and the craft is Odysseus.

It was a "spicy" landing, in the words of IM's CEO. As the target landing time neared, they realized that its laser rangefinders weren't working properly. So they implemented a workaround to get the required altitude and velocity data, pressing into service an experimental NASA instrument aboard Odysseus called NDL ("Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing)."

The team delayed the planned touchdown by two hours to make the fix, which required them to beam a software patch to Odysseus from mission control in Houston. That is a heroic effort and an incredible achievement by the engineers at IM.

Now, Odysseus IS somewhat...sideways. See the pic for the adorable reenactment IM performed at the press conference yesterday. But slightly off-kilter or not, the craft is very much alive and doing science. It's solar panels are exposed and drawing power, virtually all of its payloads are accessible, and nothing got crushed. IM expects the craft to operate for several days before it loses that precious sunlight needed to power it.

This mission was part of a NASA initiative called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, or CLPS, in which the space agency is paying private companies to deliver science experiments and other cargo to the lunar surface. (The failed Astrobotic Peregrine mission last month was the first CLPS mission, and there are I think 7 more scheduled over the next 18 months.)

Odysseur landed at the lunar south pole, which is about to be the hottest real estate in space, for one reason: water!

Link to a great article about the mission and the landing: https://www.universetoday.com/165864/odysseus-moon-lander-is-tipped-over-but-still-sending-data/

And a fascinating article out today with a behind-the-scenes look at the people at Intuitive Machines who saved the mission over and over again: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/

Babes in the Woods

Read yet another article this week about new findings on an early-universe galaxy that * shouldn't exist * according to our current scientific understanding, because "something something dark matter something something." At this point, I feel like this is the state of our "understanding" of astrophysics.

We are truly babes in the woods. With blindfolds on, waving around a dime-store metal detector. We know legions more than we ever have in the history of humanity - but imagine what we can know tomorrow.