Space Stuff

[Robert]

-EDIT-
6:10pm ET Update: Scrub! The Falcon 9 rocket's ground systems aborted the launch of a Bangladeshi satellite at T-58 seconds for an unspecified reason. However, SpaceX seems to think it will be able to turn around the new Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket for a second launch attempt on Friday, at 4:14pm ET (20:14 UTC). We'll be watching then.

The new—and likely final—version of SpaceX’s workhorse rocket may fly today
SpaceX hopes to finally close the loop of reusability.

The Block 5 rocket on the way to the launch pad.
A Falcon 9 rocket has gone vertical on Thursday morning at Launch Complex 39A in Florida, and SpaceX is on track for the liftoff of a brand new version of its workforce booster. The launch of the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 to geostationary transfer orbit is set for 4:12pm ET (20:12 UTC) Thursday, with a launch window that stretches for a little more than two hours.

The highlight of this flight is the debut of the Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 rocket (which Ars previewed thoroughly last week). SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said this will be the final "substantial" upgrade to the Falcon 9 rocket, optimizing the booster for reuse. The company hopes to be able to fly each Block 5 first stage 10 times before significant refurbishment is required.

Ten flights of an individual booster would be hugely significant, as SpaceX has thus far only ever reused each of its Falcon 9 rockets a single time. Additionally, the company hopes to reduce the turnaround time between launches of a Falcon 9 booster, now several months, to a matter of weeks.

Every orbital rocket since the dawn of the Space Age, except for components of the space shuttle, has been thrown away after a single flight. The versatile shuttle, which ended up costing about $1 billion per flight, never proved economical. Now, with the Block 5 version of its rocket, SpaceX finally hopes to close the loop by building a rocket with a short turnaround and flying it multiple times at a relatively low cost.

The first step toward that goal begins today. Weather conditions are forecast to be 80 percent go. A landing attempt will occur at 8 minutes and 10 seconds after launch, aboard the Of Course I Still Love You droneship.

 

[Robert]

NASA will send tiny helicopter to Mars
VID Why crawl when you can fly? Because flying in a thin atmosphere is hard, but Mars 2020 will try anyway

Depiction of Mars 2020's helicopter on Mars.

The appeal of a ‘copter is obvious: it’ll be faster than a crawling robot, see further and should be less likely to be stuck in sand.

While Bernoulli’s Principle holds on Mars, the red planet’s atmosphere is vastly thinner than Earth’s so a copter needs to be lighter and rotate its blades faster to achieve lift. NASA’s therefore designed a machine with blades that “will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3,000 rpm – about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth”, weighs just 1.8kg and has a “fuselage … about the size of a softball”.

NASA’s planned a “30-day flight test campaign” comprising five flights. For starters the ‘copter will climb to 3 meters, hover for 30 seconds, then descend. Subsequent flights will reach “up to a few hundred meters, and longer durations as long as 90 seconds”.

The craft will be autonomous but will have a wireless connection to the Mars 2020 rover to exchange data.

 

[Robert]

After “crazy hard” development, SpaceX’s Block 5 rocket has taken flight
“For those that know rockets, this is a ridiculously hard thing."

 

[Robert]

Decades-old data reveals shows Jupiter’s moon sprayed alien juice over Galileo probe
Plume pinpointing means the Europa Clipper is going surfing

Space scientists have just figured out that an unusual anomaly from over 20 years ago was the equivalent of a space probe being squirted in the face.

Back in 1997 the Galileo Jupiter probe skimmed the watery moon of Europa and now it appears it got a faceful from a water plume 1,000km (621 miles) wide.

 

[Robert]

Astroboffins spy the most greedy black hole yet gobbling a Sun a day
It farts out enough energy to irradiate all life on Earth

Astronomers have spotted the greediest supermassive black hole going through the fastest growth spurt some 12 billion years ago.

The humongous hole, codenamed QSO SMSS J215728.21-360215.1, is the staggering size of about 20 billion suns, and grows at a rate of 200 million suns over a million years. It has a voracious appetite and gobbles a mass equivalent to twice that of our Sun every two days to sustain itself.

 

[adz]

Astroboffins spy the most greedy black hole yet gobbling a Sun a day
It farts out enough energy to irradiate all life on Earth

Astronomers have spotted the greediest supermassive black hole going through the fastest growth spurt some 12 billion years ago.

The humongous hole, codenamed QSO SMSS J215728.21-360215.1, is the staggering size of about 20 billion suns, and grows at a rate of 200 million suns over a million years. It has a voracious appetite and gobbles a mass equivalent to twice that of our Sun every two days to sustain itself.

These are the things that keep me awake at night

 

[Robert]

Bipartisan pair of senators blast plan to end space station in seven years
NASA inspector general appears to buttress senatorial concerns.

Sen. Ted Cruz, right, and Sen. Bill Nelson (background) both support extending ISS operations beyond 2025.
At one point on Wednesday afternoon, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) turned to his counterpart from Florida, Democrat Bill Nelson, and spoke of their mutual preference for continuing federal funding for the International Space Station throughout the 2020s. "Senator Nelson and I are on exactly the same page," Cruz said.

"Why couldn't we agree on a lot of other pages?" Nelson quipped in reply.

The exchange came during a hearing of the Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which Cruz chairs, on the topic of "Examining the Future of the International Space Station: Administration Perspectives." More specifically, the Trump administration has said it will end NASA's direct support for the International Space Station in 2025. Wednesday's hearing delivered a bipartisan response from the Senate in which key members vigorously oppose this plan.

 

[Robert]

NASA fix for Curiosity rovers's damaged drill: hitting it, repeatedly
Robot arm to add 'percussive' force so we can drill, baby, drill

NASA's top engineers think they've figured out a way to get the Curiosity rover's drill back to work holing the rock faces of Mars.

Back in 2016 the nuclear-powered rover's rock-sampling drill broke downafter a motor failed. As 225 million km (140 million miles) is too far to make an on-site visit, the men and women of NASA have worked out a remote fix.

The new technique is called Feed Extended Drilling (FED) and uses the rover's robotic arm to direct the drill bit. Tests conducted in February 2018 proved the technique didn't work very well so the NASA boffins added a percussive element to hopefully drive the spinning drill bit into rock slabs on Saturday.

 

[Robert]

NASA’s new exoplanet-spotter survives sling past the Moon
Store-and-forward probe TESS warms up its cameras with a snap of 200,000 stars

200,000-plus stars snapped by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

NASA’s exoplanet-spotting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has successfully manoeuvred around Earth’s moon.

TESS is headed for an orbit that’s elliptical and inclined to Earth. The ellipse allows TESS to squirt data back to Earth from its 108,000km perigee, an altitude that keeps it well clear of the cluttered ~30,000km orbit inhabited by geosynchronous satellites. At its 373,000km apogee it’ll be well clear of the Van Allen Radiation belts.

The inclination makes the orbit stable by reducing back-and-forth tugs of gravity from Earth and the Moon. The resulting orbit is stable enough that TESS won’t need to adjust its orbit, so can carry less fuel which means more payload for instruments.

To get into that orbit, TESS needs a gravity-assist from the Moon, which is why it passed within 8.000km of the lunar surface last week.

NASA’s engineers have also been testing TESS’ cameras, with an early result being the shot above that depicts the output of just one of four cameras, and just 1/400th of the sky that TESS can survey, but still shows more than 200,000 stars from around the constellation Centaurus. The full image is here.

 

[Robert]

NASA asks for Europa lander science experiments—and that’s a big deal
A mundane federal solicitation may be key to ensuring the lander happens.

Plumes of water vapor on Europa? A lander could tell us much more.
NASA is in various stages of planning two multi-billion dollar missions to Jupiter's intriguing, ice-covered moon of Europa. One, a flyby mission known as the Europa Clipper, will make dozens of passes of the moon down to an altitude of about 25km as it assesses the nature of the ice and the ocean below and looks for clues of habitability. A second even more ambitious mission would seek to actually land on Europa, sample its ice, and look for signs of life.

Both missions, but especially the lander, would be among the most complex, daring, and costly planetary science missions that NASA has attempted. However, both the Clipper and lander are not equally likely to occur. The Clipper is more established. It has been progressing through NASA's multi-tiered review process and has a launch date of 2022. In the president's budget request for fiscal year 2019, it also received $265 million in funding.

The lander mission has always seemed more tenuous, partly because it represents such a breathtaking challenge to land on an icy moon so far away—a nightmare glacier that is irradiated by nearby Jupiter and where the creaky surface rises and falls. In terms of complexity, the Europa Clipper spacecraft has a mass of about 6 tons, and the lander spacecraft will probably end up with a mass of about 16 tons.

Worryingly, the lander also received no funding in the fiscal year 2019 budget from the White House. For the time being, it remains reliant on Congress and especially a single representative in the US House of Representatives—Texas Republican John Culberson. In the House budget proposal for 2019, where Culberson sets the topline numbers for NASA as chairman of the authorizing subcommittee, the Clipper mission received $545 million and the lander $195 million. For this reason, the lander mission would benefit from a broader constituency, and that means more buy-in from the US scientific community.

 

[Robert]

China takes a critical first step toward landing on the far side of the Moon
The Queqiao spacecraft is now on its way toward L2.

The far side of the Moon. No robotic spacecraft has ever made a soft landing here.
China's space agency has taken a critical first step toward an unprecedented robotic landing on the far side of the Moon. On Monday, local time, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation launched a Long March 4C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. Although it did not broadcast the launch, the Chinese space agency said it went smoothly, according to the state news service Xinhua.

"The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the Moon," Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, told Xinhua.

About 25 minutes after the launch, the Queqiao spacecraft separated from the rocket's upper stage, and began a trip toward a halo orbit of the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point L2. Over the next six months, the 425kg spacecraft will undergo tests to ensure it will function properly as a communications relay.

If so, China will then attempt to launch the Chang'e 4 spacecraft late this year, which will try to make an unprecedented soft landing on the far side of the Moon. This mission will also include a rover to undertake scientific excursions.

However, because the far side of the Moon is the far side, a lander and rover there cannot have a direct line of sight for communications with Earth. Hence the need for the relay spacecraft at L2, which can capture data from the Chang'e 4 lander and send it back to Earth. The relay spacecraft will use S-band and X-band frequencies to communicate.

 

[Robert]

Astronaut took camera on spacewalk, but forgot SD card
Houston? What does ‘No SD’ mean? Is this thing even on?

An international space station astronaut took a GoPro camera for a space walk last week, but forgot to bring any memory.

“A question about the GoPro real quick,” asks astronaut Andrew Feustel in the video below. “I’m pushing the button I see a ‘no SD’. Do I need that to record? And if it is recording is there supposed to be a red light on?”

Mission control responds “The GoPro. I’m told that if it has the card in it, it should have a red light if it is recording.”

“And if it says ‘No SD’ what does that mean?” Feustel replied.

“I think that means no card,” mission control replies. “I’ll check it though, hang on.”

“Let’s just forget about it for now, Feustel eventually said.
The spacewalk was otherwise a success, with NASA reporting its “thermal maintenance” mission succeeded.

 

[Robert]

The SpaceX rocket used for the ill-fated Zuma mission to fly again today
The company will also make another attempt to recover a payload fairing.

A sooty Falcon 9 rocket is ready for launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceX will attempt its 10th launch of the year on Tuesday, a mission serving two different customers. The Falcon 9 rocket will carry five communications satellites for the Iridium NEXT constellation, along with two gravity-measuring satellites for NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences.

This first-stage booster has flown once before, a little more than four months ago when it launched the Zuma mission for the US government—a satellite or spacecraft that was apparently lost in space after it failed to separate from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX appears to have been absolved from blame for this mishap, and certainly the first stage booster performed nominally during that mission.

SpaceX will not attempt to recover this core, as it is a Block 4 variant of the booster. Each Block 4 core will fly just two times as the company seeks to move all of its launches onto the newer Block 5 version of the rocket, which has slightly increased performance and numerous upgrades to optimize the first stage for reusability.

Although SpaceX will not seek to recover the first stage, it will attempt to recover one half of the rocket's payload fairing, using a system of on-board thrusters and parachutes to steer the fairing-half back to the Pacific Ocean toward a boat named Mr. Steven. This boat will seek to "catch" the fairing before it falls into the ocean. Past attempts to recover the fairing have come close but not succeeded.

 

[Robert]

Astroboffins, get in here and explain Saturn's odd-shaped balls
Well, technically speaking, the gas giant's ring system takes regular hard poundings

A trio of physicists reckoned they’ve figured out why some of Saturn’s moons are so oddly shaped, with some looking like giant floating ravioli and others imitating stubby baguettes.

Saturn is most well known for its complex ring system and it is estimated that at least 62 moons are hiding amongst the structure so far. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed images of some of its inner moons and found that Pan and Atlas, measuring tens of kilometers across, had bulbous middles and flat circular edges, making them look like flying saucers, whereas Prometheus is larger and looks more like an elongated hexagon.


Images of Pan, Atlas and Prometheus.

Martin Rubin, co-author of the study and a computational physicist at the University of Bern, said he was baffled when he saw the pictures. He decided to investigate with some of his colleagues by building a computer model to simulate the conditions under which the moons formed.

 

[Robert]

Lovely long exposure shot from yesterday's SpaceX launch:

 

[Robert]

China just invited the world to its space station
"All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate."

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in a Chinese pressure suit during training with Chinese colleagues to practice sea survival off China’s coastal city of Yantai, on 14 August 2017.

At a time when NASA and its partners are trying to decide how long to maintain the International Space Station, China has taken the significant step of inviting the world to its planned orbital station. The China Space Station, or CSS, could become operational as soon as 2022.

"CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world," said Shi Zhongjun, China's Ambassador to UN and other international organizations in Vienna. "All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the cooperation on an equal footing."

Such an announcement represents potentially the greatest soft power threat of the last six decades to US and Russian dominance of spaceflight. In the public announcement of this policy on China's state news service Xinhua, Chinese officials said the country stands ready to help other developing countries interested in space technology—and in having their own space programs.

This inclusive approach (though just how inclusive an authoritarian government can be remains to be seen) offers a rebuke of sorts to the US government and the International Space Station. By law, the US forbids direct involvement between China's space program and NASA. Some at NASA want to change this, but Congress has established such rules to prevent technology transfer.

 

[Robert]

SpaceX to pick up the space pace with yet another Falcon 9 launch
Comms sat to treat Asia Pacific to exciting new HD programming. Rejoice!

Updated After taking an extra day to look over the second-hand Falcon 9 following its static fire on 25 May, engineers plan to light the blue touch-paper and stand well back on 1 June.

The night launch, currently scheduled for some time between 0429 and 0657 (UTC) on 1 June, stands only a 40 per cent chance of getting off the ground due to weather constraints, assuming SpaceX doesn't decide to take a bit longer to ensure the rocket's swan song goes to plan.

The likelihood of launching the following day, 2 June, improves to 60 per cent (at least from the weather perspective.)

As with the previous launch, SpaceX does not intend to attempt a recovery of the booster after it has lifted off from the SLC-40 pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

 

[Robert]

Dawn spacecraft to get up-close and personal with dwarf planet Ceres
New orbit will skim just 30 miles above Death Star lookalike

Our cloest image of Ceres yet, but we're getting ten times closer

The Dawn spacecraft orbiting dwarf planet Ceres will soon make its final course change as NASA boffins set it up for a closest-ever flyby yet to get a warts-and-all look.

Ceres is the largest body in the Asteroid Belt and orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn's been there since 2015, mapping the surface from hundreds of miles up. Its closest approach to the surface came this year, and the probe is now orbiting 270 miles (440 kilometres) above the surface.

NASA now wants to drop that altitude to less than 30 miles (50 kilometers) above Ceres' surface. The probe will send back high-resolution images and collect gamma ray and neutron spectra data from close to the surface.

 

[Robert]

Dark matter halos may leave twinkling wake in galaxies
Dark matter halos leave wake of disturbed stars that may be visible in sky surveys.

The Universe, according to cosmologists, is divided into three unequal portions. In the big bargain bin near the exit aisle, you’ll find dark energy. Dark energy’s job is to push everything apart. There’s lots of it, and no one knows why. Then, next to dark energy, on a display shelf, you’ll find a smaller amount of dark matter. Regular matter, the stuff you and I can see, is tucked off to the side: small and barely noticeable.

But the Universe isn't a store's display, and these individual parts can interact. Many of our models for dark matter predict a hierarchy of structures—halos of dark matter in and around galactic clusters and individual galaxies that hold them together. At large scales, we can detect these halos through gravitational lensing. Because there are observations to constrain them, all current theories of dark matter predict large halos correctly.

However, these same theories also predict smaller halos with sizes between 1,000 and a billion solar masses. In this mass range, we have no observations, and consequently, current theories disagree. These tiny halos are going to be hard to spot, though: their gravitational effect—the only way we can see them—will be minimal. But, now a group of researchers may have figured out a new way to spot some of them.

 

[Robert]

Frozen Pluto has wind-blown dunes made of methane sand
This landscape is both familiar and deeply weird.

Those finger-print like patterns are dunes on the plain adjacent to the peaks of the al-Idrisi Montes.
Part of the wonder of seeing new worlds is the radical difference from the planet you know. But if you know a little bit about the processes that shape our Earth, it’s also enthralling to see those same processes play out under alien conditions. It’s a marriage of exotic and familiar, like an instantly recognizable melody appearing in a style of music you’re hearing for the first time.

One familiar process is the formation of dunes. Large, repeating ridges of wind-blown sand can form in the desert, but they can also form as small ripples can on sandy stream bottoms or beaches. Wherever you have solid particles in a moving medium, dune-like landforms are possible. And we have seen plenty of them on Mars, on Titan, and even on comet 67P, despite its lack of a substantial atmosphere. In a new paper led by Plymouth University’s Matt Telfer, researchers working on the images from the New Horizons probe add another weirdo to the list of dune-bearing worlds—the dwarf planet Pluto.