Space

cross-posted from [email protected]: (https://sh.itjust.works/post/10229245)

Progress MS-25 launch:

A Russian Progress cargo ship loaded with more than 5,500 pounds of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station blasted off from Kazakhstan early Friday, kicking off a two-day orbital chase.

Perched atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, the Progress MS-25/86P spacecraft took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:25 a.m. EST (2:25 p.m. local time) and slipped into the planned preliminary orbit eight minutes and 45 seconds later.

The Progress then separated, spread its solar wings and set off after the space station in the first stages of a two-day 34-orbit rendezvous. If all goes well, the spacecraft will catch up with the lab complex early Sunday, guiding itself into a docking at the Russian space-facing Poisk module around 6:15 a.m.

The space freighter is delivering 3,423 pounds of spare parts, other equipment and supplies, 88 pounds of nitrogen, 926 pounds of water and 1,135 pounds of propellant used to help maintain the station’s orbit.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10314304

NASA announced Nov. 29 that Hubble was in a safe mode because of a problem with one of its three operational gyroscopes. That gyro first triggered a safe mode Nov. 19 when it provided what NASA described as faulty readings. Spacecraft controllers restored operations of Hubble, only to see problems again Nov. 21 and 23.

The agency said in the statement that engineers were studying the problem and did not estimate when science operations would resume. Hubble can operate with just a single gyro, although with some loss of productivity, such as the inability to perform some solar system observations.

Hubble has six gyros, which were installed on the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Three of the six have since malfunctioned.

The news of this latest, temporary problem with Hubble prompted a response from Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backing the Polaris program of SpaceX private astronaut missions. “Put us in coach,” he posted on social media.

That was a reference to a study announced in September 2022 involving Isaacman, SpaceX and NASA to study the feasibility of a private mission to reboost and possibly repair Hubble using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. At the time Isaacman suggested that a Hubble mission could be the second of three planned Polaris missions.

A nice brief overview of the SLS program, the history, the potential future, and some of the problems.

Slight caveat at 3:21: SLS only broke the record the "most powerful rocket ever launched successfully". The N1 was more powerful, but never reached orbit on any of its launches.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10260299

WASHINGTON — Angola signed the U.S.-led Artemis Accords outlining best practices for space exploration Nov. 30, becoming the third African nation to do so.

The signing took place during the visit of Angola’s president, João Lourenço, to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden. The signing was mentioned briefly in White House statements about the meeting.

Angola is the third African nation to sign the accords, after Rwanda and Nigeria, which joined in December 2022 during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Thirty-three countries have now signed the accords, 10 of which have done so this year.

“Angola is already using space-based capabilities to map United Nations sustainable development goals across the country, helping to tackle ambitious objectives such as eliminating poverty and hunger,” Mike Gold, chief growth officer at Redwire and a former NASA official who helped develop the Accords, told SpaceNews. “By signing the Artemis Accords, Angola is taking its space ambitions beyond Earth orbit, while supporting norms of behavior that will lead to a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy.”

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10260600

A nice overview of various recent and upcoming spaceflight topics:

• Something exploded at a Chinese spaceport
• The world's spaceports are busier than ever
• New money for rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major
• Firefly's fourth launch scheduled for December
• Astra stays alive with $2.7 million in fundraising
• Ariane 6 finally has a launch schedule
• Firefly's Miranda engine ignites for the first time
• A Chinese company is developing a stainless steel rocket
• China is making progress on a Raptor-like engine
• Starship V2 in the works

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10260294

Amazon announced Friday that it has purchased three Falcon 9 rocket launches from SpaceX beginning in mid-2025 to help deploy the retail giant's network of Kuiper Internet satellites.

In a statement, Amazon said the SpaceX launches will provide "additional capacity" to "supplement existing launch contracts to support Project Kuiper’s satellite deployment schedule." SpaceX has its own broadband satellite fleet, with more than 5,100 Starlink spacecraft currently in orbit, making it a competitor with Amazon.

Last year, Amazon bought up most of the Western world's excess launch capacity from everyone but SpaceX, securing 68 rocket flights from United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin to deploy thousands of satellites for the Kuiper broadband network. Amazon previously contracted with ULA for nine Atlas V launches to support the initial series of Kuiper launches, the first of which lifted off in October with Amazon's first two Kuiper prototype satellites. More Atlas Vs will start launching operational Kuiper satellites next year.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, the world's most reliable launch vehicle, was left out of Amazon's multibillion-dollar rocket purchase. This led to a lawsuit filed in August by shareholders of a pension fund that includes Amazon stock. The suit claims Amazon, its founder Jeff Bezos, and its board of directors breached "their fiduciary duty" and failed to consider SpaceX during the launch service procurement.

The Falcon 9 rocket is the only rocket with any openings in its launch schedule that could make up a shortfall from delays caused by Amazon's other launch providers. SpaceX has launched 88 Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets so far this year and aims to increase the launch cadence to one flight every 2.5 days in 2024. Most of these launches are for SpaceX's own Starlink Internet network.

Amazon's Project Kuiper is one of several satellite "megaconstellations" at various stages of development to provide low-latency broadband connectivity to consumers, governments, and corporate customers around the world. SpaceX's Starlink is the biggest of the group, and one of two (along with OneWeb) low-Earth orbit constellations currently providing commercial Internet service.

But once again, SpaceX has proved it will happily take money from its competitors to launch their satellites. OneWeb turned to SpaceX to launch its broadband satellites after losing access to Russian rockets in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Other communications satellite operators that compete with Starlink, including Viasat and SES, have launched their spacecraft on SpaceX rockets.

A bitter pill for Amazon indeed, and slightly embarrassing for Blue Origin.

The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar systems, according to Penn State researchers.

In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report the discovery of a planet more than 13 times as massive as Earth orbiting the "ultracool" star LHS 3154, which itself is nine times less massive than the sun. The mass ratio of the newly found planet with its host star is more than 100 times higher than that of Earth and the sun.

The finding reveals the most massive known planet in a close orbit around an ultracool dwarf star, the least massive and coldest stars in the universe. The discovery goes against what current theories would predict for planet formation around small stars and marks the first time a planet with such high mass has been spotted orbiting such a low-mass star.

The sun recently unleashed an "almost X-class" solar flare that was only fractionally less powerful than one of the sun's most powerful explosions. This flare has already bombarded us with radiation and unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that will likely slam into Earth today (Nov. 30) or tomorrow (Dec. 1).

Solar flares are essentially large explosions that are triggered when magnetic fields around sunspots snap and fling plasma into space. On Nov. 28, a large flare erupted from a dark patch near the sun's equator. Solar orbiters measured the flare as a 9.8 magnitude M-class, which is just below the threshold of X-class flares — the most powerful class of solar flare, Spaceweather.com reported. (Solar flare classes include A, B, C, M and X, with each class being at least 10 times more powerful than the previous one. X-class flares are the equivalent of a magnitude 10 M-class flare and above.)

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is the rate at which the universe is expanding. This can be predicted using the standard model of cosmology, also known as Lambda-cold dark matter (ΛCDM). This model is based on detailed observations of the light left over from the Big Bang – the so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB).

The universe’s expansion makes galaxies move away from each other. The further away they are from us, the more quickly they move. The relationship between a galaxy’s speed and distance is governed by “Hubble’s constant”, which is about 43 miles (70 km) per second per Megaparsec (a unit of length in astronomy). This means that a galaxy gains about 50,000 miles per hour for every million light years it is away from us.

But unfortunately for the standard model, this value has recently been disputed, leading to what scientists call the “Hubble tension”. When we measure the expansion rate using nearby galaxies and supernovas (exploding stars), it is 10% larger than when we predict it based on the CMB.

In our new paper, we present one possible explanation: that we live in a giant void in space (an area with below average density). We show that this could inflate local measurements through outflows of matter from the void. Outflows would arise when denser regions surrounding a void pull it apart – they’d exert a bigger gravitational pull than the lower density matter inside the void.

HELSINKI — A Chinese launch vehicle maker appears to have suffered an explosion at a test site at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

To their surprise, an international team of researchers has discovered a giant and extremely faint stream of stars between galaxies. While streams are already known in our own galaxy and in nearby galaxies, this is the first time that a stream running between galaxies has been observed. It is the largest stream detected to date. The astronomers have published their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The first observations were made with astronomer Michael Rich's relatively small 70-centimeter telescope in California (United States of America). Next, the researchers focused the 4.2-meter William Herschel telescope (La Palma, Spain) on the area. After image processing, they saw an extremely faint stream more than 10 times the length of our Milky Way. The stream appears floating in the middle of the cluster environment, not associated with any galaxy in particular. The researchers have named it the Giant Coma Stream.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10131954

The week begins with Roscosmos planning to launch the Progress MS-25 resupply capsule on a Soyuz 2.1a up to the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Then, a Falcon 9 launch out of Vandenburg Space Force Base (VSFB) will take multiple different payloads to a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) in one launch and also has a return-to-launch site landing. Later that day, SpaceX will launch 23 more Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit (LEO) from Cape Canaveral Space Forse Station. Finishing off the week, another Chinese rocket, the Jielong-3 plans to take an unknown payload to an SSO.

Nice overview of upcoming launches. Might be slightly out-of-date, as it looks like there are now Long March 2C and Ceres-1 launches scheduled for Sunday and Monday, and Jielong-3 has slipped to Tuesday.

Scientists have discovered a rare sight in a nearby star system: Six planets orbiting their central star in a rhythmic beat. The planets move in an orbital waltz that repeats itself so precisely that it can be readily set to music.

A rare case of an "in sync" gravitational lockstep, the system could offer deep insight into planet formation and evolution.

The analysis, led by UChicago scientist Rafael Luque, was published Nov. 29 in Nature.

"This discovery is going to become a benchmark system to study how sub-Neptunes, the most common type of planets outside of the solar system, form, evolve, what are they made of, and if they possess the right conditions to support the existence of liquid water in their surfaces," said Luque