Space News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

New aurorae detected on Jupiter's four largest moons
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-aurorae-j ... moons.html
by W. M. Keck Observatory

Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi have discovered that aurorae at visible wavelengths appear on all 4 major moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Using Keck Observatory's High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) as well as high-resolution spectrographs at the Large Binocular Telescope and Apache Point Observatory, a team led by Caltech and Boston University observed the moons in Jupiter's shadow so that their faint aurorae, which are caused by the gas giant's strong magnetic field, could be spotted without competition from bright sunlight reflected off of their surfaces.

"These observations are tricky because in Jupiter's shadow the moons are nearly invisible. The light emitted by their faint aurorae is the only confirmation that we've even pointed the telescope at the right place," says Katherine de Kleer, Caltech professor and lead author of one of two new research papers published today in The Planetary Science Journal describing the discovery.

All four of the Galilean moons show the same oxygen aurora we see in skies near the Earth's poles, but gases on Jupiter's moons are much thinner, allowing a deep red color to glow nearly 15 times brighter than the familiar green light.

At Europa and Ganymede, oxygen also lights up infrared wavelengths, just a little redder than the human eye can see—the first occurrence of this phenomenon seen in the atmosphere of a body other than Earth.

At Io, Jupiter's innermost moon, volcanic plumes of gas and dust are vast in size, reaching hundreds of kilometers in height. These plumes contain salts like sodium chloride and potassium chloride, which break down to produce additional colors. Sodium gives Io's aurora the same yellowy-orange glow that we see in urban streetlamps. The new measurements also show potassium aurora at Io in infrared light, which has not been detected anywhere else previously.

[caltrek]

Alien Life on Enceladus Could Be Found by Studying Saturn’s Rings
by Alfredo Carpineti
February 24, 2023

Introduction:

(IFL Science) The E-ring is quite unlike all the other rings of Saturn. It is much wider, roughly the Earth-Moon distance, and much thicker than the other rings. It is also rich in microscopic particles of ice and silica and the Cassini mission identified the icy moon Enceladus as its creator.

Underneath its icy shell, Enceladus harbors a deep water-ocean with hydrothermal activity at its bottom. And on the southern pole of the moon, a region called the tiger stripes is known to have geysers. And these geysers launch material into space and ended up forming the E-ring.

It is unclear how the nano-silica particles seen by Cassini formed but one suggestion sees them as coming from the seafloor of Enceladus, and new models agree with the idea. Materials can be lifted from the moon’s seafloor and taken to the icy shell in a matter of months.

“Our model shows that these grains may be transported through the ocean interior on timescales faster than previously thought,” Assistant Professor Emily Hawkins, from Loyola Marymount University, said in a statement. “The nano-silica material is thought to be important in the generation of life on the icy moon. Ultimately, our research aids in the understanding of the habitability of Enceladus, and will guide future missions to the outer solar system moon.”

What keeps the interior of Enceladus going is the tidal forces it experiences as it goes around Saturn in a strongly elliptical orbit. The forces squish the rocky core and the ice shell and the bottom of the ocean gets heated by hydrothermal vents that form there.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/alien-life- ... ngs-67698

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Japan forced to destroy flagship H3 rocket in failed launch

40 minutes ago

Japan was forced to blow up its new rocket during a failed launch on Tuesday, setting back efforts to crack a market led by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Its space agency had to send a self-destruct command to the H3 rocket when its second-stage engine failed minutes after lift-off.

Observers say it is a significant setback for Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa).

The government called the test failure "extremely regrettable".

The H3 rocket is the first medium-lift rocket designed by Japan in three decades.

It has been presented as a cheaper alternative to SpaceX's Falcon 9 for launching commercial and government satellites into Earth's orbit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64871603

[Time_Traveller]

The world's first 3D-printed rocket is about to launch into space. Here's how it could beat Elon Musk's SpaceX to Mars.

Mar 8, 2023, 11:52 AM

The world's first 3D-printed rocket is about to launch into space.

Terran 1, built by Relativity Space, is expected to lift off from Cape Canaveral at 1 p.m. local time.

If it is successful, it will become the largest 3D-printed object to reach orbital flight. It could also become the first-ever privately-funded rocket to reach orbit on the first attempt.

The 3D-printed rocket is the brainchild of Tim Ellis, a former engineer at Jeff Bezos' space startup, Blue Origin.

https://www.businessinsider.com/relativ ... nch-2023-3

[weatheriscool]

Venus could have had oceans long after life started on Earth
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-venus-oce ... earth.html
by Justin Jackson , Phys.org

Today Venus has a dry, oxygen-poor atmosphere. But recent studies have proposed that the early planet may have had liquid water and reflective clouds that could have sustained habitable conditions. Researchers at the University of Chicago, Department of Geophysical Sciences, have built a new time-dependent model of Venus's atmospheric composition to explore these claims. Their findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Water is everywhere in our solar system, usually in the form of ice or atmospheric gas, though occasionally in liquid form. On all of the planets, many of the moons, from the outer ring of the inner asteroid belt to the icy Kuiper Belt, and way out to the far distant Oort cloud two light years away, water is there.

[weatheriscool]

NASA instrument bound for Titan could reveal chemistry leading to life
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-nasa-inst ... eveal.html
by Nick Oakes, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A new NASA mission to Saturn's giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could bring about a new understanding of the development of life in the universe. This mission, called Dragonfly, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), designed to help scientists hone in on the chemistry at work on Titan. It may also shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.

Titan's abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry, interior ocean, and past presence of liquid water on the surface make it an ideal destination to study prebiotic chemical processes and the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment.

DraMS will allow scientists back on Earth to remotely study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface. "We want to know if the type of chemistry that could be important for early pre-biochemical systems on Earth is taking place on Titan," explains Dr. Melissa Trainer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

[Time_Traveller]

NASA selects Firefly Aerospace for mission to moon's far side in 2026

published 2 days ago

NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace to land payloads on the moon and send another into orbit to provide communications with the lunar far side.

The mission will use Texas-based Firefly Aerospace's robotic Blue Ghost lander to safely deliver two payloads to the far side of the moon, which permanently faces away from Earth.

The launch will first send the European Space Agency's (ESA) Lunar Pathfinder communications and navigation satellite into an elliptical orbit around the moon to relay signals between Earth and the payloads on the surface.

The payloads destined for the surface are the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night), which is designed to understand the moon's radio environment and peer into the unobserved cosmic "dark ages," and User Terminal (UT), which will provide communications support for LuSEE-Night.

NASA announced on Tuesday (March 14) that it had awarded Firefly the $112 million contract as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The initiative is part of the agency's larger Artemis program.

https://www.space.com/moon-far-side-mis ... ium=social

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Glass beads on moon's surface may hold billions of tonnes of water, scientists say
Source: The Guardian

Tiny glass beads strewn across the moon’s surface contain potentially billions of tonnes of water that could be extracted and used by astronauts on future lunar missions, researchers say.

The discovery is thought to be one of the most important breakthroughs yet for space agencies that have set their sights on building bases on the moon, as it means there could be a highly accessible source of not only water but also hydrogen and oxygen.

“This is one of the most exciting discoveries we’ve made,” said Mahesh Anand, a professor of planetary science and exploration at the Open University. “With this finding, the potential for exploring the moon in a sustainable manner is higher than it’s ever been.”

Tests on the glass particles revealed that together they contain substantial quantities of water, amounting to between 300m and 270bn tonnes across the entire moon’s surface.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ntists-say

[caltrek]

A Call for a New International Treaty to Counter the Threat of a ‘Wild West’ in Outer Space
March 30, 2023

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) A new round of internationally binding legal norms is urgently needed to hold governments and commercial organisations to account for outer space exploration and utilization, an expert in space law has warned.

As the dependency of humans on outer space will only further increase in the future, accessibility to outer space is of utmost concern and needs to be both technically and legally guaranteed.

In her new book, The Space Law Stalemate, Dr Anja Nakarada Pečujlić presents a clear overview of the situation and proposes solutions to ensure fair and sustainable access to space.

Playing legal catch-up

“Risk-taking and hyper-entrepreneurial private space industry are likely to be the leaders in the next phase of the space race,” Dr Nakarada Pečujlić explains. “The evolution of space law, however, has not followed the pace of transformative changes and advancements, nor the emergence of new risks.”

The historic international treaties on space, including the Outer Space Treaty (1967) and the four subsequent space treaties, set the framework for transnational cooperation in space by preventing individual states from seeking national appropriation and claiming the sovereignty of celestial bodies.

Read more of the EurekAlert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/984561

For more information on The Space Law Stalemate, including how to order that book: https://www.routledge.com/The-Space-Law ... 032300696

[weatheriscool]

Improving the Performance of Electrodeless Plasma Thrusters for Space Propulsion
March 30, 2023 by Brian Wang
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/03/i ... lsion.html

A Tohoku University researcher has increased the performance of a high-power electrodeless plasma thruster, moving us one step closer to deeper explorations into space.

y, several space missions have successfully been completed using electric propulsion devices, such as gridded ion thrusters and Hall thrusters. Solar power is converted into thrust energy when the propellant becomes ionized, i.e., a plasma, and gets accelerated by electromagnetic fields. Yet, the electrodes necessary for these devices limit their lifetime, since they get exposed to and damaged by the plasma, especially at a high-power level.

To circumvent this, scientists have turned to electrodeless plasma thrusters. One such technology harnesses radio frequency (rf) to generate plasma. An antenna emits radio waves into a cylindrical chamber to create plasma, where a magnetic nozzle channels and accelerates the plasma to generate thrust. MN rf plasma thrusters, or helicon thrusters as they are sometimes known, offer simplicity, operational flexibility, and a potentially high thrust-to-power ratio.

But the development of MN rf plasma thrusters has been stymied by the conversion efficiency of the rf power to thrust energy. Early experiments generated single-digit conversion rates, but more recent studies have reached a modest outcome of 20%.

In a recent study, Professor Kazunori Takahashi, from Tohoku University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, has achieved a 30% conversion efficiency.

[Time_Traveller]

Spain establishes its own space agency

published 3 days ago

Spain now has its own space agency.

The country's Council of Ministers voted to allow the Spanish Space Agency, or Agencia Espacial Española (AEE), to commence operations on March 7. Plans for the agency were officially announced(opens in new tab) back in May 2021.

The agency will be based in Seville and serve to "guarantee Spain's strategic action in the field of space, both from the point of view of its technological development and the use of space in areas such as security, Earth observation, geolocation and telecommunications," according to a statement(opens in new tab) from Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation, via machine translation.

"Space is a priority and strategic area, essential to help and protect our society in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, navigation, the fight against climate change or the monitoring of phenomena such as drought or fires," the statement continued.

Minister for Science and Innovation Diana Morant indicated that the agency will have an initial budget of more than 700 million euros (U.S. $753 million) in 2023.

https://www.space.com/spain-starts-nati ... =space.com

[weatheriscool]

NASA Creates ‘Moon to Mars’ Program Office
The new division will guide NASA as it makes the Moon an intellectual halfway point to Mars.
By Adrianna Nine April 3, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/n ... ram-office

The Moon is no longer just a destination—it’s also a jumping-off point for more ambitious missions. On Thursday, NASA launched a new division called the Moon to Mars Program Office, which will use lunar exploration achievements to guide future trips to the Red Planet.

The Moon to Mars office, which sits at NASA’s Washington headquarters, was one facet of the 2022 NASA Authorization Act (an element of the CHIPS and Science Act). Among amendments and additions to ISS operations and sustainability efforts, the NASA Authorization Act mandated the implementation of an office that would leverage the Moon to help astronauts reach Mars. Now that NASA has established the office and nestled it into its Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, it’s ready to begin designing Mars missions around its Artemis program.

[weatheriscool]

Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane makes first rocket-powered flights
By Ben Coxworth
April 05, 2023
https://newatlas.com/space/dawn-aerospa ... t-flights/

Back in 2021, we heard how the Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane had made its first test flights … but it was using surrogate jet engines. Now, however, the vehicle has made its first flights using an actual rocket engine.

Designed by New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace, the Mk-II Aurora is a reusable uncrewed technology demonstrator for the company's upcoming Mk-III model.

Plans call for that vehicle to take off and land like a regular fixed-wing airplane – using conventional runways - carrying cargo such as satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 lb). Upon reaching an altitude of 100 km (62 miles), that payload will be launched into low-Earth orbit via an expendable second-stage rocket. The Mk-III could also carry up to 1 ton (0.9 tonnes) of scientific instruments (which would not be launched into orbit) on suborbital flights.

[weatheriscool]

Launch of Europe's 1st-ever Jupiter probe is just a week away
By Mike Wall
published about 9 hours ago

https://www.space.com/europe-first-jupi ... h-one-week

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer probe, or JUICE for short, is scheduled to lift off atop an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT) on April 13.

You can watch the launch here at Space.com when the time comes, courtesy of ESA.

[weatheriscool]

China declares price war on SpaceX reusable rockets, with economy driving new aerospace programme

Innovative transport system will cost just a fraction of the existing Long March rockets in response to growing challenges from the US
Chinese space authorities require space transport system to conduct more than 1,000 flights and carry over 10,000 passengers to space each year by 2045
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... -programme

Published: 7:00pm, 6 Apr, 2023

Chinese space authorities plan to drastically cut the cost of space launches in response to challenges from the United States’ reusable rockets.

A new aerospace launching system under development in China is required to cut the cargo cost per kilogram to 5 per cent to that of the existing Long March rockets, according to scientists involved in the project.

The Long-Range Aerospace Transportation System being built at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the nation’s largest aerospace defence contractor, can carry more than 60 tonnes of cargo to near-Earth orbit – about the same capacity as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

[weatheriscool]

CHARA Array’s Star Power Gets a Boost With New Fiber-Optic Telescope

By Georgia State University April 10, 2023
CHARA Array at Mt. Wilson
https://scitechdaily.com/chara-arrays-s ... telescope/

Plans are underway to add a seventh movable telescope to Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy— known as the CHARA Array—that would increase the resolution, or the ability to see small objects, by a factor of three.

Located at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California and operated by Georgia State, the new telescope will be connected using fiber optics to transport the starlight, a technique that will serve as a pathfinder for future expansion of the Array. The update comes after a group of international scientists gathered in Atlanta to take part in the 2023 CHARA Science Meeting to share the latest developments in high-resolution astronomical imaging using the CHARA Array.
CHARA Array

Georgia State’s CHARA array is an optical interferometer located on Mount Wilson, California. Credit: Georgia State University

“Adding a seventh moveable telescope to the Array represents a great leap forward in stellar astronomy,” says Doug Gies, Regents’ Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of the center. “Collaboration is truly fundamental for an undertaking like the CHARA Array. With scientists all over the world using our telescopes, this annual gathering is an important forum for us to share our latest discoveries.”

[weatheriscool]

Orion Flexes Its Solar Muscles: Prepping for the First Crewed Artemis Adventure
https://scitechdaily.com/orion-flexes-i ... adventure/
By NASA April 17, 2023
Orion Earth Moon

Four astronauts will venture around the Moon in an Orion spacecraft on Artemis II, the first crewed mission on NASA’s path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration. The approximately 10-day flight will test NASA’s foundational human deep space exploration capabilities, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, for the first time with astronauts. Credit: NASA

Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tested Orion’s solar array wing for the Artemis II mission, ensuring proper function for the spacecraft’s propulsion, thermal control, and electrical power. The Artemis II mission aims to validate human deep space capabilities with a 10-day lunar flight test.

Before NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission can be outfitted with its solar array wings, teams at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center must first verify that the arrays extend and close properly. On March 17, 2023, technicians inside the Florida spaceport’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building unfurled one of the wings to confirm all mechanisms operate as expected.

[weatheriscool]

A French Startup Will Serve You Dinner in the Stratosphere for $132,000
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/a ... for-132000
Zephalto plans to send six passengers at a time to the edge of space in its luxury balloon.
By Ryan Whitwam April 19, 2023

Space tourism is still in its infancy, but that hasn't stopped a mountain of companies from gearing up for a future of civilians among the stars. Some are promising extended stays, but others just want to give you a glimpse of space. French startup Zephalto is the latter, aiming to take passengers to the edge of space in a balloon for a fancy meal. Despite the lack of rocketry, the experience won't come cheap—the company plans to charge €120,000 ($132,000) per person.

Even with decades of advancement, rockets are still complex, expensive, and dangerous. Passengers expecting to head into space on a giant metal tube filled with highly flammable fuel must undergo training and medical checks to ensure safety. Not so with Zephalto's balloon approach. Zephalto founder and aerospace engineer Vincent Farret d’Astiès tells Bloomberg that his firm aims for 60 flights per year. Anyone healthy enough to fly on an airliner can board a Zephalto balloon.