Space News and Discussions

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Voyager 2: Nasa loses contact with record-breaking probe after sending wrong command

57 minutes ago

Nasa has lost contact with its Voyager 2 probe billions of miles away from Earth after sending it the wrong command, the space agency has revealed.

Last month, the spacecraft - exploring space since 1977 - tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth after the mistake was made.

As a result, the probe has stopped receiving commands or sending data.

Nasa said it hopes communication will resume when the probe is due to reset in October.

Voyager 2 is more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion km) from Earth, where it is hurtling at an estimated 34,390mph (55,346km/h) through interstellar space - the space between the stars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-66371569

NASA hears signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistakenly cutting contact
Source: AP

By MARCIA DUNN
Updated 8:25 AM CDT, August 1, 2023

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — After days of silence, NASA has heard from Voyager 2 in interstellar space billions of miles away.

Flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command nearly two weeks ago that tilted the spacecraft’s antenna away from Earth and severed contact.

NASA’s Deep Space Network, giant radio antennas across the globe, picked up a “heartbeat signal,” meaning the 46-year-old craft is alive and operating, project manager Suzanne Dodd said in an email Tuesday.

The news “buoyed our spirits,” Dodd said. Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will now try to turn Voyager 2’s antenna back toward Earth.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/nasa-voyager ... 587f69663d

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Boeing's 1st astronaut flight bumped into next year, more repairs needed
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-boeing-1s ... -year.html
by Marcia Dunn

Already running years behind, Boeing's first astronaut flight is now off until at least next March.

Problems with the parachute lines and flammable tape surfaced during final reviews in late spring, ahead of what should have been a July launch for the Starliner capsule. Boeing said Monday that it should be done removing the tape in the coming weeks. But a redesigned parachute system won't be ready until December.

If a parachute drop test goes well late this year, company officials said the spacecraft should be ready to carry two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station as early as March. Starliner's first crew flight will need to fit around other space station traffic, however, so it's too early to set even a tentative date, according to officials.

To ensure there are no other problems, NASA and Boeing are conducting independent reviews.

Boeing program manager Mark Nappi said technicians are almost halfway done peeling off flammable tape that was used to protect capsule wiring. Tape that cannot be removed from vulnerable spots will be covered with a protective coating.

The original guidelines for usage of the tape were confusing, according to company and NASA officials, but they later determined it could not be used in some areas because it was flammable.

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Rocket Labs Plans 20 Launches Next Year
August 8, 2023 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/08/r ... -year.html

Youtuber David G is livestreaming the Rocket Labs quarterly earnings call.

Rocket Labs is doing very well and is on track to 15 launches in 2023. Their average launch selling price is increasing.

They sold ten launches in the quarter and are on track to 20 launches in 2024.

They are developing a larger medium payload Neutron rocket.

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SpaceX is a behemoth.

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Russia's Luna-25 smashes into moon in failure
Source: Reuters

Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon.

Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.

"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," Roskosmos said in a statement.

Failure for the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia's space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth - Sputnik 1, in 1957 - and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

Russia has not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin. Luna-25 was supposed to execute a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on Aug. 21, according to Russian space officials.

Russia has been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon's south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions.

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India’s Chandrayaan-3 makes successful landing on the moon
Source: TechCrunch

Chandrayaan-3, the latest iteration of India’s ambitious mission to the moon, has successfully landed on the lunar surface — making history after its predecessor failed in 2019.

The landing, which took place at the targeted time of 5:34am PT (6:04pm IST) on Wednesday over a month after the spacecraft’s launch, has made India the fourth nation globally to make a soft landing on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China, and the first country to land on the lunar south pole, which remains an unexplored area that is anticipated to aid in the understanding of the moon’s atmosphere and pave the way for future space exploration programs.

Earlier this month, Russia attempted to take the achievement from India by launching Luna-25, which was due to make a soft landing on the south pole before India’s Chandrayaan-3. However, the Russian spacecraft crashed into the moon on Saturday after losing contact with Roscosmos, the country’s space agency.

India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), launched the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft through its “Launch Vehicle Mark-III” vehicle on July 14. The launch happened from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India’s Sriharikota island.

Chandrayaan-3, the third version of India’s Chandrayaan mission (“moon vehicle” in Sanskrit), aims to demonstrate safe landing and roving on the moon’s surface and conduct on-site scientific experiments. The spacecraft, developed with a budget of less than $75 million, comprises a propulsion module, lander and a rover that collectively carry seven scientific instruments.

To overcome the problems encountered by its predecessor, the lander on the Chandrayaan-3 mission includes improved sensors, software and propulsion systems. ISRO also carried out a number of simulations and additional testing to ensure a higher degree of ruggedness in the lander to achieve a successful landing.

The lander will conduct experiments on seismic vibrations, near-surface plasma, lunar temperature, thermal conductivity, elemental composition, and spectral signatures of Earth.

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Hardware Being Built for Laser Beaming Mission to Low Earth Orbit
August 25, 2023 by Brian Wang

UCSB Dr. Philip Lubin and his team have NASA, Breakthrough Starshot and other funding to develop laser power beaming to propel missions for eventual interstellar space goals and nearterm orbital and in solar system missions.

They have been developing the hardware and the science. They have written over 2000 pages of research.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/08/h ... orbit.html

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SpaceX Debuts 'Mirror Film' to Hide Starlink From Astronomers
The latest batch of 22 satellites has the new reflective coating, but that's a drop in the bucket.
By Ryan Whitwam September 18, 2023

When astronomers train their telescopes at the sky, they might see fewer SpaceX satellites zipping through the frame. After years of complaints from scientists about the high reflectivity of the company's constellation of internet satellites, SpaceX has started using a new "mirror film" that scatters light away from Earth. This could finally end Starlink's interference with ground-based astronomy. But so far, only a handful of the thousands of Starlink nodes have it.

Last week, SpaceX launched 22 new Starlink V2 satellites with a Falcon 9 rocket, showing off the new mirror coating for the first time. In the video below, you can see the highly reflective dielectric mirror film covering the spacecraft. It seems counterintuitive that adding a mirror finish to the satellites would make them less visible from the ground, but that's precisely what Starlink claims.

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https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/s ... stronomers

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NASA Spacecraft to Return New Asteroid Sample to Earth on Sunday
After scooping material from an asteroid, NASA's OSIRIS-REx is preparing to drop the sample off in Utah before continuing on to more adventures.
By Ryan Whitwam September 22, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/science/nas ... mple-earth

In just a few days, an important delivery will arrive on our cosmic doorstep. After seven years, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will conclude with the arrival of a sample capsule in the Utah desert. Inside, scientists expect to find the largest sample of asteroid regolith ever recovered. Something could still go wrong at the last minute, but we're in the home stretch.

NASA launched OSIRIS-REx in 2016 aboard a ULA Atlas V rocket. It spent two years in cruise mode to reach the asteroid 101955 Bennu. In late 2020, OSIRIS-REx made history when it booped the space rock to collect its sample. Japan's Hayabusa2 mission conducted a similar operation just a year before on the asteroid Ryugu, using dense metal projectiles to blast surface material into the sample container. OSIRIS-REx took a gentler approach with a puff of compressed nitrogen gas. NASA's approach seems to have worked even better than expected. Following the sample collection, the container was so full it didn't seal itself immediately.

The mission's goal was to collect at least 60 grams of material from Bennu, but it may have picked up significantly more. Early estimates have suggested the probe could carry as much as two kilograms of asteroid material. We won't know until the sample container is safely on the ground.

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Giant Magellan Telescope Starts Making its Final Mirror
September 27, 2023 by Brian Wang

The Giant Magellan Telescope begins the four-year process to fabricate and polish its seventh and final primary mirror, the last required to complete the telescope’s 368 square meter light collecting surface.

The Giant Magellan telescope will use adaptive optics to look through the atmosphere with four times the resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope. Once assembled, all seven mirrors will work in together as one monolithic 25.4-meter mirror—a diameter equal to the length of a full-grown blue whale—resulting in up to 200 times the sensitivity and four times the image resolution of today’s most advanced space telescopes. The Giant Magellan Telescope will be the first extremely large telescope to complete its primary mirror array.

Each of the mirrors is 8.4-meters in diameter and weigh about 20 tons each.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/g ... irror.html

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NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System

Sep 29, 2023

NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system.

Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which can be readily obtained during an extended, low-activity mode of operations.

While the science community is not currently aware of any reachable Kuiper Belt object, this new path allows for the possibility of using the spacecraft for a future close flyby of such an object, should one be identified. It also will enable the spacecraft to preserve fuel and reduce operational complexity while a search is conducted for a compelling flyby candidate.

“The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The agency decided that it was best to extend operations for New Horizons until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is expected in 2028 through 2029.”

This new, extended mission will be primarily funded by NASA’s Planetary Science Division and jointly managed by NASA’s Heliophysics and Planetary Science Divisions.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/new-horiz ... 2l9Mre4RyA

[wjfox]

The BlueWalker 3 satellite is officially one of the brightest objects in the sky

By Monisha Ravisetti
published about 4 hours ago

On Monday (Oct. 2), scientists with the International Astronomical Union announced that one of the brightest objects visible in the night sky is not a star or a planet, but rather the BlueWalker 3 prototype satellite.

"It is unacceptably bright for many sky observers around the world," Meredith Rawls, co-author of a paper on the finding and member of the IAU Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (IAU CPS), told Space.com.

Part of an ambitious 5G communications system developed by the company AST SpaceMobile, BlueWalker 3 appears so utterly luminous from our vantage point on Earth because, in addition to a Launch Vehicle Adapter (LVA), it possesses a massive structure known as a phased-array antenna. In fact, BlueWalker 3 is deemed the largest commercial antenna system ever deployed to low-Earth orbit; it was launched there in September of 2022.

That array takes up about 64 square meters (689 square feet) of space — and because those panels are reflective, it's almost like BlueWalker 3 is a giant mirror continuously bouncing sunlight toward our eyes.

And that mirror could soon have company. AST says it envisions about 90 similar satellites roaming the skies in the near future to make what experts call a "satellite constellation," though an AST spokesperson told Space.com that, by contrast, other such constellations are expected to require thousands of satellites to achieve their coverage goals.

https://www.space.com/bluewalker-3-prot ... bjects-sky

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Spain's first private rocket successfully lifts off
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-spain-pri ... fully.html
A Spanish company launched the country’s first private rocket.

A Spanish company launched the country's first private rocket on Saturday in a step towards bringing Spain into the exclusive club of space-faring nations.

The launch of the small MIURA1 rocket took place at 02:19 am (0019 GMT) from a military base in the southern region of Andalusia, according to the company, PLD Space.

The company hailed the launch as "successful" and said it had achieved all its "technical objectives", with the rocket rising 46 kilometers (29 miles) above the Gulf of Cadiz.

After five minutes in flight, it landed in the Atlantic Ocean, where PLD Space said it would send a team to recover it.

The launch was hailed as a "milestone" by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a posting on social media.

"The launch of Miura 1, the first rocket built 100% with Spanish technology, has been successful, a milestone that positions Spanish research, development and innovation at the forefront of space transport," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, congratulating PLD Space.

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Amazon launches test satellites for its planned internet service to compete with SpaceX
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-ama ... pacex.html
by Marcia Dunn

Amazon launched the first test satellites for its planned internet service on Friday as a rival to SpaceX's broadband network.

United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket blasted off with the pair of test satellites, kicking off a program that aims to improve global internet coverage with an eventual 3,236 satellites around Earth.

Amazon plans to begin offering service by the end of next year.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has a huge head start over Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who has his own rocket company, Blue Origin.