July 8, 2018

Florida Tech President Comments on Buzz Aldrin Situation (Source: Florida Tech)
The faculty, staff and students of the Florida Institute of Technology are kindred spirits with American icon Buzz Aldrin. When Buzz took those historic steps on the moon in 1969, our university was barely 10 years old—but was already charting a course as an important educational resource for NASA engineers, having been founded as the “night school for missilemen” on the burgeoning Florida Space Coast.

When Buzz announced three years ago that he would base his space institute at Florida Tech, his infectious passion for spaceflight’s future touched us all. His subsequent work with our faculty and students has been nothing less than inspirational. Buzz’s unforgettable mantra, “Get your ass to Mars,” has entered the university lexicon, and indeed, sparked the imagination of the next generation.

I have had numerous conversations with Buzz over the past few years and have always been impressed with his intellect, his wit, and his relentless determination to see humans inhabit Mars. Florida Tech shares Buzz’s bold vision for the future of human spaceflight... We look forward to and wholeheartedly support a timely resolution to this unfortunate situation. (7/2)

Colorado Official Takes Shot at SpaceX in Promoting State's (and ULA's) Space Role (Source: Pueblo Chieftain)
Colorado doesn't always come to mind when people think of America's space legacy. After all, no one ever said: "Denver, we have a problem." Meanwhile, our researchers and aerospace manufacturers quietly are shaping the state's economy, America's space future and astronaut safety. Employees from eight of the country's top aerospace manufacturers are hard at work right here in Colorado preparing NASA for 21st-century spaceflight.

One of those companies, Denver-based United Launch Alliance, nearly has 130 successful launches -- a remarkable accomplishment in contrast to some recent flameouts on the launch pads. Independently, Boeing is working to build the space launch system for NASA to begin the journey to Mars. Amidst this friendly competition, it is easy to forget about the safety of the astronauts who put their lives in the hands of Colorado's engineers, amongst others. It is shocking to many to learn that SpaceX plans to fuel its rocket with the astronauts already onboard.

This "load and go" method needlessly risks astronaut lives in an effort to cut corners and eke out power from an undersized platform. SpaceX's own Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad in 2016 using this exact same fueling technique and a NASA safety panel has urged this risky proposal be reconsidered. It's not the first safety question mark to be raised about SpaceX's hurry up approach to development. The company lost a Falcon 9 rocket and a (thankfully unmanned) Dragon capsule in 2015 and one of its Merlin rockets exploded during testing late last year. (7/7)

India Must Join the Space Race Before Other Nations Take Away Benefits (Source: First Post)
With several private players entering human space exploration in other countries, India must join the race for space benefits, a top space official said."Several private players are entering the space field because of the potential use of human explorations to bring the best part of space to Earth. Definitely, India cannot keep quiet and must also join, as otherwise, every other country will take away the benefits," said ISRO Chairman K Sivan.

Sivan said the time had come to marry an aircraft and a rocket as the future of aerospace industry would have an aircraft with the complexity of a rocket. "We need all the sectors — the state and the industry — to come together for the future of aerospace industry. It is going to be a combined effort of the ISRO, Indian Air Force (IAF), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and others," Sivan added. (7/7)

Never Mind the Summer Heat: Earth Is at Its Greatest Distance From the Sun (Source: New York Times)
On Friday, Earth will swing toward the outermost point in its orbit, known as aphelion. You, me and everyone on the planet will be three million miles farther from the sun than when we are closest to it. The change occurs because our planet’s orbit is not perfectly circular. Instead, it is squashed into an ellipse with the sun offset from the center — an effect that causes Earth to orbit to its farthest point every July and its innermost point, or perihelion, every January.

So, while record-breaking temperatures and raging wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere might lead you to believe the sun is punishingly close right now, remember that it is just the opposite. In fact, the extra distance causes the amount of received sunlight to drop by 7 percent compared to January. (7/5)

Galactic Collision Shaped the History of the Milky Way (Source: WIRED)
Around 10 billion years ago, our Milky Way galaxy suffered a massive head-on collision with another, smaller galaxy. That cosmic cataclysm changed the Milky Way’s structure forever, shaping the thick spirals that spin out from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. Two new studies—one published in June, another still under peer review—describe the evidence for this previously unnoticed event.

To uncover evidence of the collision so many eons later, astronomers have to work like galactic archaeologists, sifting through myriad sources of surviving information to piece together a story consistent with the available evidence. Both research teams relied on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, which has spent years gathering exceptionally rich biographies of millions of stars—not only their locations and motions, but for many, their brightnesses, temperatures, ages and composition as well.

They essentially created high-resolution and multidimensional maps of the Milky Way and used these maps to find anomalous populations of old stars that appear to retain a memory of the long-ago collision. The long-ago collision so thoroughly shook things up that the telltale stars have been strewn throughout the galaxy. “There’s debris everywhere,” said Vasily Belokurov, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and a leader of one of the two teams. “You’re basically surrounded by that debris now.” (7/8)