December 25, 2023

Lagrange Points Could Become Battlegrounds in a New Space Race (Source: Science Alert)
A new 'space race' is heating up between the US and China in space exploration, and Lagrange points are emerging as a battleground. Named after the astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, they are locations in interplanetary space where the gravitational pull of two celestial bodies (like the Earth and the Sun) balances the centripetal force needed for a smaller object to orbit steadily between them. There are five different Lagrange points in the Sun and Earth-Moon system, labeled L1 to L5, that result from these unique points of interaction with gravity. Click here. (12/25)

Musk Says at SpaceX ‘We Never Think About the Quarter’—and He’s in No Rush to Spin Off Starlink (Source: Fortune)
The space business and public markets are not, perhaps, a match made in heaven. Consider the much-anticipated Starlink IPO. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the most valuable private company in the U.S., and its largest revenue driver by far is Starlink, which offers broadband connections around the globe via a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites.

But Musk is in no hurry to spin off Starlink, despite excitement over the idea. A big reason why? The advantages of being a private company versus a public one. “At SpaceX, we never think about the quarter. We never think about it, and we don't think about the stock price," Musk said this week during a Spaces conversation hosted by ARK Investment Management CEO Cathie Wood. (12/23)

Japan’s SLIM Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit, Gears Up for Precision Moon Landing (Source: Space News)
Japan’s SLIM robotic spacecraft entered lunar orbit Dec. 25, setting up a moon landing attempt scheduled for Jan. 19. SLIM completed a roughly three-minute-long lunar orbit insertion burn at 2:51 a.m. Eastern (0751 UTC), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Christmas Day. SLIM is now in a 600 x 4,000-kilometer polar lunar orbit, as planned. The spacecraft is currently in a normal condition, JAXA stated. It will soon begin gradually lowering its orbit in preparation for landing.

The landing attempt is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. Eastern (1500 UTC) Jan. 19, landing around 20 minutes later. The lander will aim to set down within a 100 meters of its target point on the slope of the mid-latitude Shioli crater. (12/25)

Inside Amazon's Effort to Challenge Musk's Starlink internet Business (Source: Seattle Times)
Amazon executives tend to describe their satellite venture, Project Kuiper, in philanthropic terms, emphasizing its potential to connect people in remote or impoverished areas with education and global commerce. Less altruistically, Amazon also hopes the $10-billion-plus project can transform it into a global telecommunications giant. The company plans to sell rooftop antennas to individual internet users, cloud-computing and data-recovery services to business, and connectivity to wireless companies to link remote cell towers to their networks starting in 2025.

Project Kuiper is among the company’s biggest bets, one of just a few that have survived two years into a cost-cutting drive that has eliminated many of the speculative projects started late in Jeff Bezos’ tenure as CEO. It’s an enormous undertaking in an arena that has had more bankruptcies than successful businesses. Broadband is already widely available and, in many places where it isn’t, it’s not clear people will be able to afford space-based internet. Click here. (12/24)

New Hubble Telescope Image Shows Mysterious Spokes on Saturn's Rings (Source: Space.com)
At first glance, this image of Saturn looks as if it could be a shot from an old Star Trek" episode, thanks to its slightly grainy appearance and analog-esque glow. But this composite photo was taken on Oct. 22, 2023, by the Hubble Space Telescope — and most importantly, it captured a very interesting detail.

If you look carefully at the thick white inner band of Saturn's rings, you'll see shadowy appearances that almost look like dirty fingerprints. These are Saturn's mysterious ring spokes, transient features about the size of Earth that seem to rotate along with the rings. But ultimately, scientists have no idea what they are.

The spokes are only visible for two or three rotations around the planet before they disappear, which means catching them in action has historically been a difficult task; they were first spotted in 1981 by Voyager 2, then again multiple times during the Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Now, Hubble is keeping an eye on the unusual feature as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which monitors the weather on our solar system's gas giants. (12/22)

Japan Likely to Send First Astronaut to Moon Under U.S.-Led Project (Source: Japan Times)
The United States and Japan are making final arrangements to land a Japanese astronaut on the surface of the moon for the first time, under a U.S.-led lunar exploration program, sources said Sunday. The Artemis program aims to achieve a historic milestone by sending U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in over half a century, by 2025 at the earliest, and a Japanese astronaut may be among the next to land on the Earth's satellite, according to the sources.

The two countries were also discussing putting a second Japanese astronaut on the moon and expected to finalize a plan as soon as next month, the sources said. (12/24)

First Module of India’s ISS by 2028, Says ISRO Chairman (Source: Times of India)
India plans to launch its fist space station module by 2028, to be fully operational and crewed by 2035, according to ISRO Chairman S. Somanath on Friday. (12/23)

How to Create a Black Hole Out of Thin Air (Source: New York Times)
It turns out that a dead star might not be needed to make a black hole. Instead, at least in the early universe, giant clouds of primordial gas may have collapsed directly into black holes, bypassing millions of years spent in stardom. That is the tentative conclusion recently reached by a group of astronomers studying UHZ-1, a speck of light dating from not long after the Big Bang. In fact, UHZ-1 is (or was) a powerful quasar that spat fire and X-rays from a monstrous black hole 13.2 billion years ago, when the universe was not quite 500 million years young. (12/24)

SpaceX Launches Twin Radar Satellites for German Military From California (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the SARah 2 & 3 satellites for the German military Sunday. The twin craft, equipped with passive synthetic aperture radar reflectors, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on December 23. (12/23)

NASA’s Deep Space Network Turns 60 and Prepares for the Future (Source: NASA)
NASA’s Deep Space Network marks its 60th year on Dec. 24. In continuous operations since 1963, the DSN is what makes it possible for NASA to communicate with spacecraft at or beyond the Moon. The dazzling galactic images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the cutting-edge science data being sent back from Mars by the Perseverance rover, and the historic images sent from the far side of the Moon by Artemis I – they all reached Earth via the network’s giant radio dish antennas.

During 2024, these and other historic contributions from the past 60 years will be celebrated by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, which manages and directs the ground-based facilities and services that the DSN provides. More than 40 missions depend on the network, which is expected to support twice that number in the coming years. That’s why NASA is looking to the future by expanding and modernizing this critical global infrastructure with new dishes, new technologies, and new approaches. (12/23)

Hypersonic Weapons Challenge Pentagon Tracking Capabilities (Source: Space News)
A new study released Dec. 18 sheds light on potential challenges in the Pentagon’s ambitious effort to deploy a network of space sensors for detecting and tracking hypersonic missiles.

Based on internal modeling and simulation efforts, the study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies identifies areas for improvement in the planned network and raises questions intended to inform the conversation on what it takes to defeat these highly maneuverable missile threats. “There is no such thing as a perfect sensor architecture design,” said the report titled “Getting on Track: Space and Airborne Sensors for Hypersonic Missile Defense.” (12/18)

Keeping the Mars Express Lights on After 20 Years (Source: The Register)
By rights, the European Space Agency's Mars Express (MEX) mission should be over. The engineers should be burning up what remains of the fuel to ensure the spacecraft – assembled in an era when planetary protection was not the consideration it is today – is destroyed in the Martian atmosphere. However, the craft has continued its work. This is thanks, in part, to Japan's plans for a sample return mission to one of Mars's moons, Phobos. (12/24)

Researchers Use VLT Exoplanet Hunter to Study Jupiter's Winds (Source: Phys.org)
For the first time, an instrument to find planets light years away was used on an object in the solar system, in a study on Jupiter's winds. Researchers from the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Portugal) (Ciências ULisboa) used the ESPRESSO spectrograph installed on the VLT telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to measure wind speeds on Jupiter. (12/22)

Kennedy Space Center’s NASA Causeway Bridge Construction (Source: NASA)
Crews with Orion Marine Construction are now working to complete the westbound span of the Indian River Bridge, while daily traffic moves along the upgraded eastbound lanes of the bridge leading to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The bridge crosses the Indian River Lagoon and connects the Cape Canaveral Spaceport to the mainland via State Road 405/NASA Causeway in nearby Titusville. The new high-rise bridge serves as the primary entrance and exit to the space center for employees and visitors. (12/23)

13 Record-Breaking Space Discoveries of 2023 (Source: Space.com)
Among the new astronomical records set in 2023 was an announcement of the highest-energy gamma ray ever seen coming from the sun, an order of magnitude more powerful than had previously been seen. "The sun is more surprising than we knew," Mehr Un Nisa, an astronomer at Michigan State University and one of the authors who described the discovery in Physical Review Letters, said in a statement. Click here. (12/24) https://www.space.com/record-breaking-space-discoveries-2023

12 James Webb Space Telescope Findings That Changed our Understanding of the Universe in 2023 (Source: Space.com)
On Christmas morning two years ago, astronomers and space fans received the gift they'd been waiting on for 30 years: the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the world's biggest, most daring endeavor to probe the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe. This year, the space observatory has continued to deliver breathtaking and scientifically valuable images of the cosmos. Here's a look back at the JWST discoveries that altered our understanding of the universe in 2023. Click here. (12/23)

Observatory Telescope Removed From Mauna Kea (Source: Big Island Now)
The Leighton telescope has been taken out of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory and removed from Maunakea on the Big Island for shipment to Chile for re-use. Deconstruction of the observatory and restoration of the site will resume after winter. An independent decommissioning construction monitor and cultural monitor were present at all appropriate times during the first phase. (12/21)

NASA's Car-Sized Rover Spots Strong Evidence of Gushing Water on Mars (Source: Mashable)
Ancient Mars wasn't simply just wet. It experienced momentous floods. As clear evidence of this water-filled past, NASA recently released an image snapped by its Perseverance rover, showing large heavy boulders absolutely blanketing part of the Jezero Crater, a dried-up river delta.

"The rounded boulders seen here are believed to have been washed into Jezero Crater, which Perseverance is exploring, by strong flood waters billions of years ago," NASA said in a statement. "This occurred during one of three major periods that scientists have identified in the development of the lake and river system that occupied Jezero in the ancient past." (12/23)

Ariane's New Price Tag Is Bad News for Airbus, Great News for Boeing and Lockheed (and SpaceX) (Source: Motley Fool)
Europe's Arianespace ("Ariane") has a problem, and its name is SpaceX. Back in 2015, California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez related a conversation she had had with a top exec at Airbus's (EADSY 0.52%) struggling space subsidiary Ariane in which the exec jokingly asked Sanchez if she could find some way to "get rid of SpaceX," because otherwise it was going to drive Ariane out of business with its ultra-low launch prices. But SpaceX didn't go away. So one year later Ariane decided to take matters into its own hands.

To compete with SpaceX launch prices (currently $67 million for a Falcon 9 rocket launch), Ariane would introduce two new rockets: A medium-lift Ariane 62 costing $77 million to launch payloads comparable to what Falcon 9 can lift, and a heavy-lift Ariane 64 with twice the payload and a launch price of $126 million (so a price slightly cheaper than two Falcon 9 launches). Collectively, these rockets would be known as the "Ariane 6" family of rockets, replacing the company's existing Ariane 5 rockets, and would aim to cut the cost of Ariane's launches by at least 50% (from the $164 million cost of an Ariane 5 launch). (12/23)

This Startup is Developing a Fusion Propulsion Drive for Deep Space Travel That Could Reach Mars in Just Two Months (Source: The Debrief)
Helicity Space, a startup founded in 2018, is developing a fusion drive poised to transform space travel. With a fresh round of investment, the company is developing a proof-of-concept for a fusion-powered propulsion system that can get from Earth to Mars in two months.

In a recent press release, the space-based startup recently secured $5 million in seed funding from Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures, and Gaingels. Unlike traditional rockets that rely on chemical reactions, Helicity’s fusion drive operates on a magneto-inertial fusion method. This involves fusing two hydrogen isotopes into helium, releasing immense energy – ten million times more per unit mass than chemical fuels​​. (12/22)

Space Perspective Aims for First Balloon Spacecraft Launch in Q1 2024 (Source: Florida Today)
Resembling a white whiffle ball spanning 14½ feet across, Space Perspective's prototype Spaceship Neptune is taking shape to soar on a series of test flights to the brink of space — beneath a huge hydrogen-filled balloon. Spaceship Neptune is a pressurized circular capsule expected to take its inaugural flight during the first quarter of 2024, said Taber MacCallum, co-founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective.

Packed with scientific instruments to collect data, the balloon-lifted uncrewed spacecraft will ascend from the deck of a ship and rise 20 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. For now, Spaceship Neptune is flanked by chrome metal scaffolding inside a hangar at Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville. Technicians wearing white protective coveralls, blue gloves and red headlamps have finished assembling the carbon-composite sphere, which was manufactured at a Melbourne factory. (12/22)

Why the Space Shuttle Was the Wrong Craft at the Wrong Time (Source: New York Post)
When the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center for its April 12, 1981 maiden voyage, it ushered in a new and exciting age of space travel and exploration. But as Matthew H. Hersch explains in “Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle” (MIT Press), the craft proved to be a costly flop. “The space shuttle was daring; it was messianic,” he writes. “And it failed.” (12/23)

Enough Space for Everyone? US, China Target Africa (Source: Voice of America)
As a new space race between the United States and China takes off, Africa is increasingly an arena for competition between the two superpowers. And so far, analysts say, China is ahead. While Africa's space agencies are still in their infancy compared to those of the U.S. and China, analysts say space has become a new frontier for diplomacy with African countries.

"In recent years, China has emerged as the leading partner with Africa," said Nigerian space scientist Temidayo Oniosun, who is the founder of Space in Africa, an analytics and consulting company. China is developing satellites for different partners, ground station infrastructure, and is pushing for countries to adopt its BeiDou satellite navigation system, seen as an alternative to America's GPS. "Chinese companies have been capitalizing on this for years. It's now that the U.S. is waking up to this," he said.

"U.S. strategy towards Africa in space is actually more about reducing the hegemony of China over Africa than anything else. … I think one of the major reasons they're [the U.S.] paying attention is because China is doing so much," Oniosun told VOA. Editor's Note: I'm old enough to remember when US conservatives derided NASA's outreach to Africa as wasted effort to 'make Africans feel good about themselves.' (12/22)

China Open to Space Exchanges with U.S. (Source: Xinhua)
China welcomes scientists from all over the world, including those from the United States, to apply for lunar samples through appropriate channels in accordance with application procedures issued by the country, a spokesperson for the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said Friday. Xu Hongliang made the statement in response to recent remarks by U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, noting that China attaches great importance to international cooperation in space and is always open to space exchanges with the United States. (12/22)

Orbite is Raising Funds as it Gets Set to Expand Training Programs for Spacefliers (Source: GeekWire)
Orbite Space, a venture that aims to offer down-to-Earth spaceflight training programs on a “try before you fly” basis, is raising more capital amid the company’s preparations for an expansion of operations. The financial arrangements were reported this week in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Orbite reports an equity offering of $6.775 million and says that $2.725 million of the offering has already been sold.

Orbite traces its roots to Seattle. The company’s expansion plans focus less on Seattle and more on Florida, where Orbite plans to build an Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Campus. Last month, Andrews told GeekWire that the campus is scheduled to open in 2026, and that it would become the home base for Orbite’s private-sector astronaut training programs. Between now and then, Orbite plans to offer its clients a series of space-themed travel experiences and training sessions. (12/22)

Rocket Lab Wins $515 Million Contract to Build 18 Satellites for U.S. Government Agency (Source: Space News)
Space launch provider and satellite manufacturer Rocket Lab has secured a deal worth over half a billion dollars to build 18 satellites for a U.S. government agency. As disclosed in an SEC regulatory filing Dec. 21, Rocket Lab National Security will “design, manufacture, deliver and operate 18 space vehicles” as part of a U.S. government contract valued at $515 million. A spokesperson said the company could not provide further details. Sources indicate that the customer is likely the Space Development Agency. (12/23)