January 1, 2024

India Launches X-ray Astronomy Satellite (Source: Space News)
India launched an astronomy satellite to start a year that will feature key tests for its human spaceflight program and a potential joint crewed mission with NASA. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) lifted off at 10:40 p.m. Eastern Dec. 31 (9:10 a.m. local Jan. 1) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. It deployed its primary payload, the XPoSat spacecraft, into a 650-kilometer orbit about 22 minutes later. (1/1)

A Carbon-Lite Atmosphere Could Be a Sign of Water and Life on Other Terrestrial Planets (Source: MIT News)
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers’ best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical feature in their atmospheres. The researchers propose that if a terrestrial planet has substantially less carbon dioxide in its atmosphere compared to other planets in the same system, it could be a sign of liquid water — and possibly life — on that planet’s surface. (12/28)

Jaw-Dropping News: Boeing and Lockheed Just Matched SpaceX's Prices (Source: Motley Fool)
Since it began launching rockets, SpaceX has consistently underpriced rocket launches from Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance. In November 2023, ULA secured bid prices almost identical to SpaceX's prices to win 11 launch contracts with the U.S. Space Force. ULA CEO Tory Bruno has delivered on his promise to make ULA prices competitive with its archrival.

If you recall, ULA's Delta IV Heavy was the "$400 million rocket" that SpaceX ridiculed in Congressional hearings back in 2015. But the Delta IV family has since been shut down, and the rocket ULA chose to replace it, the Vulcan Centaur, costs quite a bit less. Getting costs down from $400 million to $100 million would still be a vast improvement. And in the context of the U.S. government national security launches -- which usually cost more than commercial launches -- that ULA specializes in, $100 million might be good enough to keep ULA competitive with SpaceX.

Case in point: Last month, the U.S. Space Force announced a series of 21 launch contracts awarded to both SpaceX and ULA. Totaling $2.5 billion in value, the contracts were split between the leading space companies, with ULA winning 11 launches for $1.3 billion, and SpaceX bagging 10 launches for $1.2 billion. Do the math. That's $120 million per launch for SpaceX... and only $118 million per launch for ULA. (12/30)

Physicists Hunt Dark Photons as Large Hadron Collider Gets More Powerful (Source: Gizmodo)
Scientists working on CERN’s Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment have published the latest data in their search for a long-lived exotic particle known as the dark photon. Dark photons (also called hidden photons) differ from regular photons—particles of light—in that they are thought to have mass, making them a prime candidate to explain dark matter.

Physicists at CMS are trying to change that. Like particles produced in other experiments at CERN, the hypothetical dark photons would be produced by the decay of another particle: the Higgs boson, which was proposed in the 1960s and famously observed in 2012. Higgs bosons are thought to decay into dark photons, which then would decay into displaced muons. (12/28)

Last Chance To See The Endeavour Before The Space Shuttle Is Taken Off Public Display Indefinitely (Source: LAist)
Dec. 31 was your last chance to see the space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center before it’s taken off public display indefinitely, while the museum finishes building its new permanent home at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center in Exposition Park. Once construction is complete in the next few years, the Endeavour will be displayed in its “ready to launch” position in what will be the world’s only authentic space shuttle stack. (12/30)

The First Mirrors Of The World's Largest Telescope Just Arrived In Chile (Source: Inverse)
The first mirrors for the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) arrived at the scope’s future home in Chile, but the unboxing process is going to take a while longer — and there's definitely some assembly required. The 18 mirrors that sailed halfway around the world in late December are just the first of 798 hexagonal pieces that will eventually combine to form a 128-foot-wide mirror. It will start gathering light from alien worlds, ancient galaxies, and supermassive black holes in 2028. (12/27)

Two Space Stories In 2024 Will Determine The Future Of Humanity (Source: Forbes)
There’s a pair of happenings just beyond our planet that I’ll be watching closely, because they amount to tests of a sort that could determine the trajectory of our species. The first story you’ve probably already heard about. NASA aims to launch its Artemis II mission by the end of the year, carrying humans on a journey around the moon and back.

The other story is that next year is lining up to be the riskiest time yet for something like Kessler Syndrome to actually occur over our heads. This is due to two things: 1. The amount of objects in space has grown exponentially this century, accelerating in recent years, and this growth has happened without much in the way of international coordination to avoid collisions. And, 2. The peak of the sun’s solar cycle is forecast to occur sometime in 2024, meaning that many satellites in orbit could be disabled by the most powerful solar flares seen in decades. (12/31)

A New Way to Characterize Habitable Planets (Source: Phys.org)
For decades, science fiction authors have imagined scenarios in which life thrives on the harsh surfaces of Mars or our moon, or in the oceans below the icy surfaces of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa. But the study of habitability—the conditions required to support and sustain life—is not just confined to the pages of fiction. As more planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond are investigated for their potential to host conditions favorable to life, researchers are debating how to characterize habitability.

The study emphasizes new directions for future missions to measure habitability on other worlds, using Saturn's icy moon Enceladus as a primary example. Enceladus is covered in ice with a salty ocean beneath. In the last decade, NASA's Cassini mission acquired chemical measurements of plumes of water vapor and ice grains jetting out from fissures at Enceladus's south pole, discovering the presence of elements like carbon and nitrogen that could be conducive to life as we know it.

These geochemical properties are sufficient to describe the moon's "instantaneous" habitability. However, to truly characterize Enceladus's long-term habitability, the paper emphasizes that future planetary missions must study geophysical properties that indicate how long the ocean has been there, and how heat and nutrients flow between the core, the interior ocean, and the surface. (12/29)

Rocket Lab's Flying Again. Does It Matter? (Source: Motley Fool)
Rocket Lab is more than just rockets. Just look at the numbers. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, rocket launch is actually Rocket Lab's least profitable business. The company's launch-services division earned only a 16% gross-profit margin through the first three quarters of this year (and was unprofitable last year). In contrast, the company's faster-growing space-systems division has earned better than 21% gross-profit margins this year and has been profitable every year since it opened in 2020.

Space systems -- which includes everything from satellites to interplanetary probes to in-orbit services -- is also growing rapidly. From a mere $2.1 million in revenue booked in 2020, space systems grew to more than $150 million in revenue last year. In contrast, launch services grew from $33.1 million in 2020 to just $60.7 million last year -- good growth but less than a "double" and much slower than space systems. And space systems is going to get a whole lot bigger pretty soon. (12/30)

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are Shaping Our Future in Space. ‘Beff Jezos’ Says the Billionaires Have Earned the Right (Source: Fortune)
Not everyone is thrilled about two of the world’s richest men wielding so much power to shape our future, but “Beff Jezos,” for one, believes it’s justified. “I’m for billionaires. I know this is a controversial statement sometimes, but I think that, in a sense, it’s kind of proof-of-stake voting,” he said. Of course, “Beff Jezos” is not a real name. It’s the handle used on X by Guillaume Verdon, a former Google quantum computing engineer and one of the leaders of the effective accelerationism movement, or e/acc (pronounced “ee-ack”).

Verdon and others in the movement argue that propelling technological progress at nearly any cost is the only ethically justifiable course of action. Silicon Valley elites—including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Garry Tan, CEO of startup accelerator Y Combinator—add the label e/acc to their X profiles and consider themselves “techno-optimists.” They often criticize “decels,” or people they deem to be hindering progress—a favorite target being those wanting to slow down AI development for the safety of humanity.

“I would love to see, you know, a trillion humans living in the solar system,” Bezos said on Fridman podcast earlier this month. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins…Our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy.” (12/30)

North Korea Will Launch Three More Spy Satellites in 2024, Kim Says (Source: AP)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to launch three additional military spy satellites, produce more nuclear materials and introduce attack drones in 2024, as he called for “overwhelming” war readiness to cope with U.S.-led confrontational moves, state media reported. (12/31)

NASA Tests Autonomous Drones in Prep for Future Self-Flying ‘Air Taxis’ (Source: Washington Post)
Self-piloted “air taxis” moved a step closer to reality recently with a recent NASA experiment involving multiple autonomous drones. The drones flew beyond observers’ line of sight, dodged one another and successfully maneuvered around obstacles before safely landing, the agency announced Dec. 21. The test results could help researchers to someday create autonomous, self-piloted helicopters that could ferry passengers and cargo through busy skies. (12/30)

Organic Molecules Come from the Universe's Cold Places (Source: Universe Today)
For a long time, cosmo-chemists have known that organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are quite plentiful in the Universe. Scientists consider them plausible prebiotic building blocks that likely played an important role in the formation of life on Earth. What’s not as well understood is their origin story. For a long time, scientists suspected that they formed in regions where temperatures get to around 1000 K. That would supply energy to promote chemical activity to create PAHs, such as in star-forming molecular clouds or circumstellar disks. It’s also possible they form as part of the processing of carbon-rich dust grains by nearby energy sources (such as stars).

However, based on recent studies of an asteroid and meteorite, it turns out that some PAHs formed in cold regions of space, too. In those regions, the temperature does not get much higher than 100 K. That finding opens up new pathways for understanding life’s chemical journey on other planets and celestial bodies. (12/29)

America's X-37B vs. China's Shenlong: Spaceplanes, Compared (Source: Popular Mechanics)
Here’s what we know so far about how America’s X-37B stacks up against China’s Shenlong spaceplane. Although there are several artists’ conceptions of what the spacecraft looks like floating around, the Chinese government has never released a photo of what it actually looks like at the time of this writing. And despite racking up multiple missions into space, no images of the spaceplane have been leaked to the public. According to Space News, an analysis of a recovered nose fairing suggests Divine Dragon has similar dimensions to the X-37B.

The X-37B is 29 feet long and 9.5 feet tall with a wingspan of 14 feet 11 inches. It has a payload bay measuring approximately 7 feet by 4 feet, covered by clamshell doors during launch. There are two X-37Bs. (12/29)

What's Headed to the Launch Pad on the Space Coast in 2024 (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The moon is a big target for space launches in 2024, with NASA aiming to return the first humans in more than 50 years for a fly-by on the Artemis II mission while spate of commercial companies are lined up for their lunar landers’ shot to touch down safely. It’s one big theme of the lineup of what could be yet another record year for launches on the Space Coast.

Another is the introduction of new spacecraft to the manifest with both the first-ever crewed Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the first-ever uncrewed flight of the Sierra Space Dream Chaser on tap. And it’s a year that should see the introduction of a new heavy lift rocket from United Launch Alliance and and maybe even one from Blue Origin, plus more private and NASA human spaceflight and one big science mission to an icy moon of Jupiter. (12/31)

NASA Releases Stunning 4K Video of Apollo 13 Views of the Moon, Ending All Conspiracy Theories (Source: Physics-Astronomy.com)
NASA has developed a stunning view of the Moon using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and combined with the views recorded by Apollo 13 astronauts during their risky trek around the far side in 1970. Click here. (12/6)

Major Milestones Achieved Through the ISS National Lab in 2023 (Source: Space Daily)
As 2023 comes to a close, the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory wraps up a banner year supporting R&D in low Earth orbit. The ISS National Lab and NASA work in unison to utilize the orbiting outpost to its fullest capacity, and the achievements from this year demonstrate the increasing demand for access to space for R and D among researchers from diverse fields. Below highlights some of the many exciting ISS National Lab activities and successes from this past year. Click here. (12/31)

Innovative X-Ray Lobster-Eye Mission Set to Launch (Source: Space Daily)
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) spacecraft Einstein Probe is ready to launch in January 2024. Equipped with a new generation of X-ray instruments with high sensitivity and a very wide view, this mission will survey the sky and hunt for powerful blasts of X-ray light coming from mysterious celestial objects such as neutron stars and black holes.

Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany. In return for contributing to the development of this mission and the definition of its scientific goals, ESA will get access to 10% of the data generated by Einstein Probe's observations. (1/1)

This Warm Year-Round Beach Town Doubles As A Space-Lover's Paradise (Source; Explore.com)
Florida offers tourists relaxing sandy vacations and endless theme parks to explore. However, the Sunshine State also has a lesser-known region in Central Florida, the Space Coast. The Space Coast was founded in the 1950s but was put on the map in the early 1960s with the establishment of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island.

In July 1969, the Kennedy Space Center and the United States made history when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. With that said, the Kennedy Space Center led the cities on the Space Coast to flourish. This included Titusville, founded in 1867.

With temperatures rarely dipping below the 70s at any given time of the year, the lesser-known beach town is a place where visitors can escape the cold. During the 1960s Space Race, many NASA employees called Titusville home. However, this is not its claim to fame. Titusville is known for its rocket launch viewing sites like Space View Park and Playalinda Beach. The latter is on the shores of the Indian River across from the Kennedy Space Center's launch pads. (12/31)