April 16, 2024

Where Is Planet Nine? Its Hiding Places Are Running Out (Source: Scientific American)
Over time, more indirect evidence for P9’s existence came to light, notably a slight tilt of the sun’s spin axis, none of which was conclusive, but all curious enough to keep astronomers searching for a culprit. Still, all the indirect evidence in the world (or worlds) doesn’t add up to a single direct observation of the planet. So the game was afoot.

Unfortunately no planet unveiled itself in the data. Taken together with the DES and ZTF surveys (and accounting for overlaps in coverage), the astronomers have now eliminated 78 percent of P9’s hiding places. This does lengthen the odds that the purported planet exists. But while down, it’s not out. The 22 percent of the sky where it still could hide includes a big chunk that looks out into the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, where stars are far more crowded together, making the search more difficult. (4/15)

China's 130-Ton Reusable Rocket Engine Breaks Records During Tests (Source: Interesting Engineering)
China’s main space contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), completed key engine tests on its reusable rocket engine. The 130-ton reusable liquid oxygen kerosene engine, developed by CASC’s Sixth Academy, will power CASC’s reusable rockets, such as the Long March 10. CASC’s engineers completed the two ground ignition tests on Saturday, April 13, according to reports from Chinese state media.

CASC has reportedly completed 15 repeated tests and 30 ignition starts on its new engine, with the total test duration exceeding 3,900 seconds. According to a press release, the 15 repeated tests broke the previous record for liquid rocket main engine testing in China. (4/15)

EarthCARE Satellite to Launch with Advanced Climate Instruments (Source: Space Daily)
Scheduled for a May launch, the EarthCARE satellite is equipped with four advanced instruments aimed at studying Earth's clouds and their impact on climate. This joint effort by Airbus, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) seeks to deepen our understanding of climate dynamics and temperature regulation via cloud behavior.

Maximilian Sauer, EarthCARE's project leader at Airbus Defence and Space, emphasized the necessity of this mission for improving climate models. "To grasp the complexity of cloud systems, mere imaging is insufficient. Our approach involves multiple analytical methods through sophisticated instruments," Sauer noted. (4/12)

Precision in Space: L3Harris Boosts Avionics for Next-Gen Launch Vehicles (Source: Space Daily)
Rising mission demands necessitate high-performance, cost-effective, and technologically sophisticated solutions with a track record of reliability. L3Harris's comprehensive avionics suite includes communication systems, range safety receivers, power distribution, data acquisition, flight computers, and navigation capabilities. Click here. (4/12)

Aerojet Rocketdyne Advances Space Maneuver with New Propulsion Tech (Source: Space Daily)
"Dynamic Space Operations, or DSO, are fundamentally about enabling on-orbit maneuverability," said Tom Wehr, director of business development for launch and space exploration at Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company. Wehr emphasized that the ability to change orbits on demand disrupts adversarial targeting and complicates their military planning. For instance, satellites in fixed, predictable orbits allow adversaries to anticipate surveillance times and alter their activities to evade detection. (4/12)

NASA Looking for Fresh Ideas to Reduce Cost, Shorten Schedule for Mars Sample Return (Source: Space News)
NASA announced Monday that it will seek proposals for studies on ways to bring back samples collected by the Perseverance rover faster and less expensively than the agency's current approach. That came after an internal study confirmed the current MSR architecture would cost between $8 billion and $11 billion and, to fit it within projected budgets without cutting other programs, would delay the return of the samples to 2040.

NASA plans to have studies on alternative approaches done by this fall to allow it to determine the best way forward on MSR. NASA will spend $310 million on MSR in the current fiscal year, near the low end of the range included in a 2024 appropriations bill, and will request $200 million in 2025. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he has briefed key members of Congress about those plans and they were "quite understanding" of the situation, but in a statement late Monday California's two senators said the proposed funding levels for MSR "are woefully short" and called on NASA to work with Congress to balance the cuts to the program. (4/16)

Budgetary Pressure Stressing Several NASA Programs (Source: Space News)
Budgetary pressures are forcing NASA to make hard decisions on how to change or even cancel some missions. That includes restructuring a series of Earth science missions and canceling the Geospace Dynamics Constellation heliophysics missions, as well as proposed cuts to the Chandra and Hubble telescopes. Observers note that with budget caps in place for fiscal year 2025, NASA has little room to maneuver, and even after the caps expire in 2026 the agency faces a "slow bleed" of resources for science missions given projected slow growth in spending. (4/16)

Lockheed Wins US Missile Defense Contract Worth $17 Billion (Source: Reuters)
Lockheed Martin has won a $17 billion contract to develop the next generation of interceptors to defend the US against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack, the Missile Defense Agency said. The win represents a shot in the arm for Lockheed after the United States said it wanted to reduce F-35 orders, and the Army in February abandoned development of a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, a next-generation helicopter for which Lockheed had submitted a design. (4/15)

Aerospacelab Acquiring a Belgium's AMOS (Source: Space News)
Smallsat manufacturer Aerospacelab is acquiring a Belgian company that produces optical systems for satellites. Aerospacelab said Monday it is buying AMOS, or Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems, for an undisclosed sum. Space projects AMOS has worked on include polishing mirrors for ESA's dark matter hunting space observatory Euclid and providing multispectral instruments for the agency's Sentinel Earth observation satellite program. Aerospacelab says the acquisition will give the company critical capabilities across space and ground systems. (4/16)

NASA Confirms ISS Debris Hit Florida Home (Source: NASA)
NASA confirmed Monday than an object that hit a Florida home was debris from the International Space Station. NASA said it analyzed the object that fell through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida, in March and concluded it was part of a battery cargo pallet that was discarded from the station in 2021. That pallet reentered in March, and the path and timing of the debris corresponded with the debris that hit the Florida home. The debris was made of the metal alloy Inconel and weighted about three-quarters of a kilogram. (4/16)

Biggest Stellar-Class Black Hole Discovered (Source: The Guardian)
Astronomers have discovered the biggest stellar-class black hole in our galaxy. The black hole, designated BH3 and in a star systems 2,000 light-years away, has a mass 33 times that of the sun. Astronomers detected the black hole by noticing a wobble in the motions of another star, which it turns out is orbiting the black hole. The mass of the black hole suggests to astronomers it may have formed by the same processes that, in other galaxies, created gravitational wave events. (4/16)

Do Black Holes Hide the Secrets of Their Ancestors? (Source: Space.com)
Some are created by the death and collapse of a massive star — yet no single star can birth the most tremendously large black holes. Those are the supermassive black holes that lurk at the hearts of galaxies with masses equivalent to millions, or even billions, of suns. Giant black holes such as these are believed to have been created when two smaller black holes collided and merged once upon a time. And now, scientists wonder whether we can learn about the family tree of a black hole by working backward through the generations. (4/15)

I Flew Boeing's Starliner Spacecraft in 4 Different Simulators. Here's What I Learned (Source: Space.
The commander of my spacecraft prepared for a steep spin next to the space station. "This is an alarming rotation rate. If we saw this in real life, there would be problems," Ray Bigonesse, lead rendezvous officer for Boeing's new Starliner astronaut taxi, told my crew as he twisted the joystick. Luckily for us, we were not in space but in a simulator at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). Click here. (4/15)

Geometers Engineer New Tools to Wrangle Spacecraft Orbits (Source: Quanta)
In October, a Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. Because Europa is constantly bombarded by intense radiation created by Jupiter’s magnetic field, the Clipper spacecraft can’t orbit the moon itself. Instead, it will slide into an eccentric orbit around Jupiter and gather data by repeatedly swinging by Europa — 53 times in total — before retreating from the worst of the radiation.

To plan convoluted tours like this one, trajectory planners use computer models that meticulously calculate the trajectory one step at a time. The planning takes hundreds of mission requirements into account, and it’s bolstered by decades of mathematical research into orbits and how to join them into complicated tours. Mathematicians are now developing tools which they hope can be used to create a more systematic understanding of how orbits relate to one another. Click here. (4/15)

Incredibly Rare Cosmic Object Detected in Gravitational Waves For The First Time (Source: Science Alert)
A gravitational wave detected in May of last year has given us a type of cosmic collision we've never seen before. One of the masses involved was a neutron star. So far, so normal. But we don't know what the other object was. That's because it sits firmly in a niche known as the lower mass gap – the seemingly rare bodies with masses somewhere between the chonkiest neutron stars and the titchiest black holes.

It's the first time we've seen a gravitational wave event involving a neutron star and a mass gap object, and although we aren't much closer to knowing what the latter actually is, the discovery excitingly suggests that these elusive mystery blobs could be common in the galaxy. (4/12)

Neutron Stars Could Be Heating Up From Dark Matter Annihilation (Source: Phys.org)
One of the big mysteries about dark matter particles is whether they interact with each other. We still don't know the exact nature of what dark matter is. Some models argue that dark matter only interacts gravitationally, but many more posit that dark matter particles can collide with each other, clump together, and even decay into particles we can see. If that's the case, then objects with particularly strong gravitational fields such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs might capture and concentrate dark matter. This could in turn affect how these objects appear.

For this study, the team looked at how much dark matter a neutron star could capture, and how the decay of interacting dark matter particles would affect its temperature. The details depend on which specific dark matter model you use. The team focused on how dark matter and baryons (protons and neutrons) might interact, and whether that would cause dark matter to be trapped. Sure enough, for the range of possible baryon-dark matter interactions, neutron stars can capture dark matter. (4/15)

Switzerland Signs Artemis Space Agreement (Source: SwissInfo)
Swiss Economics Minister Guy Parmelin signed the Artemis Accords at NASA's headquarters in the US capital of Washington D.C. on Monday. As a result, Switzerland has agreed to promote the peaceful exploration of outer space with the US and 35 other signatories. (4/16)

UAE Announces Crew Member to Take Part in Next Phase of Mars Simulation Mission (Source: The National)
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) has revealed the identity of the Emirati who will take part in the next phase of a Nasa simulation to replicate the conditions of a mission to Mars. Shareef Al Romaithi will participate in the next phase of the project, which is due to start on May 10, the MBRSC announced on Monday evening. The project involves analogue astronauts – crew members who take part in simulated missions on Earth – to test the effects of space flight on the human mind and body.

Mr. Al Romaithi will spend 45 days living with other crew members in a specially designed facility in Houston, Texas, as part of the Human Exploration Research Analogue (HERA) project. (4/15)

India Achieves Breakthrough with Lightweight Carbon-Carbon Rocket Engine Nozzle (Source: Times of India)
ISRO Tuesday said it has successfully developed a lightweight Carbon-Carbon nozzle for rocket engines, marking a breakthrough in rocket engine technology. The innovation promises to enhance the vital parameters of rocket engines, including thrust levels, specific impulse, and thrust-to-weight ratios, thereby boosting the payload capacity of launch vehicles. (4/16)

Lockheed Martin Pitching Nuclear Propulsion Portfolio for Defense Space Mobility, Logistics (Source: Defense Scoop)
The U.S. government has begun funding the development of different nuclear-powered spacecraft for civil and commercial use cases, and Lockheed Martin believes that the technology could play a key role in military space operations once it has matured. The company is on contract for three key nuclear-powered spacecraft programs with various government agencies as the U.S. looks to return to the moon and eventually begin exploration of Mars. Each effort tackles a different type of space-based nuclear power for different mission areas.

And while the government is focused on how space nuclear propulsion can support civil and commercial applications, there is also some appetite to use the technology in the defense sector — particularly for space servicing, mobility and logistics (SAML) missions, according to Jeff Schrader, vice president of global situation awareness at Lockheed Martin. (4/15)

Space Florida: Bolstering the New Space Economy in the State (Source: Journal of Space Commerce)
Tom Patton talks with Rob Long, president and CEO of Space Florida. He was named to the position last year following the retirement of Frank DiBello. Rob has over 25 years of leadership experience in the aerospace industry. His expertise spans launch operations, logistics, and spaceport management. His strategic vision aims to position Florida as a global hub for aerospace commerce. Click here. (4/11)

Since Peregrine, Astrobotic Has Been Busy Building a Future in Space (Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
In the months since its first spacecraft burned up over the Pacific Ocean following a dramatic 10-day mission intended for the moon, Astrobotic Technology has been busy planning its return. The startup has added talent from NASA and international partners who will help pilot its miniature rover on the next lunar mission, Griffin, planned for later this year. An outside review of the failed Peregrine mission is still underway and could impact NASA’s plans for the pending trip.

Last week, Astrobotic announced that its modular, shoebox-sized CubeRover will traverse the moon’s south pole on the upcoming mission with a software assist from a Canadian startup called Mission Control. Last month, the startup announced that four space industry veterans, all with experience at NASA, are joining the team to help with Griffin and other missions either as staff or advisers. (4/15)

Mercury: The Solar System's Smallest Planet May Once Have Been as Large as Earth (Source: BBC)
The ratio of chemicals on Mercury's surface is highly unusual. By using a technique known as "spectrometry" to analyse the chemical composition of the planet at a distance, scientists know that Mercury has a much high concentration of thorium than its nearest neighbours. Thorium should have evaporated in the extreme heat of the early Solar System. Instead, its thorium content is closer to that of Mars – three planets away – which would have formed at cooler temperatures due to its distance from the Sun.

Such anomalies have led some planetary scientists to hypothesise that Mercury originally formed at a more distant point from the Sun, near to Mars – and that it started out with a much bigger mass, around the size of the Earth, that would befit its large core. At some point in its history, however, it is hypothesised that Mercury collided with another planetary body that sent it spinning towards the Sun. Such a collision could have blown away its crust and much of its mantle but left behind the huge liquid core. (4/14)

Can Information Escape a Black Hole? (Source: Quanta)
Nothing escapes a black hole … or does it? In the 1970s, the physicist Stephen Hawking described a subtle process by which black holes can “evaporate,” with some particles evading gravitational oblivion. That phenomenon, now dubbed Hawking radiation, seems at odds with general relativity, and it raises an even weirder question: If particles can escape, do they preserve any information about the matter that was obliterated?

Leonard Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University, found himself at odds with Hawking over the answer. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with Susskind about the “black hole war” that ensued and the powerful scientific lessons to be drawn from one of the most famous paradoxes in physics. Click here. (4/15)

Space Junk Hunters Close in on Spent Rocket Stage From 2009 Mission (Source: Gizmodo)
Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission successfully rendezvoused with a second-stage H-2A rocket, coming to within several hundred kilometers of the wayward object, the Tokyo-based company announced last week. The spacecraft is gearing up to get a closer look at the old rocket, circling its target and snapping photos of it.

Astroscale’s satellite is designed to creep up on the defunct spacecraft and, after inspecting it, match its tumble rate in order to align and dock with it. Once it’s docked, Astroscale will lower the spacecraft’s orbit using its thrusters before releasing it on a trajectory toward Earth’s atmosphere. The decommissioned spacecraft will then burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, putting an end to its stint in orbit. (4/15)

Radical NASA Study Says This Spacecraft Formation Could Reveal New Physics (Source: Science Alert)
A team of NASA researchers proposed how spacecraft could search for evidence of additional physics within our Solar System. This search, they argue, would be assisted by the spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation and using interferometers. Such a mission could help resolve a cosmological mystery that has eluded scientists for over half a century. Slava Turyshev's experience includes being a Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission science team member. In previous work, he investigated how a mission to the Sun's solar gravitational lens (SGL) could revolutionize astronomy.

The concept paper was awarded a Phase III grant in 2020 by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. In a previous study, he and SETI astronomer Claudio Maccone also considered how advanced civilizations could use SGLs to transmit power from one solar system to the next. To summarize, gravitational lensing is a phenomenon where gravitational fields alter the curvature of spacetime in their vicinity. This effect was originally predicted by Einstein in 1916 and was used by Arthur Eddington in 1919 to confirm his General Relativity (GR). (4/15)

Polaris Dawn is Getting Closer and Closer to Being Launch Ready (Source: Space Explored)
Polaris Dawn, a private mission being paid for by Shift4 CEO Jared Issacman, who also paid for and flew on Inspiration4 in 2021. The goal of the mission is to fly higher than any human spaceflight since Apollo, perform the first private spacewalk, and conduct numerous science experiments in orbit. Like Inspiration4, Polaris is partnering with SpaceX to complete this. Currently, SpaceX is the only company capable of this sort of feat. To do so, the company has modified its Dragon spacecraft to support spacewalk operations and develop an upgraded spacesuit to be used in the vacuum of space.

That spacecraft was sent to vacuum chamber testing earlier this month. Teams will recreate expected conditions in space by lowering and raising the vehicle’s pressures to ensure Dragon performs as expected both during and after the first commercial spacewalk,” SpaceX stated on social media. This will be able to close out the vast majority of concerns with bringing a vacuum into the Dragon’s main cabin, although no test is as good as doing it in the real world. (4/14)

Top Astronomers Gather to Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About the Universe (Source: Futurism)
A number of high-profile astronomers are set to convene at London's Royal Society to question some of the most fundamental aspects of our understanding of the universe. The luminaries of cosmology will be re-examining some basic assumptions about the universe — right down to the over-a-century-old theory that it's expanding at a constant rate.

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in significant ways. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole. (4/14)

Lunar Rover Racing (Source: Space Review)
Astronauts on the first Artemis landing missions will be on foot, but later on could have their choice of vehicles to roam across the lunar terrain. Jeff Foust reports on the latest milestones in the development of lunar rovers with commercial and international partners. Click here. (4/15)
 
FARRAH, the Superstar Satellite (Source: Space Review)
Decades ago, FARRAH was not just the name of a famous actress but also of a classified satellite program. Dwayne Day examines what is known about FARRAH (the satellite) after a model of it appeared at a museum. Click here. (4/15)
 
Zero-Gravity Regulations (Source: Space Review)
A “learning period” that has restricted regulation of commercial human spaceflight in the US for nearly two decades could soon be ending. David Gillette and Emma Rohrbach argue that the learning period supported innovation in ways that could be extended to other fields. Click here. (4/15)
 
Nukes in Space: a Bad Idea in the 1960s and an Even Worse One Now (Source: Space Review)
In the early 1960s, the United States and Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons in space, with disastrous results for many satellites in orbit at the time. Michael Mulvihill discusses those tests and why they show the perils of a potential Russian nuclear ASAT weapon. Click here. (4/15)

Space Coast's Third Largest Employer, L3Harris, Announces 'Difficult Decision' for Layoffs (Source: Space Coast Daily)
Brevard County’s third-largest employer, L3Harris, announced that it is planning layoffs to “streamline” their operations. The company didn’t specify an exact number of layoffs that would be coming soon. The company is known as an aerospace and defense powerhouse with over 7,000 jobs in Brevard County. (4/15)

Google Reportedly Prepping for Satellite-Supported Pixel Phones (Source: Ars Technica)
Google has been doing a lot of work in Android to support satellite-based messaging, and it sure would be nice if someone actually shipped some hardware it could use. Despite the feature launching with the iPhone 14 in 2022, Android manufacturers haven't been super receptive to copying the idea of satellite messaging.

Qualcomm and satellite company Iridium built a working solution and incorporated it into Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, only for zero Android manufacturers to support the feature, leading to the dissolution of the partnership. If Google wants an Android satellite SMS phone to play with, it seems like it will need to build the device itself. (4/15)

ESA Accelerates the Race Toward Clean Energy From Space (Source: ESA)
ESA is laying the groundwork for the development of satellite technology designed to harvest the Sun's energy in space before transmitting it wirelessly to receiving stations on Earth. The initiative, named SOLARIS, raises the tantalising prospect of clean, scalable energy beamed down continuously from orbit to back up weather-dependent renewables and eliminate reliance on fossil fuels.

Through SOLARIS, ESA is bringing together policymakers, energy suppliers and space companies to investigate the feasibility of developing and implementing space-based solar power. (4/15)

Rocket Lab to Launch NASA's New Solar Sail Technology No Earlier Than April 24 (Source: Space.com)
A NASA solar sail mission meant to test new space travel materials in Earth's orbit is scheduled to lift off no sooner than April 24, the space agency announced. Named the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3, the mission's primary goal is to test the deployment of solar sails using new composite booms, which are tube-shaped materials meant to unfurl and hold four very thin triangular sheets tautly. These sheets, together, form a kite-like solar sail. (4/15)

Scammers Plan to Use SpaceX Starlink Satellites in Transnational Scam Network Targeting Thailand with Deception (Source: Thai Examiner)
Thai police, on Friday, revealed that they have disrupted a call scammer gang that planned to use Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network to link it with telecommunications networks across the world including the European Union, the United Kingdom and Asia.

Police are still studying the find of hardware and data destined for the Golden Triangle area in Laos via Chiang Rai. However, they believe it was Chinese-controlled and in transit from war-torn Myanmar. (4/14)

Starbase Rising: Rapid Expansion, Growing Pains at SpaceX's South Texas Rocket City (Source: San Antonio Express-News)
For decades, Boca Chica Beach was the destination at this end of Texas 4. Now, SpaceX’s so-called “Gateway to Mars” is the main attraction. SpaceX has converted this previously untouched stretch of land into a rocket factory, launch site and company town. And the pace of growth is quickening. The growth was foretold in March 2021, when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he aimed to rename “an area much larger than Boca Chica” as “Starbase.”

In the unincorporated community of Boca Chica Village a few miles inland from the launch site, some residents weren’t thrilled with his proclamation. Rosemarie Workman, whose house is across the street from Musk’s own Starbase residence, wanted her billionaire neighbor to know: “This is not SpaceX property — this is my property. Not everything out here is owned by SpaceX.” Click here. (4/15)

SWOT Satellite Helps Gauge the Depth of Death Valley’s Temporary Laked (Source: NASA)
California’s Death Valley, the driest place in North America, has hosted an ephemeral lake since late 2023. A NASA-led analysis recently calculated water depths in the temporary lake over several weeks in February and March 2024, demonstrating the capabilities of the U.S.-French Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which launched in December 2022.

The analysis found that water depths in the lake ranged from about 3 feet (1 meter) to less than 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) over the course of about 6 weeks. This period included a series of storms that swept across California, bringing record amounts of rainfall. (4/15)

We Live in a Cosmic Void So Empty That it Breaks the Laws of Cosmology (Source: New Scientist)
Astronomers call it the “local hole”, but that is quite the understatement. It is a vast, gigantic, enormously huge cosmic void, spanning 2 billion light years. Our galaxy happens to be near its center, but the trouble with this hole is not that it presents a proximate danger – more that it shouldn’t exist at all. One of our most firmly held beliefs about the cosmos is the assumption--known as the cosmological principle--that the universe’s matter should be evenly distributed on the largest scales.

It is the cornerstone on which much of modern cosmology is built. If the void is real, then that stone might be crumbling. For this reason, few dared to believe the void could be genuine. But evidence has mounted in recent years, and astronomers have moved from doubt to begrudging acceptance. They have also discovered other similarly vast structures. So now the question is being asked with increasing urgency: if we really are living in a void, do we need to drastically modify our models of the cosmos? (4/15)

So Long Polaris: The Earth Will Get A New North Star (Source: IFL Science)
If you look up into the clear night sky in the Northern Hemisphere, you will see the star Polaris, more commonly known as the North Star. Sitting around 1 degree away from the geographic North Pole, Polaris has been used in navigation (of the Northern hemisphere) for centuries. But it hasn't always been our North Star.

That title has previously been held by binary star system Thuban, which was closer to the geographic North Pole between 3942 and 1793 BCE. Thuban, named in Ancient Egypt and meaning “head of the serpent”, consists of a white giant star 2.8 times as massive as the Sun, with a secondary star thought to be an A-type main-sequence star around 2.6 solar masses. (4/11)