September 28, 2018

The Strange, Sad Case of Sunspot, the Empty Astronomy Town (Source: WIRED)
Not far from the test site of the first atomic bomb, high in the mountains above the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, sits Sunspot Observatory. For around 70 years, its telescopes have stared right at the Sun. Normally, that happens without much fanfare. But last week, Sunspot made international news when residents were evacuated—for a week and a half—in response to an undisclosed security threat.

Officials refused to release details. Now, those details are out: An affidavit, unsealed last week, revealed that the FBI was investigating child pornography linked to an IP address in Sunspot, and a suspect seemed threatening. The investigation is ongoing and no one has been charged. That information is disturbing, along with the secrecy surrounding the evacuation.

The FBI had shown up, while the local sheriff didn’t know what was happening. The internet went wild with conspiracy theories—from the usual “aliens!” to the less absurd “spies.” Residents of nearby, unevacuated Cloudcroft, a town of 700, fielded questions and transactions from curious seekers and reporters (hello), determined to decipher the situation. Click here. (9/24)

ULA Selects Blue Origin to Provide Vulcan Main Engine (Source: Space News)
United Launch Alliance announced it has selected Blue Origin to provide the main engine for its next-generation Vulcan launch vehicle, a decision long expected by the industry. ULA said it will use a pair of Blue Origin BE-4 engines in the first stage of its Vulcan rocket, expected to make a first launch in mid-2020. The company did not disclose the terms of its agreement with Blue Origin. (9/27)

House Joins Senate in Push to Extend ISS (Source: Space News)
A key House member announced he is introducing legislation that would extend operations of the International Space Station to 2030, weeks after senators sought a similar extension. In his opening statement at a House space subcommittee hearing on the past and future of NASA’s space exploration efforts, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), chairman of the subcommittee, said he was introducing legislation called the Leading Human Spaceflight Act that he said was designed to “provide further congressional direction to NASA.” (9/27)

Bizarre Particles Keep Flying Out of Antarctica's Ice, and They Might Shatter Modern Physics (Source: Live Science)
There's something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it. Physicists don't know what it is exactly. But they do know it's some sort of cosmic ray — a high-energy particle that's blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about shouldn't be able to do that.

Since March 2016, researchers have been puzzling over two events in Antarctica where cosmic rays did burst out from the Earth, and were detected by NASA's Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) — a balloon-borne antenna drifting over the southern continent.

ANITA is designed to hunt cosmic rays from outer space, so the high-energy neutrino community was buzzing with excitement when the instrument detected particles that seemed to be blasting up from Earth instead of zooming down from space. Because cosmic rays shouldn't do that, scientists began to wonder whether these mysterious beams are made of particles never seen before. (9/26)

SpaceX’s BFR and Raptor Deemed “Science-Fiction” by French Space Agency Manager (Source: Teslarati)
Dr. Francis Rocard – director of French space agency CNES’ solar system exploration program – had little good to say about SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk’s long-term ambitions in space, going so far as to question the CEO’s driving ethics and label the company’s next-generation rocket and propulsion system “science-fiction”.

CNES is providing a bit less than 25% of the $3.8 billion ESA is spending to develop the Ariane 6 rocket, as well as another $700m for the construction of a new launch pad and support facilities at the space agency’s French Guiana spaceport. ArianeGroup, a public-private partnership and company, plans to begin replacing its highly successful Ariane 5 rocket with Ariane 6 as early as 2020 and is providing roughly $475 million of its own money to develop that launch vehicle.

According to Arianespace, the best possible price a customer might wind up paying for one of Ariane 5’s two slots is ~$60m, essentially the same as the base price for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch. The problem, however, lies in the reality that Ariane 62 will be effectively incapable of performing the same dual-manifest launches but end up costing significantly more for a dedicated launch than the $60m-$100m Ariane 5 customers currently expect. (9/27)

UCF Lab Has Developed a Recipe for Creating Martian Soil on Earth. And Yes, it's Red (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Like any complicated recipe, whipping up some Martian soil on Earth requires finding the right ingredients. You may raid a museum to find an exceedingly rare mineral or call your local coal provider for a dash of magnetite. Put it together in just the right quantities with the rest, and the result is a very close imitation of the soil on Mars. It’s the kind of thing that organizations like NASA clamor for — if you do it right.

And as the world turns its attention toward settling Mars, it’s going to need quite a bit of the Red Planet’s dirt. That special recipe is exactly what scientists at the University of Central Florida have perfected, creating what now sits in jars at a small, innocuous lab inside the school: Brown soil with an auburn tint and flecks of orange. Like the real stuff, it’s downright reddish.

“We basically take minerals, as pure as we can get, … we mix them together, a bit of this and a pinch of that, and follow the recipe,” said Daniel Britt, a UCF professor. Britt and his team now sell the Martian dirt and are developing two other kinds. They also have created four variants of asteroid dirt and two of lunar dirt, all of them for sale at $20 a kilogram to a host of clients that include Kennedy Space Center. (9/27)

Orlando's Moon Walker John Young Would Have Been 88 (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Orlando’s own moon walker, astronaut John Young, died in early 2018. He would have turned 88 today, Sept. 24, 2018. While he doesn’t have the name recognition of Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin, he is in the minds of Orlando drivers quite often with the John Young Parkway named after him as well as John Young Elementary School. He was one of only 12 men to walk on the moon. He flew the first space shuttle mission, STS-1 on Space Shuttle Columbia. (9/24)