June 29, 2019

Stunning Video Shows Sun's Pulsing 'Skin' in Incredible Detail (Source: Space.com)
A new video shows a view of the sun that's so strange you'd think it came from a science fiction horror film. The "skin" of the sun — also known as the photosphere — pulses and morphs in an active region of solar granules imaged by a Swedish telescope. "These granules are the tops of convection cells where hot gas rises from the interior to cool, and then descends back down," NASA explained in a statement. Click here. (6/27)

SpaceX Faces Daunting Challenges if it’s Going to Win the Internet Space Race (Source: LA Times)
Elon Musk and SpaceX have staked their legacy on a spaceship capable of carrying a hundred passengers to Mars. But to pay for that dream, the Hawthorne company is banking on a project that is ambitious in its own way: selling broadband internet service delivered by more than 1,000 small satellites.

Chief Executive Musk has mused to reporters about the technological hurdles facing SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, including antennas that track the satellites as they move through the sky and laser communication systems that allow the spacecraft to talk to each other. Last month, SpaceX launched the first 60 satellites of its planned constellation.

But industry experts say the company’s biggest challenge is financial. SpaceX must drive down the cost of sophisticated hardware and software to the point where it can deliver fast, reliable internet service at a price point that competes with cable or fiber-delivered broadband services, while finding enough underserved markets to provide scale. (6/28)

Branson Ready to Risk Life to Make Space Dreams Real (Source: Daily Beast)
Richard Branson is finally close to riding his rocket ship. After a decade in which he repeatedly announced his imminent departure into space as the first passenger aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, only to then call it off, it seems that the ship is ready. And Branson, ever the showman, aims to time his ride to coincide with the most epochal date in the history of space travel. Earlier this year he announced his intention to lift off on or close to July 20, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon.

That would certainly be an act of chutzpah. The Apollo program went from conception to the moon landing in eight years. Branson originally promised his ship would be ready for lift-off with passengers in 2009, and we’re still waiting. Technically, Virgin Galactic is no moonshot. It is a project of far lower ambition and aimed at a fundamentally frivolous purpose. For years it has been way overhyped. (6/27)

NASA Picks Dragonfly Mission to Titan (Source: Space News)
NASA announced Thursday it selected the Dragonfly mission to Titan as its next New Frontiers mission. Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and arrive at Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2034. The spacecraft, equipped with eight rotors, will be able to fly through Titan's dense atmosphere, traveling from a landing site near the moon's equator to a large crater 175 kilometers away over the course of two and a half years. Scientists will use Dragonfly to better understand Titan's composition and chemistry, which contains the building blocks for life much like the early Earth. NASA said it selected Dragonfly after addressing a number of technical risks with the original proposal for the mission. Dragonfly beat out CAESAR, a comet sample return mission. (6/28)

Senate Bill Authorizes Space Force Creation (Source: Space News)
The Senate approved its version of a defense authorization bill, including language creating a U.S. Space Force. The Senate on Thursday passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 by a vote of 86–8. The Senate approved a space organization that is somewhat different than what was passed by the House Armed Services Committee, which proposed a Space Corps within the Air Force. Both chambers will have to hammer out a compromise on final NDAA language before a new space service is enacted, but a Pentagon official was optimistic that some version of a Space Force will emerge in the final version of the bill. (6/28)

Canadian Pension Fund Invests in SpaceX (Source: Space News)
A Canadian pension fund is the latest investor in SpaceX. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan announced Thursday it had made an investment of undisclosed size in the company, saying it will support SpaceX's "next phase of growth" as it develops its Starlink constellation. The announcement comes as SpaceX filed paperwork for a new round of about $310 million, in addition to the $1 billion in two separate rounds it announced in May. (6/28)

Asteroid Day Yields Support and Awareness (Source: GeekWire)
This year's Asteroid Day comes with growing activity surrounding, and support for, planetary defense. The annual event, timed to the anniversary of the Tunguska impact in Siberia in June 1908, includes this year several hours of live television programming from Luxembourg, the headquarters for the event. Those involved with the event cited progress in the last year, such as the development of missions like NASA's DART, for better understanding the impact hazards posed by near Earth objects and how to mitigate them. (6/28)

Radio Wave Source Pinpointed (Source: Space.com)
Astronomers have located the source of a mysterious burst of radio waves. A study published Thursday concluded that a series of fast radio bursts detected over the last few years can be traced back to a galaxy 3.6 billion light-years away. It's only the second time that astronomers have been able to pinpoint such bursts, and astronomers say they still don't know what process, or processes, create them. (6/27)

Apollo Mission Control Room Restored (Source: AP)
The renovation of Mission Control from the Apollo program is now complete. NASA will formally reopen the room today after years of work to restore the center to its appearance during the Apollo program. The team responsible for the restoration worked to make it as historically accurate as possible, down to ashtrays and carpeting. The flight controllers who used to work in the center declared that restoration mission a success: "It's just nice to see the thing come alive again," said Gene Kranz. (6/27)

Houston Airport System to Break Ground on Spaceport Project (Source: Houston Business Journal)
Phase 1 of the Houston Spaceport broke ground on June 28. The Houston Airport System celebrates the groundbreaking of phase 1 — an $18.8 million project. The scope of the project’s first phase includes streets, water, wastewater, electrical power and distribution, fiber optics and communications facilities. The first phase will also include the construction of 53,000 square feet of lab and office space, according to the HAS website. Some 154 acres of land are set aside for phase 1.

Texas Sterling-Banicki JV LLC, a joint venture, is developing the infrastructure for the spaceport, according to a building permit filed with the city of Houston and previous Houston Business Journal reporting. JV partners Houston-based Texas Sterling Construction Co. and Phoenix-based Banicki Construction are both subsidiaries of Sterling Construction Co. More than $13.1 million of the $18.8 million will cover TSB’s preconstruction and design services as well as construction services for the infrastructure work.

The first company to sign on as a spaceport tenant — Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is already underway on lunar lander and drone technology. On May 31, Intuitive Machines received a $77.2 million contract from NASA to develop, launch and land its Nova-C spacecraft on the lunar surface. The company is on track to be the first private U.S. firm to land a spacecraft on the moon during a planned 2021 mission. (6/27)

NASA Moon Landing Warning: Humans At Risk From Crippling Illness Caused by Lunar Dust (Source: Express)
Humans may be allergic to lunar dust, the last living man to walk on the Moon has claimed after revealing illness sustained after the final NASA Apollo mission. Scientist Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt was part of the last Apollo mission to the Moon in 1972 shortly before the program was shelved. Mr Schmitt was the only scientist to get the opportunity to walk on the satellite. He spent hours collecting dust and samples from the Moon’s surface.

But when he returned to the landing module, dust which had collected on his spacesuit became inhaled, causing an immediate reaction. He told the Starmus space festival in Zurich that the “inside of my nose became swollen” and that the allergic reaction could be “heard in my voice”. Ms Schmitt said: “But that gradually that went away for me, and by the fourth time I inhaled lunar dust I didn’t notice that. “Whereas a flight surgeon taking suits out of the Apollo 17 command module, after we had splashed down, he had such a reaction that he had to stop doing what he was doing. (6/27)

Want to Live on the Moon? Try Living Under a Swiss Glacier First (Source: Space.com)
This month, about 50 feet (15 meters) under a Swiss glacier, you can experience what it might be like to live on the moon. To offer an idea at what such a habitat might look like, European researchers and students are conducting a mock moon habitat trial under a glacier near the famous Matterhorn in Switzerland's Alps.

Called IGLUNA, the demonstration is organized by the Swiss Space Center and the European Space Agency. Teams from across Europe arrived in the car-free mountain town of Zermatt, Switzerland, last week to set up their experiments, which include an ice-digging robot, a construction robot, an algae bioreactor and a hydroponic system for growing veggies. They've also built a habitat 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) tall buried deep in the ice. (6/27)

Startup Shares Disaster Imagery, But at What Cost? (Source: Space News)
Government space agencies and multinational corporations have well-established mechanisms in place to respond to requests for imagery in the wake of fires, floods or other disasters.. For Iceye, the Finnish firm that launched the first small radar satellite in 2018, the frequent requests pose challenges. “There is something happening every day: earthquakes, floods, fires, landslides, avalanches,” said Rafal Modrzewski, Iceye founder and chief executive. People fill in forms on Iceye’s website and the company tasks its Iceye-X2 synthetic aperture radar satellite to capture the imagery.

“There is no situation in which we would charge people for [this] data,” Modrzewski said. Still, Iceye is a new company that needs to make money in order to survive. Perhaps governments should provide some type of support to ensure companies like Iceye can continue sharing geospatial data in the wake of disasters, he added. “The problem is no one thinks about disasters before they happen,” Modrzewski said. “We are there to provide data when they do. We may not be there unless governments realize they have to support us.” (6/28)

Astronomers Have Decoded a Weird Signal Coming from a Strange, 3-Body Star System (Source: Live Science)
Once or twice a day, a strange object in the Milky Way blinks at us. Now, astronomers think they know why. The object is called NGTS-7, and to most telescopes it looks like a single star. Researchers at the University of Warwick in England started watching because it seemed to be emitting flares, but on closer examination they noticed that its starlight dims briefly every 16.2 hours. When the astronomers zoomed in, they realized there are actually two similarly sized stars in the system, and that only one of them is dimming briefly in that way — suggesting that there's something dark circling on or just above the star's surface. (6/27)

Senate Confirms Commander of New Space Command (Source: The Hill)
The Senate on Thursday evening confirmed the Air Force general tapped to lead the newly formed U.S. Space Command. The Senate approved Gen. John Raymond to be the commander of Space Command by unanimous consent in a package of a couple dozen military nominations. Raymond serves as the commander of Air Force Space Command. When the Pentagon announced his nomination in March, the department said he would be dual-hatted, meaning he will now serve as both commander of U.S. Space Command and commander of Air Force Space Command. (6/28)

New Era of Supersonic Travel May End Before It Even Begins (Source: Bloomberg)
The dream of flying passengers faster than the speed of sound gave birth to Concorde in the 1970s, only for the nightmare of making a profit to snuff it out less than three decades later. Companies competing to build a successor to the iconic jet may find that the biggest hurdle isn’t technology or economics, but the hefty carbon footprint that’s the result of such eye-watering speeds -- especially with mainstream plane and engine makers saying electric airliners may soon be within reach.

Driven by mounting public and political concerns about aviation emissions, the new-found environmental zeal of manufacturers such as Airbus SE threatens to make startups intent on breaking the sound barrier look like relics from a greedier age that spared little thought for the the environment. That’s despite advances in aerodynamic design, materials and propulsion that have brought a second supersonic era tantalizingly close. Those concerns were on display at last week’s Paris Air Show, where Boom Technology Inc., which is working to introduce a 75-seat, Mach 2.2 jetliner, went out of its way to assert the plane’s green credentials. (6/28)

15 Out-of-This-World Facts About the International Space Station (Source: Mental Floss)
Today marks the 16th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight to assemble the International Space Station. Let’s celebrate 16 years of the ISS with 15 things you may not have known about the world’s shared space station. Click here. (6/27)

Astronomers Discover the Source of Unexplained Cosmic Radio Burst (Source: C/Net)
The burst was picked up by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder, which consists of 36 radio telescopes working in tandem to scan the sky and listen for radio signals. Situated in the Australian outback, where there's little radio interference, ASKAP is able to pick up the faintest whispers of the universe. The burst traveled from the other side of the universe, smacking into ASKAP's array -- and within half a second, the machine stopped the search and downloaded the data from each of the 36 dishes.

The burst hits each dish at slightly different times. In a ridiculous feat of engineering, the team can calculate the difference in arrival time to within one-tenth of a nanosecond. That allows their detective work to begin, tracing the position to a spot in the sky -- essentially plucking a needle from a haystack. The research team found FRB 180924 had come from a distant galaxy very similar in size to our own Milky Way. Galaxies are huge, huge swirling masses of stars, but the team was able to pinpoint the burst's exact cosmic city block, approximately 13,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.

On only one other occasion, in 2017, has a fast radio burst been traced to its source -- and that particular investigation was slightly easier because the burst repeated itself intermittently, like a strobe light. Known as FRB 121102, or the "repeater," the burst came from a completely different source to FRB180924: a dwarf galaxy slightly around 3 billion light-years away. That suggests non-repeating fast radio bursts might be different from those that do repeat, or it could hint that the signal differs depending on where it comes from. (6/27)