June 21, 2025

NASA Spacecraft Photographs the Crash Site of a Japanese Lander (Source: AP)
A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander. NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon. The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact. (6/20)

New Theory Proposes Time Has Three Dimensions, with Space as a Secondary Effect (Source: Phys.org)
Time, not space plus time, might be the single fundamental property in which all physical phenomena occur, according to a new theory by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist. The theory also argues that time comes in three dimensions rather than just the single one we experience as continual forward progression. Space emerges as a secondary manifestation.

Gunther Kletetschka's mathematical formula of six total dimensions—of time and space combined—could bring scientists closer to finding the single unifying explanation of the universe. Dimensions of time beyond our everyday forward progression are difficult to grasp. Theoretical physicists have proposed many variations. (6/21)

Neither Planet Nor Asteroid – Mysterious Object Moving 2 Billion km From the Sun Detected and its Origin Still Baffles Astronomers (Source: Union Rayo)
NASA has found a mysterious object far away from the Sun. A planet? Or maybe an asteroid! Not at all, scientists have found an active comet in a place far far away from our solar system that sunlight almost doesn’t reach, where everything should be frozen and out of action. The remarkable thing is the celestial body is breaking the current theories on how comets behaved. (6/21)

Vast Filament of Hidden Matter Seen for the First Time (Source: Universe Today)
Regular matter is properly called baryonic matter. It's made of baryons, which are mostly protons and neutrons (but not electrons). Baryons make up the matter we interact with in everyday life, including our own bodies. Baryonic matter makes up about 5% of the Universe, while dark matter (27%) and dark energy (68%) make up the rest, according to the standard cosmological model, Lambda CDM.

Cosmological models predict that the missing matter can be found in long filaments that extend between matter densities. Astronomers have spotted these filaments, but not with clarity. They're difficult to differentiate from the background because the matter exists as warm intergalactic gas called the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM).

They determined that a filament in the Shapley supercluster is 7.2 Megaparsecs long, or about 23.5 million light years. Though that's an extreme length, it's classified as a short filament. Spectral analysis allowed them to detect emissions from the WHIM in two separate regions of the filament, measuring both the temperature and the gas density. They were able to calculate the mass of the filament and its overdensity. Its about 10 times more massive than the Milky Way. (6/20)

Dassault Spaceplane Development Gains French Military Support (Source: Dassault)
The Minister of the French Armed Forces, and the Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation announced an agreement to support the development of a spaceplane demonstrator. This demonstrator represents the first step in an incremental and intrinsically dual roadmap for the development of a family of spaceplanes called VORTEX (Véhicule Orbital Réutilisable de Transport et d’Exploration).

In line with its key role in national aeronautical sovereignty, Dassault Aviation is building this roadmap to contribute to the development of key strategic capabilities and meet the new challenges of the space economy. It addresses multiple applications, including transport to and from orbit, and civil and military missions for an autonomous orbital platform. (6/20)

China Launches Satellite Chinasat-9C (Source: Xinhua)
China sent a new satellite into space on Friday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan. The satellite Chinasat-9C was launched by a Long March-3B carrier rocket, and entered the preset orbit successfully. The launch marks the 582nd flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series. (6/20)

Relativity Space Accelerates Production and Testing of First Terran R (Source: NSF)
In a series of recent updates from Relativity Space, the company highlighted progress on its upcoming Terran R launch vehicle and supporting infrastructure for the rocket’s first flight, scheduled for 2026. The company is currently concentrating on three key areas: Terran R launch infrastructure, Aeon R engine testing, and the production of Terran R.

Block 1 of Terran R, the first version of the vehicle, is designed to teach Relativity how to successfully and efficiently recover the first stage before Block 2 ultimately takes over. With an annual flight goal of 50-100 flights per year, Relativity is relying heavily on the rocket’s reusable nature to enable regular flights and lower costs. The company believes that demand is outpacing the market, and is working to fill some of the gaps within the market with Terran R. (6/20)

Macron Challenges Europe to Rival US, China in Space (Source: Reuters)
President Emmanuel Macron threw France's backing behind plans for a European satellite manufacturing champion and called for accelerated deployment of Starlink-type satellites as he declared space the new theatre for world power competition. Macron called for an energetic push spanning launchers to manufacturing and services as he set out a strategy to counter the sprawling rocket-to-telecoms interests of U.S. billionaire Elon Musk. (6/20)

US-Sweden Tech Transfer Agreement Includes US Launches From Swedish Spaceports (Source: US Dept. of State)
Today, the United States and Sweden signed the Agreement on Technology Safeguards Associated with U.S. Participation in Space Launches from Sweden, or the U.S.-Sweden Technology Safeguards Agreement. The Agreement, upon entry into force, provides the legal and technical framework for U.S. commercial space launches from Swedish spaceports while ensuring proper handling of sensitive technology. The Agreement creates new commercial opportunities for the U.S. space industry and will deepen our cooperation with our partners in Sweden in this increasingly critical sector. (6/20)

Pentagon Struggles to Build Unified Satellite Network (Source: Space News)
The U.S. military wants to turn its satellite communications into something that works like the internet — fluid, fast, and built on seamless interoperability between networks. But at an industry conference this week, Pentagon officials said the long envisioned military space internet is still a long way off.

In an era where commercial satellites outnumber military ones, the Defense Department is trying to tap into this diverse ecosystem, defense officials said June 17 at the SAE Media Group’s MilSatcom USA conference. The goal is creating what DoD calls “enterprise satcom” — a virtualized, software-defined network that could automatically reroute communications between military, commercial and allied nations’ satellites if an adversary jams one satellite system. (6/20)

How Astronomers Will Deal With 60 Million Billion Bytes of Imagery (Source: New York Times)
Each image taken by Rubin’s camera consists of 3.2 billion pixels that may contain previously undiscovered asteroids, dwarf planets, supernovas and galaxies. And each pixel records one of 65,536 shades of gray. That’s 6.4 billion bytes of information in just one picture. Ten of those images would contain roughly as much data as all of the words that The New York Times has published in print during its 173-year history. Rubin will capture about 1,000 images each night.

As the data from each image is quickly shuffled to the observatory’s computer servers, the telescope will pivot to the next patch of sky, taking a picture every 40 seconds or so. It will do that over and over again almost nightly for a decade. The final tally will total about 60 million billion bytes of image data. That is a “6” followed by 16 zeros: 60,000,000,000,000,000.

All that data needs to be stored and processed. To do that, Dr. O’Mullane oversaw the construction of a state-of-the-art data center at Rubin with enough storage to retain a month’s worth of images in case of a lengthy network disruption. Maintaining the nearly 60 miles of fiber-optic cables that connect the observatory to the city of La Serena, Chile, can be challenging. People have stolen equipment. A fire on the road and a truck hitting a pole have caused outages. (6/20)