SpaceX revealed its new spacesuit designed for Crew Dragon passengers to unbuckle and float outside the spacecraft.
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SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites today (May 6), the company's 46th orbital mission of the year already.
NASA astronauts will ride a United Launch Alliance Atlas V for the 1st time on May 6. Getting the long-running rocket ready for humans took thousands of checks.
A recently detected sunspot region unleashed a powerful X4.5 solar flare early Monday morning, causing radio blackouts throughout parts of the Eastern Hemisphere.
The International Space Station, the largest and brightest object now orbiting Earth, will provide excellent views for skywatchers across much of the Northern Hemisphere for much of May.
A patch created to honor Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft, features a geometric pattern representing the glow of her space shuttle lifting off into the night sky.
The launch of astronauts on a Boeing spacecraft will mark a first for the company, but will also bring human spaceflight back to a rocket and launch site after more than 50 years.
Many people travel to broaden their horizons; there's no broader horizon than the cosmos.
The post The Broadest Horizon appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
A Falcon 9 stands ready for a Starlink mission at Cape Canaveral’s pad 40. File photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.
Update: SpaceX has pushed the T-0 liftoff time to near the end of the launch window.
SpaceX is gearing up for the first of two Starlink missions from Florida, as Boeing gets ready for the first piloted launch of its Starliner capsule. A Falcon 9 rocket will launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday, followed by another on Tuesday from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
Liftoff on Monday is scheduled for 2:14 p.m. EDT (1814 UTC). Meteorologists at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station say there is a 90-percent chance of acceptable conditions for launch, with a small risk of cumulus cloud development being the only concern.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage with commentary starting about an hour before launch.
The Falcon 9 first stage assigned to the Starlink 6-57 mission will be making its 15th flight. The booster, which has the tail number 1069, first flew in December 2021 on a cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. In addition to making 10 previous Starlink deliveries, it launched the Hotbird 13F and SES 18 and 19 telecommunications satellites and a batch of satellites for OneWeb’s high speed internet service. It most recently flew a month ago on Apr. 5 for the Starlink 6-47 mission.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule sits atop the Atlas 5 rocket at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a day before its planned launch. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.
Years behind schedule and more than a billion dollars over budget, Boeing’s Starliner capsule is finally poised for its first piloted launch Monday, a critical test flight carrying two veteran astronauts to the International Space Station and in so doing, demonstrate an alternative to SpaceX’s already operational Crew Dragon.
While SpaceX has launched 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians to orbit in 13 piloted Crew Dragon flights since May 2020, Boeing has been bedeviled by multiple technical problems that required extensive re-work — and an additional unpiloted test flight — to resolve.
But mission managers say all the known issues have been corrected, multiple other upgrades and improvements have been implemented and the spacecraft has been thoroughly tested to verify it is finally ready to safely carry astronauts to and from the space station.
No one is more eager for launch than the Starliner’s crew, both active-duty NASA astronauts.
“I have full confidence in the management that makes the decisions that filter down to the operations team, full confidence on the NASA side and the Boeing side,” said mission commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore. “There have been some issues in the past. That’s the past. That is not now.”
Multiple space agencies are looking to send crewed missions to the Moon’s southern polar region in this decade and the next. Moreover, they intend to create the infrastructure that will allow for a sustained human presence, exploration, and economic development. This requires that the local geography, resources, and potential hazards be scouted in advance and navigation strategies that do not rely on a Global Positioning System (GPS) developed. On Sunday, April 21st, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) released the first complete high-definition geologic atlas of the Moon.
This 1:2.5 million scale geological set of maps provides basic geographical data for future lunar research and exploration. According to the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the volume includes data on 12,341 craters, 81 impact basins, 17 types of lithologies, 14 types of structures, and other geological information about the lunar surface. This data will be foundational to China’s efforts in selecting a site for their International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) and could also prove useful for NASA planners as they select a location for the Artemis Base Camp.
Credit: CAS via Xinhua handout
Ouyang Ziyuan and Liu Jianzhong, a research professor and senior researcher from the Institute of Geochemistry of the CAS (respectively), oversaw these efforts. Since 2012, they have led a team of over 100 scientists and cartographers from relevant research institutions. The team spent more than a decade compiling scientific exploration data obtained by the many orbiters, landers, and rovers that are part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (Chang’e), and other research about the origin and evolution of the Moon.
According to the CAS, the atlas includes an “upgraded lunar geological time scale” for “objectively” depicting the geological evolution of the Moon, including the lunar tectonics and volcanic activity that once took place. As a result, the volume could not only be significant in terms of lunar exploration and site selection. Still, it could also improve our understanding of the formation and evolution of Earth and the other terrestrial planets of the Solar System – Mercury, Venus, and Mars. As Jianzhong indicated in a CAS press release,
The first Hispanic woman to launch into space is now the second female astronaut to be awarded the United States' highest honor. Ellen Ochoa was bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
For National Astronaut Day 2024, we have an exclusive interview with Uniphi Good's Annie Balliro on why she founded the holiday honoring America's spaceflyers.
Two NASA astronauts waited several extra years for their ride aboard Boeing Starliner, but the wait was not fully unexpected, the former test pilots recently shared with reporters.
Thanks to XMM-Newton, astronomers may know the powerful event that gave rise to the Cloverleaf odd radio circle.
The path of annularity on Oct. 2, 2024, passes through the Pacific Ocean and South America. View detailed maps of where the eclipse will be visible here.
Teams at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, are currently engaged in intensive preparations for the critical ‘Launch and Early Orbit’ phase of the agency's EarthCARE satellite.
Last November, NASA’s Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the Main Belt asteroids it will investigate as it makes its way to Jupiter. In the process, the spacecraft spotted a small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid, now named Selam (aka. “Lucy’s baby”). The moonlet’s name, an Ethiopian name that means “peace,” pays homage to the ancient human remains dubbed “Lucy” (or Dinkinish) that were unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974. Using novel statistical calculations based on how the two bodies orbit each other, a Cornell-led research team estimates that the moonlet is only 2-3 million years old.
The research was led by Colby Merrill, a graduate student from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell. He was joined by Alexia Kubas, a researcher from the Department of Astronomy at Cornell; Alex J. Meyer, a Ph.D. student at the UC Boulder College of Engineering & Applied Science; and Sabina D. Raducan, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bern. Their paper, “Age of (152830) Dinkinesh-Selam Constrained by Secular Tidal-BYORP Theory,” recently appeared on April 19th in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Merrill was also part of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which collided with the moonlet Dimorphos on September 26th, 2022. As part of the Lucy mission, Merrill was surprised to discover that Dinkinesh was also a binary asteroid when the spacecraft flew past it on November 1st, 2023. They were also fascinated to learn that the small moonlet was a “contact binary,” consisting of two lobes that are piles of rubble that became stuck together long ago.
Artist’s Rendering of NASA’s Lucy mission, which will study asteroids within the Main Belt and Jupiter’s Trojan population. Credit: Southwest Research Institute
While astronomers have observed contact binaries before – a good example is the KBO Arrokoth that the New Horizons spacecraft flew past on January 1st, 2019 – this is the first time one has been observed orbiting a larger asteroid. Along with Kubas, the two began modeling the system as part of their studies at Cornell to determine the age of the moonlet. Their results agreed with one performed by the Lucy mission based on an analysis of surface craters, the more traditional method for estimating the age of asteroids. As Merrill said in a recent Cornell Chronicle release:
Starliner is at last at its Florida launch pad for its historic 1st mission with astronauts. The Boeing spacecraft made a brief journey there May 4 to coincide with Star Wars Day.
It’s that time again! Time for another model that will finally solve the mystery of dark matter. Or not, but it’s worth a shot. Until we directly detect dark matter particles, or until some model conclusively removes dark matter from our astrophysical toolkit the best we can do is continue looking for solutions. This new work takes a look at that old theoretical chestnut, primordial black holes, but it has a few interesting twists.
Primordial black holes are hypothetical objects formed during the earliest moments of the Universe. According to the models they formed from micro-fluctuations in matter density and spacetime to become sandgrain-sized mountain-massed black holes. Although we’ve never detected primordial black holes, they have all the necessary properties of dark matter, such as not emitting light and the ability to cluster around galaxies. If they exist, they could explain most of dark matter.
The downside is that most primordial black hole candidates have been ruled out by observation. For example, to account for dark matter there would have to be so many of these gravitational pipsqueaks that they would often pass in front of a star from our vantage point. This would create a microlensing flare we should regularly observe. Several sky surveys have looked for such an event to no avail, so PBH dark matter is not a popular idea these days.
This new work takes a slightly different approach. Rather than looking at typical primordial black holes, it considers ultralight black holes. These are on the small end of possible masses and are so tiny that Hawking radiation would come into play. The rate of Hawking decay is inversely proportional to the size of a black hole, so these ultralight black holes should radiate to their end of life on a short cosmic timescale. Since we don’t have a full model of quantum gravity, we don’t know what would happen to ultralight black holes at the end, which is where this paper comes in.
Observational limits for primordial black holes. Credit: S. ProfumoAs the author notes, basically there are three possible outcomes. The first is that the black hole radiates away completely. The black hole would end as a brief flash of high-energy particles. The second is that some mechanism prevents complete evaporation and the black hole reaches some kind of equilibrium state. The third option is similar to the second, but in this case, the equilibrium state causes the event horizon to disappear, leaving an exposed dense mass known as a naked singularity. The author also notes that for the latter two outcomes, the objects might have a net electric charge.
