Space News & Blog Articles

As usual, the SpaceX South Texas Launch Facility, located near the village of Boca Chica, is the focal point of a lot of attention. Almost two months ago, crews at the facility began working on the first true Super Heavy prototype, the launch stage of SpaceX’s Starship. After six weeks of assembly, SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy Booster 3 (B3) out of the “High Bay” (where it was assembled) and installed it onto the launch pad.

The assembly process began on May 15th, which was assisted by the new Bridge Crane (added to the High Bay back in March) and wrapped up on Thursday, July 1st. The B3 was then moved out and loaded aboard the companies Self-Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) and transported down Highway 4 to the launch facility, where it was transferred by another crane onto Test Pad A.

Once it is ready to conduct commercial missions, the Starship and Super Heavy will be the world’s first entirely reusable launch system. As the booster element (aka. first stage) of the system, the Super Heavy stands about 65 meters (215 ft) tall and will be equipped with 32 Raptor engines. This record number of engines (more than any rocket in history) will allow the Super Heavy to produce 72 meganewtons (MN), or 16 million pounds/thrust (lbf).

This is more than twice the thrust generated by the first stage of the Saturn V booster, which NASA used to send the Apollo astronauts to the Moon – 35.1 MN, or 7.89 million lbf. When paired with the Starship – the orbital vehicle element that will rely on 6 Raptors engines – the launch system will be capable of sending 100 metric tons (110 US tons) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

According to a statement made by Musk via Twitter, the B3 prototype will be used for ground tests, similar to the ground tests conducted with the Starship (SN) prototypes. This differentiates it from Booster 1 (BN1), the first Super Heavy prototype to complete stacking inside the High Bay, which served as a

The standard model of cosmology is known as the LCDM model. Here, CDM stands for Cold Dark Matter, which makes up most of the matter in the universe, and L stands for Lambda, which is the symbol used in general relativity to represent dark energy or cosmic expansion. While the observational evidence we have largely supports the LCDM model, there are some issues with it. One of the most bothersome is known as cosmic tension.

It centers on our measurement of the Hubble constant, which tells us the rate at which the universe has expanded over time. There are lots of ways to measure the Hubble constant, from the brightness of distant supernovae, to the clustering of galaxies, to fluctuations in the cosmic background, to the light of microwave lasers. All of these methods have advantages and disadvantages, but if our cosmological model is right they should all agree within the limits of uncertainty.

The problem is, they don’t agree. Back in the early days of cosmology the uncertainty of our measurement was so large that all these results overlapped, but as our measurements got better it became clear different methods gave slightly different values for the Hubble constant. In polite company, astronomers say there is tension between these values.

This tension means that either our measurements are a bit off, or there is something wrong with our model. This has led some astronomers to propose some missing aspects to our model, such as how the mass of neutrinos might realign our Hubble values. But as new measurements of the Hubble constant keep coming in, it looks as if the tension is just getting worse. Now a new paper from Wendy Freedman argues that the tension problem isn’t that bad and that the tension will likely fade as the next generation of telescopes gives us even better data.

As it stands, the main tension in Hubble values arises between methods that rely upon the cosmic distance ladder, such as supernova observations, and those that don’t, such as the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

Sometimes simple and elegant solutions are all that is needed to solve a problem.  One problem that was searching for a solution was how to track microplastics.  These small particles of plastics are what results after the sun and friction (such as ocean waves) break down larger plastic objects.  They have become a huge problem in the ocean, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and their constituent organisms.  Now, a team from the University of Michigan have used data originally collected to monitor hurricanes to try to track microplastics, potentially helping to reign in a problem that threatens to engulf the world’s oceans.

The data the team used was collected by NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS).  CYGNSS is a constellation of 8 microsatellites that launched in 2016 and normally monitors weather and ocean patterns to keep track of hurricanes.  Specifically they were interested in data collected on ocean roughness – or how choppy the ocean is.  Though placid oceans are not caused by only a single factor, one factor that contributes to it is the amount of debris in the ocean at a given location.

Much of that debris is made up of microplastics.  So the researchers theorized that calmer water would result from high concentrations of microplastics.  To find the calming effect of those microplastics though, they first had to control for another factor impacting choppiness – wind speed.  Luckily, CYGNSS also has data on wind speeds at the same locations it collected data on ocean roughness.  

With proper controls in place, the researchers then compared areas of calm seas with the areas of concentrated microplastics, as predicted by models. They matched up particularly well, lending credence to the idea that microplastics could be tracked via remote sensing of ocean roughness.

Example of microplastics captured in the Atlantic Ocean.
Credit – Nichole Trenholm / Ocean Research Project

Certain parts of the galaxy are more magical than others.  There are barren wastelands where barely a particle strays through occasionally, and there are fantastical nebulae that can literally light up the sky.  But beyond their good looks, those nebulae hold secrets to understanding some of the most important features of any galaxy – stars. Now, for the first time, a team from the University of Maryland managed to capture a high resolution image of one of the most active star-forming regions in our part of the galaxy.  Data from that image are not only spectacular, but can illuminate the details of the star formation process.

The instrument the team used to collect the most important parts of the data, known as SOFIA, is an amazing air-based telescopes.  Strapped to a modified 747 chassis, it specializes in capturing infrared images, just slightly out of the wavelengths that the human eye can see.  SOFIA turned its eye on a star forming region known as Westerlund 2, which is located in the RCW 49 nebula.  But the researchers didn’t stop there, using data collected in every wavelength from x-rays down to radio waves via different instruments.

Hubble image of a starforming nebula with the 747 housing SOFIA in the foreground.
Credit – Marc Pound / UMD

Luckily there was plenty of data to choose from.  That region of space had been the focus of previous studies, which hinted that there might be two bubbles of warm gas surrounding the region.  These types of gas bubbles have long been thought to play a role in star formation. Data from SOFIA definitively showed that there was in fact only one bubble, and that bubble is expanding.  The most likely cause of that expansion is a stellar wind launched by the formation of a massive star somewhere within the bubble itself.  

Gas bubbles aren’t the only material surrounding these formation regions though.  They’re joined by a “shell” made up of a form of ionized carbon.  Seen in the kaleidoscope of wavelengths the researchers analyzed, the shell and the gas bubbles intermingle with each other, but separating out individual wavelengths allowed for much higher resolution pictures of the bubbles (which were invisible in previous radio and sub-millimeter data) and shell (which glowed in a far-infrared band that SOFIA was able to collect).