NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Prepares to Swing by Earth

On Oct. 16, at 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the Earth’s atmosphere, passing a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface. By sling-shotting past Earth on the first anniversary of its launch, Lucy will gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.

The Trojan asteroids are trapped in orbits around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter, either far ahead of or behind the giant planet. Lucy is currently one year into a twelve-year voyage. This gravity assist will place Lucy on a new trajectory for a two-year orbit, at which time it will return to Earth for a second gravity assist. This second assist will give Lucy the energy it needs to cross the main asteroid belt, where it will observe asteroid Donaldjohanson, and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. There, Lucy will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. Lucy will then return to Earth for a third gravity assist in 2030 to re-target the spacecraft for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm.

For this first gravity assist, Lucy will appear to approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. While this means that observers on Earth will not be able to see Lucy in the days before the event, Lucy will be able to take images of the nearly full Earth and Moon. Mission scientists will use these images to calibrate the instruments.

Lucy’s trajectory will bring the spacecraft very close to Earth, lower even than the International Space Station, which means that Lucy will pass through a region full of earth-orbiting satellites and debris. To ensure the safety of the spacecraft, NASA developed procedures to anticipate any potential hazard and, if needed, to execute a small maneuver to avoid a collision.

“The Lucy team has prepared two different maneuvers,” says Coralie Adam, Lucy deputy navigation team chief from KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California. “If the team detects that Lucy is at risk of colliding with a satellite or piece of debris, then12 hours before the closest approach to Earth the spacecraft will execute one of these, altering the time of closest approach by either two or four seconds. This is a small correction, but it is enough to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision.”

Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby. Lucy’s large solar arrays increase this effect.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

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At around 6:55 a.m. EDT, Lucy will first be visible to observers on the ground in Western Australia (6:55 p.m. for those observers). Lucy will quickly pass overhead, clearly visible to the naked eye for a few minutes before disappearing at 7:02 a.m. EDT as the spacecraft passes into the Earth’s shadow. Lucy will continue over the Pacific Ocean in darkness and emerge from the Earth’s shadow at 7:26 a.m. EDT. If the clouds cooperate, sky watchers in the western United States should be able to get a view of Lucy with the aid of binoculars.

“The last time we saw the spacecraft, it was being enclosed in the payload fairing in Florida,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colorado office. “It is exciting that we will be able to stand here in Colorado and see the spacecraft again. And this time Lucy will be in the sky.”

Lucy will then rapidly recede from the Earth’s vicinity, passing by the Moon and taking a few more calibration images before continuing out into interplanetary space.

“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the Moon,” said John Spencer, acting deputy project scientist at SwRI. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the Moon by other space missions.”

The public is invited to join the #WaveToLucy social media campaign by posting images of themselves waving towards the spacecraft and tagging the @NASASolarSystem account. Additionally, if you are in an area where Lucy will be visible, take a photograph of Lucy and post it to social media with the #SpotTheSpacecraft hashtag. Instructions for observing Lucy from your location are available here.

Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), in the Boulder Colorado office is the principal investigator. SwRI, headquartered in San Antonio, also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for Lucy. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado built the spacecraft, principally designed the orbital trajectory and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy is the thirteenth mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/lucy-ega

http://lucy.swri.edu/

https://youtu.be/BD7SVOQA440

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NASA Poised to Break Sound Barrier in New Way

Seventy-five years ago, a sonic boom thundered for the first time over the high desert of California.

On the ground below, it has been written, a small group of researchers from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – NASA’s predecessor organization – were the first to hear the thunder crack coming from the Bell X-1 rocket plane flying faster than the speed of sound.

It was Oct. 14, 1947, and the joint X-1 team of NACA, Air Force (newly formed that year), and Bell engineers and pilots had broken the sound barrier – an imaginary wall in the sky some said was impossible to penetrate.

Now, aeronautical innovators with NASA’s Quesst mission are poised to break the sound barrier again, only this time in a very different way that could make it possible for all of us to one day travel by air just as fast as any of the X-1 pilots who flew supersonic.

“That first supersonic flight was such a tremendous achievement, and now you look at how far we’ve come since then. What we’re doing now is the culmination of so much of their work,” said Catherine Bahm, an aeronautical engineer at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.

Bahm is manager of the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project. Her team is responsible for designing and building the X-59, NASA’s experimental airplane that is the centerpiece of Quesst.

Through Quesst, NASA plans to demonstrate the X-59 can fly faster than sound without generating the typically loud sonic booms that led to supersonic flight over land being banned in 1973.

The plan includes flying the X-59 over several communities to survey how people react to the quieter sonic “thump” it produces – if they hear anything at all. Their responses will be shared with regulators who will then consider writing new rules to lift the ban.

And when that happens it will mark another historic milestone in flight, potentially opening a new era in air travel, where airline passengers might hop on a supersonic jet at breakfast time in Los Angeles to make a lunchtime reservation in New York City.

Then to Now

The dream of commercial supersonic travel wasn’t top of mind for Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager when he piloted the X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” in 1947 on the history-making flight past Mach 1 – a measurement of how fast you’re flying relative to the speed of sound.

It was years before a U.S. supersonic transport – widely known as the SST – was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, shortly after Europe announced its plans for the Concorde, the faster-than-sound airliner that eventually operated from 1976 to 2003.

The U.S. later halted the SST project in 1971 and banned supersonic flight over land in 1973.

Research continued into supersonic flight for both military and purely scientific reasons. The X-planes that followed the X-1 pushed the boundaries of flight higher and faster, and NASA’s aeronautical innovators were there at every step.

The ever-more-advanced computer and wind tunnel research tools they used added to their knowledge.

Quieting the Boom

Along the way, researchers gained a greater understanding of how aircraft create sonic booms and turned their attention the idea of lowering the intensity of the sonic booms by manipulating the shape of the airplane.

That idea was tested in flight by NASA’s Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration program during 2003-2004. It used a Northrop F-5E jet whose fuselage was modified to give it a shape designed to produce quieter sonic booms.

It worked.

With the X-59 and its quiet supersonic technology building on all that has been learned since the X-1 first proved it was possible to go beyond Mach 1, NASA hopes to enable industry to make faster-than-sound flight available to everyone.

“We’ve kind of been stuck with our airliners at about Mach .8 for the past almost 50 years, so being able to get there – wherever there is – much faster is still kind of an unfulfilled dream,” said Peter Coen, NASA’s mission integration manager for Quesst.

There’s an old joke about how the X-1 broke the sound barrier and NASA has been trying to fix it ever since. Coen doesn’t see it that way. Instead, the new obstacle to supersonic flight is the speed limit due to the negative effect of sonic boom noise, he said.

“With the X-59 flying on the Quesst mission, I think we’re ready to break the sound barrier once again,” Coen said.

First flight of the X-59 is targeted for early 2023.

https://www.nasa.gov/aeroresearch/nasa-poised-to-break-sound-barrier-in-new-way

Cartoon Network to Merge With Warner Bros. Animation Following Company-Wide Layoffs

The hits keep coming for Warner Bros. Discovery, and the company's most recent announcement is sending shockwaves across social media. After all, new reports have gone live confirming Cartoon Network Studios is about to undergo a special overhaul. The studio will be merging with Warner Bros. Animation as the pair's parent company continues to restructure its various organizations.

According to Collider, the news was shared in a meme shared company-wide as employees learned Cartoon Network Studios and Warner Bros. Animation are merging. The two studios will consolidate their animation teams as part of a "strategic realignment" for Warner Bros. Discovery.

This latest news comes shortly after trades announces another round of major layoffs at Warner Bros. Television Group. The company laid off a total of 82 employees and confirmed that 43 vacant positions won't be filled moving forward. These layoffs ranged from scripted to unscripted television as well as animation. And of course, the announcement was the latest of several lambasted moves by Warner Bros. Discovery regarding its animation catalog.

Back in August, the Internet revolted when it learned HBO Max was removing more than 30 animated series from its catalog including Infinity Train and other hit titles. These shows were removed in tandem with cancellations behind the scenes including Scoob: Holiday Haunt and Batgirl. Reports suggested the removed titles were being cut as part of cost-saving measures, and animation creators were quick to criticize Warner Bros. Discovery for the unprecedented move.

Now, it seems the company is merging its animation studios, but current reports suggest the consolidation will not impact the types of content the teams previously released. In light of alleged fearmongering, Cartoon Network art director David DePasquale addressed fans' worries and assured them the worst-case scenario hasn't come to pass. "These are decisions that affect real people, studios, & jobs," the artist shared. "I work there. You can stand by whatever you'd like, but you sensationalizing it and guiding people to extrapolate that CNS is basically dead is really shitty, especially for those of us who still have a job there. Do better."

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/cartoon-network-warner-bros-animation-hbo-max/

Death toll in northern Turkey mine explosion rises to 41

Rescue workers conclude operations at site of mine in Amsara as president confirms final missing miner found dead.

An explosion inside a coal mine in northern Turkey killed at least 41 people, the Turkish president has said, as rescue operations were concluded.

The blast occurred on Friday at the state-owned TTK Amasra Muessese Mudurlugu mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the last missing person had been found dead on Saturday.

“Our priority was to find the miners in the gallery. We finally reached the last one. He also died, bringing the number of deaths to 41,” he said shortly after arriving at the site.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu earlier said 58 miners had survived the blast, “either by themselves or thanks to rescuers”.

He said 28 people had been injured as a result of the blast.

Energy Minister Fatih Donmez, who also went to Amasra after the blast, said a preliminary assessment indicated the explosion was likely caused by firedamp – a reference to flammable gases found in coal mines.

The explosion occurred 300 metres (985 feet) below the entrance of the mine at around 15:15 GMT, the Bartin governor’s office said.

Television images on Friday showed hundreds of people, some with tears in their eyes, congregating around a damaged white building near the entrance to the pit.

Earlier, Turkey’s Maden-Is mining workers’ union attributed the blast to a build-up of methane gas, but other officials said it was premature to draw conclusions about the cause of the accident.

Erdogan wrote on Twitter that the incident would be thoroughly investigated.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/14/dozens-trapped-after-turkey-mine-blast-governor