TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Sep 26, 2023
IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula
Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
House Speaker introduces bill to extend commercial spaceflight regulatory learning period
September 22, 2023
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has introduced legislation that would extend a restriction on the Federal Aviation Administration’s ability to regulate commercial human spaceflight safety by another eight years.
McCarthy announced Sept. 21 he has introduced the Space Transformation And Reliability (STAR) Act. The one-page bill would extend what is alternatively called a “learning period” or moratorium on certain safety regulations, set to expire at the end of this month, through September 2031.
“As we look to the century and beyond, the commercial space industry is crucial to advancing U.S. national security and scientific discovery, and I am confident that the STAR Act will help continue to provide this industry with additional time to fly, innovate and grow,” McCarthy said in a statement about the bill.
The regulatory restriction, which limits the ability of the FAA to promulgate regulations regarding the safety of spaceflight participants on board commercial vehicles, was enacted in 2004 and designed to give industry time to build up experience upon which regulations could be based. The restriction was set to expire in 2012 but has been extended several times since then, and is now set to expire Sept. 30.
While it is unlikely that the bill can become law before the end of the month, a temporary expiration of the restriction would have little impact on commercial space activities. FAA officials have said that the end of the restriction would only start a long-term process to enact safety regulations.
“From a practical sense, not much would be changed” if the restriction expires at the end of the month, said Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, in a Sept. 18 interview. “We don’t have a set of drafted regulations all ready in a file cabinet that we can spring on the industry.”
He said the FAA is working to prepare for a time when it can draft safety regulations for spaceflight participants. That included establishing this summer a space-related aerospace rulemaking committee, known as a SpARC, that includes members of industry and academia to begin studies of potential future regulations.
“They’ve just begun some really good work trying to figure out what an appropriate framework ought to look like and what the timing of that should be,” Coleman said.
Developing regulations, he added, will be a long-term process. He noted that streamlined launch licensing regulations, known in the FAA as Part 450, took about two years to develop at what he described a “pretty accelerated” pace.
“Regulations take years to really do, and do right,” he said. “In my view, really to get it right you need somewhere between three to five years.”
https://spacenews.com/house-speaker-introduces-bill-to-extend-commercial-spaceflight-regulatory-learning-period/
https://kevinmccarthy.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/kevinmccarthy.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/bill-text_star-act.pdf
Office of Space Commerce touts progress on civil space traffic coordination system
September 22, 2023
After a slow start, the Commerce Department says it is making progress on establishing a civil space traffic coordination system that will rely on both commercial and government data.
During a panel discussion at the AMOS Conference here Sept. 21, Richard DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, emphasized the progress the office has made on creating the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) that will take over civil space safety responsibilities currently held by the Defense Department. TraCSS is slated to begin initial services in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Much of that has been focused on getting personnel and funding. “When I started, there was almost no staff,” said DalBello, who took over as director of the office in May 2022. The office has been slowly but steadily hiring and has a goal of 50 people by next year. Many of them will work in two TraCSS operations centers, the locations of which have not yet been determined.
That hiring is enabled by an increased budget: $70 million in fiscal year 2023, less than the $87 million requested but far more than $16 million it received in 2022. “We have made good use of that budget,” he argued.
That includes spending much of it on commercial services. DalBello said Sept. 22 that the office, which requested $88 million in fiscal year 2024, projects spending $17 million of that on commercial infrastructure and $41 million on commercial space situational awareness data, services and pathfinders to support TraCSS.
TraCSS, though, will rely extensively on government resources as well, particularly data from the Defense Department. “We could not be where we are without DOD and NASA,” he said, with NASA handling research and development activities linked to TraCSS.
A Space Force official on the panel pledged increased support for TraCSS. Barbara Golf, strategic advisor for space domain awareness, said the Space Force would provide more accurate catalog information to the Commerce Department to go into its database than what it currently makes publicly available through the Space-Track service.
“We are working to get the high-accuracy catalog released to the DOC, machine to machine, starting in the spring of next year, every four hours indefinitely,” she said. “They will have everything they need in order to be seeded for spaceflight safety. They can then augment with commercial data.”
Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations for the Space Force, said in a separate media briefing at the conference Sept. 20 that he was satisfied with the focus the Commerce Department was devoting to establishing TraCSS, in part because it has risen to the attention of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
“She talked very knowledgeably about it, which is very encouraging. That means it’s on her radar. It means she understands what resource outlays are going to be required,” he said. “I’m really encouraged mostly because of the leadership that she’s shown with taking on that mission. They’ve got money. They’re investing the money in the things that they should be.”
While the Office of Space Commerce has talked about having an initial version of TraCSS ready by late 2024, Saltzman said he was not rushing them to establish it. “We’ve got this covered. It’ll be about when they’re ready to take this on because it’s important,” he said. “I just know how tough it is, and mostly we’re going to have to continue to do it anyway for our own purposes.”
Having the Commerce Department taking over civil space safety activities dates back to Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in 2018. Progress was initially slow because of a lack of funding and questions by some in Congress about whether Commerce was the best agency to host that capability.
The policy was a “canary in a coal mine,” said Diane Howard, director of commercial space policy on the National Space Council, during a keynote at the conference Sept. 20. It raised issues about funding and the roles of both government and the private sector, she said, issues that have expanded beyond space traffic coordination.
“I think some of those early days of SPD-3 being an unfunded mandate forced a lot of those early conversations about how to make that transition, to be more creative,” she said. “Some of that is baked into the conops now.”
https://spacenews.com/office-of-space-commerce-touts-progress-on-civil-space-traffic-coordination-system/
Turning up gravity for space fungi study
Sep 25, 2023
Fungi in space have been a plot point in Star Trek: Discovery, but they are also a very real problem for astronauts and space stations. United Nations co-sponsored testing by a team from Macau in China subjected fungi to hypergravity with ESA’s fast-spinning centrifuge.
A team from the Astrobiology team of the State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences at the Macau University of Science and Technology of Macau – a special administrative region of China – used ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge at the ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands to test the growth of fungal colonies under double normal Earth’s gravity.
Up until now the Macau team has been making use of 3D clinostats – otherwise known as random positioning machines, which continuously shift their orientation of the gravity vector to simulate microgravity conditions – to test how fungi respond to weightlessness.
Access to the LDC was arranged through HyperGES, part of the Access to Space for All initiative of the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, UNOOSA.
The LDC is an 8 m-diameter four-arm centrifuge that gives researchers access to a range of hypergravity up to 20 times Earth gravity for weeks or months at a time.
At its fastest, the centrifuge rotates at up to 67 revs per minute, with its six gondolas placed at different points along its arms weighing in at 130 kg, and each capable of accommodating 80 kg of payload.
Their two weeks using the LDC enabled the Macau team extended testing into hypergravity conditions, supported by ESA’s Life Support & Physical Sciences Instrumentation Laboratory team.
Fungal species were grown until full mature grown was achieved, and then examined to check for genetic or ‘phenotypic’ stress reactions.
Next, one of the selected fungal species underwent a second generation of exposure to hypergravity to see if any stress reactions or alterations were maintained, or whether cumulative effects might be observed. As part of the analysis, selected samples were also analysed under a scanning electron microscope at ESA’s nearby Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory.
“The study of fungi in space is called ‘astromycology’, a subset of astrobiology,” explains Marta Filipa Simões, leader of this project from Macau University of Science and Technology.
“The ship’s engineer in Star Trek: Discovery is an astromycologist, but this is indeed a real field of study and an increasingly important one. Fungi have a long history of making it into space and can have serious impacts once they are there.”
The Russian space station Mir experienced fungal contamination as it aged. Portholes became obscured while plastics and metals were corroded, triggering malfunctions in turn – and wider concerns for the station structure.
Prof. Simões adds: “The International Space Station has had its own issues in rooms where crewmembers exercise, with higher humidity leading to fungal contamination on the walls. They have to do a lot of regular cleaning and disinfecting to prevent it
“In a closed system like the ISS, any time you have the growth of biofilms, which fungi use to stay in place, you can have problems. This can be a serious concern because fungi might also trigger infections or allergic responses in astronauts, whose immune systems are themselves depressed in space. Conversely many fungal species appear to have their growth promoted in microgravity conditions – it is part of our present study to try and better understand why.”
Some fungi are always going to make it to space, with hardy fungal spores able to adhere to all sorts of surfaces and tissues, such as the human body. Spacecraft cleanrooms are never pristine in practice; biological surveys show they are home to fungi and other microorganisms.
“We are never going to be able to get rid of fungi entirely as we venture into space, so we need to understand them,” says André Antunes, part of the research team of Macau University of Science and Technology.
“In addition, they offer positive opportunities as well as risks. Down on Earth fungi are employed to make food – such as yeast for fermentation – as well as medicines, chemical enzymes for industry as well as metal nanoparticles used in numerous fields.
“For future space settlement they might be harnessed to cover different types of needs,, including recycling, or mining essential minerals out of planetary surfaces. These are seen as essential in helping to reduce costs and ensure sustainability of crewed space exploration.”
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Turning_up_gravity_for_space_fungi_study
Andreas Mogensen: International Space Station commander
Sep 25, 2023
Andreas has been in space for almost a month, where he has been conducting science experiments and technology demonstrations from all over Europe: From understanding how he sleeps in orbit to health tracking and photographing lightning from space.
While Andreas will continue to conduct science throughout the mission, his next big step is coming as he takes the role as commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 70. Andreas will become the longest serving European commander, taking the role and the responsibilities for the rest of his Huginn mission.
"It is great to have Andreas as the commander of the ISS. Andreas is the sixth European astronaut to take this role, which is a sign of recognition from our international partners for the quality of our European astronauts. I am happy to see European leadership in space, as well as Andreas becoming the longest serving European Commander. I wish him and the crew of Expedition 70 a successful and wonderful time on the International Space Station" says Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA's Director of Human and Robotic Exploration.
Being responsible of the Crew
As the commander of the Space Station, Andreas will be responsible for ensuring the safety, good health and well-being of the Space Station’s crew while directing them as one team. He will also work with the flight director on ground to oversee all the activities and operations on the Space Station.
During Andreas’s commandership, multiple cargo vehicles will arrive, as well as Axiom-3, where ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt will fly to the Space Station. This will mark the first time two Scandinavians are in space together.
Getting the keys
This change in command of the Space Station will happen the day before the current commander, Sergey Prokopyev, leaves for Earth. This transition is marked by a traditional ceremony in which all crew members gather. The departing commander gives a speech reflecting on their commandership and hands over the symbolic key of the Space Station to the next commander, Andreas, who shares a few words about their new responsibilities.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Andreas_Mogensen_International_Space_Station_commander
Hundreds Of Mysterious 'Fairy Circles' Seen From Space For First Time
9/25/23 AT 3:00 PM EDT
The drylands of Namibia and Australia are home to some peculiar formations. Mysterious ring-like patterns of vegetation surround barren patches of soil, but no one knows why.
These so-called fairy circles have puzzled scientists for decades. Now, new research, shedding light on their global distribution, hopes to provide new insights into the formation and location of these puzzling patterns.
"There are many hypotheses regarding the formation of fairy circles, for example, they are described as a consequence of the self-organization of vegetation," Emilio Guirado, from the University of Alicante in Spain, told Newsweek.
"Social insects such as termites, which build their nests at certain distances from each other, are also hypothesized to form fairy circles. Another hypothesis focuses on toxic latex from Euphorbia, a genus of succulent plants," Guirado said.
Until recently, fairy circles had only been identified in Namibia and Australia. But Guirado and his colleagues were curious as to where else these patterns might form. "We wondered if fairy circles would exist in more places than those traditionally observed in Namibia or Australia," he said. "We set up a model based on artificial intelligence to look at hundreds of thousands of hectares from space."
It took a month before the model produced its first results, but Guirado said it was well worth the wait: "When we saw that there were hundreds of undescribed sites in areas never studied before we were very happy and excited about the find."
The team published their results on September 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In total, Guirado and his team identified 263 fairy circle sites in 15 different countries over three continents.
Further analysis pinpointed certain similarities between the environmental conditions at these sites, such as aridity, temperature, low soil nutrients and high sand content. However, there was also some variation between the sites, suggesting that these circles may have formed by different means in different places.
"I think that the world can be complex and that all the hypotheses of the formation of fairy circles could have a place depending on the site or the moment," Guirado said. "It is likely that all of them are valid where they have been described and that some could be combined in a few places at once. For example, our results show that the importance of termites is greater in the Namibian zone than in Australia or the Sahel zone."
More research needs to be done to confirm these theories, but Guirado hopes that his new global atlas of fairy circles will enable these more localized analyses in the future.
"We hope that the information we publish in the paper could provide scientists around the world with new areas of study that could solve new puzzles in the formation of fairy circle patterns," he said. "For example, these results could also open the door for research on how spatial patterns may be indicators of ecosystem degradation with climate change.
"I would like to emphasize that our study provides new sites with the existence of patterns similar to fairy circles, calculates the importance of multiple variables to explain their global distribution and analyzes their stability. But undoubtedly, more specialized fieldwork is required to provide more information and results on the formation of these intriguing vegetation patterns."
https://www.newsweek.com/hundreds-fairy-circles-seen-space-first-time-1829623
Last supermoon of 2023 rises this week. Don't miss the Harvest Moon shine with 3 bright planets
Sep 25, 2023
September’s full moon, known as the Harvest Moon, will rise on Friday, Sept. 29 — and it is a special one. Not only will it be the fourth successive supermoon of 2023, but it is also the final supermoon of the year, thus marking the end of a very supermoon summer.
Fittingly for such a special supermoon, the Harvest Moon will also be joined by a parade of planets in the sky, including the solar system’s largest worlds, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as its smallest, Mercury.
From New York City, the fully illuminated moon will rise at around 18:33 EDT (2233 GMT) and set the following day at around 06:52 EDT (1052 GMT), according to In the Sky. Following the full moon, which will be located in the Pisces constellation, the lunar face will recede, a process astronomers call "waning." After that, Earth's natural satellite will head toward its next intriguing phase, turning into a completely dark new moon on Oct. 14, which will mark the start of a new 29.5-day lunar cycle.
The run of four consecutive supermoons began with the Full Buck Moon on July 3. This was followed by two supermoons in August, the Full Sturgeon Moon on Tuesday, Aug. 1, and the Full Blue Moon on Aug. 30..
The term "supermoon" refers to full moons that happen around the time when the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit, an approach called perigee. This happens because the moon’s orbit around Earth is an ellipse rather than a perfect circle, meaning there are times when it falls further away from our planet and times when it comes closer.
The proximity of the moon during supermoons means the lunar disk can appear around 30% brighter and around 14% larger as seen from Earth compared to the appearance of the lunar face during "regular" full moons. These differences may be visible to moon-watchers with a lot of experience observing lunar events, but aren’t really that noticeable with the unaided eye to skywatchers who don’t often scrutinize the moon.
The moon will reach perigee in the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 27, at around 21:06 EDT (0106 GMT), two days before the Harvest Moon, according to NASA. By the time the moon’s fully illuminated face is turned toward Earth, it will be around 224,657 miles (361,552 kilometers) from our planet, according to eclipse expert and retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espanak. This is opposed to the moon's average distance from Earth, which falls around 238,000 miles (382,900 km).
However, this won't be the closest or, therefore, brightest supermoon of 2023. During the Aug. 30 Full Blue Moon, the moon was around 222,043 miles (357,343 km) from Earth, according to Espanak.
The first planet to visit the final supermoon of 2023 on Saturday will be Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, which will rise at around 17:18 EDT (2118 GMT) and will sit in the Aquarius constellation, according to In the Sky. Saturn’s fellow gas giant and the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, will rise at 20:17 EDT (0017 GMT). Jupiter will sit to the left of the Harvest Moon in the Aries constellation.
Mercury will be the last planet to pay the Harvest Moon a visit and will be the toughest to spot. The closest planet to the sun, Mercury is currently at its furthest from our host star. Though it appears in the morning sky, it disappears in the evening. On Saturday, the solar system’s smallest planet will rise at around 05:30 (0930 GMT). Mercury will share the sky with the full moon for just over an hour before the final supermoon of the year sets.
Skywatchers who miss the Harvest Moon will have to wait a while for the next supermoon, which will also be a Harvest Moon, rising on Sept. 18, 2024. This will be the first of two supermoons next year, with the second occurring a month later on Oct. 17, 2024.
https://www.space.com/harvest-full-moon-fourth-supermoon-2023-planet-parade
Readout of Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman’s Travel to Japan
Sept. 26, 2023
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman traveled to Japan Sep. 21-26 to support modernizing the U.S.-Japan Alliance and bolstering integrated deterrence through enhanced space security cooperation.
Saltzman attended meetings in Tokyo with Minister of Defense Minoru Kihara; Chief of Staff, Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Staff, Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida; Chief of Staff, Japan Air Self-Defense Forces, Gen. Hiroaki Uchikura, and Dr. Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Saltzman also visited Fuchu Air Base, where he met with Commander, JASDF Space Operations Group, Col. Kimitoshi Sugiyama.
Throughout these meetings, the leaders reaffirmed the critical importance of the U.S.-Japan Alliance as a cornerstone of peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, and emphasized the value of space cooperation to helping the Alliance meet new and emerging threats.
The two sides reviewed progress on bilateral cooperative efforts, including the inaugural Space Engagement Talks in July and U.S. use of Japan’s future deep space radar. They also explored ways to strengthen cooperation in areas such as satellite communications and research and development.
The leaders further discussed increasing partnership activities that deepen interoperability, including through space education, training, and exercises. They additionally agreed to continue advocating for international norms of behavior in space.
Saltzman commended Japan’s resolve to bolster its defense capabilities through greater investment, stronger information security, and increased cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. He underscored that these approaches would contribute to a more resilient space architecture and help address shared regional and global security challenges.
During the trip, Saltzman also met with Commander, U.S. Forces Japan, Lt. Gen. Ricky N. Rupp.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3537813/readout-of-chief-of-space-operations-gen-chance-saltzmans-travel-to-japan/