TYB
Angola signs Artemis Accords
December 1, 2023
WASHINGTON — Angola signed the U.S.-led Artemis Accords outlining best practices for space exploration Nov. 30, becoming the third African nation to do so.
The signing took place during the visit of Angola’s president, João Lourenço, to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden. The signing was mentioned briefly in White House statements about the meeting.
In a background briefing about the meeting, a senior administration official called Angola an “important country” to sign the accords even though the country has a small space program.
“One of the hallmarks of President Biden’s administration’s policy towards Africa is incorporating our African partners in the most important conversations that affect the future of this very decisive decade in space — space norms,” the official said. “And our approach towards how countries behave and operate in outer space is incredibly important, and the Africans have and should be at the table for that conversation.”
Angola is the third African nation to sign the accords, after Rwanda and Nigeria, which joined in December 2022 during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Thirty-three countries have now signed the accords, 10 of which have done so this year.
“Angola is already using space-based capabilities to map United Nations sustainable development goals across the country, helping to tackle ambitious objectives such as eliminating poverty and hunger,” Mike Gold, chief growth officer at Redwire and a former NASA official who helped develop the Accords, told SpaceNews. “By signing the Artemis Accords, Angola is taking its space ambitions beyond Earth orbit, while supporting norms of behavior that will lead to a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy.”
Angola’s signing comes after a meeting of U.S. and African space industry officials during the International Astronautical Congress in October in Baku, Azerbaijan. “It is exactly this type of outreach that I think is critical to achieving our goals in space diplomacy in this new and collaborative space era,” said Valda Vikmanis Keller, director of the Office of Space Affairs within the State Department, at a Dec. 1 meeting of the National Space Council’s Users’ Advisory Group.
https://spacenews.com/angola-signs-artemis-accords/
SpaceX KOREA 425 MISSION
DECEMBER 1, 2023
On Friday, December 1 at 10:19 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched the Korea 425 mission to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. There were a total of 25 spacecraft on board this mission, including KOREA's 425, Space BD’s ISL48, SITAEL’s microHETSat, D-Orbit’s ION SCV Daring Diego, York Space Systems’ Bane, and PlanetIQ’s GNOMES-4.
This was the 17th flight of the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15, ISI EROS C-3, and seven Starlink missions.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=korea425
New images of rare thunder
Dec 1, 2023
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen has captured images of rare thunder phenomena as part of the Thor-Davis experiment on his Huginn mission.
Every Saturday Andreas grabbed the Space Station’s camera, mounted the Davis camera on top and headed to the Cupola to look out for thunderstorms on Earth. The first image is now out.
Andreas managed to capture a red sprite, a thunderous phenomenon called Transient Luminous Event (TLE), that takes place above thunderclouds, between 40 and 80 kilometres over the ground. From the image and the video, he captured, scientists estimate that the size of the red sprite is roughly 14 by 26 km. As the red sprites form above thunder clouds, they are not easily studied from ground and are therefore mostly seen from space, including using the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) that sits on the outside of the Space Station. However few sprites have been seen from the ground.
The Davis camera is an event camera, which works more like the human eye, sensing change in contrast instead of capturing an image like a regular camera. The power draw of an event camera is very low, on the order of a few watts while still being able to take the equivalent of 100 000 pictures a second. The speed of the camera is evident from the video below where you see the thunder strike below and then the red sprite form above.
“These images taken by Andreas are fantastic. The Davis camera works well and gives us the high temporal resolution necessary to capture the quick processes in the lightning,” said Olivier Chanrion, lead scientist for this experiment and DTU Space senior researcher.
The Thor-Davis experiment investigates lightning in the upper atmosphere and how it might affect the concentration of greenhouse gasses. It builds upon the former Thor experiment from Andreas’s first mission in 2015, when he also captured images of a different thunder event shooting up towards space, a blue jet,. The experiment is led by Danish Technical University (DTU) together with ESA.
Follow Andreas’s updates from space on social media and visit the Huginn page for more news on his mission and the science he performs on the International Space Station.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/New_images_of_rare_thunder
not sure what happened to the rest of that image