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NASA’s Webb Rings in Holidays With Ringed Planet Uranus
DEC 18, 2023
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features – including a seasonal polar cap. The image expands upon a two-color version released earlier this year, adding additional wavelength coverage for a more detailed look.
With its exquisite sensitivity, Webb captured Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta ring – the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. It also imaged many of the planet’s 27 known moons, even seeing some small moons within the rings.
In visible wavelengths as seen by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, Uranus appeared as a placid, solid blue ball. In infrared wavelengths, Webb is revealing a strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting atmospheric features.
One of the most striking of these is the planet’s seasonal north polar cloud cap. Compared to the Webb image from earlier this year, some details of the cap are easier to see in these newer images. These include the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap, toward the lower latitudes.
Several bright storms can also be seen near and below the southern border of the polar cap. The number of these storms, and how frequently and where they appear in Uranus’s atmosphere, might be due to a combination of seasonal and meteorological effects.
The polar cap appears to become more prominent when the planet’s pole begins to point toward the Sun, as it approaches solstice and receives more sunlight. Uranus reaches its next solstice in 2028, and astronomers are eager to watch any possible changes in the structure of these features. Webb will help disentangle the seasonal and meteorological effects that influence Uranus’s storms, which is critical to help astronomers understand the planet’s complex atmosphere.
Because Uranus spins on its side at a tilt of about 98 degrees, it has the most extreme seasons in the solar system. For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the Sun shines over one pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a dark, 21-year-long winter.
With Webb’s unparalleled infrared resolution and sensitivity, astronomers now see Uranus and its unique features with groundbreaking new clarity. These details, especially of the close-in Zeta ring, will be invaluable to planning any future missions to Uranus.
Uranus can also serve as a proxy for studying the nearly 2,000 similarly sized exoplanets that have been discovered in the last few decades. This “exoplanet in our backyard” can help astronomers understand how planets of this size work, what their meteorology is like, and how they formed. This can in turn help us understand our own solar system as a whole by placing it in a larger context.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-rings-in-holidays-with-ringed-planet-uranus/
Step Inside a Blue Origin Capsule Thanks to It's First-ever Exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center
December 16, 2023
Visitors to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center can now step inside a Blue Origin crew capsule in the first-ever permanent exhibit for Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space company.
The brand-new exhibit allows space enthusiasts to explore a realistic replica of Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule with a virtual reality experience, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex shared with Travel + Leisure. The exhibit is located in the Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex.
The exhibit “uses actual data and imagery to authentically mimic the rocket’s journey above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space,” according to the Kennedy Space Center.
Visitors to the new exhibit will don VR headsets to simulate the company’s journey above the Kármán Line made more realistic with interactive zero gravity indicators, seat shakers, and audio.
The capsule itself is a “near-perfect replica” of the original with a few things enlarged or made smaller to increase accessibility. The exhibit also features a handicap-accessible flight seat and external VR headset so visitors who can’t enter the capsule on their own can still experience it.
Space enthusiasts can also “send a postcard to space aboard one of Blue Origin's New Shepard rockets,” according to the Kennedy Space Center.
Bezos first launched human flights on Blue Origin in 2021 with a successful 10 minute mission on the New Shepard rocket. The rocket reached a height of about 66.5 miles, passing the Kármán Line, before floating back down to Earth.
At the time, the passengers — including Bezos himself — experienced about four minutes of weightlessness.
Beyond the new exhibit, the Kennedy Space Center will celebrate the holidays this year with a nighttime projection mapping show featuring the story of a shooting star-turned-snowflake, a new Rocket Tree Trail, and other holiday decor from Dec. 15 through Dec. 30.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/blue-origin-exhibit-kennedy-space-center-8414105
SaxaVord Spaceport receives U.K. license
December 18, 2023
A launch facility under development in the Shetland Islands has become the first licensed vertical spaceport in the United Kingdom, although exactly when it will host its first launch remains uncertain.
The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced Dec. 17 that it issued a spaceport license for SaxaVord Spaceport, located on the island of Unst in the Shetland Islands. The license allows the spaceport to host up to 30 launches a year, including four in any month.
SaxaVord is the second spaceport to be licensed by the CAA and the first capable of hosting vertical launches. CAA issued a spaceport license in November 2022 to Spaceport Cornwall, located at Newquay Airport Cornwall in southwestern England, for launches by the now-defunct Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch system.
“Granting SaxaVord their license is an era-defining moment for the U.K. space sector,” said Tim Johnson, director of space regulation at the CAA, in a statement. “This marks the beginning of a new chapter for U.K. space as rockets may soon launch satellites into orbit from Scotland.”
“The award of our spaceport license is both historic for Shetland, Scotland and the U.K., and places us firmly at the leading edge of the European and global space economy,” Frank Strang, chief executive of SaxaVord Spaceport, said in a statement. “There is much to do still but this is a fantastic way to end the year and head into Christmas.”
The announcement of the license, though, provided few details about when the first launch from SaxaVord would take place. The spaceport noted in its statement that companies planning to launch from the spaceport include ABL Space Systems, HyImpulse, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) and Skyrora.
Of those four, only ABL has attempted an orbital launch: its first launch in January from Alaska failed seconds after liftoff. It is preparing for a second launch in the near future, also from Alaska. ABL’s launch from SaxaVord is in support of Lockheed Martin’s “U.K. Pathfinder” mission funded by the U.K. Space Agency.
RFA is developing its RFA One small launch vehicle, and a company executive said in November that they expected to be ready for a first launch in mid-2024. The U.K. Space Agency is providing $4.3 million to fund infrastructure and test equipment needed for the launch.
HyImpulse signed a letter of intent Nov. 15 to perform launches from SaxaVord. That will begin with suborbital launches as soon as August 2024, with orbital launches expected to begin in late 2025.
In a Dec. 18 statement, Volodymyr Levykin, chief executive of Skyrora, said his company was working towards “an orbital launch from U.K. soil at the end of next year.” Skyrora, though, said last November it was planning a 2023 orbital launch shortly after the failure of a suborbital launch from Iceland.
A fifth launch company, Astra Space, previously expressed interest in launching from SaxaVord, with the company announcing a partnership with the spaceport in May 2022. Astra has since slowed development of its launch vehicles because of limited cash, and SaxaVord no longer lists Astra as a client.
SaxaVord Spaceport has reportedly suffered its own financial problems that stopped construction work in the summer, according to local media. Strang told the Shetland News Dec. 17 that his company had made “enormous process in plugging the funding gap” and that he expected full-scale construction efforts to resume in 2024.
SaxaVord is not the only spaceport project seeking a license in the United Kingdom. Another is Sutherland Spaceport in northern Scotland, originally selected by the U.K. Space Agency as the country’s preferred vertical launch site in 2018 and now being developed by Orbex for its Prime small launch vehicle.
“I think we will see the final flurry of spaceports for a while in 2024,” said Colin MacLeod, head of U.K. spaceflight regulation at the CAA, during a Dec. 14 webinar by the Westminster Business Forum on the U.K. space sector. He said there were five to seven organizations pursuing spaceports in the U.K. “We’re getting to the point now where most of them are in a position to either take the decision to apply for a license or not.”
https://spacenews.com/saxavord-spaceport-receives-u-k-license/
The National UFO Historical Records Center acquires archives of Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
Dec 17, 2023
In a groundbreaking development for UFO enthusiasts and researchers, the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC) in Rio Rancho has become the official home of the archives of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).
APRO, a scientific organization founded in 1952, conducted extensive field investigations on UFOs and boasted a sizable team of consulting Ph.D. scientists. One notable figure within this group was James E. McDonald, a renowned atmospheric physicist affiliated with the University of Arizona and a leading UFO researcher of his era. Additionally, James Harder, a civil and hydraulic engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, served as the director of research for APRO from 1969 to 1982. McDonald and Harder were among a group of six scientists that provided testimony on UFOs during a one-day symposium sponsored by APRO before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics on July 29, 1968.
NUFOHRC Executive Director David Marler told the Roswell Daily Record by email Wednesday, "We are overjoyed at the prospect of allowing public access to the APRO UFO files after 35 years of them being considered ‘lost.' In acquiring the extensive APRO UFO case files and in conjunction with our pre-existing data sets, we now have the largest collection of civilian UFO reports dating to the early 1950s numbering in the tens of thousands. This is the largest collection of UFO reports to ever be centralized in the history of the United States. Coupled with the civilian records are original (declassified) military UFO reports derived from Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former chief scientific adviser to (the) Air Force Project Blue Book."
NUFOHRC is currently seeking a location in Albuquerque to house its collection of UFO archives. The facility will be accessible by the public and civilian, scientific and government researchers.
"We continue our work of organizing and digitizing these records so they may be readily accessible to the general public,” Marler said. “Integral to the success of this effort will be the acquisition of donations to purchase a public building. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we seek to create a credible institution devoted to the UFO subject predicated on original documentation on a scale never seen before. We have no such historical archive in the United States currently devoted to this subject. We at NUFOHRC have the history. Now, we need a home for this history."
https://www.rdrnews.com/news/state/the-national-ufo-historical-records-center-acquires-archives-of-aerial-phenomena-research-organization/article_b25f79d0-9c62-11ee-9048-8b35c0fba31e.html
https://nufohrc.org/
Jay Leno's Garage - Cybertruck Easter Eggs, Features & Design
In this very special episode of Jay Leno's Garage, Jay is once again joined by Tesla's Head of Design, Franz von Holzhausen who along with Tesla's Vice President
of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, bring with them this very special 2024 Tesla Cybertruck Foundation Series, aka, the CYBERBEAST! Jay, Franz, and Lars go over the finer details of the Cybertruck and also reveal some of the Cybertruck's easter eggs…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGDOKD7ZZqI