TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Mar 28, 2024
Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri
Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. With a yellowish hue, Omega Centauri's red giant stars are easy to pick out in this sharp, color telescopic view.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Stunning Echo of 800-year-old Explosion
MAR 28, 2024
In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days. Historical records show that the supernova looked like a temporary ‘star’ in the constellation Cassiopeia shining as bright as Saturn.
Ever since, scientists have tried to find the supernova’s remnant. At first it was thought that this could be the nebula around the pulsar — the dense core of a collapse star — named 3C 58. However closer investigations revealed that the pulsar is older than supernova 1181.
In the last decade, another contender was discovered; Pa 30 is a nearly circular nebula with a central star in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is pictured here combining images from several telescopes. This composite image uses data across the electromagnetic spectrum and shows a spectacular new view of the supernova remnant. This allows us to marvel at the same object that appeared in our ancestors’ night sky more than 800 years ago.
X-ray observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulfur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.
Studies of the composition of the different parts of the remnant have led scientists to believe that it was formed in a thermonuclear explosion, and more precisely a special kind of supernova called a sub-luminous Type Iax event. During this event two white dwarf stars merged, and typically no remnant is expected for this kind of explosion. But incomplete explosions can leave a kind of ‘zombie’ star, such as the massive white dwarf star in this system. This very hot star, one of the hottest stars in the Milky Way (about 200 000 degrees Celsius), has a fast stellar wind with speeds up to 16,000 km/h. The combination of the star and the nebula makes it a unique opportunity for studying such rare explosions.
Visual Description:
This is a composite image of SNR 1181, the remains of an explosion hundreds of years ago caused by the merger of two stars.
A bright, multi-colored, spherical nebula sits in the middle of the canvas surrounded by a field of stars that appear as white dots. In the center of the nebula is a small point of aqua-colored light. This is the hot white dwarf star that was left behind after the likely merger of two smaller white dwarfs caused an explosion. From this single point of aqua light, several spectacular rays expand outward, resembling a single firework bursting in celebration in the night sky.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/stunning-echo-of-800-year-old-explosion/
Nasa’s Soho mission captures 5,000th comet
March 28, 2024
Nasa’s Soho mission, which is tasked with observing the Sun, has captured its 5000th comet as it dives around the star in our Solar System.
Soho, the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory was launched on December 2, 1995 with a package of 12 instruments onboard. Nasa was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations.
Being called the SOHO-5000, it is a small comet belonging to the so-called Marsden group. This comet is part of the larger comet 96P/Machholz.
https://gulistannewstv.com/nasas-soho-mission-captures-5000th-comet/
NASA gives IXPE observatory the Ctrl-Alt-Del treatment to make it talk sense
Wed 27 Mar 2024 // 20:57 UTC
NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space observatory has had a problem, prompting engineers on the ground to hit the reset button.
It's a technique familiar to many engineers when faced with misbehaving hardware and one that IXPE's team has had to use on a previous occasion.
While out in low Earth orbit, IXPE has stopped transmitting valid telemetry data – an issue similar to one encountered in June 2023. The latest problem was noted on March 23 and, thanks to procedures developed last time, the team initiated a spacecraft avionics reset. IXPE then dropped into a safe mode, and the team is working to resume science operations.
According to NASA: "The spacecraft is in good health."
The Register asked the US space agency to learn more about the issue and why it has reoccurred. We will update this piece should the boffins respond.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/nasa_ixpe_reset/
NASA’s Artemis astronauts will try to grow plants on the moon
27 March 2024
NASA has selected the first science experiments that astronauts will bring to the moon as part of the Artemis III mission. This mission, currently planned for 2026, will mark the first time humans have walked on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The first of the three scientific instruments is called Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF). In this experiment, astronauts will grow plants on the surface of the moon, observing their ability to photosynthesise and grow, and how they respond to the stress of lower gravity and space radiation.
This won’t be the first time plants have been grown in space – astronauts have been growing vegetables aboard the International Space Station for a decade, and China’s Chang’e 4 mission sprouted seeds on the moon in 2019. Those seeds didn’t last long, though, so if all goes well, LEAF will give us our first glimpse of the full growth cycle of plants on the moon.
The second experiment is the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS), a small seismometer designed to measure moonquakes near the lunar south pole. Characterising how the ground moves during those quakes will help researchers understand the underground structure of the area.
The final instrument, called the Lunar Dielectric Analyzer (LDA), will measure how electrically conductive the soil is. Ice bound to dust particles drastically increases the ability of the soil to conduct electricity, so the LDA will help the hunt for deposits of frost and measure changes in the soil as the sun rises and sets over the lunar surface.
“These three deployed instruments were chosen to begin scientific investigations that will address key Moon to Mars science objectives,” said NASA’s Pam Melroy in a statement. The ultimate goal of the Artemis programme is to lay the groundwork for a long-term human presence on the moon, which will, in turn, teach us how to prepare for crewed missions to Mars.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2424697-nasas-artemis-astronauts-will-try-to-grow-plants-on-the-moon/
DELTA IV HEAVY TO LAUNCH NROL-70
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket is launching the NROL-70 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This is the 16th and final launch of a Delta IV Heavy rocket.
Launch Date and Time: NET March 28, 2024 at 1:40 p.m. EDT
MISSION OVERVIEW
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket is launching the NROL-70 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Liftoff will occur from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This is the 16th and final launch of a Delta IV Heavy rocket.
The NRO develops and operates the world’s most capable and innovative overhead reconnaissance systems to collect intelligence for U.S. national security, and to support disaster relief and humanitarian efforts.
The NROL-70 mission will strengthen the NRO’s ability to provide a wide-range of timely intelligence information to national decision makers, warfighters, and intelligence analysts to protect the nation’s vital interests and support humanitarian efforts worldwide.
https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/next-launch/delta-iv-heavy-nrol-70
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCoyHHhX3rw
Boeing files lawsuit against Virgin Galactic over development of new mothership aircraft
Mar 28, 2024
Boeing and its subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences are suing Virgin Galactic over unpaid work and the misappropriation of trade secrets.
The suit alleges that Virgin Galactic has not paid $26.4 million in invoices for work related to the development of a new "mothership" aircraft intended to power Virgin's next-generation suborbital space planes. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on March 21, according to a SpaceNews report.
Virgin Galactic argues that the lawsuit is baseless in both facts and law and intends to defend itself vigorously, according to comments made to SpaceNews by a company spokesperson.
Suborbital space tourism provider Virgin Galactic uses a carrier aircraft mothership to haul a space plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). Then the space plane falls free and begins its rocket-powered journey to suborbital space.
The company selected Aurora Flight Sciences in 2022 to build two new motherships. These would be delivered in 2025 and replace the current VMS Eve and be rated to fly as many as 200 times a year.
However, work halted after the completion of preliminary design work in May 2023. Boeing and Aurora claim that the project's budget and timeline constraints led to the conclusion that the new mothership could not be developed as Virgin Galactic envisioned.
Additionally, Boeing and Aurora accuse Virgin Galactic of misappropriating trade secrets. These specifically concern technical specifications and modeling equations for aircraft performance, passed inadvertently to Virgin as part of the project. Boeing and Aurora have requested Virgin destroy this proprietary information.
Virgin declined to do so, claiming it had intellectual property rights to them as part of the agreement, according to the report.
The company has also shifted focus away from developing a new mothership, concentrating on producing its Delta-class space plane, with plans to continue using VMS Eve for upcoming test and commercial flights.
https://www.space.com/boeing-aurora-flight-sciences-virgin-galactic-lawsuit-mothership
Overlooked Apollo data from the 1970s reveals huge record of 'hidden' moonquakes
Mar 27, 2024
The moon is much more seismically active than we realized, a new study shows. A reanalysis of abandoned data from NASA's Apollo missions has uncovered more than 22,000 previously unknown moonquakes — nearly tripling the total number of known seismic events on the moon.
Moonquakes are the lunar equivalent of earthquakes, caused by movement in the moon's interior. Unlike earthquakes, these movements are caused by gradual temperature changes and meteorite impacts, rather than shifting tectonic plates (which the moon does not have, according to NASA). As a result, moonquakes are much weaker than their terrestrial counterparts.
Between 1969 and 1977, seismometers deployed by Apollo astronauts detected around 13,000 moonquakes, which until now were the only such lunar seismic events on record. But in the new study, one researcher spent months painstakingly reanalyzing some of the Apollo records and found an additional 22,000 lunar quakes, bringing the total to 35,000.
The findings were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which was held in Texas between March 13 and March 17, and are in review by the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The newly discovered moonquakes show "that the moon may be more seismically and tectonically active today than we had thought," Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a geophysicist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research, told Science magazine. "It is incredible that after 50 years we are still finding new surprises in the data."
Apollo astronauts deployed two types of seismometers on the lunar surface: one capable of capturing the 3D motion of seismic waves over long periods; and another that recorded more rapid shaking over short periods.
The 13,000 originally identified moonquakes were all spotted in the long-period data. The short-period data has been largely ignored due to a large amount of interference from temperature swings between the lunar day and night, as well as issues beaming the data back to Earth, which made it extremely difficult to make sense of the numbers.
"Literally no one checked all of the short-period data before," study author Keisuke Onodera, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, told Science Magazine.
Not only had this data gone unchecked, but it was almost lost forever. After the Apollo missions came to an end, NASA pulled funding from lunar seismometers to support new projects. Although the long-period data was saved, NASA researchers abandoned the short-period data and even lost some of their records. However, Yosio Nakamura, a now-retired geophysicist at the University of Texas in Austin, saved a copy of the data on 12,000 reel-to-reel tapes, which were later digitally converted.
"We thought there must be many, many more [moonquakes in the data]," Nakamura told Science magazine. "But we couldn't find them."
In the new study, Onodera spent three months going back over the digitized records and applying "denoising" techniques to remove the interference in the data. This enabled him to identify 30,000 moonquake candidates, and after further analysis, he found that 22,000 of these were caused by lunar quakes.
Not only do these additional quakes show there was more lunar seismic activity than we realized, the readings also hint that more of these quakes were triggered at shallower points than expected, suggesting that the mechanisms behind some of these quakes are more fault-orientated than we knew, Onodera said. However, additional data will be needed to confirm these theories.
Recent and future moon missions could soon help scientists to better understand moonquakes. In August 2023, the Vikram lander from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission detected the first moonquake since the Apollo missions on its third day on the lunar surface.
Onodera and Nakamura hope that future NASA lunar seismometers on board commercial lunar landers such as Intuitive Machine's Odysseus lander, which became the first U.S. lander to reach the moon for more than 50 years in February, will confirm what the new study revealed.
https://www.space.com/apollo-data-reveals-hidden-moonquakes
Space Force chief: U.S. intelligence is top-notch, but more insights needed on space domain
March 27, 2024
Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said the U.S. Space Force has robust intelligence about what foreign adversaries are doing in outer space. Still, military leaders always want more comprehensive data and analysis about activities in orbit, he said March 27.
“I don’t often get surprised by things I hear,” Saltzman said at the Mitchell Institute’s Space Security Forum
Awareness about potential threats and what other nations are up to in space is foundational to all military space activities, he said. But having additional sensors and analytics tools would further boost the Space Force’s visibility into technologies being tested by strategic competitors like China and Russia.
“You can never have too much space domain awareness,” Saltzman said. “The demand for intelligence is continuous, it’s ever changing.”
The Space Force uses the term space domain awareness to describe the capability to track and monitor objects in space. This includes both friendly and potentially threatening objects like anti-satellite weapons and debris from collisions or explosions in space.
In remarks at the conference, Saltzman highlighted various threats in orbit that target U.S. satellites, particularly China’s development of ground-based lasers to disrupt and degrade satellite sensors, electronic warfare jammers targeting GPS and communications satellites, and anti-satellite missiles.
Saltzman said space domain awareness is not just about taking pictures of objects but also being able to “maintain custody” of objects of interest.
Maintaining custody of a target goes beyond simply knowing where something is in space. It refers to the ability to continuously track and monitor a specific object with a high degree of accuracy and for an extended period.
“This requires a tremendous network of sensors to continue that data flow,” said Saltzman. He noted that the Space Force will continue to invest in sensors that use various phenomenologies — including optical, radar and radio frequency — but also in “tools to pull that data together, contextualize it, so decision makers can make timely, relevant decisions.”
Increased use of commercial data
Saltzman and other officials said space domain awareness is a task shared with allies and also with the private sector. The Space Force increasingly buys data and services from companies that can deliver specialized intelligence about objects circling the Earth.
That emerging demand was highlighted in a new report by the market research firm Quilty Space, which said space domain awareness represents a significant business opportunity for companies that build and operate sensors, and for new space companies that use small satellites to monitor outer space.
“DoD spends billions deploying and maintaining space situational awareness (SSA) systems in space and on Earth,” said the Quilty report. Three programs, the SilentBarker satellite system, the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), and the Ground Based Optical Sensor System will collectively cost $2.6 billion from 2021 to 2027.
“In the coming years, DoD, and soon the Office of Space Commerce, are anticipated to spend tens of millions of dollars on commercial SSA data buy,” the report noted.
Quilty analysts said defense and intelligence agencies are likely to remain the industry’s primary customers. Meanwhile, “commercial satellite operators remain a challenging market for selling SSA data, given their reluctance to pay for data that is largely available for free through the U.S. government.”
The report said the more “disruptive” companies in the sector are developing satellite networks — or hosted payload systems — to monitor the space environment. Compared to ground-based sensors, Quilty analysts said, small-satellite networks in orbit provide higher fidelity data, and are especially useful for monitoring hostile or non-cooperative spacecraft and to perform visual inspections of commercial missions for things like anomalies or health checks.
Quilty Space sees a potential market for satellites that “focus not on mapping, but instead tracking specific high-interest resident space objects. Such use cases have strong appeal for DoD.”
https://spacenews.com/space-force-chief-u-s-intelligence-is-top-notch-but-more-insights-needed-on-space-domain/
SPACECENT stands up new combat detachment
March 28, 2024
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Southwest Asia (AFNS) –
Lt. Col. Deane L. Lake assumed command of U.S. Space Forces Central Combat Detachment 3-1 during an activation and assumption of command ceremony at an undisclosed location within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, March 12.
CDet 3-1 provides Command and Control for SPACECENT teams in the region that provide space-based capabilities such as missile warning detection, ensuring reliable communications and GPS
The Space Operations Center operates 24 hours a day and delivers information gathered from those capabilities to U.S. and coalition forces providing security in the region. The SOC is co-located at the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, increasing the speed with which that information can flow to friendly actors in the region.
“This is the first Space Force combat detachment to activate in any Space Field Component Command, CDet 3-1,” said Col. Christopher S. Putman, SPACECENT commander. “Guardians will play an integral part in U.S. efforts to promote peace and stability in the region. This new command provides SPACECENT a forward deployed element that can exercise the command and control necessary to accomplish the mission and properly care for our deployed Guardians.”
According to Lake, CDet 3-1 ensures SPACECENT can deploy Guardians that are prepared for battle and can handle obstacles in the space domain.
“Activating this combat detachment is a big step toward normalizing force presentation and organizes our Guardians in theater into one unit, focused on providing command and control for SPACECENT,” Lake said.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3723236/spacecent-stands-up-new-combat-detachment/