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2024 Be An Astronaut Campaign
Dec 09, 2024
NASA astronauts have been traveling to space for more than six decades and living there continuously since 2000.
Now, NASA’s Artemis program is preparing to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon.
As NASA continues to expand human exploration in our solar system, we will need more than the currently active astronauts to crew spacecraft bound for deep-space destinations.
Every four years, NASA opens its doors and welcomes thousands of applicants to join a new class of astronauts that will push human spaceflight to new depths.
Astronaut applications opened March 5, 2024, and closed April 16, 2024.
In those 42 days, NASA’s 2024 Be An Astronaut Campaign used various platforms to promote the beauty of human spaceflight, explore opportunities to reach untapped and underserved audiences, encourage the younger generations to follow their dreams and pursue a career as an astronaut, and inspire the world about the capabilities we have as humans to explore farther than we ever have before.
Official “Be a NASA Astronaut” Video
To kick off the astronaut recruitment campaign, NASA, NASA Johnson, NASA Artemis, and NASA Astronauts accounts collaborated on a video narrated by Morgan Freeman on Instagram reaching over 9.7 million views.
This video, seen below, was shared across agency social media platforms, YouTube, and digital sites to introduce the start of the astronaut application period.
Throughout the campaign, #BeAnAstronaut was utilized to increase campaign awareness and engagement. This hashtag was used by 36 agency accounts and totaled 167 posts across the agency.
With over 15,000 social media mentions, 256,655 total page views throughout the campaign, and news presence on the Today Show, TIME Magazine, Yahoo News, The New York Times, and more, the Be An Astronaut campaign was a successful and exciting project that inspired aspiring astronauts to follow their dreams.
2024 Astronaut Graduation
On March 5, 2024, not only did astronaut applications open, but the 2021 class of NASA astronaut candidates graduated, officially making them astronauts and eligible for spaceflight.
These newly graduated astronauts created a superlative to demonstrate just how NASA’s astronaut corps works as a team and family as they passed the torch down to NASA’s next class of astronauts.
Astronaut Candidate Countdown
Our astronaut graduation countdown campaign celebrated the most recent graduating class of astronauts.
The previous class completed two years of rigorous training at Johnson Space Center before they officially gained their wings.
This campaign not only highlighted their achievements, but hopefully inspired potential candidates by showcasing the journey from trainee to astronaut.
During the graduation ceremony, applications for the next astronaut class were announced, continuing the legacy of excellence and exploration.
cont.
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/becoming-an-astronaut/2024-be-an-astronaut-campaign/
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/astronauts/become-an-astronaut/
The Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon
Dec 09, 2024
The next full Moon will be Sunday morning, Dec. 15, 2024, passing opposite the Sun at 4:02 a.m. EST. This will be Saturday evening from Alaska Time westwards to the International Date Line.
The Moon will appear full for about three days around this time, from Friday evening through Monday morning, making this a full Moon weekend.
The Maine Farmers' Almanac began publishing Native American names for full Moons in the 1930s. Over time these names have become widely known and used.
According to this almanac, as the full Moon in December this is the Cold Moon, due to the long, cold nights. Other names are the Frost Moon (for the frosts as winter nears) or the Winter Moon.
As the full Moon before the winter solstice, old European names for this Moon include the Moon before Yule and the Oak Moon. Yule was a three-day winter solstice festival in pre-Christian Europe.
In the 10th century King Haakon I associated Yule with Christmas as part of the Christianization of Norway, and this association spread throughout Europe.
Some believe that the Oak Moon name ties back to ancient druid traditions of harvesting mistletoe from oak trees, a practice first recorded by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder in the first century CE.
The term "druid" may derive from the Proto-Indo-European roots for "oak" and "to see," suggesting "druid" means "oak knower" or "oak seer."
As the full Moon closest to the winter solstice, this will be the Long Night Moon. The plane of the Moon's orbit around Earth nearly matches the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
When the path of the Sun appears lowest in the sky for the year, the path of the full Moon opposite the Sun appears near its highest.
For the Washington, D.C. area, on Saturday evening into Sunday morning, December 14 to 15, the Moon will be in the sky for a total of 16 hours 1 minute and will reach a maximum altitude of 79.0 degrees (at 11:52 p.m. EST), with 14 hours 33 minutes of this when the Sun is down.
The next night, Sunday evening into Monday morning, December 15 to 16, the full Moon will be in the sky slightly longer and will reach higher in the sky, but slightly less of this time will be when the Sun is down.
The Moon will be in the sky for a total of 16 hours 3 minutes and will reach a maximum altitude of 79.2 degrees (at 1:54 a.m.), with 14 hours 29 minutes of this when the Sun is down.
This also is the Child Moon. Five years ago, then 7-year-old Astrid Hattenbach was walking home from school with her father Henry Throop (a friend and former coworker at NASA Headquarters).
When she saw the rising full Moon, she said: “You know what this Moon is called? It’s called a Child Moon.
Because the Moon rises at a time that the children, they can see it, because they’re not in bed, and they might even be outside like we are right now.”
Henry told me about this and I thought it a perfect name. This year (at least for Washington, D.C. and similar latitudes), the earliest evenings with a full Moon in the sky will be on December 13 through 15, with sunset at 4:44 p.m. EST and evening twilight ending at 5:50 p.m. (on the 13th) or 5:51 p.m. (on the 14th and 15th).
For more on the wonder the Moon imbues in the hearts of children (and in all of us) look up Carl Sandburg's poem "Child Moon."
For Hindus, this full Moon corresponds with Datta Jayanti, also known as Dattatreya Jayanti, a festival commemorating the birth day of the Hindu god Dattatreya (Datta), celebrated on the full Moon day of the month of Margashira.
Karthika Deepam is a festival observed by Hindus of Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and Kerala when the nearly full Moon lines up with the Pleiades constellation (Krittikai or Karttikai).
This year it will be on Friday, December 13. Some areas celebrate multi-day festivals that include this full Moon.
cont.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/the-next-full-moon-is-the-cold-moon-frost-moon-or-winter-moon/
NASA Eyes Launching SPHEREx Sky-Mapping Mission in Early 2025
Dec. 9, 2024
The observatory will lend insight into what happened after the big bang, measure the glow of galaxies near and far, and search the Milky way for building blocks of life.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting late February 2025 for the launch of the agency’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx.
Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
About the size of a subcompact car, SPHEREx will enter a polar orbit around Earth and create a map of the entire sky in 3D, taking images in every direction, like scanning the inside of a globe.
The map will contain hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies, showing them in 102 colors (each a different wavelength of light).
Scientists will use SPHEREx’s all-sky map to achieve the mission’s three key science goals.
The first is to shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation, a brief but powerful cosmic event when space itself increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold less than a second after the big bang.
The observatory will measure the distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies to improve understanding of what drove inflation and of the physics behind this event.
The SPHEREx mission will also measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far, including light from hidden galaxies that haven’t been individually observed.
This data will provide a more complete picture of all the objects and sources radiating in the universe.
Its third key science goal is to search the Milky Way galaxy for icy granules of water, carbon dioxide, and other essential building blocks of life.
The mission will help scientists discover the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving them a better sense of how likely they are to be incorporated into newly forming planets.
Launching as a secondary payload on the same Falcon 9 rocket as SPHEREx will be NASA’s PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere).
Led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in Boulder, Colorado, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites heading to low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-eyes-launching-spherex-sky-mapping-mission-in-early-2025/
To Stay on Path, Defense Space Programs Need Domestic Software Developers
Dec. 9, 2024
During the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of electronic components slowed down development of satellites headed to the Space Development Agency.
But it's not only parts and subcomponents that affect the timeline of satellite delivery, said the agency's director.
"Even though it takes a while to get the hardware and the supply chain built up to actually build the satellites, it doesn't matter what you see on the schedule on day one, I'll tell you right now … software is always on your critical path, mostly because you can't start a lot of the software until you have some of the hardware," said Derek Tournear, speaking Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.
The SDA is building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which will eventually include hundreds of satellites, delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last.
The network of hundreds of optically connected satellites will deliver two primary capabilities to warfighters on the ground.
The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for ground and maritime time-sensitive targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for instance.
The system will provide the ability to detect those targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution and deliver that solution down to a weapons platform so the target can be destroyed.
The second capability is similar to the first but for enemy missiles already in flight.
Right now, Tournear said, Tranche 0 of the PWSA is already in orbit. That includes about 27 satellites.
Tranche 1 will come in a few months, he said, which means about 160 satellites in space by next year to provide operational capability to service members on the ground.
The Tranche 0 satellites, he said, launched about seven months late due to supply chain issues that resulted from COVID-19, including, among other things, an inability to buy resistors.
Tranche 1's launch will be delayed as well, he said, also due to supply chain issues. But now, he said, it's not resistors, but much more complex parts.
"We can buy resistors all day long now, but there's a difference between being able to manufacture an optical terminal or a reaction wheel on the order of single digits versus being able to ramp that up to where I need 100 of them," he said.
"And obviously people were a little optimistic in how long it would take them to ramp up their manufacturing lines. And we pushed them. We pushed them pretty strongly on that."
Now, he said, the supply chain for parts needed to make satellites has caught up to what's needed by SDA. But it's not only parts that satellites need, Tournear said, its software as well.
"Supply chain is not only supply chain in the hardware and being able to build things, but we also need a robust industrial base that can create software, test software, get the software ready to go, and build that capability up," he said.
Right now, Tournear said, much of the industrial base relies on foreign entities to produce software. It's something he said he'd like to see change.
"It's one of the things that we've kind of said we're worried about that at the Space Development Agency," he said.
"We want our flight software on our satellites to be written in the U.S., because that's one of the supply chain interdiction things that I'm worried about. And so that's been a bottleneck."
Tournear was also clear that he looks to America's "industrial base" to build the PWSA, not just the defense industrial base.
"I want people to also … stop thinking about the defense industrial base," he said. "We don't look at the defense industrial base. We look at the entire industrial base.
And by the way, if you happen to do defense as part of that industrial base, more power to you. But we want to leverage the commercial side of that: hardware and software, because those are both critical."
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3990196/to-stay-on-path-defense-space-programs-need-domestic-software-developers/
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/XMM-Newton/XMM-Newton_celebrates_25_years_of_breakthroughs
XMM-Newton celebrates 25 years of breakthroughs
10/12/2024
Today, ESA’s powerful X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, celebrates 25 years in space. From planets to black holes, the space telescope has delivered many ground-breaking observations of a variety of celestial objects.
And the mission is still going strong as recent results testify. We take a look at five fascinating discoveries from the last five years.
XMM-Newton was launched on Ariane-5 from ESA’s Kourou space port, on 10 December 1999.
“ESA and its member states had invested a great deal in developing this mission and at the time expectations were very high,” notes ESA Director of Science, Prof. Carole Mundell.
“And we were not disappointed: XMM-Newton has rewarded us handsomely with a treasure-trove of exceptional discoveries and continues to surprise us.
Its launch marked a turning point for European leadership in X-ray astronomy and we continue to see new generations of scientists asking questions we could not have imagined when the mission was first proposed.”
“The spacecraft’s X-ray telescope is still the largest in terms of collecting area,” adds Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist.
“Thanks to this, the mission can carry out uniquely sensitive observations of some of the most powerful and dramatic events in our Universe, advancing our understanding of the cosmos.”
To celebrate XMM-Newton's 25 years in space we selected five prominent results that the telescope has made possible in the last five years.
From the Solar System to remote galaxies, they showcase the power and versatility of X-ray observations. Let’s take a trip through these fascinating findings.
Jupiter’s mystery
Setting off on our journey from the Solar System, we find that XMM-Newton helped to answer a 40-year old mystery: how do X-ray auroras arise at Jupiter’s magnetic poles?
The observations in X-rays of ESA’s telescope combined with measurements by NASA’s Juno mission, enabled astronomers to see the aurora-making mechanism at work, for the first time.
As Jupiter rotates and drags its magnetic field, the field is compressed. This heats the particles trapped by the magnetic field which directs them down into the atmosphere of Jupiter, sparking the X-ray aurora.
In our galaxy, a set of ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra pioneering observations spurred a new understanding of what happens inside a neutron star.
The X-ray observatories spotted three exceptionally young neutron stars that are unusually cold for their age.
Scientists compared the three 'oddballs' with theoretical predictions of how neutron stars could cool down.
Since these predictions are linked to the theories of a neutron star’s interior, the comparison can be used to test the theories and to address fundamental questions about a neutron star’s makeup.
Neutron stars get their name from the fact that under their immense pressure, even atoms collapse: electrons merge with atomic cores, turning protons into neutrons.
Or do they? Could the extreme pressure give rise to exotic particles? Or possibly melt protons and neutrons together into a swirling quark soup?
Thanks to XMM-Newton and Chandra, scientists were able to reject most theories of the interior of neutron stars.
This helps them to focus on fewer ideas and get closer to answering the long-standing puzzle of the state of matter in neutron stars’ cores.
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At the edge of a gigantic black hole
In the ‘neighbourhood’ outside our home galaxy, XMM-Newton has shed light on the environments closely surrounding gigantic black holes.
ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes observed extremely bright flares of X-ray light coming from around a supermassive black hole.
This gravitational ‘monster’ is 10 million times more massive than the Sun and lies at the centre of a spiral galaxy 800 million light-years from Earth.
The telescopes picked up X-ray flares bouncing off the gas falling into the black hole. And also, for the first time, they captured the echoes of these flares reflected by the gas in the disc behind the black hole.
By looking at the delays between the primary flares and their echoes, astronomers can create a 3D-map of the black hole surroundings.
Sizing up the ‘monster’
Further out, at 1 billion light-years from Earth, researchers have used XMM-Newton to track these light echoes from the ‘corona’ of a supermassive black hole in the core of an active galaxy.
The corona is the cloud of billion-degree gas surrounding the black hole and its dynamics are strongly linked to the characteristics of this gravitational monster.
By watching how light bounced off from the corona scientists were able to track how it changed over time. From this, they could determine the mass and spin of the galaxy’s central black hole with increased accuracy.
Blistering gas sloshing among galaxies
We end our trip through XMM-Newton’s recent discoveries at 240 million light-years away from Earth, in the Perseus cluster of galaxies.
For the first time, XMM-Newton captured direct signs that the fiery hot gas dispersed among the galaxies is flowing and sloshing.
The Perseus cluster is one of the most massive known objects in the Universe.
It contains hundreds to thousands of galaxies and a huge amount of intergalactic gas at temperatures of around 50 million degrees that shines brightly in X-rays.
Learning more about the motions of intra-cluster gas is key to understanding how galaxy clusters form and evolve.
Scientists think that these massive flows may be driven by smaller sub-clusters of galaxies colliding and merging with the main cluster itself.
Looking forward
“These recent results testify to the breadth and depth of research that our X-ray telescope has made possible,” comments Peter Kretschmar, ESA XMM-Newton Mission Manager.
“It is extremely gratifying to see how well XMM-Newton has been doing over a quarter of a century, and that it is in excellent shape to continue serving the astronomical community for many more years.”
Crucially, XMM-Newton’s observations also serve to prepare for investigations with ESA’s future large-class mission NewAthena, planned to be the largest X-ray observatory ever built.
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Extremely rare, black 'anti-auroras' paint luminous 'letter E' above Alaska
December 10, 2024
Extremely rare, black "anti-auroras" helped create a peculiar E-shaped swirl of green light recently photographed over Alaska, experts say.
Aurora hunter Todd Salat spotted the unusual aurora on Nov. 22 above an unspecified location in southcentral Alaska at around 4 a.m. local time (8 a.m. EST).
The luminous letter appeared seemingly out of nowhere and lasted for a few minutes while cycling through several shapes, all of which contained strange dark patches not seen in most auroras.
"It came up from the northwest and I was like, 'whoa!' It looked like the letter E to me," Salat told Spaceweather.com. "Within just a few minutes it sailed overhead on its back and looked like some critter with its legs in the air."
The unusual aurora is the result of anti-auroras, a.k.a. black auroras. The strange phenomenon creates the rounded dark patches that look as if they have been bitten out from between the arms of the 'E' shape, Spaceweather.com reported.
As the name implies, anti-auroras are essentially the opposite of an aurora — they prevent gases from giving off energy in the form of light.
The result is "dark rings, curls or blobs that punctuate the glowing colors," according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
Auroras are triggered when high-energy particles from the sun, predominantly electrons, bypass Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, and superheat gas molecules in the upper atmosphere.
The excited molecules release energy in the form of light, which collectively forms long smooth ribbons that twist in the sky. The color of the light varies depending on which element is being excited and where in the atmosphere it is located.
The swirling light shows normally only occur sparsely near the poles where Earth's magnetic field is weakest.
But they are particularly prominent and widespread now due to increased solar activity tied to solar maximum, the peak of the sun's roughly 11-year sunspot cycle.
However, anti-auroras interrupt the aurora-forming process by starving gases of charged particles.
"The black aurora isn't actually an aurora at all; it's a lack of auroral activity in a region where electrons are 'sucked' from the ionosphere," Göran Marklund, a plasma physicist at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, previously told ESA.
Anti-auroras were first identified in the late 1990s. But in 2001, scientists loosely figured out how they worked when ESA's four Cluster satellites passed through space above a black aurora sighting.
This revealed small vertical cells in the upper atmosphere, known as positively charged electric potential structures, where electrons were being repelled back into space.
The mechanism behind these cells remained elusive for well over a decade, until a 2015 study utilizing more than a decade of Cluster mission data showed that these structures form when auroras deplete plasma, creating "ionospheric cavities," in the upper atmosphere while the magnetosphere shifts from the strain caused by solar storms.
However, the conditions have to be just right for anti-auroras to appear.
Anti-auroras can occur in the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights and typically only last for around 10 or 20 minutes.
Aurora activity is expected to remain high over the next few years so there is a decent chance we could see more examples of these dark patches dancing among them.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/aurora-borealis/extremely-rare-black-anti-auroras-paint-luminous-letter-e-above-alaska
Philippines volcanic eruption: Kanlaon volcano 'may progress to further explosive eruptions'
December 9, 2024
A large volcano in the central Philippines erupted today (Dec. 9) at 3:03 p.m. local time, spouting a column of ash and gas up to 1.86 miles (3 kilometers) into the sky, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS).
Thermal and X-ray camera monitors recorded pyroclastic density currents — hot flows of ash and debris that hug the ground and can travel hundreds of feet per second — descending the slopes of Mount Kanlaon.
Local government units have advised people to evacuate a 3.7 mile (6 kilometers) radius around the site, and the country's civil defence office has stated that the urgent evacuation of 87,000 people is already underway.
In a statement, PHIVOLCS representatives warned the volcano "may progress to further explosive eruptions."
The Kanlaon volcano is one of two dozen active volcanoes in the Philippines and is located in the central provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental.
It is one of the most active volcanoes in the country and has already erupted once before this year, on June 3, 2024. Prior to this, its last eruption was in December 2017.
The latest eruption follows several weeks of volcanic unrest in the region. According to PHIVOLCS, continuous degassing and occasional emissions of ash have occurred at the summit crater since Oct. 19.
Between five and 26 daily earthquakes have been recorded in the vicinity since late November.
PHIVOLCS has raised the volcano's Alert Level to Alert Level 3 — the agency's highest classification of volcanic unrest and third highest Alert Level overall.
Alert Level 3 indicates that the unrest is being driven by a magmatic intrusion into shallow levels of the volcano's cone, and that a "hazardous eruption" could occur within weeks.
The next level on the scale, Alert Level 4, is designated when a low-level magmatic eruption is under way, which can progress to a highly hazardous major eruption — Alert Level 5 — within hours or days.
Meanwhile, PHIVOLCS continues to monitor the pyroclastic density currents along the volcano's southeastern flanks.
According to the British Geological Survey, these currents are "inherently unpredictable" and are "perhaps the most hazardous event to local areas" during explosive volcanic eruptions.
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/watch-kanlaon-volcano-in-philippines-erupt-spewing-ash-almost-2-miles-into-the-sky
LeoLabs expands space-monitoring network with radar site in Arizona
December 10, 2024
LeoLabs, a company specializing in space-monitoring technology, announced it is operating its seventh radar site in Arizona.
The radar installation features next-generation Ultra High Frequency (UHF) technology designed to track activities in low and very low Earth orbit (LEO), as well as potential future applications in missile and hypersonic glide vehicle detection.
The radar employs a phased array antenna operating in the UHF band, allowing it to detect, locate, and track space debris, satellites, and highly maneuverable objects in orbit.
LeoLabs CEO Tony Frazier highlighted the radar’s advanced capabilities, describing it as a testbed for cutting-edge space domain awareness technologies aimed at addressing military and intelligence needs.
“We are excited about the advanced space domain awareness capabilities it will offer to our global defense and intelligence customers,” Frazier said.
Founded in 2016 to serve commercial and civil customers, LeoLabs has leaned heavily into military applications, particularly since the establishment of the U.S. Space Force in 2019.
Seven radar sites
The company’s radar network, now consisting of 11 operational radars across seven sites globally, covers the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and equatorial regions.
The new site has already started tracking over 9,500 objects in LEO and streaming data to clients, underscoring its operational readiness.
The type of radar deployed in Arizona is called UHF planar direct radiating array. It includes features designed to maintain custody of maneuverable objects, detect non-cooperative launch activities, and track objects nearing atmospheric re-entry.
LeoLabs also sees this radar as a stepping stone toward capabilities that could detect and track missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles, a domain of growing interest for U.S. national security.
The radar was partially funded by a 2023 U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award. Construction took less than five months, a rapid timeline the company said is indicative of LeoLabs’ agility in responding to defense needs.
LeoLabs is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Its expansion reflects broader industry trends as governments worldwide grapple with threats posed by space debris, anti-satellite weapons, and contested orbital zones.
The U.S. Space Force, in particular, has emphasized space domain awareness — monitoring the behaviors and trajectories of objects in orbit—as a critical component of national security.
https://spacenews.com/leolabs-expands-space-monitoring-network-with-radar-site-in-arizona/
Lockheed Martin to launch 5G demonstration on Firefly rocket
December 9, 2024
Lockheed Martin announced plans to launch its Tactical Satellite (TacSat) aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket in 2025, marking the second mission in a multi-launch agreement between the aerospace giant and the upstart rocket company.
The mission, funded internally by Lockheed Martin, aims to showcase cutting-edge technologies targeting the defense market.
TacSat, a compact spacecraft about the size of a mini-fridge, is built on a Terran Orbital Zuma bus — a platform Lockheed Martin also employs for the Space Development Agency’s military network.
The satellite will carry an infrared imaging sensor and a 5G communications payload, both designed to address the Pentagon’s growing demand for “all-domain networks” that seamlessly link space assets with forces on the ground, at sea, and in the air.
The 5G payload, described as providing “cellular-like networking,” is expected to enhance the resilience of satellite constellations while enabling real-time data sharing and improved coordination during military exercises.
Meanwhile, the infrared sensor will bring a previously developed imaging technology into space for the first time, offering high-quality imagery for potential military applications.
The TacSat mission is part of Lockheed Martin’s broader strategy to respond to the Department of Defense’s push for multi-domain operations.
This concept envisions seamless communication across all branches of the military and their assets, from satellites to fighter jets and naval vessels.
TacSat represents the second collaboration between Lockheed Martin and Firefly under their multi-launch agreement.
The first mission, scheduled earlier, involves Lockheed Martin’s LM400 medium satellite platform.
Firefly’s Alpha rocket, designed to launch up to 1,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit, has been gaining traction in the small-satellite launch market.
Lockheed Martin said in a statement Dec. 9 that the TacSat spacecraft recently completed its final tests at the company’s facility in Littleton, Colorado.
https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-to-launch-5g-demonstration-on-firefly-rocket/
https://spacenews.com/shattered-genesis-spacecraft-yields-scientific-discoveries-20-years-after-crash-landing/
Shattered Genesis spacecraft yields scientific discoveries 20 years after crash landing
December 9, 2024
In September 2004, NASA’s Genesis return sample capsule tumbled from the sky and slammed into the Utah desert in a remote part of the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground, shattering the delicate solar wind collectors it carried.
The upshot of that downfall: new scientific insights following over 20 years of painstaking work by researchers sorting through the spacecraft’s contaminated remains.
Genesis was loaded with delicate wafers that held precious samples of atoms and ions from puffs of solar wind that the probe accumulated while lingering at Lagrange Point 1, the spot in space where Earth’s and the sun’s gravity counteract one another. But Genesis — a Discovery-class spacecraft with a price tag of $264 million designed, built, tested and operated by Lockheed Martin — failed to deploy its parachutes due to an engineering error.
The mishap was later tied to improper orientation of gravity-switch sensors that were to set off the capsule’s parachute landing system.
The resulting crash landing banged up the return capsule and shattered the collection wafers, corrupting the prized shipment of solar wind particles.
Fast forward 20 years, and scientists say they have clutched victory from the jaws of defeat.
The researchers who have been meticulously cleaning and studying the fragments say they have been able to the samples to make new discoveries into the nature and impacts of solar wind that they plan to share Dec. 13 at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) being held Dec. 9 to 13 in Washington, D.C.
Cleaning and gleaning
“To be honest, we are finally getting to the point where we are starting to do the really interesting science,” said Amy Jurewicz, a Genesis project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
She is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University’s Center for Meteorite Studies in Tempe, Arizona, and a chief Genesis team member working on the cleaning problem.
“We have been trying to figure out how to use these itty-bitty little samples that had gotten dirty. Now we’re finding some really good stuff,” Jurewicz told SpaceNews.
The main message today, she said, is, “Yes, we had an accident. It didn’t go as planned. But look at what we can still do with the samples.”
Aside from making sense of and cleaning the wreckage of the collection wafers, the process of piecing together valid scientific studies from Genesis involved comparing findings to data from other spacecraft observations, as well as data from additional instruments on Genesis — and studying the pieces with techniques and technology not yet developed when the spacecraft took off. For one, there were a number of other instruments on Genesis, not just one big collector.
Depending on how you count the busted-up solar wind collectors, there’s between 5,000 and 10,000 pieces available for study, Jurewicz said, with specialists “donating their time to the cause.”
“The scientific work invested in a variety of collector materials allowed for several methods to make the same elemental or isotopic measurement.
The bonus is that after the crash, some of the materials were more easily cleaned than others,” Judith Allton, the Genesis sample curator at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told SpaceNews.
“The payload design called for collector materials to be of a thickness unique to each solar wind regime captured.
Thus, when collector pieces were dislodged and mixed together by the crash, the specific solar wind regime contained within each fragment is identified by measuring the thickness of the fragment,” Allton said.
“The 300 mirror-polished collectors looked so beautiful when the canister was closed in August 2000,” she said, prior to the probe’s sendoff a year later.
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The team has also matched some Genesis findings against those of NASA’s sun-observing Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, Jurewicz told SpaceNews.
Launched in 1997, ACE produces space weather reports and keeps an eye on geomagnetic storms unleashed by the sun that can interrupt telecommunication services on Earth and harm astronauts in space.
Having “more than one shot” at achieving a measurement proved beneficial, said Allton.
Many people working on Genesis still feel a sense of camaraderie after all these years, Allton added, “I suppose due to our common focus on salvaging the science.”
That sense of family and making a contribution may only happen on small missions like the Discovery Program missions, she added.
Results and implications
Genesis was designed to provide precise knowledge of the solar system initial isotopic and chemical compositions by returning solar matter for analysis in terrestrial laboratories.
“Unfortunately, the mission is perhaps best remembered by general audiences for the crash of the sample return capsule when the parachute failed to deploy,” said Genesis Mission Science Team member and University of California, Los Angeles, researcher Kevin McKeegan.
“However, despite this setback, Genesis has accomplished all its major science goals and is continuing to achieve progress on secondary and tertiary tasks.”
McKeegan observed in his AGU abstract that when it comes to the composition of oxygen and nitrogen isotopes in chondrite meteorites and inner solar system materials, “we now know that the standard model is grossly wrong.”
“We have learned new things that have brought us to a new era of research, not just on solar wind, but space weathering and how things change due to the radiation damage,” Jurewicz said.
That information is useful in figuring out how the surface of the moon and asteroids are changed by solar bombardment, she added.
Genesis samples are still available and remain useful to the research community. Given the cleaning alongside 20 years of advancements in scientific gear and techniques, “there is now a basis for people to look at the samples and move on from there,” Jurewicz said.
For instance, the work on Genesis offers the most precise solar data ever captured in space to aid cosmochemistry experts modeling solar system formation.
“Genesis occupied a special place in the history of robotic space exploration as the first mission to return to Earth from beyond the moon, and the first return in a series of robotic sample-return missions,” said Roger Wiens, who runs the Wiens Planetary Spectroscopy Lab in Purdue University’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in West Lafayette, Indiana.
“The mission will be remembered as coming from the ‘faster, better, cheaper’ era, and fortunately, its samples and science survived in spite of its low budget and its crash landing,” he said, adding that “every cosmochemistry class teaches” about the spacecraft’s discoveries.
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Tuesday hearing to address drone threats to homeland security
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Two Republican lawmakers are focused on a skyward threat.
Reps. August Pfluger of Texas and Carlos Gimenez of Florida will conduct a hearing on Tuesday to examine the full scope of threats posed to the nation’s homeland security by unmanned aerial systems — also known as UAS — or drones.
The two lawmakers are the chairmen of, respectively, the House Homeland Security’s subcommittees on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement and Intelligence and on Transportation and Maritime Security.
“In the wrong hands, drone technology has the potential to negatively impact the essential mission of law enforcement agencies, disrupt our critical infrastructure, and even surveil sensitive U.S. military and other sites in the homeland,” they said in a joint written statement shared with Inside the Beltway.
“As these threats evolve rapidly, Congress must be prepared to meet the moment to ensure law enforcement has the necessary authorities and tools to swiftly detect, track, and mitigate hostile drone activity.
We are eager to hear from FBI, DOJ, and CBP officials, as well as private sector stakeholders, to gain a deeper understanding of the emerging threats posed by the malicious use of drones in the United States and to explore how law enforcement can more effectively address these threats,” the two chairmen said.
The hearing will be live-streamed on YouTube at 2 p.m. ET
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/dec/8/inside-beltway-tuesday-hearing-address-drone-threa/
https://www.congress.gov/event/118th-congress/house-event/117754
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTotPeiMjlc
North Korea dismisses new Space Force unit in Japan as a Washington power grab
December 10, 2024
North Korea’s state-run news agency has criticized the establishment of a new U.S. Space Force command in Japan as part of Washington’s broader plan to seek “regional hegemony.”
The creation of the U.S. Space Forces Japan is another attempt by the United States “to contain its strategic rivals and establish military supremacy in the Asia-Pacific region,” Ri Song Jin, a researcher with the National Aerospace Technology Administration, said in a column published Saturday by the Korean Central News Agency.
Space is a “common asset of the whole mankind,” and the U.S. is transforming it into a battlefield with its regional Space Force commands, he wrote.
The command’s activation on Dec. 4 at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo marked “a pivotal moment” for regional space operations, Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of the Hawaii-based U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific, told reporters at a press conference the previous day.
“Space is becoming increasingly congested, contested and critical to national security,” he said. “This activation is a critical step in enhancing the integration and coordination of space capabilities with Japan.” Ri accused Mastalir of trying to “deceive the international community.”
“The offensive mission of the U.S. Space Force and its continuous expansion into the overseas region clearly prove that such military moves are not aimed to cope with someone’s ‘threat,’” he wrote.
U.S. Space Forces Japan did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday afternoon. The Space Force launched its first subordinate command in the Far East at Osan Air Base, South Korea, on Dec. 14, 2022.
U.S. Space Forces Korea is tasked with providing missile warning, position navigation and timing, and regional satellite communication services, according to U.S. Forces Korea, the command responsible for the 28,500 American troops on the peninsula.
The subordinate command in South Korea has since participated in large-scale military drills between Washington and Seoul, including Ulchi Freedom Shield in August.
Details of the command’s role during the exercise were not disclosed; however, a USFK news release said it “provided critical support in monitoring and defending against potential space-based threats.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he would boost Pyongyang’s space presence and place three military satellites in orbit by this year. The communist regime’s first and last satellite launch so far this year failed on May 27, according to KCNA and South Korea’s military.
Eight days after that launch, South Korea formally suspended a military deconfliction agreement with the North that banned the two countries from holding artillery drills and military flights near the border separating the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea made three attempts in 2023 on May 31, Aug. 24 and Nov. 21. Only the November launch was successful. Seoul and Washington consider the North’s satellite launches a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit it from using ballistic missile technology.
https://www.stripes.com/branches/space_force/2024-12-10/north-korea-space-force-japan-16118307.html
Air National Guard Units Set to Transfer to Space Force Under Defense Bill Despite States' Opposition
December 09, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Nearly 600 Air National Guardsmen who focus on space missions would be transferred to the Space Force against the wishes of every governor in the country under Congress' newly unveiled annual defense bill that could soon be signed into law.
The final version of this year's National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, includes a provision to transfer 578 Guardsmen who perform space missions on behalf of the Air Force's reserve component into the active-duty Space Force.
In total, the legislation calls to move 33 airmen from Alaska, 126 from California, 119 from Colorado, 75 from Florida, 130 from Hawaii, 69 from Ohio and 26 from the Air National Guard's headquarters, according to the bill.
Congressional agreement on the Department of the Air Force's plan, Legislative Proposal 480, to move Air National Guard units with space missions into the active-duty Space Force which was first reported by Military.com in April was met with fierce condemnation by state governors and National Guard lobbyists.
The compromise NDAA would "occur without regard to section 104 of Title 32, United States Code, or section 18238 of Title 10, United States Code," both which say such a move would require approval from state governors.
Every governor in the country as well as five U.S. territories voiced opposition to the move throughout the year, and continued to rally against the compromise on Monday.
"Using the power of Congress to override the authority of governors, rather than directing the Department of Defense to work with governors in good faith, not only creates uncertain circumstances for the service members in affected states but also opens the door for future legislation overriding states' rights," a statement from the National Governors Association said.
"The decision undermines more than 100 years of precedent, as well as national security and military readiness," according to the statement released on Monday.
Notably, President-elect Donald Trump made creating a Space National Guard a promise during his reelection campaign.
A Space National Guard, while opposed by President Joe Biden's administration, was seen as the preferred option among National Guard lobbyists and Air Guardsmen in those space-focused units.
Retired Maj. Gen. Francis McGinn, the president of the National Guard Association of the United States, or NGAUS, took aim at the defense bill Monday.
"The backroom deal that would allow the Air Force to forcibly transfer Air National Guard space units to the Space Force without the required consent of their governors was struck in defiance of a century of legal precedence, the fierce opposition of the nation's governors, and the clear intentions of the incoming administration," McGinn said in a statement Monday.
The Space Force does not have a reserve component such as the National Guard for its Guardians. Legislation passed in the 2024 NDAA allowed for the creation of a completely unique part-time, active-duty service model.
Military.com has previously reported on the growing pains that the part-time service model faces, particularly with how those Guardians would get paid. The Space Force won't be accepting part-time applicants until at least 2026.
National Guard lobbyists and advocates are hoping the original language from the House's version of the NDAA which would require governors' approval before such a transfer will ultimately prevail.
"In the interim, these critical units would have to be rebuilt, leaving the nation with a capability gap in a critical domain for several years," McGinn said. "NGAUS and our partners will continue to oppose LP 480 in other settings.
This fight is far from over."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/09/air-national-guard-units-set-transfer-space-force-under-defense-bill-despite-states-opposition.html