TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
December 18, 2024
NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
What kind of strange galaxy is this? This rare structure is known as a polar ring galaxy, and it seems to have two different rings of stars. In this galaxy, NGC 660, one ring of bright stars, gas, and dark dust appears nearly vertical, while another similar but shorter ring runs diagonally from the upper left. How polar ring galaxies obtain their striking appearance remains a topic of research, but a leading theory holds that it is usually the result of two galaxies with different central ring planes colliding. NGC 660 spans about 50,000 light years and is located about 40 million light years away toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). The featured image was captured recently from Observatorio El Sauce in Chile.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Sols 4396-4397: Roving in a Martian Wonderland
Dec 17, 2024
Over the weekend Curiosity continued her trek around the northern end of Texoli butte, taking in the beautiful views in all directions.
Steep buttes reveal cross-sections through ancient sedimentary strata, while the blocks in our workspace contain nice layers and veins — a detailed record of past surface processes on Mars.
Sometimes we get so used to our normal routine of rover operations that I almost forget how incredible it is to be exploring ancient sedimentary rocks on another planet and seeing new data every day.
Curiosity certainly found a beautiful field site!
But the challenges are a good reminder of what it takes to safely explore Mars.
We had hoped that the weekend drive could be extended a little bit using a guarded driving mode (using auto navigation), but the drive stopped early during the guarded portion.
Because the drive stopped short, we did not have adequate imaging around all of the rover wheels to fully assess the terrain, which meant that unfortunately Curiosity did not pass the Slip Risk Assessment Process (SRAP) and we could not use the rover arm for contact science today.
The team quickly pivoted to remote sensing, knowing there will be other chances to use the instruments on the arm in upcoming plans.
Today’s two-sol plan includes targeted science and a drive on the first sol, followed by untargeted remote sensing on the second sol.
The Geology and Mineralogy Theme Group planned ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam on a target named “Avalon” to characterize a dark vein that crosscuts the bedrock in our workspace.
Then Curiosity will acquire two long-distance RMI mosaics to document the first glimpse of distant boxwork structures, and a view of the top of Mount Sharp from this perspective.
This Martian wonderland includes a lot of beautiful sedimentary structures and fractures, so the team planned Mastcam mosaics to assess a stratigraphic interval that may contain more climbing ripples, another mosaic to characterize the orientation of fractures, and a third mosaic to look at veins and sedimentary layers.
Then Curiosity will drive about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest, and will take post-drive imaging to prepare for planning on Wednesday.
The second sol is untargeted, so GEO added an autonomously selected ChemCam LIBS target.
The plan includes standard DAN and REMS environmental monitoring activities, plus a dust-devil movie and Navcam line-of-sight observation to assess atmospheric dust.
I was on shift as Long-Term Planner today, so in addition to thinking about today’s plan, we’re already looking ahead at the activities that the rover will conduct over the December holidays.
We’re gearing up to send Curiosity our Christmas wish list later this week, and feeling grateful for the gifts she has already sent us!
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4396-4397-roving-in-a-martian-wonderland/
Cutting-Edge Satellite Tracks Lake Water Levels in Ohio River Basin
Dec 17, 2024
Data from the U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission gives researchers a detailed look at lakes and reservoirs in a U.S. watershed.
The Ohio River Basin stretches from Pennsylvania to Illinois and contains a system of reservoirs, lakes, and rivers that drains an area almost as large as France.
Researchers with the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission, a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), now have a new tool for measuring water levels not only in this area, which is home to more than 25 million people, but in other watersheds around the world as well.
Since early 2023, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface — including oceans, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers — covering nearly the entire globe at least once every 21 days.
The SWOT satellite also measures the horizontal extent of water in freshwater bodies. Earlier this year, the mission started making validated data publicly available.
“Having these two perspectives — water extent and levels — at the same time, along with detailed, frequent coverage over large areas, is unprecedented,” said Jida Wang, a hydrologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a member of the SWOT science team. “This is a groundbreaking, exciting aspect of SWOT.”
Researchers can use the mission’s data on water level and extent to calculate how the amount of water stored in a lake or reservoir changes over time.
This, in turn, can give hydrologists a more precise picture of river discharge — how much water moves through a particular stretch of river.
The visualization above uses SWOT data from July 2023 to November 2024 to show the average water level above sea level in lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin, which drains into the Mississippi River.
Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters), and dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters).
Comparing how such levels change can help hydrologists measure water availability over time in a local area or across a watershed.
Complementing a Patchwork of Data
Historically, estimating freshwater availability for communities within a river basin has been challenging.
Researchers gather information from gauges installed at certain lakes and reservoirs, from airborne surveys, and from other satellites that look at either water level or extent.
But for ground-based and airborne instruments, the coverage can be limited in space and time.
Hydrologists can piece together some of what they need from different satellites, but the data may or may not have been taken at the same time, or the researchers might still need to augment the information with measurements from ground-based sensors.
Even then, calculating freshwater availability can be complicated. Much of the work relies on computer models.
“Traditional water models often don’t work very well in highly regulated basins like the Ohio because they have trouble representing the unpredictable behavior of dam operations,” said George Allen, a freshwater researcher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and a member of the SWOT science team.
Many river basins in the United States include dams and reservoirs managed by a patchwork of entities.
While the people who manage a reservoir may know how their section of water behaves, planning for water availability down the entire length of a river can be a challenge.
Since SWOT looks at both rivers and lakes, its data can help provide a more unified view.
“The data lets water managers really know what other people in these freshwater systems are doing,” said SWOT science team member Colin Gleason, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
While SWOT researchers are excited about the possibilities that the data is opening up, there is still much to be done.
The satellite’s high-resolution view of water levels and extent means there is a vast ocean of data that researchers must wade through, and it will take some time to process and analyze the measurements.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/swot/cutting-edge-satellite-tracks-lake-water-levels-in-ohio-river-basin/
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/science-enabling-technology/technology-highlights/very-cold-detectors-reveal-the-very-hot-universe-and-kick-off-a-new-era-in-x-ray-astronomy/
Very Cold Detectors Reveal the Very Hot Universe and Kick Off a New Era in X-ray Astronomy
Dec 17, 2024
X-rays are radiated by matter hotter than one million Kelvin, and high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy can tell us about the composition of the matter and how fast and in what direction it is moving.
Quantum calorimeters are opening this new window on the Universe. First promised four decades ago, the quantum-calorimeter era of X-ray astronomy has finally dawned.
A quantum calorimeter is a device that makes precise measurements of energy quanta by measuring the temperature change that occurs when a quantum of energy is deposited in an absorber with low heat capacity.
The absorber is attached to a thermometer that is somewhat decoupled from a heat sink so that the sensor can heat up and then cool back down again.
To reduce thermodynamic noise and the heat capacity of the sensor, operation at temperatures less than 0.1 K is required.
The idea for thermal measurement of small amounts of energy occurred in several places in the world independently when scientists observed pulses in the readout of low-temperature thermometers and infrared detectors.
They attributed these spurious signals to passing cosmic-ray particles, and considered optimizing detectors for sensitive measurement of the energy of particles and photons.
The idea to develop such sensors for X-ray astronomy was conceived at Goddard Space Flight Center in 1982 when X-ray astronomers were considering instruments to propose for NASA’s planned Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF).
In a fateful conversation, infrared astronomer Harvey Moseley suggested thermal detection could offer substantial improvement over existing solid-state detectors.
Using Goddard internal research and development funding, development advanced sufficiently to justify, just two years later, proposing a quantum-calorimeter X-ray Spectrometer (XRS) for inclusion on AXAF.
Despite its technical immaturity at the time, the revolutionary potential of the XRS was acknowledged, and the proposal was accepted.
The AXAF design evolved over the subsequent years, however, and the XRS was eliminated from its complement of instruments.
After discussions between NASA and the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), a new XRS was included in the instrument suite of the Japanese Astro-E X-ray observatory.
Astro-E launched in 2000 but did not reach orbit due to an anomaly in the first stage of the rocket.
Astro-E2, a rebuild of Astro-E, was successfully placed in orbit in 2005 and renamed Suzaku, but the XRS instrument ceased operation before observations started due to loss of the liquid helium, an essential part of the detector cooling system, caused by a faulty storage system.
A redesigned mission, Astro-H, that included a quantum-calorimeter instrument with a redundant cooling system was successfully launched in 2016 and renamed Hitomi.
Hitomi's Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) obtained high resolution spectra of the Perseus cluster of galaxies and a few other sources before a problem with the attitude control system caused the mission to be lost roughly one month after launch.
Even so, Hitomi was the first orbiting observatory to obtain a scientific result using X-ray quantum calorimeters. The spectacular Perseus spectrum generated by the SXS motivated yet another attempt to implement a spaceborne quantum-calorimeter spectrometer.
The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) was launched in September 2023, with the spectrometer aboard renamed Resolve to represent not only its function but also the resolve of the U.S./Japan collaboration to study the Universe through the window of this new capability.
XRISM has been operating well in orbit for over a year.
Development of the Sensor Technology
Development of the sensor technology employed in Resolve began four decades ago. Note that an X-ray quantum-calorimeter spectrometer requires more than the sensor technology.
Other technologies, such as the coolers that provide a <0.1 K heat sink, the filters that block long-wavelength radiation, the low-noise readout electronics and signal processing, and the X-ray optics, are essential components of the instrument, but discussion in this article is limited to the sensors.
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The sensors used from XRS through Resolve were all based on silicon-thermistor thermometers and mercury telluride (HgTe) X-ray absorbers.
They used arrays consisting of 32 to 36 pixels, each of which was an independent quantum calorimeter. Between Astro-E and Astro-E2, a new method of making the thermistor was developed that significantly reduced its low-frequency noise.
Other fabrication advances made it possible to make reproducible connections between absorbers and thermistors and to fit each thermistor and its thermal isolation under its X-ray absorber, making square arrays feasible.
Through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract executed after the Astro-E2 mission, EPIR Technologies Inc. reduced the specific heat of the HgTe absorbers.
Additional improvements made to the cooler of the detector heat sink allowed operation at a lower temperature, which further reduced the specific heat.
Together, these changes enabled the pixel width to be increased from 0.64 mm to 0.83 mm while still achieving a lower heat capacity, and thus improving the energy resolution.
From Astro-E through Astro-H, the energy resolution for X-rays of energy around 6000 eV improved from 11 eV, to 5.5 eV, to 4 eV. No changes to the array design were made between Astro-H and XRISM.
Over the same period, other approaches to quantum-calorimeter arrays optimized for the needs of future missions were developed.
The use of superconducting transition-edge sensors (TES) instead of silicon (Si) thermistors led to improved energy resolution, more pixels per array, and multiplexing (a technique that allows multiple signals to be carried on a single wire).
Quantum-calorimeter arrays with thousands of pixels are now standard, such as in the NASA contribution to the future European New Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (newAthena) mission.
And quantum calorimeters using paramagnetic thermometers — which unlike TES and Si thermistors require no dissipation of heat in the thermometer for it to be read out — combined with high-density wiring are a promising route for realizing even larger arrays.
Results from Resolve
So, what is Resolve revealing about the Universe? Through spectroscopy alone, Resolve allows us to construct images of complex environments where collections of gas and dust with various attributes exist, emitting and absorbing X-rays at energies characteristic of their various compositions, velocities, and temperatures.
For example, in the middle of the galaxy known as NCG 4151 (see figure above), matter spiraling into the central massive black hole forms a circular structure that is flat near the black hole, more donut-shaped further out, and, according to the Resolve data, a bit lumpy.
Matter near the black hole is heated up to X-ray-emitting temperatures and irradiates the matter in the circular structure.
The Resolve spectrum has a bright narrow emission line (peak) from neutral iron atoms that must be coming from colder matter in the circular structure, because hotter material would be ionized, and would have a different emission signature.
Nonetheless, the shape of the iron line needs three components to describe it, each coming from a different lump in the circular structure. The presence of absorption lines (dips) in the spectrum provides further detail about the structure of the infalling matter.
A second example is the detection of X-ray emission by Resolve from the debris of stars that have exploded, such as N132D (see figure below), that will improve our understanding of the explosion mechanism and how the elements produced in stars get distributed, and allow us to infer the type of star each was before ending in a supernova.
Elements are identified by their characteristic emission lines, and shifts of those lines via the Doppler effect tell us how fast the material is moving.
These results are just the beginning. The rich Resolve data sets are identifying complex velocity structures, rare elements, and multiple temperature components in a diverse ensemble of cosmic objects.
Welcome to the quantum calorimeter era! Stay tuned for more revelations!
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NASA Missions Spot Cosmic ‘Wreath’ Displaying Stellar Circle of Life
Dec 17, 2024
Since antiquity, wreaths have symbolized the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
It is fitting then that one of the best places for astronomers to learn more about the stellar lifecycle resembles a giant holiday wreath itself.
The star cluster NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.
The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy.
Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger.
This new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope.
The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.
Meanwhile, X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space.
These X-rays are powered by winds flowing from the young, massive stars that are sprinkled throughout the cluster.
The extended cloud in the Chandra data likely comes from the overlapping X-ray glow of thousands of young, low-mass stars in the cluster.
In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available.
Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.)
In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, purple, blue, and white) has been combined with optical data (green and violet) captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.
Visual Description
This release includes two composite images, each featuring a star cluster that strongly resembles holiday greenery.
The first image depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges.
The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.
The image is aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, in blues, golds, whites, oranges, and reds.
These lights represent stars within the cluster. Some of the lights gleam with diffraction spikes, while others emit a warm, diffuse glow.
Upon closer inspection, many of the glowing specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.
The second image in today’s release is a new depiction of NGC 2264, known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster”. Here, wispy green clouds in a conical shape strongly resemble an evergreen tree.
Tiny specks of white, blue, purple, and red light, stars within the cluster, dot the structure, turning the cloud into a festive, cosmic Christmas tree!
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-missions-spot-cosmic-wreath-displaying-stellar-circle-of-life/
Power Outage At SpaceX Caused Loss Of Ground Control To Private Space Mission
Dec 18, 2024
This September, the Polaris Dawn mission became the first to have a private space walk.
Run by billionaire Jared Isaacman, the mission was seen by some as risky – and it has now been revealed that the spacecraft lost contact with ground control for at least an hour.
This incident was not reported on at the time and has only now come to light in a Reuters exclusive.
The fault was not from the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule used for the mission, but from the ground. Reportedly, a power outage hit a SpaceX facility in California, temporarily preventing ground control from commanding the craft.
The team and ground control had to use satellites from Starlink, another Elon Musk company, to communicate. Isaacman and the other three astronauts fortunately remained safe during this outage.
"Not having command and control is a big deal," one of the sources for the Reuters piece, who is familiar with the matter, told the outlet.
"The whole point of having mission operators on the ground is to have the ability to quickly respond if something happens."
SpaceX and Musk have so far not responded to media requests about the incident and it is unclear whether the incident was reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, but a source told Reuters that SpaceX notified NASA since the type of spacecraft is also used by their astronauts.
https://www.iflscience.com/power-outage-at-spacex-caused-loss-of-ground-control-to-private-space-mission-77277
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/power-failed-spacex-mission-control-before-september-spacewalk-by-nasa-nominee-2024-12-17/
Catching The View From The Edge Of Space
December 18, 2024
Does “Pix or it didn’t happen” apply to traveling to the edge of space on a balloon-lofted solar observatory? Yes, it absolutely does.
The breathtaking views on this page come courtesy of IRIS-2, a compact imaging package that creators [Ramón García], [Miguel Angel Gomez], [David Mayo], and [Aitor Conde] recently decided to release as open source hardware.
It rode to the edge of space aboard Sunrise III, a balloon-borne solar observatory designed to study solar magnetic fields and atmospheric plasma flows.
To do that the observatory needed a continual view of the Sun over an extended period, so the platform was launched from northern Sweden during the summer of 2024.
It rose to 37 km (23 miles) and stayed aloft in the stratosphere tracking the never-setting Sun for six and a half days before landing safely in Canada.
Strictly speaking, IRIS-2 wasn’t part of the primary mission, at least in terms of gathering solar data.
Rather, the 5 kg (11 pound) package was designed to provide engineering data about the platform, along with hella cool video of the flight.
To that end, it was fitted with four GoPro cameras controlled by an MPS340 microcontroller.
The cameras point in different directions to capture all the important action on the platform, like the main telescope slewing to track the sun, as well as details of the balloon system itself.
The controller was programmed to record 4K video at 30 frames per second during launch and landing, plus fifteen minutes of 120 FPS video during the balloon release.
The rest of the time, the cameras took a single frame every two minutes, which resulted in some wonderful time-lapse sequences.
The whole thing was powered by 56 AA batteries, and judging by the video below it performed flawlessly during the flight, despite the penetrating stratospheric cold and blistering UV exposure.
Hats off to the IRIS-2 team for this accomplishment. Sure, the videos are a delight, but this is more than just eye candy.
Seeing how the observatory and balloon platform performed during flight provides valuable engineering data that will no doubt improve future flights.
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/18/catching-the-view-from-the-edge-of-space/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKWAjiNBPxo
https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/234239/Standard-Uranium-Announces-Engagement-of-Fleet-Space-Technologies-for-ExoSphere-Multiphysics-at-Flagship-Davidson-River-Project
https://standarduranium.ca/news-releases/
Standard Uranium Announces Engagement of Fleet Space Technologies for ExoSphere Multiphysics at Flagship Davidson River Project
December 18, 2024 7:00 AM EST
Standard Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: STND) (OTCQB: STTDF) (FSE: 9SU) ("Standard Uranium" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the engagement of Fleet Space Technologies to implement their ExoSphere Ambient Noise Tomography ("ANT") and ground gravity surveys on the Company's flagship Davidson River project.
Standard Uranium is pleased to be the first uranium company to deploy the industry leading innovative technology in the southwest Athabasca basin.
Highlights
First ANT Survey in the SW Basin: The Company and Fleet Space are partnering to complete what will be the first combination ANT-Gravity surveys in the southwestern Athabasca Basin region on the Davidson River project.
Targeted Multiphysics: Multidisciplinary approach to targeting through Fleet space's end-to-end mineral exploration solution, ExoSphere, collecting ground gravity data in tandem with real-time ANT data, upgrading historical work and layering additional geophysics over known uranium-bearing corridors on the Davidson River project.
Uranium Deposit Vectors: ANT-Gravity grids covering uranium-bearing structural corridors on the Project are designed to characterize lithological variations and alteration signatures, in addition to further refining the structural architecture of known basement conductors on Davidson River.
The results of the surveys will assist in prioritization of target areas on the Project for upcoming drill programs.
"We are very excited to be working with the Fleet Space team on what will be the first deployment of ExoSphere Multiphysics surveys in the southwest Athabasca Basin," said Sean Hillacre, President & VP Exploration of Standard Uranium.
"I look forward to de-risking our exploration strategies and upgrading our drill targets at Davidson River through these cutting edge technologies, which will provide additional discovery vectors on our flagship project."
First ExoSphere Multiphysics in the SW Athabasca Basin Region
Fleet Space Technologies is transforming critical mineral discovery with its end-to-end mineral exploration solution, ExoSphere, which combines satellite connectivity, 3D multiphysics, and artificial intelligence ("AI") to image mineral systems up to depths of 5 km in real-time.
Over 40 leading exploration companies like Rio Tinto, Barrick, and Gold Fields, among many others, use ExoSphere's real-time 3D subsurface imaging on projects across five continents.
ExoSphere is a vertically integrated solution, combining Fleet Space's LEO satellite network, satellite-enabled smart seismic sensors, and predictive AI models to streamline data acquisition, processing, integration, and delivery of targeting insights in a single workflow.
Deployed in an array across an area of interest, Fleet Space's lightweight, hand-deployable seismic sensors ("Geodes") transmit high-quality 3D Ambient Noise Tomography ("ANT") data, measured from naturally occurring environmental seismic vibrations in the ground, to Fleet Space's satellites for processing into actionable insights for exploration teams in the field.
This simplifies data operations, enhances the quality and speed of data-driven targeting selection, and helps to minimise environmental footprint across the lifecycle of a project.
Leveraging the collected ANT data, ExoSphere will automatically conduct a cover correction of the gravity data collected simultaneously to remove false positive anomalies due to the geometry of the overburden and basement contact.
The combination of data will create a 3D density model providing a multidimensional view of subsurface structures and differentiation of rock types and potential alteration signatures to aid in drill target selection and prioritization.
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Davidson River Project
Size & Location: The Davidson River project covers more than 30,700 hectares across ten mineral claims in the southwestern Athabasca Basin region, approximately 25-30 kilometres west of NexGen's Arrow deposit and Fission Uranium's Triple R deposit, and 5 kilometres south of the present-day margin of the Athabasca Basin.
Geophysical/Geological Signatures: The project encapsulates the inferred extension of the Patterson Lake corridor, a structural trend that hosts the neighboring Arrow and Triple-R uranium deposits.
Four main conductive corridors have been identified on the Project, totalling more than 70 kilometres of prospective strike length. The new multiphysics surveys will add additional targeting layers to expedite discoveries on the Project.
Drilling Highlights: The summer 2022 program revealed the best intersections of prospective alteration and structure to date along the Bronco and Thunderbird trends, including wide graphitic structural zones on Bronco and oxidized alteration on Thunderbird, in addition to elevated radioactivity and dravite alteration.
Machine Learning: Data-driven machine learning techniques will contribute to drill targeting at Davidson River through anomaly detection and mapping of EM data, in addition to anomaly matching based on the footprints of known world-class uranium deposits in the area including the Arrow and Triple-R deposits.
The machine learning techniques will also be applied to the Company's internal drilling and geochemical databases.
Next Steps: Planned 2025 drilling will follow up on the most prospective basement structures and alteration zones intersected to date and begin testing new target areas prioritized by the new ANT-Gravity surveys.
Standard Uranium plans to follow up on prospective drilling results from 2022 and test brand new high-priority targets akin to the neighboring JR Zone discovery within the new southeast claim blocks.
Standard Uranium holds more than 94,000 hectares of prime exploration real estate across the prolific Athabasca Basin region, which hosts the highest-grade uranium deposits on the planet.
The Company boasts an attractive portfolio of uranium exploration projects currently available for option ranging from early-stage to drill-ready projects throughout the Athabasca region, providing turn-key opportunities with permits in hand, First Nations agreements signed, vendors secured, and highly prospective uranium targets.
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https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/A_fall_of_CubeSats
A fall of CubeSats
18/12/2024
Four pioneering ESA Technology CubeSats reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the last few months.
Each was only about the size of a shoebox or smaller, but despite their diminutive dimensions the missions left an outsize legacy in terms of demonstrating innovative space technology, industrial capacity building and scientific data return.
“The ESA in-orbit demonstration phases of these missions had already been completed,” explains Roger Walker, heading ESA’s Technology CubeSats.
“The companies overseeing them continued to operate them after the conclusion of our involvement however, gathering additional flight experience to the end, right up until their reentry.”
CubeSats are small low-cost satellites built up from standardised 10 cm boxes. Originally developed for educational uses these highly capable platforms are increasingly finding operational uses.
ESA’s Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality employs them to provide the European space sector with early flight demonstrations of promising innovations, typically targeting scientific or Earth-observing goals at the same time.
The CubeSats had been intentionally deployed in low enough altitudes for their orbits to naturally decay over time, fulfilling ESA space debris regulations.
SIMBA tracked the Sun
Developed for ESA by a Belgian-led consortium, the SIMBA (Sun-earth IMBAlance) CubeSat, which was launched in September 2020 and reentered on 14 August, harnessed a highly accurate Attitude Determination and Control System based on an experimental star tracker camera and reaction wheels.
This enabled SIMBA’s main radiometer instrument to perform measurements of total solar irradiance – how much solar energy Earth is receiving from the Sun – and how much is being radiated back, to determine Earth’s radiation budget – a vital variable for climate studies.
"Fitting a radiometer aboard such a tiny satellite proved quite challenging," recalls Stijn Nevens of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Principal Investigator for the mission.
"We had to omit some of the features of conventional radiometers, requiring extra work at the data processing stage, but we learned a lot. For me this has been a long and winding road – it feels weird not having SIMBA in the sky anymore!"
Tjorven Delabie of the Belgium-based ArcSec Space start-up, spun out of KU Leuven, adds: “Our spin-off company most probably wouldn’t be here if not for the SIMBA mission.
It took a startracker algorithm that was previously very much an academic endeavour and demonstrated our approach worked for real in space, giving a lot of traction in the market.
"So far we’ve sold more than a hundred startrackers around the world, and we’re following up with reaction wheels and ultimately a full ADCS for CubeSats.
With SIMBA such an important part of our history, getting the email that it had reenteed was a little bit of a sad moment, almost like someone had died, but we are involved in ESA’s follow-on CubeSpec mission.”
RadCube monitored space weather impacts to Earth's magnetosphere
Six days later SIMBA was followed into atmospheric reentry by the RadCube mission from Hungary, Poland and the UK, tasked with surveying space weather.
Equipped with miniaturised magnetometers to chart disturbances to Earth’s magnetic field as well as a space radiation ‘telescope’ detector, the August 2021-launched CubeSat was in the right place at the right time as the Sun entered its 11-year peak of activity, giving rise to sensing numerous solar storms and active terrestrial auroras.
And RadCube’s MAGIC magnetometers, based on over the counter ‘magnetoresistive’ sensors typically used in computer hard drives or smartphones, will be reflown on a follow-up ESA CubeSat called HENON, which will venture beyond Earth into deep space in order to survey space weather.
The same MAGIC sensors are also destined to form part of a ‘space weather station’ for the lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon, the European Radiation Sensors Array.
“RadCube has been a tremendously valuable opportunity, allowing us to demonstrate the capabilities of MAGIC,” explains Jonathan Eastwood of Imperial College London.
“To start with we successfully validated the instrument performance and demonstrated that these sensors, an order of magnitude smaller and more power efficient than those used for typical science missions, could still meet the requirements needed for space weather monitoring of magnetic field disturbances in low-Earth orbit.
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"The icing on the cake was RadCube operating during the intense geomagnetic storm of May 2024, the strongest for 20 years.
This shows that instruments based on MAGIC’s technology can contribute to ESA’s space safety monitoring goals. We are really excited to now be contributing further MAGIC instruments to ESA’s ERSA and HENON projects.”
Sunstorm's X-ray analysis of erupting Sun
On 5 September the reentry of Sunstorm took place, which was made by a Finnish-led consortium and flown on the same launcher as RadCube.
It hosted a new type of solar X-ray spectrometer to characterise the strong X-ray pulses that accompany coronal mass ejections – massive eruptions of many millions of tons of material from the Sun’s surface, giving rise in turn to solar storms with the potential to impact satellites in space as well as terrestrial power and communications infrastructure.
With its basic technology proven in space, a full-size operational version of Sunstorm’s XFM-CS (X-ray Flux Monitor for CubeSats) instrument is now due to be flown on the US NOAA Space Weather Next L1 satellite in 2029.
Formation flying GOMX-4B traded crypto
The most recent Technology CubeSat reentry took place on 9 October, marking the end of ESA’s GOMX-4B CubeSat developed by GOMSpace in Denmark.
Flown jointly with the Danish Ministry of Defence’s GOMX-4A in February 2018, the pair demonstrated formation flying based on cold gas thrusters and data sharing via inter-satellite links.
GomX-4B also hosted the HyperScout hyperspectral imager for Earth observation, provided by cosine Remote Sensing in the Netherlands.
"The GomX-4B mission played a pivotal role in demonstrating the capabilities of the cosine HyperScout hypersectral imager, showcasing its potential for the first time," comments cosine Managing Director Marco Esposito.
Follow-up versions of HyperScout have gone on to be flown on ESA’s Earth-observing Federated Satellite Systems (FSSCat) mission and the Hera asteroid mission, while Hera’s Juventas CubeSat has incorporated an evolution of GomX-4B’s cold gas thrusters from GOMSpace Sweden.
In the extended mission phase GOMX-4B was also able to make several initially unplanned demonstrations by reconfiguring its software and radios on orbit.
This included the first demonstration of 5G Internet-of-things communications from a nanosatellite with OQTECH of Luxembourg and the first cryptocurrency transactions made in space with J.P. Morgan.
“The GOMX-4 mission is now an important part of our legacy, and the products, capabilities and reliability demonstrated through this mission continues to be an important asset for building trust with existing and future customers”, says Lars Krogh Alminde, Co-founder and Vice President Strategy & Business Development.
A dedicated follow-on mission, GOMX-5, is in development.
ESA's Technology CubeSats
ESA supports Technology CubeSats through the ‘Fly’ element of its General Support Technology Programme, with many more in preparation.
As well as HENON, CubeSpec, and GOMX-5, all due for launch in 2026, other missions include next year’s GENA-OT which will test a new 16U platform from OroraTech and fly numerous technology experiments.
Meanwhile ESA's PRETTY CubeSat for satnav reflectometry testing goes on operating in orbit.
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Researchers eye space nuclear thermal propulsion for space maneuver warfare and to cut transit time to Mars
Dec. 18, 2024
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers are surveying industry for companies able to design space-qualified nuclear thermal rocket propulsion engines for future military and commercial space applications.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a request for information (DARPA-SN-25-21) on Friday for the Nuclear Thermal Rocket Propulsion project.
Nuclear thermal propulsion
Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) is a fission-powered system that uses a reactor to heat a liquid propellant into a gas, which shoots through a nozzle to propel a spacecraft.
This approach reportedly is twice as efficient than chemical rockets, which can free space and weight for more payload and supplies.
Nuclear thermal propulsion, moreover, is expected to reduce the time it takes to reach Mars by as much as 25 percent, which could speed space exploration and limit crew exposure to cosmic radiation.
The project seeks information and industry expertise in space-qualified nuclear thermal rocket propulsion engine design; development, modeling, and simulation; engine integration; autonomous engine and reactor control; engine instrumentation; and engine system integration.
The dramatic improvement in propulsion efficiency offered by nuclear thermal propulsion potentially enables development of a true space logistics network, researchers say.
Space maneuver warfare
For the military, nuclear thermal propulsion holds the potential to enable combat forces no longer to be static and predictable, and achieve space maneuver particularly in the face of an adversary to maintain initiative, achieve surprise, and outmaneuver an adversary in space.
For commercial space, nuclear thermal propulsion may help transport astronauts safely to and from Mars, substantially reduce trip time, and reduce the risks of space radiation and other aspects of long-duration space missions.
For deep-space missions, nuclear thermal propulsion could cut years off transit times for planetary exploration, and widen launch windows based on orbital alignment.
Nuclear thermal propulsion conceptually is similar to chemical propulsion; it replaces the combustion chamber with a nuclear reactor to heat propellant and accelerate it out a nozzle to generate thrust.
NASA collaboration
Separately, DARPA researchers are working together with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington to develop nuclear thermal propulsion as part of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, in which Lockheed Martin Corp. will demonstrate this technology as early as 2027.
The DRACO demonstration will use pressure-fed gaseous helium as a propellant to reduce system complexity; however, the DRACO reactor is designed for operation with liquid hydrogen propellant to allow extensibility to future operational systems.
Industry responses to this request for information by help inform and explore future programs that involve nuclear thermal propulsion.
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/power/article/55250237/space-nuclear-propulsion-for-space-maneuver-warfare-and-exploration
https://crystalbook.ru/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DARPA-SN-25-21.pdf
Japanese Space Startup's Rocket Launch Fails Minutes After Lift-Off
Dec 18, 2024 10:41 am IST
A Japanese space startup's attempt to launch a rocket carrying satellites into orbit was aborted minutes after liftoff on Wednesday.
This was Tokyo-based Space One's second attempt to launch the Kairos small rocket, nine months after the company's first try ended in an explosion.
The Kairos No 2 rocket lifted off from a site in the mountainous prefecture of Wakayama in central Japan.
The flight lasted about 10 minutes before it was terminated because "the achievement of its mission would be difficult", Space One said.
The cause of the flight failure was not immediately known, but footage circulating on social media showed the 18-metre (59 ft) solid-propellant rocket blasting off from Spaceport Kii in western Japan at 11:00 am (local time) but soon losing stability in its trajectory as it ascended.
As many as five small satellites, including one from the Taiwan Space Agency, were on board the rocket headed into sun-synchronous orbit roughly 500 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
The company said it is investigating the incident and will host a press conference at 2:00 pm local time.
Space One hopes to become Japan's first company to put a satellite into orbit in a boost to Asia's second-largest economy's lagging space industry.
But the debut flight of its Kairos rocket in March, carrying a Japanese government satellite intended to monitor North Korea's missile launches and other military activities, exploded five seconds after launch.
At the time, Space One said that inappropriate flight settings triggered the rocket's autonomous self-destruct system even though no issues were found in its hardware.
The company said it had fixed the cause of the debut flight failure.
Tokyo-based Space One was founded in 2018 by Canon Electronics, IHI's aerospace unit, construction firm Shimizu and a state-backed bank, with the goal of launching 20 small rockets a year by 2029 to capture growing satellite launch demand.
Japan hopes the company can pave the way for a domestic space industry that can compete with the United States and other space leaders.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/video-japanese-space-startups-rocket-launch-fails-minutes-after-liftoff-7274567