TYB's
That's both a double YES and a fuck YES from me.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
January 15, 2025
Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars
Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions. This happened just yesterday, though, as seen from some locations in North America and western Africa. This occultation was notable not only because the Moon was a fully lit Wolf Moon, but because Mars was near its largest and brightest, moving to opposition the closest to the Earth in its orbit only tomorrow. The engulfing, more formally called an occultation, typically lasting about an hour. The featured image was taken from near Chicago, Illinois, USA just as Earth's largest satellite was angularly moving away from the much more distant red planet. Our Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System's planets. Given the temporary alignment of orbital planes, the next time our Moon eclipses Mars will be a relatively soon February 9.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
>>22356714 PB
>Ghost Riders In The Sky
Marble-sized balls force Sydney beaches to close
January 14, 2025
Months after mysterious black balls forced the closure of some of Sydney's most famous beaches, small marble-like debris has begun washing up on the city's shores again.
The balls - this time grey or white in colour - have prompted councils to shut nine beaches, including popular Manly and Dee Why, while authorities investigate.
Eight beaches including Bondi were closed for several days in October and a massive clean-up ordered after thousands of black deposits started appearing on the coast.
Testing by authorities determined those balls were most likely the result of a sewage spill.
Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins said the latest balls "could be anything", according to the Guardian Australia.
"We don't know at the moment what it is and that makes it even more concerning," she said.
"There's something that's obviously leaking or dropping… floating out there and being tossed around."
In a post on Facebook on Tuesday, the Northern Beaches Council said they were alerted to the fresh debris by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The agency and the council planned to collect the discoveries for testing and inspect other beaches in the area too.
Anyone who spotted the balls was urged to contact authorities, the council added.
Though widely reported to be "tar balls", the debris in October was later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.
Scientists said they resembled fat, oil, and grease blobs - often called fatbergs - which are commonly formed in sewerage systems.
However Sydney Water reported there were no known issues with waste systems in the city, and authorities still don't know the source of the material, prompting some to express concerns about the safety of the city's beaches.
"The EPA can't explain the source of the human waste causing the fatbergs and it can't assure the public that Sydney's beaches are safe to use," state politician Sue Higginson, from the Greens party, said in a statement in December.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvqjrlj8d6o
Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument Poster
Jan 14, 2025
NASA's Roman Coronagraph Instrument will greatly advance our ability to directly image exoplanets, or planets and disks around other stars.
The Roman Coronagraph Instrument, a technology demonstration designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will fly aboard NASA's next flagship astrophysics observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Coronagraphs work by blocking light from a bright object, like a star, so that the observer can more easily see a nearby faint object, like a planet.
The Roman Coronagraph Instrument will use a unique suite of technologies including deformable mirrors, masks, high-precision cameras, and active wavefront sensing and control to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, or 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs.
The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
Artwork Key
-
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
-
Exoplanet Count : Total number of exoplanets discovered at the time of poster release. This number is increasing all of the time.
-
Nancy Grace Roman's birth year : Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16, 1925.
-
Color Filters : Filters block different wavelengths, or colors, of light.
-
Exoplanet Camera
-
Deformable Mirrors : Adjusts the wavefront of incoming light by changing the shape of a mirror with thousands of tiny pistons.
-
Focal Plane Mask : This is a mask that helps to block starlight and reveal exoplanets.
-
Lyot Stop Mask : This is a mask that helps to block starlight and reveal exoplanets.
-
Fast Steering Mirror : This element corrects for telescope pointing jitter.
-
Additional Coronagraph Masks : These masks block most of the glare from stars to reveal faint orbiting planets and dusty debris disks.
https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/coronagraph-instrument-poster/
NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Layers of Interstellar Dust, Gas
January 14, 2025 2:15PM (EST)
Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star apart as it went.
When the shockwave reached the star’s surface, it punched through, generating a brief, intense pulse of X-rays and ultraviolet light that traveled outward into the surrounding space.
About 350 years later, that pulse of light has reached interstellar material, illuminating it, warming it, and causing it to glow in infrared light.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed that infrared glow, revealing fine details resembling the knots and whorls of wood grain.
These observations are allowing astronomers to map the true 3D structure of this interstellar dust and gas (known as the interstellar medium) for the first time.
“We were pretty shocked to see this level of detail,” said Jacob Jencson of Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, principal investigator of the science program.
“We see layers like an onion,” added Josh Peek of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, a member of the science team.
“We think every dense, dusty region that we see, and most of the ones we don’t see, look like this on the inside. We just have never been able to look inside them before.”
The team is presenting their findings in a press conference at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington.
“Even as a star dies, its light endures—echoing across the cosmos. It’s been an extraordinary three years since we launched NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Every image, every discovery, shows a portrait not only of the majesty of the universe but the power of the NASA team and the promise of international partnerships.
This groundbreaking mission, NASA’s largest international space science collaboration, is a true testament to NASA’s ingenuity, teamwork, and pursuit of excellence,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
“What a privilege it has been to oversee this monumental effort, shaped by the tireless dedication of thousands of scientists and engineers around the globe.
This latest image beautifully captures the lasting legacy of Webb—a keyhole into the past and a mission that will inspire generations to come.”
Taking a CT Scan
The images from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) highlight a phenomenon known as a light echo.
A light echo is created when a star explodes or erupts, flashing light into surrounding clumps of dust and causing them to shine in an ever-expanding pattern.
Light echoes at visible wavelengths (such as those seen around the star V838 Monocerotis) are due to light reflecting off of interstellar material.
In contrast, light echoes at infrared wavelengths are caused when the dust is warmed by energetic radiation and then glows.
The researchers targeted a light echo that had previously been observed by NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
It is one of dozens of light echoes seen near the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant – the remains of the star that exploded.
The light echo is coming from unrelated material that is behind Cassiopeia A, not material that was ejected when the star exploded.
The most obvious features in the Webb images are tightly packed sheets. These filaments show structures on remarkably small scales of about 400 astronomical units, or less than one-hundredth of a light-year.
(An astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance. Neptune’s orbit is 60 AU in diameter.)
“We did not know that the interstellar medium had structures on that small of a scale, let alone that it was sheet-like,” said Peek.
These sheet-like structures may be influenced by interstellar magnetic fields. The images also show dense, tightly wound regions that resemble knots in wood grain.
These may represent magnetic “islands” embedded within the more streamlined magnetic fields that suffuse the interstellar medium.
“This is the astronomical equivalent of a medical CT scan,” explained Armin Rest of the Space Telescope Science Institute, a member of the science team.
“We have three slices taken at three different times, which will allow us to study the true 3D structure. It will completely change the way we study the interstellar medium.”
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-102
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-intricate-layers-of-interstellar-dust-gas/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw2wwgx0JdM
AFRL Opens Military Testing Facility for Air, Space Force Electronics
January 15, 2025
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a testing center dedicated to electronic components that complete larger US Air Force and Space Forces systems.
Located at the Radiation Tolerance Research on Electronics for Space and Strategic Systems (FORTRESS) facility in New Mexico, the hub includes capabilities to simulate man-made and natural environments where the resulting technologies will be deployed.
The 6,204-square-foot (576-square-meter) facility will also offer development, assessment, and certification services for devices to be used for aerial, space, and allied craft.
“We have some of the most unique capabilities in the Air Force,” AFRL Spacecraft Technology Division Chief Kenneth Bole explained.
“We use a low-dose gamma radiation for ‘day in the life testing’ of electronics to make sure they last day to day, but in the long term, we also have to look at how they perform over a lifetime.”
The AFRL noted that the larger FORTRESS organization, operating under the command’s Space Vehicles Directorate, has already proven its function in the past by producing materials fitted into the International Space Station, the Mars Rovers, and the widely-used Global Positioning System.
“The vast majority of US spacecraft are enabled by electronics developed and tested here,” Space Vehicles Directorate Director Col. Jeremy Raley stated.
“[FORTRESS] provides national security, and the work that we do here ensures that our critical national security space missions happen with the required resilience and dependability.”
https://thedefensepost.com/2025/01/15/us-air-space-electronics/
https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4002967/afrl-hosts-ribbon-cutting-ceremony-at-new-fortress-facility/
The best Milky Way map, by Gaia
15/01/2025
This is a new artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.
Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way.
Even seemingly simple ideas about the nature of our galaxy’s central bar and the spiral arms have been overturned.
Gaia has shown us that it has more than two spiral arms and that they are less prominent than we previously thought.
In addition, Gaia has shown that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun.
No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so we can’t take a selfie, but Gaia is giving us the best insight yet of what our home galaxy looks like.
Once all of Gaia’s observations collected over the past decade are made available in two upcoming data releases, we can expect an even sharper view of the Milky Way.
[Image Description: A model image of what our home galaxy, the Milky Way, might look like face-on: as viewed from above the disc of the galaxy, with its spiral arms and bulge in full view.
In the centre of the galaxy, the bulge shines as a hazy oval, emitting a faint golden gleam. Starting at the central bulge, several glistening spiral arms coil outwards, creating a perfectly circle-shaped spiral.
They give the impression of someone having sprinkled pastel purple glitter on the pitch-black background, in the shape of sparkling, curled-up snakes.]
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/The_best_Milky_Way_map_by_Gaia
Newfound Galaxy Class May Indicate Early Black Hole Growth, Webb Finds
Jan 14, 2025
In December 2022, less than six months after commencing science operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed something never seen before: numerous red objects that appear small on the sky, which scientists soon called “little red dots” (LRDs).
Though these dots are quite abundant, researchers are perplexed by their nature, the reason for their unique colors, and what they convey about the early universe.
A team of astronomers recently compiled one of the largest samples of LRDs to date, nearly all of which existed during the first 1.5 billion years after the big bang.
They found that a large fraction of the LRDs in their sample showed signs of containing growing supermassive black holes.
“We’re confounded by this new population of objects that Webb has found. We don’t see analogs of them at lower redshifts, which is why we haven’t seen them prior to Webb,” said Dale Kocevski of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and lead author of the study.
“There's a substantial amount of work being done to try to determine the nature of these little red dots and whether their light is dominated by accreting black holes.”
A Potential Peek Into Early Black Hole Growth
A significant contributing factor to the team’s large sample size of LRDs was their use of publicly available Webb data.
To start, the team searched for these red sources in the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey before widening their scope to other extragalactic legacy fields, including the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) and the Next Generation Deep Extragalactic Exploratory Public (NGDEEP) survey.
The methodology used to identify these objects also differed from previous studies, resulting in the census spanning a wide redshift range.
The distribution they discovered is intriguing: LRDs emerge in large numbers around 600 million years after the big bang and undergo a rapid decline in quantity around 1.5 billion years after the big bang.
The team looked toward the Red Unknowns: Bright Infrared Extragalactic Survey (RUBIES) for spectroscopic data on some of the LRDs in their sample.
They found that about 70 percent of the targets showed evidence for gas rapidly orbiting 2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second) – a sign of an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole.
This suggests that many LRDs are accreting black holes, also known as active galactic nuclei (AGN).
“The most exciting thing for me is the redshift distributions.
These really red, high-redshift sources basically stop existing at a certain point after the big bang,” said Steven Finkelstein, a co-author of the study at the University of Texas at Austin.
“If they are growing black holes, and we think at least 70 percent of them are, this hints at an era of obscured black hole growth in the early universe.”
Contrary to Headlines, Cosmology Isn’t Broken
When LRDs were first discovered, some suggested that cosmology was “broken.”
If all of the light coming from these objects was from stars, it implied that some galaxies had grown so big, so fast, that theories could not account for them.
The team’s research supports the argument that much of the light coming from these objects is from accreting black holes and not from stars.
Fewer stars means smaller, more lightweight galaxies that can be understood by existing theories.
“This is how you solve the universe-breaking problem,” said Anthony Taylor, a co-author of the study at the University of Texas at Austin.
Curiouser and Curiouser
There is still a lot up for debate as LRDs seem to evoke even more questions. For example, it is still an open question as to why LRDs do not appear at lower redshifts.
One possible answer is inside-out growth: As star formation within a galaxy expands outward from the nucleus, less gas is being deposited by supernovas near the accreting black hole, and it becomes less obscured.
In this case, the black hole sheds its gas cocoon, becomes bluer and less red, and loses its LRD status.
Additionally, LRDs are not bright in X-ray light, which contrasts with most black holes at lower redshifts.
However, astronomers know that at certain gas densities, X-ray photons can become trapped, reducing the amount of X-ray emission.
Therefore, this quality of LRDs could support the theory that these are heavily obscured black holes.
The team is taking multiple approaches to understand the nature of LRDs, including examining the mid-infrared properties of their sample, and looking broadly for accreting black holes to see how many fit LRD criteria.
Obtaining deeper spectroscopy and select follow-up observations will also be beneficial for solving this currently “open case” about LRDs.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/newfound-galaxy-class-may-indicate-early-black-hole-growth-webb-finds/
https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/01/15/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-firefly-aerospace-and-ispace-moon-landers-on-falcon-9-rocket-from-the-kennedy-space-center/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI9DAXWHUgg
American, Japanese robotic landers share rocket launch to the Moon
January 15, 2025
For the first time in lunar exploration, two robotic landers, from two different nations launched to the Moon on one rocket.
But despite Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and Tokyo-based ispace sharing one SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the two missions are taking very different paths and timelines to reach the lunar surface.
Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened Jan. 15 at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 UTC). The flight was the 100th orbital launch for SpaceX from the historic pad formerly used by Apollo and the Space Shuttle.
Minutes after deployment, Firefly confirmed acquisition of signal from its lander, officially allowing 45-day trek to the Moon to proceed.
Launch weather officers at the 45th Weather Squadron put the odds of favorable conditions for liftoff at 90 percent, stating that winds could be an issue at launch time.
“Rain showers and overcast conditions will clear the Space Coast by early this afternoon. Wind speeds will decrease throughout the day today,” meteorologists wrote.
“By early Wednesday morning and the primary launch window, winds will be at 15-20mph with occasional gusts to 25mph. This will cause a small chance for liftoff winds and a Cumulus Cloud Rule violation.”
SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster designated B1085 on this mission, which launched for a fifth time. Its previous launches were Crew-9, GPS 3 SV07, Starlink 10-5 and Starlink 6-77.
Nearly 8.5 minutes in to the flight, B1085 landed on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ marking the 107th landing for JRTI and the 398th booster landing to date.
‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’
The Wednesday morning launch marked the first Moon-bound mission for Firefly Aerospace. It’s Blue Ghost lunar lander was conceived following the company’s selection as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Program.
The objective of CLPS is to get NASA science to the surface of the Moon without the agency having to build the landers or procure launches.
NASA has multiple contracts with a variety of CLPS providers, with Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission 1 and Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 flights occurring in early 2024.
Blue Ghost has a dry mass of 469 kg (1,034 lbs) and weighs roughly 1,500 kg (3,300 lbs) when fueled.
It uses a combination of MMH hypergolic propellant and MON-3 oxidizer to power the main engine and thrusters during its journey.
It’s designed to carry ten NASA science payloads to the surface of the Moon, which so far is the most manifested on a single lander as part of CLPS.
Joel Kearns, the Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said once the 10 instruments were small enough that they could fly on one lander, the agency looked for a company that could execute on all the science operations over 14 days (one lunar daylight period).
“Firefly and several other bidders took up that challenge. They’ve come up with a really credible mission plan to conduct all the experiments we want on our instruments,” Kearns said.
In a prelaunch interview with Spaceflight Now, Brigette Oakes, the vice president of Engineering for Firefly, said the company incorporated learnings from previous lunar missions.
“We really also took a lot of lessons learned from previous missions. I mean, we did a full, thorough review of every lunar mission that went up, whether it was commercial or NASA and took a lot of lessons learned from that and then essentially just kind of fine tuned and adapted for Firefly’s model with the additional product lines and then took the best of what previous companies have done before us.”
Firefly also took learnings and hardware from its Alpha rocket and folded those into Blue Ghost as well.
“There’s a lot of great wisdom and experience and lessons learned at this company. We have rockets and satellites at our company.
So, there’s a lot of commonality between the two different parts of our company and there’s a lot of lessons learned that get shared,” said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.
“As we go to cadence on our Alpha rocket, a lot of those lessons learned, even the reaction control propulsion, that’s stuff that’s lessons learned for our Blue Ghost lander because we have ACS and RCS thrusters on our Blue Ghost lander that have heritage from the Alpha rocket.
So, there’s a lot of crosstalk within our company. So that really helps programs, like Blue Ghost have confidence.”
1/2
As Firefly goes in for its first landing attempt, set to take place on March 2, Kim said one of the key tools on this lander is a quartet of cup-shaped ends on the landing legs.
“Those landing pads are designed carefully with crumple zones,” he said. “If you think of honeycomb and how crunchy it is, it’s got that built into the actual structure.
And so, when it lands, it’s going to – kind of like you’re car when you get into an accident – it crumples deliberately. That’s what that design entails.”
The mission, called ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky,’ will take slightly longer to reach the surface of the Moon, compared to the last CLPS mission from Houston-based Intuitive Machines.
The IM-1 flight took about seven days from liftoff to landing, while the Blue Ghost lander is taking roughly 45 days to make its journey.
Once on the surface, it will operate for about two weeks with instruments including a sample collection tool called the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) from Honeybee Robotics;
a navigational demonstration called the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) from the Italian Space Agency and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center;
and the Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) from Aegis Aerospace, which will study how lunar regolith sticks to a variety of materials.
The lander is also designed to survive for a few hours in the lunar night to capture sunset and other data in lunar darkness.
Beneath the Blue Ghost lunar lander, inside a specially designed payload canister, was ispace’s lander called Resilience.
This was the second time the Japan-based part of the company launches a lander to the Moon.
Its first launch attempt, Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) launched as a dedicated flight on a Falcon 9 in December 2022 and made a failed landing attempt in April 2023.
In a prelaunch interview with Spaceflight Now, former NASA Astronaut and current CEO of ispace-US, Ron Garan, said it was a software glitch that prevented the first landing.
He said the radar altimeter saw a big jump in altitude as they approached the crater they were aiming for, which caused the lander to misinterpret where it was in the mission profile.
It then made what it thought was a soft landing, but was actually about 5,000 meters above the bottom of the crater and hovered there until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
“We’ve obviously fixed all that software, we’re not landing in the bottom of a deep crater this time and so, our confidence level is a lot higher on this one,” Garan said.
For Hakuto-R Mission 2, with the mission name ‘Never Quit the Lunar Quest,’ the Resilience lander will target a touchdown in a region called Mare Frigoris – the ‘Sea of Cold’ – which lies in the northern part of the Moon.
The mission will take considerably longer to reach the Moon than Firefly’s Blue Ghost.
While Firefly’s lander will be dropped off in a highly elliptical Earth orbit and take 25 days for a phased orbital approach before performing a translunar injection burn, Resilience will take a slower path to the Moon using the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to put it on a path for a low-energy transfer to the Moon.
Essentially, it will do a flyby of the Moon, go out about a million miles into deep space and then synch up with the Moon again for its landing.
“What the low-energy transfer allows is us to trade fuel for payload capacity margin,” Garan explained. “It just leads to more capacity for us to bring to the lunar surface.”
The lander carries with it several science instrument, including an a food production experiment and one designed to demonstrate electrolysis.
“The electrolysis is really exciting because of the implications. If we’re able to really do electrolysis on the Moon, then we’re able to produce rocket fuel on the Moon,” Garan said.
The mission will also take a small rover, called Tenacity, which will be deployed to operate on its own after landing.
It features an HD camera that will be used to capture, among other things, imagery of an art installation called the ‘Moon House,’ which is a replica of a Swedish home that will be placed on the surface.
Garan said the rover comes from the European division of ispace. “The rover itself is really critical to the future of our company.
That the rover is efficient and the data that’s going to come off the rover is going to be really valuable to us as we continue to hone our design on the surface mobility aspect of the business,” Garan said. “And so, that’s really exciting too.”
Both the rover and the lander will operate on the surface of the Moon for about two weeks when the Moon slips into lunar nighttime.
Garan said they are looking at a variety of methods for how to potentially achieve this, from orbiting solar concepts to nuclear options and beyond.
2/2
Mars hides behind the Full Wolf Moon in gorgeous photos from around the world
January 14, 2025
The moon performed a cosmic ballet with Mars this week.
On Monday evening (Jan. 13), the Full Wolf Moon passed in front of Mars in what's known as a lunar occultation, during which another celestial object appears to disappear behind the moon from our vantage point on Earth.
Mars is approaching opposition on Wednesday (Jan. 15), the moment when it is situated directly opposite the sun as seen from Earth, which means it's at its brightest in our night sky right now.
Additionally, Mars recently passed perigee on Jan. 12, its closest point to Earth in its orbit around the sun, which makes it slightly larger in the sky.
The result? A stunning lunar occultation of Mars that was seen by large parts of North America and western Africa.
Luckily, plenty of skywatchers, photographers and Space.com readers caught the spectacle on camera in the gorgeous photos below.
cont.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/mars-hides-behind-the-full-wolf-moon-in-gorgeous-photos-from-around-the-world
Goodnight, Gaia! ESA spacecraft shuts down after 12 years of Milky Way mapping
January 15, 2025
Night has fallen for the star-tracking European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, Gaia.
The mission, which has been mapping the Milky Way for the last 12 years, shut down science operations on Wednesday (Jan. 15).
The close of the mission's data-collecting phase was necessitated by Gaia running low on cold gas propellant it uses to spin.
The top-hat-shaped craft has been using around 12 grams of this propellent a day since it launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Soyuz-Fregat rocket on Dec. 19, 2013.
However, even though Gaia may be closing its eyes to the cosmos, this is far from the end of the spacecraft's influence on space science.
"In my mind, the Gaia mission is not ending — just the taking of data," Kareem El-Badry, a Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) researcher and frequent Gaia data user, told Space.com.
"I expect Gaia's best results are still to come. That includes in the areas I am most interested in — binary stars and black holes."
Gaia: Gone but not forgotten
Throughout its operational lifetime, Gaia studied almost 2 billion stars and other objects in and around the Milky Way.
This vast stellar census contains details of star motions, luminosities, temperatures and compositions.The aim is to build the largest and most precise 3D map of our local universe.
The spacecraft's first data release dropped on Sept. 14, 2016; the second followed on April 25, 2018, and the third (and latest) came out on June 13, 2022.
Gaia's science team won't have time to grieve the loss of Gaia; they are preparing for Gaia Data Release 4 (GR4), which is expected before mid-2026.
Based on five and a half years of observations, ESA said that GR4 will not be "more of the same" but rather is expected to trump GR3 in terms of data volume and quality.
Once all of Gaia's data has been downloaded to Earth, work will begin on GR5, the final data release from the spacecraft.
This will be a monster data dump containing stellar observations collected over 10.5 years. GR5 isn't expected to be released by the end of the 2020s.
"Less than one-third of all the Gaia data has been published so far, and the final data won’t be science-ready until the 2030s," El-Badry said.
"It takes a lot of human and computation work to process the data."
That means we will be reporting on Gaia-based research for some time to come.
That isn't all; Gaia will now become a test subject for scientists aiming to refine spacecraft and instrument control in space.
These tests will run over several weeks while Gaia remains at a gravitationally stable point between Earth and the sun called Lagrange point 2, or L2.
After leaving L2 and its current orbit, Gaia will placed into an orbit that keeps it clear of the Earth-moon system for the near future.
In March or April 2025, the Gaia spacecraft will move to its final orbit away from Earth's sphere of influence, preventing it from interfering with other spacecraft.
The ESA said that details about the "passivation" of Gaia and how this pioneering space mission's passing will be marked will be released soon.
https://www.space.com/goodnight-gaia-star-tracking-spacecraft-shuts-down-jan152025
Defense Department’s new tool to investigate on-orbit anomalies
January 14, 2025
Defense Department satellite operators will soon have a new tool to determine whether space weather was the likely cause of an on-orbit anomaly.
Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System (SWAFS) 2.0, a cloud-based platform, will be released for operational use in March or April, U.S. Air Force Col.
Todd Blum, chief of the U.S. Space Force Environmental Monitoring Operations Branch, said Jan. 13 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.
Drawing on space weather observations, SWAFS 2.0 will help operators evaluate on-orbit anomalies, communications interference and false-echo returns for radar systems.
It also will help military organizations calculate errors in position, navigation and timing data.
At previous weather conferences, Air Force officials have discussed how difficult it is to determine whether a satellite anomaly was harmed by a micrometeoroid strike, space weather or something else.
“We want to speed up the time from when the event happens to making such a decision,” Blum told SpaceNews.
To use SWAFS 2.0, operators will input information on the location of satellites or ground stations and their communications frequency.
Then, SWAFS 2.0 will quickly determine whether interference “could be caused by the natural environment or some other intentional or unintentional jamming,” Blum said.
The SWAFS 2.0 dashboard is designed to be tailored for specific missions.
Peraton, prime contractor for SWAFS 2.0, also calls the platform Space Environment Toolkit for Defense, or SET4D.
https://spacenews.com/defense-departments-new-tool-to-investigate-on-orbit-anomalies/
Tomorrow.io NextGen offers high-resolution rain forecasts
January 14, 2025
Weather intelligence startup Tomorrow.io unveiled NextGen, a global-precipitation forecasting platform, Jan. 14 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.
NextGen ingests data from Boston-based Tomorrow.io satellites to provide global precipitation forecasts with a resolution of 2.5 kilometers, updated every five minutes.
With NextGen, Tomorrow.io is filling “critical radar gaps worldwide” to improve forecasting accuracy and enhance lead time for predictions of extreme weather, according to the news release.
“The results are remarkable,” Forest Cannon, Tomorrow.io senior atmospheric data scientist, said in a statement.
“Our microwave sounders provide unique insights about precipitation that traditional satellites simply can’t see.”
Tomorrow.io transmits data from satellites to its network “within minutes,” according to the news release.
“The impact is transformative, turning what might have been a forecasted non-event into a scenario requiring significant operational adjustments,” Cannon added.
“Importantly, these improvements persist for over an hour after each satellite pass, and with our full constellation deployed by 2025, revisit times will ensure even greater consistency.”
Tomorrow.io operates a constellation of six satellites: two Ka-band radar satellites launched in 2023 and four satellites with microwave sounders launched in 2024. Additional satellites are scheduled to launch in 2025.
The Defense Department has awarded Tomorrow.io contracts with a value of more than $20 million.
And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is assessing Tomorrow.io weather data under a $2.3 million contract announced in October.
https://spacenews.com/tomorrow-io-nextgen-offers-high-resolution-rain-forecasts/
https://www.tomorrow.io/
Yutu-2 rover likely immobile on the moon after historic lunar far side mission
January 14, 2025
China’s Yutu-2 rover, part of the first ever mission to land on the far side of the moon, may have made its final tracks, NASA lunar orbiter images reveal.
China launched the Chang’e-4 lander and rover mission to the far side of the moon in late 2018, with the lander and Yutu-2 rover touching down in Von Kármán crater Jan. 3, 2019.
The latest Chinese media report on the progress of Yutu-2, in September 2024, stated that the six-wheeled, solar powered rover had driven a total of 1,613 meters.
However, imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) reveals that Yutu-2 appears to have been stationary since March 2024.
“NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images the rover roughly once a month and those images let me track rover motion,” Phil Stooke, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at University of Western Ontario, told SpaceNews.
“Unfortunately, there has been very little motion in the last year and apparently none at all since March 2024.”
“Up to about February 2023 the rover was moving about 7 or 8 metres every drive and typically about 40 m per lunar day.
Suddenly the drives dropped to about 3 or 4 m each and only about 8 or 10 m per lunar day,” Stooke said in an email.
“That lasted until about October 2023, and then drives dropped to only 1 or 2 m each.
In March 2024 Yutu 2 was resting just southwest of a 10 m diameter crater, and it’s been there ever since, as revealed by LRO images,” Stooke added.
The roughly 140-kilogram Yutu-2 was reported still functioning in September.
A post from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) marking the sixth anniversary of the landing Jan. 3, celebrated the mission but did not provide an update on the status of either the lander or Yutu-2 rover.
Data accessed from China’s planetary data release system and posted on social media platform X by Sefer Yu show images captured by Yutu-2 in September 2024, showing its surroundings, the rim of Von Kármán crater and tracks indicating the rover’s drive route.
It is unknown what has brought Yutu-2 to an apparent halt.
“At first I attributed the slow-down in 2023 to problems with the Queqiao relay satellite, which was apparently low on maneuvering fuel and being used sparingly to prolong its life,” Stooke wrote.
“It was replaced by a new relay satellite early in 2024, primarily to support the Chang’e-6 sample return mission, but when that sample was brought to Earth the new relay would be available for Yutu-2.
I thought the pace would pick up but it has not. This all suggests that Yutu-2 is no longer able to move.”
Lunar spacecraft face a harsh temperature and radiation environment, as well as facing mechanical degradation from the highly abrasive lunar regolith, and could face obstacles crossing challenging terrain.
Yutu-2 is the successor to the 2013 Chang’e-3 lunar nearside landing mission rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit).
The earlier Yutu rover lost mobility during its second lunar day (approximately 14.5 Earth days) but continued to operate until 2016.
Yutu-2 had a design lifetime of three months but has set a new record as the longest-lived lunar rover, surpassing the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 1 rover.
Lunokhod 2 holds the record lunar drive distance at around 39 kilometers.
The Yutu-2 rover has discovered materials potentially from the moon’s mantle, shedding light on the lunar interior, provided insights into the composition of impact ejecta in the ancient South Pole–Aitken Basin, and the history of the region using a ground-penetrating radar.
The mission also paved the way for the 2024 Chang’e-6 lunar far side sample return mission, which also landed within the South Pole–Aitken Basin, by demonstrating a landing with the support of a relay satellite, named Queqiao (Magpie Bridge).
As the moon is tidally locked with the Earth, only the near side can be seen from the ground.
This means lunar far side missions require a relay satellite to operate in an orbit taking it beyond the moon with respect to the Earth, allowing it simultaneous line of sight with both spacecraft on the far side of the moon and ground stations on Earth.
Yutu-2 is part of China’s wider, three-step lunar exploration program which intended to orbit, land on, and then collect samples from the moon.
Chang’e-4 was the repurposed backup mission for the Chang’e-3 landing mission.
https://spacenews.com/yutu-2-rover-likely-immobile-on-the-moon-after-historic-lunar-far-side-mission/
CMSSF Bentivegna talks with senior enlisted Guardians
Jan. 14, 2025
“We get to do some really exciting stuff in the Space Force,” said Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna.
“Our mission is at the heart of joint warfighting and protecting our way of life!”
Bentivegna gave two talks for U.S. Space Force master sergeants and senior master sergeants stationed at Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever SFB, and Cheyenne Mountain Complex, on Jan. 10, as an opportunity to shape the future of the USSF and receive feedback from key enlisted leaders.
When asked why he wanted to speak to these two specific groups, Bentivegna said they are the group he doesn’t get to speak to often but are a pivotal cohort for the success of the USSF.
“When I speak and engage, it’s usually with a mixed audience and I haven't had a chance to talk to these groups specifically.
I’m speaking to this audience of master sergeants and senior master sergeants because there are specific things, as we've been evolving, that I need them to understand and get after for the Space Force,” he said.
Bentivegna added that the Space Force is leveraging its senior NCOs more as it continues to evolve and shift, and is pushing more responsibility onto them, not only from a care and feeding standpoint but also operationally, as they are who is going to allow the service to evolve to where it needs to go.
Bentivegna also emphasized the importance of these talks being in a dialog format so that he can get feedback and ensure that initiatives are understood and being implemented as intended.
“This is an opportunity to have that dialog and discussion. To give them my perspective on where we're going, what I need them to do, but more so, I want to hear from them,” Bentivegna said.
“When we talk about the initiatives and the vision that we are putting out; how is that being received?
Is the message being translated effectively? Are we on track? What do they need me to take back to the Pentagon to address on their behalf?”
Among the topics Bentivegna discussed were mission objectives and requirements.
He emphasized the importance of clarity in communication so that objectives and specific requirements are understood down the chain of command.
Bentivegna also discussed noncommisioned officer development on various fronts such as professionalism in the new dress and appearance regulations being written for the USSF, ensuring the best performers get promoted, recognizing good performance in more ways than just awards, and ensuring senior NCOs have their college degrees completed.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4028887/cmssf-bentivegna-talks-with-senior-enlisted-guardians/
Drone Nerds Further Supports American Farmers with Multifunctional Agriculture Drones through ABZ Innovation Partnership
January 15, 2025
Fort Lauderdale, FL, Drone Nerds, one of the largest enterprise and agricultural drone providers, is proud to announce its partnership with ABZ Innovation, a leader in drone technology design and manufacturing, expanding its lineup of agricultural spraying drone offerings. to further support American farmers.
Recognizing the ongoing changes and challenges in federal drone regulations that may affect rural American communities, this partnership will provide alternative platform solutions to the North American farming industry.
ABZ Innovation's multifunctional agricultural drones are designed in Hungary and support multiple use cases across the agricultural industry.
ABZ Innovations agricultural UAVs feature two platform series, each tailored to different application needs; these platforms include the L30 and L10 series of spraying drones.
For medium and large farms, the L30 drone offers 21 hectares of coverage per hour and offers granular or liquid application versatility.
The L30 features a 30-liter capacity and is equipped with a Controlled Droplet Application (CDA) spraying system; with an advanced flight planning algorithm, the L30 has an enhanced navigation system for optimized operational precision.
The L10 PRO is designed for farmers with up to around 150 hectares, and smaller farms.
This platform features a "plug and play” option for connection to any EMLID RTK base, offering centimeter-level accuracy.
It can also be equipped with a trichogramma spreading system to facilitate a biological and sustainable pest control application.
"We're thrilled to launch drones that meet the complex demands of modern farming.
By expanding our lineup and partnering with ABZ drones, we are bringing diverse, trusted solutions for American farmers with varied needs," said Jeremy Schneiderman, CEO of Drone Nerds.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/01/15/tmt-newswire/globenewswire/drone-nerds-further-supports-american-farmers-with-multifunctional-agriculture-drones-through-abz-innovation-partnership/2039425
https://enterprise.dronenerds.com/
House passes bill to remove Chinese-made drones from the state drone fleet
January 15, 2025 at 8:25 AM CST
The North Dakota House has approved a measure to replace Chinese-made drones in the state fleet.
The state has 353 drones, 307 from China.
The sponsor – Rep. Mike Nathe (R-Bismarck – said he was told by some federal officials that the Chinese drones were equipped with data gathering and transmitting devices.
"These drones are flying over these communities, over the oil fields, over the missile sites, the air bases, everything," Nathe said.
"I asked them, how many of these do you think may be bad and have these devices, and he and a gentleman who is a retired special forces both said the same thing — all of them."
The cost to replace the Chinese drones will be about $15 million.
The measure also contains $11 million for access to Federal Aviation Administration radar data.
"This helps us two ways," Nathe said. "This helps the state to fly our drones wherever we want. And also helps us to market Vantis to other states."
Nathe described Vantis as a “control tower” that watches and monitors drones in the air. He saidys it was developed at the state’s UAS Test Site.
The vote was 89 to 4. It will now be considered in the state Senate. Nathe said the hope is to “fast track” the measure.
https://news.prairiepublic.org/local-news/2025-01-15/house-passes-bill-to-remove-chinese-made-drones-from-the-state-drone-fleet
https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo1038.html