TYB
https://www.space.com/mercurcy-elusive-easily-visible-winter-spring-2025
See Mercury at its best in the night sky over the next 2 weeks
February 26, 2025
We now have a fine opportunity to view the planet that many astronomy guide books refer to as the most difficult of the naked-eye planets to see. The planet in question is Mercury.
Beginning now and running through the end of the second week of March, this somewhat overgrown version of the moon will have an evening appearance about as favorable as we northerners ever get to see.
In general, the most favorable elongations of Mercury — morning or evening — are those when the planet rises or sets in a dark sky, and that situation will occur for a five-day interval beginning later this week.
From March 5 through March 10, Mercury will set at, or shortly after the end of evening twilight, more than 1 hour 30 minutes after sunset for mid-northern latitudes.
A bad rap
Mercury is popularly known as the "elusive" planet. Read what the New Handbook of the Heavens — considered one of the best guides to the stars for the amateur astronomer — said about Mercury:
"It stays close to the sun like a child clinging to its mother's apron strings, because you must look for it so soon after sunset or before sunrise, there was a famous astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, who never saw the planet in all of his life."
And yet, despite its reputation, Mercury is not really that difficult to spot; just find a reasonably unobstructed horizon. A clear, haze-free sky also helps.
The remark about Copernicus is rather ironic, for he was the man who pushed hard for placing the sun and not the Earth at the center of our solar system.
Although the climate of Copernicus' homeland (Poland) tended to be rather cloudy and misty, one would have to believe that such a noteworthy figure in the field of astronomical calculation must have surely tried on those occasions when the weather was more favorable. Indeed, Mercury was far from impossible to glimpse during elongations as favorable as the upcoming one.
Venus and the moon direct you to Mercury
During the first two weeks of March, Mercury will have an advantage in that it will be positioned not very far from the most dazzling of all the planets, Venus.
In fact, we strongly encourage you to use Venus as your landmark to locate Mercury. And on March 1, another celestial object will help point the way to this rocky little planet: the moon.
Currently, Mercury sets about 90 minutes after sunset; about a half hour after sundown look for it about 10 degrees above the west-southwest horizon.
Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10 degrees, so "one fist up" from the horizon should bring you to Mercury.
You'll have no trouble in seeing it as a very bright "star" glowing with just a trace of a yellowish-orange tinge.
On March 1, Mercury is shining at a very bright magnitude of –1.0. In fact, among the stars and planets, Mercury will rank only behind Venus, Jupiter and Sirius (the brightest star) in terms of brightness.
But to make absolutely sure that you're looking at Mercury, brilliant Venus will be hovering about 15 degrees ("1.5 fists") above and slightly to the right of it, while floating about 10 degrees ("one fist") above and slightly to Mercury's left will be a slender, 5% illuminated, waxing crescent moon, almost mimicking the smile of a Cheshire cat against the twilight sky; a great occasion to make a positive identification of the so-called elusive planet using our nearest neighbor in space as a pointer.
After March 1, the moon will quickly move away to the east, but Mercury will continue to interact with Venus, drawing closer to it, while moving to its lower left.
In the evenings that follow, Mercury will diminish — slowly at first — in brightness, but it will also be reaching its greatest elongation, 18-degrees to the east of the sun, on March 8.
Shining then at a magnitude of -0.2 (just a trifle brighter than the similarly hued star Arcturus), Mercury should be readily visible, appearing low in the western sky and setting more than 1.5 hours after the sun.
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Rapid fade out
Finally, on the evening of March 12, Mercury and Venus will be closest to each other, separated by 5.5 degrees, and appearing almost side-by-side — Mercury positioned to the left of Venus — as they descend down the western sky.
By that time, Mercury will have faded to magnitude +0.7.
Mercury, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the moon. Right now, it resembles a gibbous phase, about 73% illuminated, which is why it currently appears very bright.
By the time it arrives at its greatest elongation, it will appear less than half-illuminated (44%) and the amount of its surface illuminated by the sun will continue to decrease in the days thereafter.
So, when it begins to turn back toward the sun's vicinity after March 8th, it will fade at a rather rapid pace.
In fact, on the evening of March 15, Mercury's brightness will have dropped to magnitude +1.6; as bright as the star Castor in Gemini and only 1/11 as bright as it is now.
In telescopes it will appear as a narrowing crescent phase only 16% illuminated. This, in all likelihood will be your last view of it, for the combination of its rapid fading and its descent into the brighter sunset glow will finally render Mercury invisible after mid-March.
With binoculars, you might try scanning to the left of Venus for a couple of more evenings after the 15th to try and extend your view of Mercury, but for all intents and purposes it will be gone by St. Patrick's Day.
A double identity
In old Roman legends, Mercury was the swift-footed messenger of the gods.
The planet is well named for because it's the closest planet to the sun it's also the swiftest of the sun's family of eight planets, averaging about 30 miles per second and completing one circuit of the sun in only 88 Earth days.
Interestingly, the time it takes Mercury to rotate once on its axis is 59 days, so that all parts of its surface experiences periods of intense heat and extreme cold.
Although its mean distance from the Sun is only 36 million miles (58 million km), Mercury experiences by far the greatest range of temperatures: nearly 900°F (482°C) on its day side; -300°F (-184°C) on its night side.
In the pre-Christian era, this planet actually had two names, as it was not realized it could alternately appear on one side of the sun and then the other.
Mercury was called Mercury when in the evening sky, but was known as Apollo when it appeared in the morning.
It is said that Pythagoras, about the fifth century B.C., pointed out that they were both one and the same.
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Virgin Galactic to start assembly of first new spaceplane in March
February 27, 2025
Virgin Galactic plans to start assembling the first of a new generation of suborbital spaceplanes next month with commercial flights expected to start in the middle of 2026.
In an Feb. 26 earnings call, company executives said assembly of the first Delta SpaceShip will start in March at a new facility near Phoenix.
That would put the company on a path to begin test flights in the spring of 2026 and commercial flights, starting with research payloads, in the middle of 2026.
“The production and launch timeline for the new ships remains on track, with our first commercial research spaceflight expected in the summer of 2026, and the first private astronaut spaceflight in the fall of 2026,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said on the call.
“We are able to be more specific with projecting our timelines because we now have line of sight to the delivery dates of each and every tool and part that supports assembly.”
He used the call to highlight the progress made by Virgin and key suppliers on various components and subassemblies of the vehicle. Those items will be delivered to the Phoenix facility for final assembly and testing of the spaceplane.
The company said it is confident that, once assembled, the spaceplane can quickly go through a flight test program because it is derived from VSS Unity, the suborbital spaceplane it retired last summer.
“Unity required moving in small incremental steps to build up the knowledge about the spaceship’s performance and limits,” said Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s spaceline president.
“The test flights of Delta will be much more like regression testing, where we are incrementally expanding how Delta flies, but doing so by comparing it to how we know Unity flew.”
Once research flights begin, he said he expected “on the order of 6 to 10” flights carrying research payloads, including employees, that will also serve to test operations before beginning flights of private astronauts.
Colglazier said that, once those private astronaut flights begin, the company expects to quickly accelerate to its planned flight rate of two per week.
“We will prudently ramp ourselves up a little bit as we lean into that, but I believe 2027, if not right January 1, right at the beginning of that year, we should be up at a pace that we’ve talked.”
Virgin’s immediate focus is getting the new Delta SpaceShips into operation to enable the company to achieve profitability.
However, in the call Colglazier said the company is looking at additional applications of its vehicles, including repurposing the aircraft used to take the spaceplane aloft.
He noted that the company’s current “mothership” aircraft, VMS Eve, is unusual in that it can carry heavy payloads to altitudes as high as 15,000 meters.
“We believe the same high-altitude heavy-lift capability that supports Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceflight business can also be of value to government and research customers, especially when a derivative model has extended flight duration,” he said.
He said the company is “moving towards solid preliminary design” of a variant of the aircraft design for high-altitude, long-endurance applications, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
“I think that’s a super smart opportunity for us and one that we are actively paying attention to because we think this is a real potential for the government.”
“With that said, first things first, we have to keep ourselves laser-focused on getting to the first of these two ships out and then the second one right behind it,” he added, to enable the company to achieve positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
The company had an adjusted EBITDA loss of $288.5 million in 2024, compared to a $427 million loss in 2023.
The company ended 2024 with $657 million of cash and equivalents on hand to finance completion of the Delta SpaceShips.
https://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-to-start-assembly-of-first-new-spaceplane-in-march/
https://spacenews.com/congressional-watchdog-flags-risks-in-space-development-agencys-satellite-program/
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106838
Congressional watchdog flags risks in Space Development Agency’s satellite program
February 26, 2025
A congressional watchdog report is raising red flags about the Space Development Agency’s ambitious plan to build a network of missile-tracking satellites, highlighting concerns over a key piece of technology that has yet to be fully tested in orbit.
The Government Accountability Office, in a report mandated by Congress and published Feb. 26, warned that the SDA is pressing forward with its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture despite unproven inter-satellite laser communications links — a technology crucial to the system’s ability to track missile threats and relay data to military commanders in real time.
The GAO report highlights a core issue: The SDA is moving to acquire and launch new tranches of satellites before validating that the inter-satellite links function properly in space.
The agency initially planned to test the technology in Tranche 0, an experimental group of 27 satellites launched in 2024.
However, according to the GAO, SDA has yet to fully demonstrate the technology in orbit, preventing the agency from applying lessons learned to the 165 Tranche 1 satellites and 264 Tranche 2 satellites, which have already been ordered.
“SDA is moving forward with dramatic increases in the scale of future tranches even though it has made limited progress demonstrating laser communications — a central capability for PWSA,” the report stated.
Potential risks to DoD investment
The PWSA — a constellation intended to track missile threats and relay critical data to commanders on the ground — is projected to cost nearly $35 billion through 2029, making it one of the Department of Defense’s most significant space investments.
SDA, an agency under the U.S. Space Force, has adopted a rapid development approach, launching new tranches every two years.
Tranche 0 has faced multiple delays due to supply chain disruptions, impacting the testing of laser communications.
SDA officials informed the GAO that of the four prime contractors for Tranche 0 — SpaceX, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and York Space — one had demonstrated three of the planned eight laser communications capabilities, while another had demonstrated only one.
The remaining two contractors have yet to achieve any planned capabilities.
Despite these setbacks, SDA has continued procuring the next rounds of satellites, committing nearly $10 billion to Tranche 1 and Tranche 2.
The GAO contends that a lack of testing data from Tranche 0 means that subsequent tranches are based on unproven designs, increasing the risk of costly setbacks.
Lessons from Starlink
As part of its audit, the GAO spoke with executives at SpaceX, whose Starlink satellite constellation has successfully implemented inter-satellite laser links.
SpaceX officials emphasized the difficulty of establishing and maintaining laser connections in low Earth orbit, where satellites travel at 17,000 miles per hour and have only brief windows of opportunity to communicate with ground stations.
For SDA, the ability to rapidly transmit missile tracking data across a network of hundreds of satellites is critical.
While the agency plans to incorporate radio frequency communications as well, it maintains that laser links are essential to achieving the program’s goals.
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Shifting testing strategy
SDA originally intended to test Tranche 0 laser links between terminals from different vendors to ensure interoperability.
However, the agency has since adjusted its approach, now planning to demonstrate links only between terminals built by the same manufacturer, according to GAO.
While SDA officials say they still intend to validate some elements of a full-scale mesh network, the GAO warns that this change undermines the agency’s ability to gather comprehensive data to inform future satellite deployments.
Moreover, the watchdog agency criticized SDA for failing to communicate testing timelines or performance data to key stakeholders, including the Department of Defense’s testing officials and contractors.
“The lack of an overall test schedule and plan is concerning,” the GAO report stated.
Recommendations from GAO
The GAO made several recommendations to the Secretary of the Air Force, including requiring SDA to fully demonstrate a minimum viable product for laser communications before proceeding with future launches.
The Department of Defense, in its response, stated that it agrees with the recommendations and is already implementing them. However, the GAO disputed that claim.
“We disagree,” the agency said. “The evidence presented throughout our draft and final report supports our view that SDA is not already taking the actions we recommend.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is currently conducting an independent review to evaluate SDA’s organizational performance, acquisition approach, and its capacity to deliver on PWSA objectives following a leadership shakeup at the agency.
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https://defensescoop.com/2025/02/27/john-phelan-navy-secretary-trump-nominee-confirmation-hearing-tech/
Trump’s Navy secretary nominee endorses joint collaboration with Air Force on drone enablers
February 27, 2025
John Phelan, President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of the Navy, told Senate lawmakers that he sees opportunities for joint technology development on next-generation capabilities to support manned and unmanned platforms.
If confirmed, Phelan — a businessman and co-founder of MSD Capital — would take the helm of the department as it pursues new drones and a “hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned systems, among other modernization efforts.
Service leadership is also in flux in the wake of Trump’s firing of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti last week.
“I understand that the F/A-XX next-generation [fighter] aircraft, offering significant advancements in operational reach and capacity within contested environments, is intended to enable Carrier Strike Groups to outpace adversaries while maintaining naval air dominance.
I also understand the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force are collaborating closely to ensure interoperability through shared enabling technologies like autonomy, mission systems, and communication architectures.
This collaborative approach, encompassing both manned and unmanned platforms, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), will maximize operational effectiveness and flexibility across the services,” Phelan wrote in response to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of his confirmation hearing Thursday.
“In my view, aligning technology development and operational requirements will ensure the Services are poised to fully leverage next-generation unmanned systems, ultimately enhancing capabilities and long-range mission effectiveness,” he added.
The Pentagon envisions highly autonomous CCA drones serving as robotic wingmen to manned fighter jets or performing separate missions.
The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are each pursuing their own variants, which they hope to field in the coming years.
The Air Force is widely seen as being ahead of the other branches in their pursuit of these types of platforms.
The Navy also aims to develop and field a next-generation manned fighter jet, currently referred to as the F/A-XX, that it hopes to field in the 2030s.
An Air Force decision about the future of its manned, next-gen stealth fighter program— which was part of the Next Generation Air Dominance initiative — was postponed late last year amid the transition in presidential administrations.
Phelan told lawmakers that he would advocate for “smart investments” in the Navy’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, highlighting the need to foster industry competition, including non-traditional contractors, with the aim of driving down costs, accelerating timelines and maintaining the Navy’s technological superiority.
He also noted that he would prioritize “timely” modifications to Nimitz-class aircraft carriers for unmanned system integration.
Defense officials have expressed a desire to ensure interoperability between the services’ future crewed and uncrewed systems. Phelan — who has never served in the military — endorsed that idea in his comments to senators.
“I understand the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are aligned on key enabling technologies, including mission systems, autonomy architecture, and communication and command architecture.
This alignment ensures that both manned and unmanned platforms can operate effectively together, enhancing interoperability across branches.
If confirmed, I will commit to continue collaboration with the other services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to ensure that systems are compatible and ready to integrate seamlessly in joint operations, supporting interservice coordination and maximizing mission effectiveness,” he wrote.
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The Navy isn’t just looking to field next-gen unmanned aerial systems. It’s also pursuing new unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vehicles, as it works to build a so-called hybrid fleet of crewed and uncrewed platforms.
Accelerating the fielding of those types of systems to deter China in the Indo-Pacific was part of Franchetti’s Project 33 and CNO Navigation Plan, which she unveiled a few months before she got fired.
The Navy has also been playing a key role in the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which was launched during the Biden administration with the goal of fielding thousands of “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” by August 2025.
The sea service has also set up new organizations, such as Task Force 59 and robo-ship squadrons, to work through concepts of operation and other issues that need to be addressed.
Phelan didn’t refer to Replicator by name in his written comments to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but he suggested that he’s in favor of those types of efforts.
“The unique capabilities that unmanned systems bring to the naval and joint force are a tremendous force multiplier, and I believe the Department of the Navy should appropriately and adequately resource the right solutions and doctrine, organization, training, personnel and facilities that support these capabilities, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
There can be no dispute that unmanned systems are now very much part of the landscape of modern war,” he wrote.
“Also revealed is the rapid pace of innovation for these systems, as well as the rapid operational adoption of the evolving systems in battle,” he added.
“If confirmed, I will thoroughly examine this issue to ensure the Department of the Navy investments are properly prioritized in this area by ensuring appropriate system selection through early, data-driven analysis.
This will include championing joint investment in enabling technologies like autonomy, mission systems, and communications to guarantee interoperability across services and with coalition partners, for example through ongoing all-domain attritable autonomous systems efforts.”
Phelan is the second of Trump’s service secretary nominees during his second term to have a confirmation hearing. Earlier this week, Daniel Driscoll was confirmed as secretary of the Army.
A confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick for Air Force secretary, Troy Meink, has not been scheduled.
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The first 500 drones out of 12,000: Latvia sent an aid package to Ukraine
27 February, 2025
Latvia has sent a new batch of strike drones to Ukraine as part of the International Drone Coalition.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds announced this. He shared that 500 Latvian-made strike drones are on their way.
This is likely the first batch of 12,000 drones that the Minister recently announced would be delivered to Ukraine.
According to Sprūds, all drones are to be delivered in the first half of 2025. Two Latvian companies will produce them in the coming months for €17 million.
Latvia and the United Kingdom lead the International Drone Coalition. It was formed in February 2024. It currently includes 17 countries, with Norway recently joining.
As part of this initiative, the UK has established an international procurement fund, which Latvia has contributed €5 million to.
The member states have already promised to provide Ukraine with almost €2 billion for drones.
Coalition countries have supplied or will soon supply the Ukrainian military with about 100,000 different strike drones. First of all, this refers to FPV drones.
In the first announced international tender, the coalition selected five companies out of over 260 European manufacturers to supply 30,000 drones worth €45 million.
Two Latvian manufacturers also received orders. Last year, according to Minister Sprūds, about 5,000 different Latvian-made drones worth €15 million were transferred to the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
This year, Latvia plans to allocate €20 million to purchase drones for the Ukrainian military.
The Latvian government plans to provide the Ukrainian Defense Forces with 42 new Patria 6×6 armored personnel carriers.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/the-first-500-drones-out-of-12-000-latvia-sent-an-aid-package-to-ukraine/