Blog for Monday, July 24, 2023

Summer seems to be starting to wind down but you wouldn’t think it was based on the high temperatures. The grass has recovered from the drought and is growing like a jungle. Thanks for the aerobic exercise opportunity each week, Nature.

In fact, grass cutting is the cause of the day late post this week, after cutting a neighbor’s grass on Sunday I couldn’t muster the energy to compose the post.

As a long term “heads-up”, I wanted to say that Joe DalSanto, astronomer at COD, is planning to give a talk titled, “The View From Earth, 400 Years of Astronomical Adventure” on Saturday, Oct 14 at 7:30 to 9 PM at the college. Reserve the date if the talk is of interest to you. It is free.

3 unmanned lunar landers will be heading for the moon – On July 20 we celebrated 54 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, now there soon will be 3 probes headed back for a soft landing. India successfully launched their Chandrayaan-3 probe on July 14 and it is scheduled to land at the moon’s south pole on August 23. Russia will soon be launching Luna25 on August 11. It has been over 45 years since their last moon mission. It will be headed for the Buguslavsky crater near the south pole and intends to search for signs of water ice. Finally, Japan’s SLIM Sniper probe is targeting an August 26 launch. The name, Sniper, comes from the spacecraft’s unique onboard camera’s ability to identify craters, measure positioning and pinpoint a landing. The primary goal is to demonstrate precise navigation and its shock absorbing landing legs. The US won’t be completely shut-out from lunar landings this year, we have 2 upcoming CLIPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) missions scheduled later this year. In the third quarter, Intuitive Machines will be launching its Nova-C lander on a Falcon 9 rocket and landing at Malapert A crater near the south pole and Astrobotic is planning a fourth quarter mission to land its Peregrine Lander. Peregrine is launching on the new Vulcan rocket and intends to land near the Gruithuisen Domes.

 

Blog for Sunday, July 16, 2023

I’m glad that our MASS meeting was scheduled a week earlier, otherwise we would have been hunkered down in my basement last Friday at 9PM waiting for the tornado sirens to cease. Hope everyone finds themselves ok from our recent rash of violent weather.

SpaceX sets new record for booster reuse – SpaceX started the week with the launch on July 9 of 22 StarLink satellites and setting a new record with the 16^th reuse of one of its booster rockets. Core 1058 set the record but many other cores are right behind with 15 and 14 reuses. The number of StarLink satellites launched is quickly approaching 4800. It was the 44^th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2023 and the 47^th launch for SpaceX this year. They have a good chance of reaching their goal of 100 launches.

By the time I published this accomplishment, SpaceX tied the record of 16 launches with a booster on Saturday night, July 15. This time booster core 1060 launched 54 more Starlink satellites. With their booster landings on a barge at sea (now at 207 successful landings on both land and barge), SpaceX launches continues to amaze me.

Rho Ophiuchi Star Forming Region

Webb Telescope celebrates 1 year of operation – On July 12, 2023, JWST dropped a new picture of the star forming region called Rho Ophiuchi 390 light-years from earth. Even at that distance, it is the closest star forming region to earth. There are about 50 stars breaking out of their dust cocoons (yellow in the image). Molecular hydrogen is colored red in the image. The Sun probably formed out of a similar cloud with 10’s of siblings about 4.5 billion years ago. Astronomers hope that JWST will give us 20 years of great pictures.

Indian launches Chandrayaan 3 to the moon – On July 14, Indian launched its second attempt at a moon landing. This time the probe will attempt a landing near the south pole of the moon and it carries a small rover. Landing is anticipated on August 23. The considerable time between launch and landing is due to the low energy trajectory that the probe will take, making numerous ever-increasing orbits around the earth and then making ever-decreasing orbits around the moon. The lander is expected to last only 1 lunar day of 14 earth days. If successful, India will be the 4^th country to soft land on the moon, joining the US, Russia and China.

 Blog for Sunday, July 9, 2023

Going to keep today’s blog short. I’m working on last Friday’s MASS Meeting notes on our website and hope to be done and have them posted by mid-week.

We had a great meeting. The discussion about UAP’s (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) went well. Dean shared his early morning mysterious experience from some years back and Don relayed a strange observation he had had. We took the full 3 hours to discuss various other topics.

I did want to add that Beth’s recent trip in May to Washington, DC, where she posted a picture of her in front of the Einstein statue on the Mall, reminded me of a similar photo opportunity Carol and I had a few years back.

Here is Beth in May 2023

Here I am in Nov 2010

Just goes to show that science-oriented minds migrate to the same statue. Although, I might have been a little more aggressive with my hand placement.

 

Blog for Sunday, July 2, 2023

It started out as a rough week with computer problems but fortunately my younger son supplied me with a newer computer and some infrastructure modifications and all seems to be working well except for my Uverse TV which is doing a lot of pixelating. But that will be a problem for the coming week.

Virgin Galactic first commercial flight – On June 29, Virgin Galactic flew 4 persons of the Italian Air Force and 2 Virgin Galactic employees. The Italians were all space rookies and they brought the total of people in space up to 659. The flight lasted only 14 minutes from the dropping of VSS Unity from the carrier plane, the powered flight up to 85.1 km (52.9 miles) and finally the landing on the New Mexico runway. So far in 2023, the number of sub-orbital people (12) outnumber the orbital ones (11) for a total of 23 this year.

Asteroid Day on June 30 – Celebrating the Tunguska event from June 30, 1908 where an asteroid flattened 2000 square kilometers of Siberian Forest. The Planetary Society did an event but otherwise it has been a relatively quiet celebration this year.

Euclid Telescope launches – The telescope launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on July 1. It will take 4 weeks to travel out to the L2 Lagrange Point 1.5 million km from earth like the JWST, but this European telescope is much different. It will be a survey telescope that will look at 1/3 of the sky detecting galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away and will use spectroscopy to determine the distance to those galaxies so that it can build a 3-D map of the universe. It will be limited to only 1/3 of the sky because dust in the plane of the Milky Way and ecliptic of the Solar System prevents observation of these faint objects. It will take Euclid 6 years to complete its survey but there will be a partial data release after 2 ½ years. The 3 major goals of the $1.8 billion telescope are: 1) how do galaxies change over time? 2) create a dark matter map by analyzing the distortion of galaxy shapes in its images; and 3) how does the expansion rate of the universe change over time? Those are all interested questions for me and I can’t wait until 2026 to start getting some answers.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 25, 2023

It’s been a relatively slow week of news, but here are a couple of items I learned about recently.

OSIRIS-REx Sample Return -- In the June Planetary Society publication, they had a feature article about the return of the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security- Regolith Explorer) probe with its sample of the asteroid Bennu. It’s been almost 7 years since it was launched on September 8, 2016 to the .5 km diameter carbonaceous asteroid. Scientists think the ancient surface of Bennu might have formed only 10 million years after the Sun making it about 4.5 billion years ago.

The rubble-pile asteroid surprised scientists with its rocky surface and the probe circled Bennu for 505 days before deciding where to take its sample. During the sampling process, people were stunned that the sample arm plunged 2 feet into the surface and created a flurry of dust, rocks and pebbles. Dante Lauretta, chief scientist, feels they might have gotten a 250-gram (a baseball’s mass) sample, far exceeding the 59.5-gram goal.

On Sunday, September 24, 2023, the sample return capsule will detach from the main probe, 4 hours and 60,000 miles away from Earth and then plunge into the atmosphere at a blistering 7.7 miles per second. Protected with a heat shield, the capsule will slow for 2 minutes before deploying its parachute and descending from 3200 ft to a 12 by 50-mile target ellipse in the Utah Test Range. With this heat shield protection, scientists will be able to analyze the material of the asteroid without it undergoing the heat and pressure that a meteor sample would endure.

The asteroid Bennu is known as a Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO) because its 1.2-year orbit brings it within 186,000 miles of Earth every 6 years. Astronomers calculate that it has a 1 in 1800 chance of colliding with Earth between 2178 and 2290. That’s a long shot, but the downside is it would take out an entire continent if it did hit us. The more we understand these objects, the better chance we have of doing something about it when there is a danger of collision.

Euclid Space Telescope to Launch – Euclid is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on Saturday, July 1. It will travel for 30 days to the L2 point beyond the moon just like the JWST. But Euclid will be a survey telescope meaning it won’t study individual objects. Over 6 years, it will survey 1/3 of the sky avoiding the plane of the Milky Way and the plane of the Solar System where dust would inhibit its observations. It will map galaxies out to 10 billion light-years away. Using spectroscopy, it will be able to estimate the distance to galaxies and create a 3-D map of the universe. It has 3 major goals: 1) how do galaxies change over time? 2) create a dark matter map by analyzing the distortion of galaxy shapes in its images; and 3) how does the expansion rate of the universe change over time? The first release of data will be 2.5 years after launch. All the mission’s questions are one of intense interest to me, so I can’t wait until 2026 for this first set of data.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 18, 2023

I’m a day late. It was a busy Father’s Day with setting up a new weather station and stopping in for some early Sunday donuts and mead at a local establishment. This is the 8th weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

Today, Monday June 19, US astronaut Frank Rubio will overtake US astronaut, Andrew Morgan, for the 13^th longest stay in space, 271.53 days. Of course, he is setting this record stay with his two fellow cosmonauts from the Soyuz 68S mission that launched on September 21, 2022. If he stays until September 27 of this year, he will set the US record for the longest stay in space at 371 days, breaking Mark Vande Hei’s record of 355 days set in 2022. Not bad for a rookie astronaut on his first mission. He will still be behind 5 other Russians and tied with his 2 fellow cosmonauts for the longest stay in space by any country. Valeri Polyakov has the record of 437.75 days set in 1994-1995 aboard the Russian Mir space station.

It slipped under my news radar but the show ‘Stars on Mars” started on June 5. You can catch the previous episodes on streaming or watch new ones at 7PM on Mondays on FOX TV. It is an analog Mars mission with William Shatner as the Earth based communicator, and 12 people including, 2 ex-football players, Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman, cyclist Lance Armstrong and various other TV personalities. I watched the first 2 shows on streaming and it is heavy on the reality-TV and light on the Mars science. I’m not sure if I would recommend it, but I might be hooked on the on-going person dynamics. My biggest question would be what our actual Mars simulation analog astronaut, Beth, thinks of the show?

UAP news is taking off– NASA recently had their first public presentation by their UAP Panel. UAP now stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, (recently the word, Aerial, was replaced with Anomalous so that events in space and under water could be included). Now on 6/12/23, we have a high security clearance official, David Grusch, claiming he heard that alien craft with bodies have been recovered and some American people have been murdered by them. These outrageous claims need evidence and so far, none has been produced. Grusch even admits he hasn’t seen evidence directly but only relaying second or third hand accounts. Mick West, a UFO video debunker, has done his best to be a rational mind analyzing the claims, but I’m worried that his level-headed responses will be dismissed by the radicals on the other side. NewsNation has done some broadcasts with Grusch, but they are far from being unbiased reporting. This type of coverage is undermining the report from NASA’s UAP panel which has studied the phenomena for the last 7 months and is trying to bring scientific analysis to the subject.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 11, 2023

This is the 7th weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

The week started out with a bang. I had joined Fraser Cain’s Universe Today as a patreon supporter and he scheduled me for a 15-minute Zoom interview on Monday, June 5. What an honor to talk to someone that I have seen for so many hours of video content with interviews and about astronomy and space issues. I zoomed from my upstairs lair and Fraser noticed my picture of the “Tesla in space” that Elon Musk launched on the first Falcon Heavy rocket. I was also surrounded by my models of the Space Shuttle and ISS and I think my “lava lamp” might have dated me. I told him about our MASS group and hoped he would check out our content. He seemed interested but I know he must be a very busy guy. I thanked him for letting me know about a phone app that identifies birds by their sounds, something that Carol and I are enjoying. Before I knew it, our time was up.

Vulcan rocket test fires its BE4 engines – On 6/7/23, the new rocket fired its engines for a 6-second test and it went according to plan. This is the last major hurdle for the Vulcan rocket to launch before the end of 2023. On its inaugural mission, possibly in July this year, it will send the Peregrine lunar lander from Astrobotic to a soft landing at the South Pole of the moon. The second Vulcan mission is to launch the first DreamChaser space plane to the ISS for a cargo delivery. The rocket uses methane-liquid oxygen burning BE-4 engines which are years late and coming from Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos. Vulcan is a critical rocket. It is needed due to the phase-out of the Atlas 5 which uses Russian based engines. Fortunately, we have a stockpile of Atlas 5 parts already in the US after Russia invaded Ukraine. The DoD has awarded its future military satellite contracts to be launched with 60% coming on Vulcan launches and 40% on SpaceX. The other US rocket, the Delta, is being de-commissioned because it is cost prohibitive. The Vulcan is capable of putting 27.2 mt (60,000 lb) into LEO which is more than a reusable Falcon 9 which maxes out at 22.8 mt (50,000 lb). Blue Origin also plans to use the BE-4 engines on its new rocket, the New Glenn. This rocket is critical because it will be launching the Blue Moon manned lunar lander for NASA.