Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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November 8th, 2022
Credit: China ‘N Asia Spaceflight
China’s projected booster to support crewed flights to the Moon is expected to make its maiden voyage around 2027.
China Daily reports that Zhao Xinguo, a senior rocket designer and head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology’s rocket development department, said the new launcher, yet to be named, is a key backbone in China’s future plan to plant Taikonauts on the lunar landscape.
Booster specifics
Speaking Monday in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, the site of the 14th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, Zhao said that the new rocket will be about 295 feet (90 meters) tall, with a diameter of nearly 17 feet (5 meters) – nearly twice as tall as the Long March 5 that is presently the largest booster in China’s rocket family.
With a core booster and two side boosters, the rocket’s liftoff weight will be 2,187 metric tons, twice as heavy as the Long March 5, according to China Daily.
Credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Moon base
The next-generation booster can hurl spacecraft weighing about 27 tons into an Earth-Moon transfer trajectory, a gateway for lunar landing, or a 70-ton spacecraft into a low-Earth orbit.
Additionally, China’s Long March 9, also under development, will join the ranks of the new rocket to transport construction materials to the Moon to build a permanent base there, said Hu Xiaojun, a rocket researcher also at the academy.
Posted in 
Credit: AMS
Sky watchers in Northern California on Friday reported seeing a bright light in the sky tumbling down. Video taken from El Dorado County showed a bright ball descending from a dark night sky.
Meanwhile, a family’s house in Nevada County, California caught fire after several witnesses described a ball of light descending from the sky.
The preliminary trajectory, however, does not fit the location of the inflamed home — which is located in Nevada County, about 240 km (150 miles) SSE.
Not related to incident
According to a Vincent Perlerin posting at the American Meteor Society: “There are reports in the news that this fireball reached the ground and destroyed a structure near Harry L. Englebright Lake, which is approximately 50 miles north of Sacramento, CA.”
Perlerin adds that, as you can see from the map, “this fireball passed well north of this area and could not possibly be related to this incident. Confirmation from NASA also discounts this story as this fireball totally disintegrated while still well up in the atmosphere.”
Also, go to this video spotlighting the incident at:
Credit: SETI Post-detection Hub
A new international research hub is established to coordinate global expertise to prepare humanity for an ET “we’re not alone” scenario and how we should respond.
The new SETI Post-Detection Hub is an initiative of the UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN), and is jointly hosted by the Scotland-based St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science and the Centre for Global Law and Governance.
The new SETI Post-Detection Hub is hosted by the Center for Exoplanet Science and the Centre for Global Law and Governance of the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
Responsible response
The new hub “will act as a coordinating center for an international effort bringing together diverse expertise across both the sciences and the humanities for setting out impact assessments, protocols, procedures, and treaties designed to enable a responsible response,” according to a university statement.
John Elliott, Coordinator of SETI Post-Detection Hub
Credit: SETI Post-detection Hub
“Scanning signals of assumed extra-terrestrial origin for structures of language and attaching meaning is an elaborate and time-consuming process during which our knowledge will be advanced in many steps as we learn ‘Extra-Terrestrial,’” said John Elliott, Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews and coordinator of the Hub
Societal impact
While there are now procedures and entities established with the United Nations for dealing with the threat posed by impacts of asteroids on Earth, the hub notes, there is nothing similar in place for picking up a radio signal from E.T.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
According to the university statement, the SETI Post-Detection Hub, for the first time, provides a permanent ‘home’ for coordinating the development of a fully comprehensive framework, “drawing together interested members of the SETI and wider academic communities as well as policy experts to work on topics ranging from message decipherment and data analytics to the development of regulatory protocols, space law, and societal impact strategies.”
Another source of ideas
“The St Andrews group is essentially a parallel to the International Academy of Astronautics SETI committee. They have one advantage, sharing the same physical location instead of meeting once a year and communicating by email the rest of the time,” said Michael Michaud, author of the influential book: Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials, New York, Copernicus (Springer), 2007.
“It may be useful to have another source of ideas about post-detection, but we don’t yet know what those ideas will be,” Michaud told Inside Outer Space.
For more information on this initiative, please go to:
Possible design of China’s space plane?
Source: Homem do Espaco/Twitter
China’s puzzling space plane, catalogued as 53357/2022-093A, has been circuiting the Earth after being lofted into orbit on August 4th.
Space tracker Robert Christy of the informative website, Orbital Focus at https://www.orbitalfocus.uk, notes that China’s in-orbit craft recently acquired a companion.
On October 23 at about 07:30 UTC, the space plane raised its orbit from 351 x 591 kilometers to 597 x 608 kilometers. A new object separated from the main vehicle between October 24 and October 30, Christy reported. The two objects are very close to each other, perhaps station keeping, he said.
Tengfei-1 reusable aerospace vehicle.
Credit: Credit: China Central Television (CCTV)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
On October 31, U.S. military space trackers released orbital data about the new space plane-released object in a near-identical orbit, showing them less than 656 feet (200 meters) apart.
Separation distance
“They could have separated from each other any time in the week since the orbit change, but the new satellite would not have been detected until it moved far enough away to be resolved as a separate item by U.S. tracking sensors,” Christy tells Inside Outer Space.
November 2, the separation between the two began to increase steadily at about two kilometers per day. Around midnight UTC November 5/6 they were 6.5 kilometers apart.
Runway ready for space plane arrival on the edge of China’s former nuclear weapons test range at Lop Nur?
Credit: Planet
Continued monitoring
“For them to stay so close,” Christy adds, “they must either both be experiencing the same degree of drag from the Earth’s atmosphere, or one of them is using thrusters to control the separation distance. Alternatively, they may be connected by a long tether that is being reeled out slowly,” he explains.
Christy speculates that that the new object is carrying a still/video imaging system to return images of the space plane, or it is a space technology experiment of some kind? “Continued monitoring of the pair may provide more answers,” he said.
Credit: Paul Maley
Caught on video
“Whatever the object is, its nearness to the space plane is acceptable to mission controllers. An un-wanted piece of equipment would likely have been pushed away at higher velocity or the space plane would have changed orbit slightly to avoid the danger of an inadvertent collision,” said Christy.
As for an end-of-mission, return to Earth of the Chinese space plane, Christy said that in the low orbit, repeat ground tracks for landing opportunities on the Lop Nur runway were coming round every 12 days. In the high orbit, the repeat time is three days, he concluded.
Meanwhile, Arizona-based sky sleuth, Paul Maley, captured a video of the craft slipping by overhead.
Go to Maley’s video at:
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s freshly-docked and transitioned Mengtian lab module has kick-started the country’s Tiangong space station into a final stage of completion.
However, China’s space station could further expand and upgrade from inside to outside, said Tang Yi, head designer of the China Space Station System of China Academy of Space Technology.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Mengtian, Tiangong’s second lab that docked with China’s Tiangong space station complex is the last “building block.” Tiangong now forms a T-shape structure, the planned layout of the space station.
Station complete is set for year’s end.
Credit: CNAS/CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Extend and upgrade
“For astronauts, the three-module space station means ample room to roam for three, even six astronauts on board without feeling cramped,” Tang told China Central Television (CCTV). “We’ve also anticipated the space station’s future on the outset: we’ve designed so it can extend and upgrade, including what’s inside the modules. The space station’s equipment can change and upgrade,” Tang said.
With the upcoming launch and arrival of the Shenzhou-15 three-person crew, the Tiangong will increase to six for a short period.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Ins and outs of airlock cabin
To facilitate the ins and outs of larger cargo and payloads, the airlock cabin of Mengtian is equipped with two square hatches, an internal one and an external one. In addition, the external hatch is electrically driven. This auto door reduces the astronaut’s labor and increases efficiency when transporting cargo out of the cabin, said Bai Hemin, a designer for the space station system at the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
With a larger door, Mengtian is capable of releasing miniaturized satellites into space. Astronauts can install small satellites on a payload transfer device, depressurize the airlock cabin, and then take them out of the cabin, said Meng Yao, a designer of Mengtian.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Pre-launch testing
When the space station is completed, it’s expected to run for at least a decade, or possibly even longer, according to CCTV.
Pre-launch, the Mengtian lab module completed ground tests in the Tianjin base of the China Academy of Space Technology, a subordinate of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The testing base includes the world’s largest thrust electromagnetic vibration testing system. The Mengtian lab module had previously completed vibration tests in two directions with the help of two electromagnetic shaking tables, “primarily used to simulate the vibration environment generated during the rocket launch and to assess the integrity of module structure and equipment function,” said Qiu Hanping, deputy chief engineer of mechanical test in the General Assembly and Environmental Engineering Department under CAST.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Thermal testing
“The temperature of the spacecraft in orbit is always changing as the orbit varies,” reports Liu Zhiqiang, deputy chief engineer of vacuum thermal test system of the General Assembly and Environmental Engineering Department.
Credit: GLOBALink/Xinhua Global Service
“The KM8 Large Space Environment Simulator needs to simulate environmental tests in which the ambient temperature varies from negative 180 degrees Celsius to positive 100 degrees Celsius for checking whether each system works normally or not and ensuring the normal operation of the spacecraft in orbit and the safety of astronauts,” said Liu.
Go to these newly-issued videos at:
The threat of Near Earth Objects (NEOs).
Credit: NASA
The International Asteroid Warning Network is organizing a second “timing campaign,” one that makes use of space rock 2005 LW3.
That object of their affection is an easily observable object from most of our planet as a bright fast-moving source on the nights of November 23-24, 2022.
2005 LW3, the target of the campaign, will reach magnitude 13 during its upcoming fly-by.
Accuracy of observations
The goal of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) campaign is to provide an incentive to near Earth Object (NEO) observers to check the accuracy of the timing of the astrometric observations they report to the Minor Planet Center. That international organization is responsible for collecting observations of asteroids, comets, and other small bodies in the Solar System.
“The fast angular motion on the plane of the sky, together with the excellent knowledge we already have of this object’s trajectory, will allow the campaign team to carefully assess the accuracy of the timetags reported by each station,” explains the European Space Agency’s NEO Coordination Center – the operational center of ESA’s Planetary Defense Office.
“These checks are extremely important to detect possible subtle time biases that are often present even at telescopes that synchronize their system time with extreme accuracy,” the ESA NEO center adds.
The IAWN was established with the goal of assessing, strengthening, and coordinating the international response to a possible near-Earth object (NEO) impact threat.
Locations of the 70 ground-based observation sites that participated in the 2019 XS campaign.
Credit: Davide Farnocchia, et al.
Previous campaign
IAWN campaign coordinator Vishnu Reddy at Arizona State University in Tucson is the point of contact for this campaign.
“We have two flavors of the campaign,” said Reddy. “The first is a full-blown planetary defense exercise where we test every component of the system. The most recent Apophis campaign is a good example of that. We have also started doing shorter more focused timing campaign to improve the timing accuracy of observatories collecting asteroid observations,” he told Inside Outer Space.
Reddy said that a previous campaign was performed in November 2021 using 2019 XS, a small Apollo near-Earth asteroid. What was found was a systematic -0.5 second bias across the board, he said.
Chelyabinsk sky rendering is a reconstruction of the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013. Scientific study of the airburst has provided information about the origin, trajectory and power of the explosion. This simulation of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion by Mark Boslough was rendered by Brad Carvey using the CTH code on Sandia National Laboratories’ Red Sky supercomputer. Andrea Carvey composited the wireframe tail. Photo by Olga Kruglova.
Credit: Sandia National Laboratories.
Good test
“So, the upcoming 2005 LW3 campaign is a follow-on to that to see how we are doing with keeping our clocks accurate. We gave suggestions to improve the clock timing and the campaign this month is a good test of that,” Reddy said.
Observers that are interested or routinely involved in NEO observations can join the exercise, reporting their intention to participate on a webpage dedicated to the campaign at:
https://iawn.net/obscamp/2005LW3/
Also, for detailed information about the earlier 2019 XS campaign, go to “International Asteroid Warning Network Timing Campaign: 2019 XS” in the Planetary Science Journal at:
These float rocks appear to have originated in the Marker Band, which can be seen running from lower left to upper right in the accompanying Navcam image. Marker Band is in the upper left of this image. Photo taken by Curiosity’s Left Navigation Camera on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3643 duties.
“We are perched just below the ‘Marker Band,’ a thin dark band whose origin is unclear,” reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars researchers have found some amazing textured float rocks in the rover’s workspace but were not in a good position to do contact science here, so Curiosity moved back a little in order to obtain science data, O’Connell-Cooper adds.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left photo taken on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Float rocks
“These float rocks appear to have originated in the Marker Band…there are several different textures here – the most noticeable are the ropey elongated ridge features, or “sausages” as one of our colleagues Juergen described them,” O’Connell-Cooper explains. “Underlying the sausages features is smoother bedrock. There are also rougher areas on top of the sausages, which look like they might have been altered (by later fluid movement for example). Finally we have the underlying non-Marker Band bedrock, the smooth rock the floats themselves are sitting on.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
O’Connell-Cooper notes it was hard to narrow down research choices with so many interesting targets; “we wanted to do a little bit of everything.”
Brushed targets
The rover planners were game to get as much in as possible, so the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) were to get a rare triple whammy of targets: unbrushed on the sausages at “Iracema,” brushed underlying smooth float rock at “Mel” and then brushed in-place non-Marker Band bedrock at “Mamupi.”
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity’s Mastcam was to obtain multispectral imagery on both brushed targets and the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) was slated to use Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to also analyze the bedrock at Mel.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ropey textures
ChemCam is then slated to turn its focus onto the in-place Marker Band above the robot, using the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) to picture the ropey textures at “Pintada” and LIBS to analyze “Soco,” a bright rock where the Marker Band is in contact with the local bedrock.
RMI will also capture images of layering within that in-place Marker Band at “Buena Vista.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Document stratigraphy
The robot’s Mastcam continues to document stratigraphy in this area, taking a very large mosaic (83 images) along the Marker Band itself and a slightly smaller (46 images) mosaic on “Canta,” a butte in the distance but above the Marker Band, O’Connell-Cooper reports.
“Once all of this has been completed, we drive a short distance, scooching closer to the in-place Marker Band,” O’Connell-Cooper adds, as part of the now-in-motion weekend plan.
Credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU)
I was delighted to take part in This Week In Space podcast: Episode 36 —NASA is finally tackling UFOS.
This topic and others were addressed by space journalists Rod Pyle, Tariq Malik and myself, offering a number of opinions about UFOs and today’s sky-high extraterrestrial expression: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).
NASA study
One subject area tackled: how and why is NASA looking into UFO phenomenon with a new $100,000 study that will run into mid-2023?
GIMBAL/“Tic Tac”
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy/Inside Outer Space screengrab
With a panel of experts, including scientists, astronauts (and yes, at least one space reporter), NASA has been charged with using its considerable expertise in the quest to understand what exactly UFOs (now called UAPs) might be all about.
Wait a Minute!
Deep dive
Are they extraterrestrial visitors?
Time travelers?
Earthly foreign agents?
Swamp gas (no, we don’t buy that one either)?
Give a listen to the podcast and join us as we deep dive into the possibility of extraterrestrial emissaries.
Go to: https://www.space.com/this-week-in-space-podcast-twit
Photo illustration by Thomas Gaulkin for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ January 2022 issue (used with permission)
A new partnership is underway, one that calls for amateur astronomers and satellite watchers to create the largest optical space sensor network to accurately track thousands of human-made objects in Earth orbit.
Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak kick-started Privateer Space, the group now publicizing its partnership with Celestron, a leading telescope maker.
The collaborative venture allows Celestron telescope owners to participate in improving the collective understanding of where objects are located at any given time – in low Earth orbit and beyond.
Credit: Privateer Space
According to a Privateer Space statement, “by crowdsourcing the transparency and predictability of space, Privateer will be able to provide more accurate locations of objects in space and share those critical data through the Wayfinder platform, while Celestron users will be able to participate firsthand in keeping space safe and accessible for all humankind.”
Credit: Privateer Space
Space environmentalism
Moriba Jah, co-founder and chief scientist of Privateer, said that by combining Celestron telescopes with the recently launched Wayfinder 2.0, “anyone can easily become an active steward of the space environment.”
While many radars and telescopes can detect objects in space, Privateer adds that they are often not capable to track those objects long enough to precisely determine their orbits. That leaves much to guess.
Left to right: Moriba Jah, Chief Scientist; Steve Wozniak, President; Alex Fielding, CEO, Chairman.
Credit: Privateer Space
Celestron CEO, Corey Lee, said in a statement that the partnership with Privateer, will make “space environmentalism accessible to everyone” by participating in the largest optical space sensor network.
More details forthcoming as Privateer and Celestron develop and roll out this capability.
For more information, go to:
Credit: CNSA/CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) Operations Centers are monitoring the uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere of China’s large space object CZ-5B (2022-143B). That’s the core stage of the rocket that launched on October 31st Mengtian – the third module of the Chinese large modular space station.
The EU SST network of sensors is observing the object closely, and its radars have narrowed down its re-entry window to November 4th.
Initial measurements from EU SST contributing sensors confirmed that the core stage is tumbling.
China’s Long March 5 Core Stage – Predicted Reentry Time now November 4, 2022 at 11:20 UTC ± 3 hours – from The Aerospace Corporation.
Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Pink Icon (if applicable) – vicinity of eyewitness sighting or recovered debris
Note: Possible reentry locations lie anywhere along the blue and yellow ground track. Areas not under the line are not exposed to the debris.
Level of risk
“The uncertainty of where the large debris will ultimately land presents a level of risk to human safety and property damage that is well above commonly accepted thresholds,” explains The Aerospace Corporation and its Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS).
CORDS — as is the U.S. military and a global network of satellite watchers — are actively tracking the CZ-5B rocket body.
And for good reason.
The core booster weighs an estimated 22.5-metric tons. That’s about the size of a 10-story building.
Notes The Aerospace Corporation, similar uncontrolled reentries of Long March rockets occurred in 2020, 2021 and most recently in July 2022 – of which, two resulted in large debris landing near populated areas.
Precautionary preparation
“Over 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the reentry’s potential debris footprint. Factors such as the rocket core’s uncontrolled manner of descent and its size, which is too large to entirely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, collectively present risks high enough that require additional precautionary preparation around the world,” adds The Aerospace Corporation.
Credit: European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST)
