Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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February 3rd, 2025
Image credit: SETI Institute
Questions for the day, with universal appeal:
If an extraterrestrial civilization existed with technology similar to ours, would they be able to detect Earth and evidence of humanity? If so, what signals would they detect, and from how far away?
A research team led by Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, in collaboration with the Characterizing Atmospheric Technosignatures project and the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, set out to detect answers.
Image credit: Sofia Sheikh , et. al
Types of technosignatures
“Our goal with this project was to bring SETI back ‘down to Earth’ for a moment and think about where we really are today with Earth’s technosignatures and detection capabilities,” said Macy Huston, co-author of a new research paper and postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Astronomy.
“In SETI, we should never assume other life and technology would be just like ours,” Huston added, “but quantifying what ‘ours’ means can help put SETI searches into perspective.”
Indeed, the research paper notes, future telescopes and receivers could enhance our detection sensitivity or enable us to identify new types of technosignatures, such as other atmospheric signatures of pollution.
Image credit: NOAA
Observable outputs
As Sheikh and colleagues point out, Earth’s present-day technosignatures hold clues to humanity’s culture, society, and biosphere.
“Some of these clues may be straightforward to interpret correctly if the associated technosignature is detected, but others could be interpreted in wildly varying ways, as there are many activities or prior states that could produce the same astronomically observable outputs. We should keep this in mind as we ourselves hypothesize about the ETIs behind any future technosignature candidates.”
To access this paper in the Astronomical Journal — “Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures be Detected with Present-day Technology?” – go to:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7
Also go to this informative video at:
https://youtu.be/Pdg2x3NP2ds?si=7ln-ElTaNrgJXQhA
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Posted in 
Image credit: KSA
That large metallic ring that dropped into Africa’s Mukuku village, in Makueni county in the country’s south, is apparently still under study.
Reportedly tumbling “red-hot” into that village, the object was pronounced as a piece of rocket debris by investigators with the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) in Nairobia. They reported that the object, which is roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter, tipped the scales at some 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms).
“Preliminary assessments indicate that the fallen object is a separation ring from a launch vehicle (rocket),” the KSA stated in a January 1st official statement. The KSA later dismissed a media report by Nation Africa that the country had demanded compensation for the debris dumping from India.
Await official findings
The KSA stressed that “investigations into the object’s origin are still ongoing,” and no official statement has been issued linking the debris to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) “or any specific space mission.”
Image credit: KSAKSA advised the public to “await official findings.”But there continues to be discussion regarding the rocket detritus as possibly associated with the ISRO’s Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) launch on December 30.
The SpaDeX payload flew atop ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C60), lifting off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
Meanwhile, since January 3, the KSA has offered no follow-on word on the purported skyfall nor identifying the object’s origin.
Image credit: ISRO/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Space debris webinar
However, the puzzling metal ring – as well as other incidents tied to space junk falling in Africa – were discussed in a recent January 30 webinar titled: Treating Effective Counter-Measures Against Space Debris in African Countries.
That webinar was hosted by Space in Africa, an analytics and consulting company in the space sector, serving both the institutional and commercial markets with a particular focus on Africa.
Image credit: Space in Africa
The webinar speakers were Dr. Yeshurun Alemayehu, State Minister for the ICT and Digital Economy Sector, the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, Ethiopia, and Dr. Doreen Agaba, Technical Lead, Department of Aeronautics and Space Science Uganda. The event was moderated by Mustapha Iderawumi, a senior analyst for Space in Africa.
In a description of the webinar posting by Space in Africa, they point out that, “as Africa’s engagement in space activities expands, the issue of space debris has become increasingly pertinent.”
Recent incidents
The intent of the webinar was to analyze recent space debris incidents in Africa, risks posed to African satellites and ground infrastructure, and emerging technological solutions for debris tracking, collision avoidance, and removal.
Taking the fall. Space hardware dives into Earth’s atmosphere with some fragments making their way to the ground.
Image credit: ESA/D.Ducros
“Recent incidents, such as the crash of a separation ring from a launch vehicle from the sky and landing in Mukuku Village, Makueni County in Kenya in December 2024, the space debris from a U.S.-based SpaceX satellite launch fell in western Uganda, causing property damage over a 40-kilometre area, and sightings of possible space debris streaking across southern skies in Ethiopia, highlight the immediate risks posed by falling debris to both space infrastructure and terrestrial communities,” the posted webinar description adds.
Pressurization sphere stemming from a rocket body that fell in Southern Africa years ago.
Image credit: NASA/Orbital Debris Program Office
Legal avenues
One webinar discussion point was the examination of international treaties “to understand the responsibilities of foreign space actors and the legal avenues available to African countries in the event of damage caused by space debris.”
Other areas addressed included assessing the impact of space debris on African space infrastructure and public safety.
The webinar also highlighted the significance of space debris issues among African policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the general public. Exploring mitigation strategies and best practices was another discussion area.
For informative on the webinar, go to:
Go to the webinar replay at:
Also, go to:
Space Debris Delays Flights to South Africa Amid Warnings of Falling Rocket Components
Image credit: White House
Yesterday, NASA requested the array of Assessment and Analysis Groups (AGs) that provide community input into Moon, Mars, the outer planets and other exploration target planning to pause all meetings.
While the pause is in action, NASA is conducting a review to ensure compliance with recent presidential actions by the President Trump Administration.
All of these AGs are being made aware of this action.
Clarification
The AGs are not “Advisory,” they are “Assessment or Analysis” Groups. These entities cannot be Advisory because they have not been chartered officially by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) is the oldest “AG”; the only official Advisory Groups are the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and subsidiaries, such as the Planetary Advisory Committee (PAC).
AGony
The communique from NASA:
“As NASA continues to review and ensure compliance with presidential actions, we are requesting that you please pause all meetings and activities of Planetary Science Analysis/Assessment Groups,” the communique explains.
“This includes ExMAG [Extraterrestrial Materials Assessment Group], LEAG [Lunar Exploration Analysis Group], MAPSIT [Mapping and Planetary Spatial Infrastructure Team], MEPAG [Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group], MExAG [Mercury Exploration Assessment Group], OPAG [Outer Planets Assessment Group] , OWWG [Ocean Worlds Working Group], SBAG [Small Bodies Assessment Group], VEXAG [Venus Exploration Analysis Group], the cross-AG EDIA [Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] Working Group, and any other groups or activities that have been developed by the AGs.”
Image credit: White House
Executive orders, memoranda
The presidential actions NASA listed as leading to this pause may include, but are not limited to, the following Executive Orders and Presidential memoranda:
- Ending Radical and Wasteful Government Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) Programs and Preferencing
- Initial Guidance Regarding Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) Executive Orders
Go to: https://chcoc.gov/content/initial-guidance-regarding-deia-executive-orders
- Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions
- Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
- Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women
- Unleashing American Energy
Go to: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unleashing-american-energy/
Image credit: NASA
Pre-launch image of Blue Ghost lunar lander. Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
The commercial Blue Ghost moonbound lander has just over a week left in Earth orbit.
What comes next is performing the critical Trans Lunar Injection, a propulsive nudge that gives the craft a “transit ticket” to the Moon for about four days of coast period.
That engine burn will last for about 16 seconds, Firefly Aerospace told Inside Outer Space.
So far, following its January 15 takeoff, the moonbound lander is over two weeks into the group’s first mission to the Moon.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
Landing date
“Our Blue Ghost lunar lander has already clocked 715,000 miles, downlinked more than 7 GB of data, and completed several NASA payload science operations,” a just-issued Firefly Aerospace statement explains.
Blue Ghost is then slated to perform a Lunar Orbit Insertion and spend 16 days in lunar orbit before descent.
Blue Ghost’s final autonomous descent will take roughly an hour, starting with a Descent Orbit Insertion burn that will place Blue Ghost on its descent trajectory on March 2.
Blue Ghost will capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions. The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night.
Artwork credit: Firefly Aerospace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Day/night operations
Blue Ghost is targeted to touchdown on the near side of the Moon near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium.
If all goes well, upon touchdown, Blue Ghost will operate 10 NASA instruments for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days). Just before lunar night also approximately a 14 day period of time, Blue Ghost will capture high definition imagery of a total eclipse from the Moon where the Earth blocks the sun.
Those NASA instruments are onboard as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
At the end of the mission, the Blue Ghost Moon lander will capture the lunar sunset before operating several hours into the lunar night.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured the Moon in the distance and Earth on the horizon from its top deck, showing the LEXI payload (right) and X-band antenna.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
First-ever images
One of Blue Ghost’s scientific payloads is a telescope that will capture the first-ever global images of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation.
The X-ray telescope is mounted on top of the lander, an instrument designed to capture the first-ever images of X-rays emanating from the edges of our planet’s vast magnetosphere.
That instrument, the Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager, or LEXI, was created by Brian Walsh, a Boston University College of Engineering associate professor.
Following Blue Ghost’s lunar landing, LEXI is set to deploy and power up, directing its focus back toward Earth as it collects images of the X-rays emanating from the edges of Earth’s magnetosphere.
Status report video
An array of other instruments are on the lunar lander, including devices designed to characterize the structure and composition of the Moon’s mantle by measuring electric and magnetic fields, collect regolith samples from the lunar surface using a burst of compressed gas, and gauge heat flow from the Moon’s interior.
Go to this informative, status-report video at:
Image credit: NASA/Association of Space Explorers
This video makes use of ethereal images recently taken on the International Space Station (ISS). Don Pettit, NASA astronaut, is a talented photographer of Earth. Currently on orbit (his 4th mission to the ISS) he took a series of long-duration photos, revealing tracks of urban night lights as the ISS passed over.
The stars show their own curving pattern, and the aurora adds even more mystery. For the movie, one frame morphs into the next in a magical dance.
In-space photographer, Don Pettit.
Image credit: NASA
Floating music
The music is by Mario Quiroga, a composer and musician in Chile. He is a “musico-terapista” (musical therapist), who creates floating music with his digital synthesizers, designed to help soothe the soul.
Featured is Quiroga’s “Aurora Boreal” composition – like a musical magic carpet as we soar over these ethereal views.
Produced by Association of Space Explorers, the professional association of flown astronauts.
For more videos in the Earth Music Theater series, go to:
Image credit: Thales Alenia Space/E.Briot
Autonomous access to the Moon by Europe is getting a boost by development of the Argonaut Lunar lander – a cargo delivery project.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Thales Alenia Space in Italy have inked a new contract to have that aerospace firm develop Argonaut to deliver cargo, infrastructure and scientific instruments to the Moon’s surface.
Tons of cargo
The plan calls for Argonaut to be launched from the 2030’s. Tons of cargo will be delivered to the Moon’s surface by the vehicle.
“An Argonaut mission from launch to landing could take from a week to a month, depending on orbits and mission design. No area is off-limits for Argonaut – the spacecraft will be able to land at any region on the Moon,” according to ESA.
Image credit: ESA – P. Carril
Argonaut consists of three main elements:
- A lunar descent element (LDE) for flying to the Moon and landing on the target
- A cargo platform element that is the interface between the lander and its payload
- The element that the mission designers want to send to the Moon.
Package delivery
Argonaut cargo includes delivery of hardware for astronauts near the craft’s landing site, a rover, technology demonstration packages, production facilities using lunar resources, a lunar telescope or even a power station, according to a Thales Alenia Space statement.
A Lunar Crater Radio Telescope on the moon’s far side, a proposed idea funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.
Image credit: Volodymyr Vustyansky
“Thales Alenia Space is the prime contractor for the development of the Lunar Descent Element. The overall mission responsibility, i.e. the use of the LDE and integration with payload, will be the subject of a separate procurement in the future,” the company statement notes. “The Lunar Descent Element is an independent architecture block of the international lunar exploration activities, namely a versatile system to support a variety of missions.”
First mission
Argonaut’s first mission is envisioned to deal with delivery of dedicated navigation and telecommunication payloads as well as energy generation and storage system, as European enterprises explore the Moon’s southern area.
This major contract to develop the European lunar lander will enable Europe to access autonomously to the Moon’s surface.
Starship 7 leftovers arc into the Atlantic near the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Image credit: Dean Olson
Uncontrolled space debris reentries are of growing concern.
The prospect of leftovers from space hotfooting into the Earth’s atmosphere can create a collision risk with aircraft in flight.
While the probability of a strike is low, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Mishap investigation
Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of their Starship vehicle during the private firm’s launch operations on January 16 from the Texas-based “SpaceX Starbase.”
Starship 7 leftovers arced into the Atlantic near the Turks and Caicos Islands, with reported debris being found on land.
A main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle landed near Georgetown, Texas in January 1997.
Image credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office
During the Starship 7 destructive event, the FAA activated a Debris Response Area and briefly slowed aircraft outside the area where space vehicle debris was falling or stopped aircraft at their departure location.
Several aircraft requested to divert due to low fuel levels while holding outside impacted areas, said the FAA in a statement, called preliminary and subject to change.
Image credit: LeoLabs/McKnight
New research
That incident underscores the output from new research – “Airspace closures due to reentering space objects” – published in Scientific Reports, an open access journal.
The research points out that the risk is rising due to increases in both reentries and flights.
“In response, national authorities may choose to preemptively close airspace during reentry events; some have already done so,” explains the paper authored by Canada-based researchers.
Airspace
“In short, there is a 26 percent chance of an uncontrolled space debris reentry in busy airspaces such as the Northeastern United States or Northern Europe each year,” said Ewan Wright at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Number of aircraft in the sky throughout the first day of each month in 2023, sampled hourly. In general, the number of aircraft peaks in the Northern Hemisphere summer, though other periodic effects such as the day of the week and year (e.g., New Year’s Day) will also affect the number.
Image credit: Wright, et al.
“Authorities may choose to close airspace in response, as occurred in Europe in 2022, but this has economic impacts and further safety consequences,” Wright told Inside Outer Space.
Wright, along with colleagues Aaron Boley and Michael Byers, write in their paper that, for a given reentry, the collision risk in the underlying airspace increases with the air traffic density.
They point out that the economic consequences of flight delays also increase should that airspace be closed.
Dilemma
“This situation puts national authorities in a dilemma—to close airspace or not—with safety and economic implications either way. The collision risk could be mitigated if controlled reentries into the ocean were required for all missions,” the researchers contend.
However, over 2,300 rocket bodies are already in orbit and will eventually reenter in an uncontrolled manner.
Image of spent rocket body captured by commercial debris inspection demonstration satellite, Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J).
Image credit: Astroscale-Japan
“Airspace authorities will face the challenge of uncontrolled reentries for decades to come,” the research team concludes.
For access to the paper – “Airspace closures due to reentering space objects” – go to:
Image credit: Intuitive Machines
The Athena Moon lander is now at Cape Canaveral, Florida, targeted for a four-day launch window that opens no earlier than February 26.
Built by Houston, Texas-based Intuitive Machines, the spacecraft is the second of four manifested lunar missions as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Payload customers
The factory-equipped Athena is outfitted with a set of payloads, designed to validate resource prospecting, mobility, and communications infrastructure in the Moon’s Mons Mouton region, one of nine potential Artemis III landing sites.
Nine candidate landing regions for NASA’s Artemis III mission The background image of the lunar South Pole terrain within the nine regions is a mosaic of LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) WAC (Wide Angle Camera) images.
Image credit: NASA
Payload customers are: NASA, Lonestar Data Holdings, Columbia Sportswear, Nokia, Lunar Outpost, Puli Space, Dymon Co. Ltd., German Aerospace Center.
Broader efforts
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus, pointed out in a press statement: “This commitment to flying missions reinforces our broader efforts of developing a heavy cargo lander, establishing a lunar data relay satellite constellation, and providing sustainable infrastructure services at the Moon to enable further exploration of the solar system.”
Intuitive Machines (IM-2), a Nova-C lunar lander dubbed Athena is being prepared for sendoff to the moon’s south pole. Onboard the lander is the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), a NASA experiment designed to search for water ice on the moon.
Image credit: Intuitive Machines
Athena will be lofted by a SpaceX Falcon-9 booster with backup launch opportunities depending on the “lunar blackout window” and other factors, Intuitive Machines adds.
Athena is to be joined near-term with another Moonbound spacecraft, the Lunar Trailblazer as a rideshare probe. Lunar Trailblazer is a Caltech-led orbiter dedicated to pinpointing water ice deposits on the Moon.
Image credit: NASA
Be it on Earth’s Moon or distant Mars, the elixir for long-term space exploration is the critical role of water.
That topic is captured in a new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“The inclination to explore across vast expanses has been a continual part of human history. In voyages across the Atlantic, or North America, one of the greatest obstacles was the availability of water. It was a life or death struggle,” explains an introduction to the PNAS volume, led by Mark Thiemens, a scientist at the division of physical sciences at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California.
Image credit: PNAS/NASA/Ben Smegelsky
“As terrestrial inhabitants make the first expansions to non-Earth habitations, water remains a major obstacle. As in the past, knowledge of where water resources are and how much remains is a fundamental question,” Thiemens and colleagues write.
Collection of papers
The PNAS journal focuses on NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to “reboot” the Moon in coming years.
The collection of PNAS papers highlight water’s significance for sustainability in future Moon and Mars habitats, and also addresses the scientific aspects such as water origins, mining, and its physical and chemical properties in extreme environments.
Artistic depiction of NASA astronauts at the lunar south pole carrying out early work to establish an Artemis Base Camp.
Image credit: NASA
The PNAS special feature includes research from international experts and early-career scientists, emphasizing the importance of water for extended human presence in space, astrobiology and planetary geology.
Finding water: elusive
The collection titles are:
- Finding water on the Moon and Mars: Humanity’s extraterrestrial future
- A mining code for regulating lunar water ice mining activities
- Exploring the lunar water cycle
- The elusive nature of Martian liquid brines
- Triple oxygen isotopes of lunar water unveil indigenous and cometary heritage
- Oxygen isotope identity of the Earth and Moon with implications for the formation of the Moon and source of volatiles
- Exploring, sampling, and interpreting lunar volatiles in polar cold traps
- The present epoch may not be representative in determining the history of water on Mars
To access the collection of papers, go to:
https://www.pnas.org/toc/pnas/121/52
Artist’s concept depicts astronauts and human habitats on Mars.
Image credit: NASA
Image credit: Interlune
Exploration of Earth’s Moon beckons – not solely as a time capsule, indeed a witness plate, to help piece together the puzzling history of our solar system.
The Moon is also a rocky, airless world of energy, mineral, and water resources to help fuel a projected cis-lunar economy.
Enter Interlune, a Seattle-based group founded in 2020, drawing upon former technologists at Blue Origin. Serving as the group’s executive chairman is Apollo 17 moonwalker and geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt.
Artwork depicts moon mining operations for Helium-3 involving harvesters, solar power plant, rover, and return launchers.
Image credit: Interlune
Interlune plans to gather scarce lunar Helium-3 for quantum computing on Earth
Heavy isotope
What Interlune has been established to do, in time, is harvest lunar resources, be they industrial metals, rare Earth elements, and water to support a long-term presence on the Moon and a full-bodied, in-space economy.
But the up-front lunar resource demanding Interlune’s attention is extracting the heavy isotope of helium-3, explains Rob Meyerson, the CEO of Interlune.
Found in small quantities in the solar wind, helium-3 is implanted into the lunar regolith in tiny concentrations by mass, as measured in samples brought back to Earth via the NASA Apollo Moon landing program.
Interlune technology testing: Airborne shake-out flights to evaluate lunar machinery making use of the Zero-G Corporation’s modified B-727-200 aircraft to mimic one-sixth lunar gravity conditions during parabolic dives.
Image credit: Interlune
For more information on harvesting helium-3 on the Moon, go to my new SpaceNews story at:
