A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship has been berthed to the ISS since it arrived on November 19th following the launch from NASA Wallops Island on November 17th aboard an Antares 230 rocket. Today the Cygnus left the station: Astronauts Release U.S. Spacecraft from Station – Space Station
The vehicle will maneuver to higher orbits for the release of several cubesats for NanoRacks. It will then de-orbit on Feb. 25th and burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
Two years after it launched into a broadcast orbit around the world, “Space Dealers” has landed in the United States.
The reality TV show, which follows the exploits of three NASA-obsessed space memorabilia sellers, began streaming on Netflix in the U.S. and UK on Friday (Feb. 1). The six-part series, produced by WAGTV, first aired in 2017 in Australia and has in the interim been seen across Europe and Russia.
“For the right price, America’s leading space dealers will sell you anything and everything that the men and women with the ‘right stuff’ have used on their brave adventures in space,” writes the producers.
“Space Dealers” lightly parodies the real-life trade in NASA artifacts and Soviet-era space hardware. The rivalry between bowtie-sporting Larry, former NASA employee Torie and well-connected Cole sets up the drama, but it is the objects that they handle and the astronauts who they visit who are the stars of the show.
The goal of the Prometheus demonstrator is to be able to build future liquid propellant engines in the 100 tons thrust class, for a cost ten times less than that involved in building an existing engine such as the Vulcain®2.
Rendering of a design for the reusable methane fueled Promethus engine.
The success of a technological challenge of this nature depends on a completely new design: over and above the change in the traditional Ariane propellant (switching from the liquid oxygen and hydrogen combination to liquid oxygen and methane), the demonstrator will entail major changes, including digitization of engine control and diagnostics. It also depends on the use of innovative design and production methods and tools, including construction using 3D printing in a connected factory environment.
“This new launcher does not constitute a sustainable response in order to be competitive in a commercial market in stagnation,” the auditor’s report states. The Ariane 6 rocket design is too “cautious,” according to the report, relying on mostly traditional technologies.
** New Blue Origin video highlights the activities and future plans of the company:
** Momentus Water-Plasma propulsion for smallsat– While small satellites are growing into major sector of the space industry, cost-effective and technically practical in-space propulsion for small spacecraft remains a challenge, especially for those sized in the CubeSat scale of a few kilograms. The startup company Momentus offers propulsion modules that will attach to smallsats and and send them to the exact orbits after they are released from a rocket that takes them into space.
Momentus propulsion system uses water heated into a plasma state by microwaves. Water is obviously a safe fuel and this means that a spacecraft using it for propulsion will encounter fewer hurdles to integrating the craft into a launch system compared to using more energetic fuels.
Momentus Water-Plasma engine diagram.
Momentus just got its first contract with a $6M order from the German company Exolaunch to provide in-space propulsion for satellites that will be launched in 2020 and 2021:
There are longer term advantages to water propulsion as well. Water has been found to be abundant throughout the solar system. Water-based propulsion clearly offers significant advantages for in-space transportation with the Moon and asteroids providing filling-station services for spacecraft of all sizes.
The agency now is targeting March 2 for launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on its uncrewed Demo-1 test flight. Boeing’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test is targeted for launch no earlier than April.
These adjustments allow for completion of necessary hardware testing, data verification, remaining NASA and provider reviews, as well as training of flight controllers and mission managers.
** SpaceX
*** The first operational full-scale Raptor LOX/Methane engine was tested at the company’s McGregor, Texas facility last weekend:
Completed a two-second test fire of the Starship Raptor engine that hit 170 bar and ~116 metric tons of force – the highest thrust ever from a SpaceX engine and Raptor was at ~60% power.
Check out the rocket cycles diagrams illustrating the flow of propellants through rocket engines, including the stage combustion cycles used on the Raptor.
***Spadre.com South Padre Island Information – Feb.5.2019 (opens with Raptor engine test video):
*** Spadre.com South Padre Island Information – Jan.30.2019
*** South Padre Island Info also offers a free webcam that includes views of the SpaceX site:
SPadre.com Starship Cam views the Spacex Starship, the Launch Pad, Isla Blanca Beach Park which is the closest possible launch viewing area, and the beach at South Padre Island Texas. Enjoy free continuous live streams and recordings of all upcoming launches, and Starship launch schedules and the latest SpaceX Boca Chica news. Launches will begin soon, watch all launches live on SPadre.com Starship Cam. For launch schedule and South Padre Island information visit: https://www.spadre.com Starship Cam hosted by South Padre Surf Company: https://www.southpadresurfcompany.com
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light. [Higher definition images]
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.
This zoom video starts with a wide view of the Milky Way and ends with a close-up look at a dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the HII region LHA 120-N 180B — also known as N180. This glowing region of newborn stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org). Music: Astral Electronic
The LMC is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, visible mainly from the Southern Hemisphere. At only around 160 000 light-years away from the Earth, it is practically on our doorstep. As well as being close to home, the LMC’s single spiral arm appears nearly face-on, allowing us to inspect regions such as N180 B with ease.
H II regions are interstellar clouds of ionised hydrogen — the bare nuclei of hydrogen atoms. These regions are stellar nurseries — and the newly formed massive stars are responsible for the ionisation of the surrounding gas, which makes for a spectacular sight. N180 B’s distinctive shape is made up of a gargantuan bubble of ionised hydrogen surrounded by four smaller bubbles.
Deep within the glowing cloud of the HII region LHA 120-N 180B, MUSE has spotted a jet emitted by a fledgling star — a massive young stellar object . This is the first time such a jet has been observed in visible light outside the Milky Way. Usually, such jets are obscured by their dusty surroundings, meaning they can only be detected at infrared or radio wavelengths by telescopes such as ALMA. However, the relatively dust-free environment of the LMC allowed this jet — named Herbig–Haro 1177, or HH 1177 for short — to be observed at visible wavelengths. At nearly 33 light-years in length, it is one of the longest such jets ever observed. This annotated image shows a close-up of the jet source and the bow shocks formed by the jet interacting with surrounding gas. [Hi-def images]
Deep within this glowing cloud, MUSE has spotted a jet emitted by a fledgling star — a massive young stellar object with a mass 12 times greater than our Sun. The jet — named Herbig–Haro 1177, or HH 1177 for short — is shown in detail in this accompanying image. This is the first time such a jet has been observed in visible light outside the Milky Way, as they are usually obscured by their dusty surroundings. However, the relatively dust-free environment of the LMC allows HH 1177 to be observed at visible wavelengths. At nearly 33 light-years in length, it is one of the longest such jets ever observed.
Deep within the glowing cloud of the HII region LHA 120-N 180B, MUSE has spotted a jet emitted by a fledgling star — a massive young stellar object . This is the first time such a jet has been observed in visible light outside the Milky Way. Usually, such jets are obscured by their dusty surroundings, meaning they can only be detected at infrared or radio wavelengths by telescopes such as ALMA. However, the relatively dust-free environment of the LMC allowed this jet — named Herbig–Haro 1177, or HH 1177 for short — to be observed at visible wavelengths. At nearly 33 light-years in length, it is one of the longest such jets ever observed. The blue and red regions in this image show the jet, which was detected as blue- and red-shifted emission peaks of the Hα line. [Hi-def versions]
HH 1177 tells us about the early lives of stars. The beam is highly collimated; it barely spreads out as it travels. Jets like this are associated with the accretion discs of their star, and can shed light on how fledgling stars gather matter. Astronomers have found that both high- and low-mass stars launch collimated jets like HH 1177 via similar mechanisms — hinting that massive stars can form in the same way as their low-mass counterparts.
MUSE has recently been vastly improved by the addition of the Adaptive Optics Facility , the Wide Field Mode of which saw first light in 2017. Adaptive optics is the process by which ESO’s telescopes compensate for the blurring effects of the atmosphere — turning twinkling stars into sharp, high-resolution images. Since obtaining these data, the addition of the Narrow Field Mode, has given MUSE vision nearly as sharp as that of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope — giving it the potential to explore the Universe in greater detail than ever before.
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light. The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2, and shows the region surrounding LHA 120-N 180B, visible at the centre of the image. [Hi-def images] More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled “An optical parsec-scale jet from a massive young star in the Large Magellanic Cloud” which appeared in the journal Nature.
The research team was composed of A. F. McLeod (who conducted this research while at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and is now affiliated with the Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University, USA), M. Reiter (Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA), R. Kuiper (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Tübingen, Germany), P. D. Klaassen (UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, UK) and C. J, Evans (UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, UK).
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 16 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”
The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard, et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
BTW: This terrific short video shows how the different wavelengths of light illuminate different aspects of the Whirlpool Galaxy’s structure and components:
