Chang’e-4: Latest images and videos from lander and rover on lunar far side

Controllers of the Chinese space Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover have reactivated the two systems after a standby period during the most intense period of solar heat during the lunar day. Various scientific instruments are being activated, the rover will soon being roving, and cameras are taking pictures such as these panoramas:

Chang’e-4 Yutu-2 first panorama

Here is a circular panorama of the scene around the lander:

Panorama of view around the lander.

The two lander and rover have taken images of one another:

Here’s an interesting video of the landing on January 3rd as seen from the spacecraft: Here’s the amazing footage of the Chang’e-4 landing on the far side of the Moon | gbtimes.com

More about the mission:

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Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

Space policy roundup – Jan.10.2019

A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:

Webcasts:

** The Space Show – Tue, 01/08/2019Dr. Doug Plata discussed a “list of 15 space advocate heresies plus news of his University of Arizona Tucson projects”.

** The Space Show – Mon, 01/07/2019Dr. George Sowers talked about the “Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture Study, The Chinese far side of the Moon lander, Colorado School of Mines new space resource graduate degree program“.

** Abandoned Space Hardware: CANCELLED – Everyday Astronaut (Tim Dodd):

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Telescopes and Binoculars at Amazon

SpaceX: Update on “Starship Hopper” + Upcoming activities

[ Update Jan.10.2019: More on the Starship Hopper:

** Fairing recovery: One other project I failed to mention is SpaceX’s effort to return the fairings (the two halves of the clam-shell like structure that protects a satellite as it goes through the dense atmosphere during a launch) back to earth via paragliders and to catch them in a ship-borne net before they touch the water. Here is a video of a recent test that SpaceX carried out off the coast of California:

For the latest news on the activities of SpaceX’s ocean-going vehicles, see

]

SpaceX is developing a 2nd-gen space transportation system to follow the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy rockets that will be much larger and be fully reusable. That is, both stages, which are now named Super Heavy and Starship, will fly multiple times and are intended to provide affordable access to low earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

SpaceX is assembling a low altitude test vehicle at the company’s facility in Boca Chica Beach, Texas near Brownsville to assist with development of the Starship. The test vehicle, referred to as “StarHopper” by some and “Starship Hopper” by others, is the same diameter as Starship but somewhat shorter. It will provide real-world data on flying and landing the Starship in a manner similar to how the Grasshopper helped with learning to fly and land the Falcon 9 first stage. The Grasshopper carried out 8 low altitude takeoffs and landings in the 2012-2013 time frame.

Things are changing frequently at Boca Chica, but here is a video showing StarHopper as of Jan. 8, 2019:

Tim “The Everyday Astronaut” Dodd, gives an overview of the StarHopper project:

… we’re going to do a quick history on SpaceX’s previous fleet of hoppers, why they build them, what this one is going to accomplish and then we’ll build a version in Kerbal Space Program and demonstrate what we’ll hopefully see the StarHopper do in 2019!

And here is some earlier commentary on the project from Scott Manley:

A few days ago, Elon posted this –

Elon Musk on Twitter: “Starship test vehicle under assembly will look similar to this illustration when finished. Operational Starships would obv have windows, etc.…”

The full-scale SuperHeavy/Starship would look something like the following (via roow110 on Reddit):

For updates on StarHopper, try:

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SpaceX has a number of other activities underway as well including:

** Falcon 9 launch of Iridium satellites from Vandenberg AFB in California is set for this Friday. This will be the 8th and final F9 launch for Iridium and will complete the implementation of the company’s 2nd-gen NEXT low earth orbit narrowband communications constellation:

SpaceX on Twitter: “Approved on the range – now targeting January 11 launch of Iridium-8 from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Weather is 60% favorable for the instantaneous launch opportunity at 7:31 a.m. PST, 15:31 UTC.”

** Cargo Dragon return from the ISS is expected this weekend.

Intl. Space Station on Twitter:  The @SpaceX #Dragon is packed with science and hardware today as teams wait for favorable weather in the splashdown area for Dragon’s return. https://blogs.nasa.gov/…

** Crew Dragon Demonstration Mission (SpX-DM1) is now set for February. A Falcon 9 will launch an uncrewed Dragon 2 vehicle, which will dock to the ISS. SpaceX about one month away from first commercial crew test flight – Spaceflight Now.

If this mission and an in-flight abort test are successful, a Crew Dragon with astronauts could launch to the ISS in the June time frame. The Demo mission was previously set for mid-January but the partial government shutdown has prevented NASA staff from completing their oversight duties for the mission. An exact date for the DM1 flight won’t be set until the shutdown is over.

The DM1 Falcon 9 and Dragon recently were lifted upright on Pad-39A to check out the pad systems, including the new crew access arm:

** 2nd Falcon Heavy launch is planned for this spring. Various Falcon 9 missions are also planned throughout the year.

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Hubble: Huge new image mosaic of the Triangulum Galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope collaboration has released huge new mosaic image of the Trangulum Galaxy:

Hubble takes gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy

This gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy — also known as Messier 33 — is a composite of about 54 different pointings with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. With a staggering size of 34 372 times 19 345 pixels, it is the second-largest image ever released by Hubble. It is only dwarfed by the image of the Andromeda Galaxy, released in 2015. The mosaic of the Triangulum Galaxy showcases the central region of the galaxy and its inner spiral arms. Millions of stars, hundreds of star clusters and bright nebulae are visible. This image is too large to be easily displayed at full resolution and is best appreciated using the zoom tool. [Higher-res versions]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of a close neighbour of the Milky Way — the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located at a distance of only three million light-years. This panoramic survey of the third-largest galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies provides a mesmerising view of the 40 billion stars that make up one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye.

This video journey takes the viewer on a three-million-light-year trip to the Triangulum Galaxy, Messier 33. The final view, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the most detailed wide-field view of this object ever obtained and shows the many glowing gas clouds in the spiral arms with particular clarity. Credit:ESA, ESO, DSS, NASA, Risinger. Music: Astral Electronic

This new image of the Triangulum Galaxy — also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598 — has a staggering 665 million pixels and showcases the central region of the galaxy and its inner spiral arms. To stitch together this gigantic mosaic, Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys needed to create 54 separate images.

This image shows NGC 604, located within the Triangulum Galaxy. Some 1500 light-years across, this is one of the largest, brightest concentrations of ionised hydrogen (H II) in our Local Group of galaxies, and it is a major centre of star formation. The gas in NGC 604, around nine-tenths of which is hydrogen, is gradually collapsing under the force of gravity to create new stars. Once these stars have formed, the energetic ultraviolet radiation they emit excites the remaining gas in the cloud. This image is only a tiny part of the large wide-field image of the Triangulum Galaxy created by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has observed this object before, with different cameras: In 2003, using the WFPC2 and in 2010, using the ACS. The different colours in the images have their origin in the different filters being used. [Higher-res versions]

Under excellent dark-sky conditions, the Triangulum Galaxy can be seen with the naked eye as a faint, blurry object in the constellation of Triangulum (the Triangle), where its ethereal glow is an exciting target for amateur astronomers.

At only three million light-years from Earth, the Triangulum Galaxy is a notable member of the Local Group — it is the group’s third-largest galaxy, but also the smallest spiral galaxy in the group [1]. It measures only about 60 000 light-years across, compared to the 200 000 light-years of the Andromeda Galaxy; the Milky Way lies between these extremes at about 100 000 light-years in diameter [2].

The Triangulum Galaxy is not only surpassed in size by the other two spirals, but by the multitude of stars they contain. The Triangulum Galaxy has at least an order of magnitude less stars than the Milky Way and two orders of magnitude less than Andromeda. These numbers are hard to grasp when already in this image 10 to 15 million individual stars are visible.

This wide-field view shows the Triangulum Galaxy — also known as Messier 33 — as seen from the ground. The extent of the new huge mosaic created with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is shown by the irregularly shaped region and the main image presented here by the rectangle within it. [Higher-res versions]

In contrast to the two larger spirals, the Triangulum Galaxy doesn’t have a bright bulge at its centre and it also lacks a bar connecting its spiral arms to the centre. It does, however, contain a huge amount of gas and dust, giving rise to rapid star formation. New stars form at a rate of approximately one solar mass every two years.

The abundance of gas clouds in the Triangulum Galaxy is precisely what drew astronomers to conduct this detailed survey. When stars are born, they use up material in these clouds of gas and dust, leaving less fuel for new stars to emerge. Hubble’s image shows two of the four brightest of these regions in the galaxy: NGC 595 and NGC 604. The latter is the second most luminous region of ionised hydrogen within the Local Group and it is also among the largest known star formation regions in the Local Group.

This wide-field view of the sky around the nearby galaxy Messier 33 was assembled from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The original photographs were taken over a period spanning more than 40 years, from 1949 until the early 1990s. As a result, some of the nearer stars in the picture have moved as a result of their significant proper motions. These show up as double dots — one red and one blue. The huge galaxy at the centre of the picture is tens or hundreds of thousands of times more distant than these nearby stars. [Higher-res versions]
These detailed observations of the Triangulum Galaxy have tremendous legacy value — combined with those of the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and the irregular Magellanic Cloud galaxies, they will help astronomers to better understand star formation and stellar evolution.

Notes

[1] Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of the Local Group, an assembly of more than 50 galaxies bound together by gravity. Its largest member is the Andromeda Galaxy — also known as Messier 31 — followed by the Milky Way and the Triangulum Galaxy. The remaining members of the Local Group are dwarf galaxies, each orbiting one of the three larger ones.

[2] The much bigger Andromeda Galaxy was mapped by Hubble in 2015, creating the sharpest and largest image of this galaxy and the largest Hubble image ever (heic1502).

More information

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Image credit: NASA, ESA

Links

Space policy roundup – Jan.8.2019

A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:

Webcasts:

** January 4, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

** The Space Show – Sun, 01/06/2019 – Dr. David Livingston led a discussion with listeners on “Space Show 2019 changes, feedback, fundraising, Advisory Board, stronger 2019 programming, To The Stars Academy, unidentified areal events, lunar policy and impact and much more”.

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The High Frontier: An Easier Way

Everyone can participate in space