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:
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:
** 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:
… 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):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
** 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”.