1. Tuesday, Apr. 11, 2023; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): We welcome back Dr. Greg Autry to the show on space economics, policy, commerce and more.
2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2023; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): TBD. Check the Upcoming Show Menu at www.thespaceshow.com for updates on scheduling.
3. Friday, Apr.14, 2023; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome back Mike Gold, ATTY with Redwire on space business, investments and more.
4. Sunday, Apr.16, 2023; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): We welcome back Morgan Irons with Lee Irons on space agriculture, biology and more. See the guests’ respective bios on The Space Show website for more information.
commercial space development, Cis Lunar development, in space propulsion and fuels, space settlement and much more. We also talked about space resources and the corresponding program at the Colorado School of Minds.
1. Tuesday, Apr. 4, 2023; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): Due to guest illness, the program planned for this date will be rescheduled. There will be no program for this evening.
2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Apr. 5, 2023; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): TBD. Check the Upcoming Show Menu at www.thespaceshow.com for updates on scheduling.
3. Friday, Apr.7, 2023; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome Tom Cooke, CEO of Spacely.work, a digital marketplace connecting independent workers to the aerospace industry.
4. Sunday, Mar.Apr9, 2023; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): No program today due to Easter Sunday.
commercial space development, Cis Lunar development, in space propulsion and fuels, space settlement and much more. We also talked about space resources and the corresponding program at the Colorado School of Minds.
** Tuesday, Mar.21.2023 – Robert Zimmerman talked about “SpaceX and Starship plus FAA launch license delay, Blue Origin, ULA, U.S. launchers, 3 D printing, ice on Mars, Boca Chica launch site, Bloomberg’s article on Musk and the Administration plus much more“.
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Artemis II: Meet the Astronauts Who will Fly Around the Moon – NASA
Four astronauts have been selected for NASA’s Artemis II mission: Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch from NASA, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.
Artemis II will be NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft around the Moon to verify today’s capabilities for humans to explore deep space and pave the way for long-term exploration and science on the lunar surface.
** Russia’s leaky Soyuz spacecraft undocks from space station for return to Earth – VideoFromSpace
Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft that sprung a major coolant leak undocked from the International Space Station on March 28, 2023 at 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT). It is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan about 2 hours later. Full Story: https://www.space.com/leaky-soyuz-spa…
First ever pressure test of the Gravitics space station prototype was successful
On Wednesday, March 15th, 2023, Gravitics conducted a pressure vessel test of an 8 meter diameter StarMax prototype hull, ahead of building our first StarMax prototype. In the weeks leading up to the test date, the team worked vigorously to build and prepare the test article by joining two 8-meter domes, preparing our data analytics software, and building out a safe test site. The test was a complete success, reaching an internal pressure level of 26.6 PSIG (pounds per square inch gauge) and exceeding the test goal parameters set by the engineering and manufacturing teams.
Reaching and surpassing the goals for this test means Gravitics has proven the space worthiness of our 8 meter StarMax hull. This test represents a key milestone in Gravitics’ drive to expand human life into the solar system and continue to push the boundaries of what humanity will achieve in space. #BuildtheSky
The Shenzhou-15 astronauts onboard China’s Tiangong space station completed their third spacewalk on Thursday, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
** Live Video from the International Space Station (Official NASA Stream) – NASA
Watch live video from the International Space Station, including inside views when the crew aboard the space station is on duty. Views of Earth are also streamed from an external camera located outside of the space station. During periods of signal loss due to handover between communications satellites, a blue screen is displayed.
The space station orbits Earth about 250 miles (425 kilometers) above the surface. An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the station, and it has been continuously occupied since November 2000. It’s a microgravity laboratory where science, research, and human innovation make way for new technologies and research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. More: https://go.nasa.gov/3CkVtC8
Did you know you can spot the station without a telescope? It looks like a fast-moving star, but you have to know when to look up. Sign up for text messages or email alerts to let you know when (and where) to spot the station and wave to the crew: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov
** What’s Up: April 2023 Skywatching Tips from NASA – NASA JPL
Mercury reaches its highest in the evening sky for the year for Northern Hemisphere observers. The Moon makes its monthly rounds to pair up beautifully with several planets. And viewing conditions may be ideal for the annual Lyrid meteor shower, thanks to no interference from the Moon.
Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch….
Clear April nights are filled with starry creatures. Near the Big Dipper, you will find several interesting binary stars. You can also spot galaxies like the Pinwheel Galaxy, M82, and M96—the last of which is an asymmetric galaxy that may have been gravitationally disrupted by encounters with its neighbors. Keep watching for space-based views of these celestial objects.
… “Tonight’s Sky” is a monthly video of constellations you can observe in the night sky. The series is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, home of science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope, in partnership with NASA’s Universe of Learning. This is a recurring show, and you can find more episodes—and other astronomy videos—at https://hubblesite.org/resource-galle….
What’s in the night sky tonight? Astronomers Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel guide us through April’s night-sky highlights, including Mercury’s favourable position in the evening sky, a wonderful encounter between Venus and the Pleiades, Mars in Gemini and the Lyrid meteor shower.
Our monthly Sky Tour #astronomy #podcast provides an informative and entertaining 10-minute guided tour of the nighttime sky. Listen to the April episode and follow the #Moon around the sky; spot #Venus and #Mercury soon after #sunset; track down a hunter, a lion, a bear, a snake, and a crow; and watch for the #Lyrids, a modest meteor shower toward month’s end.
This image shows the protocluster around the Spiderweb galaxy (formally known as MRC 1138-262), seen at a time when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. Most of the mass in the protocluster does not reside in the galaxies that can be seen in the centre of the image, but in the gas known as the intracluster medium (ICM). The hot gas in the ICM is shown as an overlaid blue cloud. The hot gas was detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner. As light from the cosmic microwave background –– the relic radiation from the Big Bang –– travels through the ICM, it gains energy when it interacts with the electrons in the hot gas. This is known as the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. By studying this effect, astronomers can infer how much hot gas resides in the ICM, and show that the Spiderweb protocluster is in the process of becoming a massive cluster held together by its own gravity.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner, astronomers have discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the still-forming galaxy cluster around the Spiderweb galaxy — the most distant detection of such hot gas yet. Galaxy clusters are some of the largest objects known in the Universe and this result, published today in Nature, further reveals just how early these structures begin to form.
Galaxy clusters, as the name suggests, host a large number of galaxies — sometimes even thousands. They also contain a vast “intracluster medium” (ICM) of gas that permeates the space between the galaxies in the cluster. This gas in fact considerably outweighs the galaxies themselves. Much of the physics of galaxy clusters is well understood; however, observations of the earliest phases of formation of the ICM remain scarce.
Previously, the ICM had only been studied in fully-formed nearby galaxy clusters. Detecting the ICM in distant protoclusters — that is, still-forming galaxy clusters – would allow astronomers to catch these clusters in the early stages of formation. A team led by Luca Di Mascolo, first author of the study and researcher at the University of Trieste, Italy, were keen to detect the ICM in a protocluster from the early stages of the Universe.
Galaxy clusters are so massive that they can bring together gas that heats up as it falls towards the cluster.
“Cosmological simulations have predicted the presence of hot gas in protoclusters for over a decade, but observational confirmations has been missing,”
explains Elena Rasia, researcher at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Trieste, Italy, and co-author of the study.
“Pursuing such key observational confirmation led us to carefully select one of the most promising candidate protoclusters.”
That was the Spiderweb protocluster, located at an epoch when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. Despite being the most intensively studied protocluster, the presence of the ICM has remained elusive. Finding a large reservoir of hot gas in the Spiderweb protocluster would indicate that the system is on its way to becoming a proper, long-lasting galaxy cluster rather than dispersing.
This image shows the protocluster around the Spiderweb galaxy (formally known as MRC 1138-262). The light that we see in the image shows galaxies at a time when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. Most of the mass in the protocluster does not reside in the galaxies, but in the gas known as the intracluster medium. Because of the mass in the gas, the protocluster is in the process of becoming a massive cluster held together by its own gravity.
Di Mascolo’s team detected the ICM of the Spiderweb protocluster through what’s known as the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. This effect happens when light from the cosmic microwave background — the relic radiation from the Big Bang — passes through the ICM. When this light interacts with the fast-moving electrons in the hot gas it gains a bit of energy and its colour, or wavelength, changes slightly.
“At the right wavelengths, the SZ effect thus appears as a shadowing effect of a galaxy cluster on the cosmic microwave background,”
explains Di Mascolo.
By measuring these shadows on the cosmic microwave background, astronomers can therefore infer the existence of the hot gas, estimate its mass and map its shape.
“Thanks to its unparalleled resolution and sensitivity, ALMA is the only facility currently capable of performing such a measurement for the distant progenitors of massive clusters,” says Di Mascolo.
They determined that the Spiderweb protocluster contains a vast reservoir of hot gas at a temperature of a few tens of millions of degrees Celsius. Previously, cold gas had been detected in this protocluster, but the mass of the hot gas found in this new study outweighs it by thousands of times. This finding shows that the Spiderweb protocluster is indeed expected to turn into a massive galaxy cluster in around 10 billion years, growing its mass by at least a factor of ten.
Tony Mroczkowski, co-author of the paper and researcher at ESO, explains that
“this system exhibits huge contrasts. The hot thermal component will destroy much of the cold component as the system evolves, and we are witnessing a delicate transition.”
He concludes that
“it provides observational confirmation of long-standing theoretical predictions about the formation of the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe.”
These results help to set the groundwork for synergies between ALMA and ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which
“will revolutionise the study of structures like the Spiderweb,”
says Mario Nonino, a co-author of the study and researcher at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste. The ELT and its state-of-the-art instruments, such as HARMONI and MICADO, will be able to peer into protoclusters and tell us about the galaxies in them in great detail. Together with ALMA’s capabilities to trace the forming ICM, this will provide a crucial glimpse into the assembly of some of the largest structures in the early Universe.
