Hello, lovelies, and welcome to your favorite space news breakdown. This week, it’s mostly planets and geopolitics, with relatively little launch news. should we
The next SpaceX crew launch was delayed by damage during transport
NASA and SpaceX have delayed the launch of SpaceX’s next manned flight to the International Space Station, no earlier than September 29. The Falcon 9 propulsion stage, mounted horizontally on a truck and trailer, struck a bridge during the trip from SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne. , California, at the company’s testing facility in McGregor, Texas.
According to NASA, “SpaceX is removing and replacing the rocket’s interstage and some onboard instrumentation after the hardware was damaged during transport from SpaceX’s production factory in Hawthorne, California, to the company’s McGregor test facility in Texas for stage testing.”
Womp womp.
“After all replacement hardware is installed,” the agency said in a statement, “the booster will undergo staged testing and further evaluation prior to acceptance and certification for flight.” .
I want to be nice, but listen. In my hometown, there is a 12’6” bridge and there are signs for miles away. Every few months, a hapless trucker arrives at the bridge. The interstate sends truckers to a completely different exit, just to avoid this bridge. And yet.
The Mars sample return mission has two, TWO space helicopters
The surface of Mars is made of relentless suction. It’s almost a vacuum, and the Martian regolith is terrible for our rovers and their moving parts. However, NASA’s space helicopter, Ingenuity, has performed very well on Mars. So well, in fact, that NASA scientists have decided to ditch the rover for their next Mars Sample Return mission. Instead of a rover, they plan to include not one, but two space helicopters. Now that we know it’s possible to fly to Mars, NASA is eager to explore.
Blue dunes on the red planet
Elsewhere on Mars, scientists look for wind patterns to describe the red planet’s climate and geology.
This Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image shows sand dunes near the center of Mars’ Gamboa Crater. Larger sand dunes form sinuous ridges and individual domes. There are small undulations at the top of the dunes, just a few meters from ridge to ridge. These merge into larger mega-waves about 30 feet away that radiate from the dunes.
The larger, brighter formations that are roughly parallel are called “Transverse Aeolian Ridges” (TAR) and are covered with very coarse sand. Megawaves appear blue-green on one side of an enhanced color cut, while TAR appears brighter blue on the other. This could be because TARs are actively moving under the force of the wind, clearing the darker dust and making them brighter.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of Gamboa Crater on Mars. NASA scientists have improved the color of the image, to show details invisible to the naked eye. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Didn’t the Marcels sing about it?
Chinese space junk crashes this weekend
This weekend, there’s a major piece of space junk falling from the sky. It is the core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket skeleton, and current estimates indicate that it will arrive on Saturday evening, roughly sixteen hours or so. Maybe 25 metric tons of spent rocket stage left. Analysts believe that only 20% or so of the debris will reach the Earth’s surface.
Statistically, the debris is likely to reach the Pacific. In 2020, debris from the first Long March 5B fell on Ivory Coast and damaged some buildings. However, “The worst case of this event will be less severe than a single cruise missile attack that we’ve been seeing every day in the Ukraine war, so let’s put it in perspective here,” he said. ‘astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan. McDowell, who is from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a webcast discussion.
Borisov Bails on the ISS
Speaking of space junk, the new head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos pushed back on the agency’s recent statement that Russia would withdraw from the ISS partnership, starting in 2024. The current target is 2028. Roscosmos obviously joined the rest of the world in understanding that Russia probably can’t build a space station by 2024. You know, with global sanctions on Ukraine and all.
Now, if we all think hard, we might find something that Russia can do to mitigate the sanctions.
“The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week. However, one of them must have changed their tune. A NASA official told Reuters that Roscosmos would like to keep flying astronauts to the ISS “until its own orbital outpost is built and operational.”
Contrition? never Sometimes I think these people make announcements just to see how the press receives them and then make their policy decisions based on public reaction. Or maybe Borisov just wants to start with an arrogance to match his predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin. So, since Putin apparently gave Rogozin his pink slip due to poor performance…is it really a good idea to match this incendiary little man?
Luna: Now slightly less horrible in certain very specific places
Observations by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have shown that pits or caves on the Moon’s surface could serve as sweet little spots for a lunar base. Day or night, the temperature inside the wells is around 63 F. The research was published this week in Geophysical Research Letters.
This is a spectacular high-sun view of the Mare Tranquillitatis crater that reveals boulders on a smooth floor. This image from LRO’s narrow-angle camera is 400 meters (1,312 feet) wide, north is up. Credits: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
“About 16 of the more than 200 pits are likely collapsed lava tubes,” Tyler Horvath said in a statement. Horvath is a doctoral student in planetary science at UCLA and led the new research.
“Humans evolved living in caves,” said co-author David Paige, “and we could go back to caves when we live on the moon.” Paige is a professor of planetary science at UCLA. He also directs the Diviner lunar radiometer experiment aboard LRO that made the temperature measurements used in the study.
Now we just have to figure out how to deal with the void.
Sky watchers’ corner
August begins with a conjunction of Mars and Uranus, high up. On the morning of August 1, you’ll find the small, bluish disk of Uranus northwest of Mars in the morning sky. Both will easily fit within the same field of view through binoculars.
The planetary gathering in the early summer morning sky will break up in the coming days, as Venus and Saturn exit to opposite sides. However, Jupiter and Saturn rise earlier each night. In mid-August, Jupiter will appear right next to the waning moon. Like Mars and Uranus, it should be easy to spot with binoculars. In the right lighting conditions, you can even see Jupiter’s four largest moons; We’ll have more on that next week.
Southern delta aquarids peak on Saturday morning. But its radiation is in the southern hemisphere, which means northern viewers will have a harder time. We might see some fireballs though. Similarly, this year’s Perseids will spend the next two weeks waxing, only to be wiped out by the full moon on August 12, the day of their peak.
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Until then, space nerds. There is no homework today; see you next week
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