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Good morning, Vietnam! Welcome back to This Week in Space, our Friday breakdown of the week’s most important space news. Today, we’ve got beautiful pictures from space telescopes, world firsts in rocketry, rather too many explosions, and—alas—still no aliens.
NASA Celebrates Webb Telescope’s First Year With Jaw-Dropping Photo of Nearest Stellar Nursery
It’s been a year since the James Webb Space Telescope released its first image: an incredible deep-field portrait of the night sky, revealing scores of celestial objects in unprecedented detail. Now, in celebration of Webb’s first year, NASA has released an absolutely breathtaking photo of the closest star nursery to Earth. Meet Rho Ophiuchi, a grouping of molecular clouds so close to Earth that there are no stars between here and there.
Rho Ophiuchi, the nearest stellar nursery to Earth
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan
Those crimson streaks are excited molecular hydrogen, flowing from newborn stars. The brilliant star at the center of the image, shrouded in dust and haloed by Webb’s trademark six-pointed flare, is known as S1. It’s larger than the Sun, and its intense ultraviolet radiation has carved it out a lacuna within the cloud, blowing a bubble with its solar wind.
If you’ve gazed your fill at Rho Ophiuchi, but you still want more glorious space images from the JWST, come and revel in the 25 best images from Webb’s first year. Our tribute to the JWST includes the iconic Pillars of Creation, protostars, an Einstein ring, and so much more.
Blue Origin Rocket Explodes During Testing, Problems May Impact ULA Vulcan
Late last month, Blue Origin lost one of its powerful BE-4 methane rocket thrusters to an explosion during a static fire test. That’s trouble enough for the company’s upcoming New Glenn rocket, but the BE-4 engine is also key to the development of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan heavy lift vehicle. Delays at Blue Origin may well extend past New Glenn to impose downstream delays on other projects—Vulcan included.
Before the BE-4 explosion, ULA was already investigating the root cause of the explosion that destroyed the upper stage of a Vulcan rocket during a pressure test in March. Vulcan’s upper stage, the Centaur V, uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen. But the expendable Vulcan also uses solid rocket boosters—and a pair of BE-4 engines—for every launch. This means Blue Origin has to manufacture dozens of these rocket engines every year. Delays at Blue Origin could push back schedules at ULA, imperiling the launch contracts already booked for Vulcan.
Blue Origin has hinted that it has identified a “proximate cause” for the BE-4 explosion, but the company has been cagey with details. Meanwhile, ULA said this week that the root cause of its failed Vulcan pressure test came down to a weak weld in the hydrogen tank, which was subjected to higher-than-expected pressures.
SpaceX Reusable Rocket Makes Record 16th Flight
Toward sustainable space exploration, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets are built from components that the company can reuse over and over. My colleague Ryan Whitwarm notes that SpaceX remains the only aerospace firm that has cracked the code on reusable rockets. Monday evening, SpaceX set a record, sending a first-stage Falcon 9 booster into orbit and successfully retrieving it for the 16th time.
SpaceX’s ability to recover the first stage of their Falcon 9 rockets has slashed the company’s launch costs, allowing it to launch ‘mega-constellations’ of thousands of Starlink satellites, including the 22 ‘V2 Mini’ Starlink satellites that SpaceX deployed in its Monday mission. But even SpaceX must contend with the increasing congestion and debris in Earth orbit. In the past six months alone, Starlink satellites had to collectively make more than 25,000 course corrections to avoid collisions with space debris or other satellites. It’s getting crowded up there.
Chinese Aerospace Company Launches First-Ever Methane Rocket to Orbit
Credit: Landspace
Methane fuel is the Next Big Thing in aerospace: cleaner and cheaper than hydrogen, kerosene, and most other liquid fuels. In March of this year, American aerospace startup Relativity Space launched a methane rocket, Terran-1, but an engine failure prevented the rocket from reaching orbit. SpaceX will use the same methalox fuel for its gigantic Starship rocket that Blue Origin will use in the BE-4 engines powering its New Glenn heavy lift vehicle. But a private Chinese launch startup, Landspace, made aerospace history this week when it successfully launched its methane-fueled rocket Zhuque-2 into low-Earth orbit.
Zhuque translates into ‘vermilion bird,’ and if an engine failure clipped Terran-1’s wings, no such disaster befell Zhuque-2. Grats, guys. Space is hard.
Harvard Astronomer Reports Dredging Up Possible ‘Interstellar Objects’ From the Pacific Seafloor
An unassuming space rock rocked our world in 2017, when astronomers confirmed that the cigar-shaped hunk of stone was the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system. We named it ‘Oumuamua. The novelty of our interstellar visitor sparked the imagination of many curious humans, including Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has ever since been obsessed with finding evidence of these visitors from afar. After hearing a tip that an ‘interstellar object’ dubbed IM1 may have fallen into the Pacific Ocean, Loeb went looking for clues by dredging the ocean floor with a magnetic sled—and surfaced with a collection of small spherical objects he says were recovered from the predicted path of IM1.
Don’t they look like golden ornaments? Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime…
Credit: Avi Loeb
Initially, the dredge was turning up nothing but volcanic ash, but Loeb says the team deployed a sub-millimeter mesh filter to wash off the ash and reveal the spherules. The team is just starting to analyze the golden glitter. None of this has been peer-reviewed, and Loeb wrote a whole book about whether ‘Oumuamua might be alien technology. On the other hand, he does have samples to test, and he promised to submit a paper for peer review and publication real soon now.
ESA to Attempt ‘First Of Its Kind’ Assisted Satellite Reentry
The European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite, named after the ruler of winds from Greek mythology, has been orbiting Earth for the past five years, using lasers to measure Earth’s winds on a global scale. Unfortunately, the satellite is finally running out of fuel. Aeolus is being pulled down by gravity and increased atmospheric drag, due in part to a recent surge in solar activity. And the clock is ticking: ESA officials said in a statement that Aeolus is already falling about a kilometer a day.
The satellite was always intended to burn up in orbit at the end of its life, but because it’s falling faster and faster, an analysis indicated Aeolus might break into larger pieces of debris than mission techs originally predicted. In order to prevent that debris from raining down on people and property below, the agency will attempt an ambitious “first-of-its-kind” assisted re-entry. Using the last of Aeolus’ fuel, ESA mission techs will put the satellite through several maneuvers meant to bring it down over “a long stretch of open water as far away from land as possible.”
Credit: ESA
“This assisted reentry attempt goes above and beyond safety regulations for the mission, which was planned and designed in the late 1990s,” Tim Flohrer, head of ESA’s Space Debris Office, explained. “Once ESA and industrial partners found that it might be possible to further reduce the already minimal risk to life or infrastructure even further, the wheels were set in motion.”
Honey In Space
How does honey behave in space? Does microgravity affect viscosity? Here, ESA astronauts aboard the International Space Station demonstrate what happens when you open a honey jar in space. Just a moment of sweet, whimsical science fun.
Perseverance Captures Farside Sunspots, Finds More ‘Organic Matter’ on Mars
In its time on Mars, the Perseverance rover has made all kinds of discoveries, from silicate clays (evidence of water) to volcanic basalt and back again. Though the rover has been busy with its charting and sample collecting, it found time yesterday to take a glance at the Sun—and when it did, its low-res MASTCAM camera captured two farside sunspots we can’t see from Earth.
MASTCAM detected these sunspots on the far side of the Sun
Credit: NASA
Perseverance’s onboard spectroscope can let the rover take a chemical “fingerprint” of whatever it’s looking at. This week, a report appeared in Nature identifying what researchers are calling “preserved organic matter” in the once-watery basin of Jezero crater.
Calling this stuff organic matter is technically true, insofar as there are carbon atoms in it. But the report identified “one or two-ring aromatic organic molecules” within sulfate crystals scraped out of crevices in the Jezero crater floor. They’re dirty benzene rings, with the occasional nitrate functional group or double bond. Still, the report sheds light on how sulfur chemicals may have participated in Mars’ carbon cycle.
China’s Zhurong Rover Finds Evidence of Rapid Climate Change on Mars
Historically, Mars has been viewed as a so-called “dead” planet, especially in comparison with places like Earth. But our missions to Mars have shown us that the Red Planet is a more dynamic place than we thought. NASA’s InSight lander detected many Marsquakes during its mission, there’s evidence of some kind of seasonal methane production on the planet from unknown sources, dust storms reshape the surface, and—according to data from China’s now-defunct Zhurong rover—the climate on Mars changed dramatically about 400,000 years ago.
Transverse Aeolian Ridges (TARs) on Mars
Credit: NASA
Zhurong and its accompanying orbiter, Tianwen-1, have measured the shape of sand dunes all across Mars. There are large sand dunes near Zhurong’s landing spot with long, dark ridges that formed on top of already-existing dunes. What’s odd about these formations is that these ridges, called tranverse aeolian ridges (TARs), formed at a different angle than the dunes they sit atop. These dunes have been observed planetwide at Mars middle latitudes, but there hasn’t been an explanation for how they formed.
According to the science team analyzing data from Zhurong, the brighter dunes below the dark ridges formed first. The darker ridges could only have been formed if planetary winds on Mars had significantly changed direction about 400,000 years ago. Mars’ axial tilt varies more than Earth’s does and is typically between 15 – 31 degrees, compared to Earth’s more modest 22.1 – 24.5-degree tilt. Mars’ poles actually became warmer during its last ice age, while the equator got colder—although, given the generally inclement weather that’s dominated Mars for the last few billion years, it might be more appropriate to call it an icier age.
NASA Shelves Janus Mission With Probes Already Built
When NASA delayed Artemis 1 (and therefore its ride-along, the Psyche asteroid mission) last year, there were concerns that Psyche had missed its launch window for good and might not fly at all. While NASA eventually gave the mission a green light to proceed, a different program has been canceled due to Psyche’s software problems.
The original plan was for Psyche to share its launch vehicle with a dual satellite binary asteroid exploration mission, appropriately named Janus. Recent Congressional budget negotiations resulted in federal spending limits that could impact NASA in the future—and the enormous costs associated with long-term projects like the Mars Sample Return mission have left the agency looking for places to cut costs. The Janus spacecraft are built and ready for launch, but NASA has decided to scrub the mission.
$50 million is a lot of money to lose, but the orbital math is conclusive. The relative positions of Earth and the Janus mission’s target asteroids have changed enough that the satellites can no longer hold enough fuel to reach their targets. Secondary missions to other asteroids were considered, but none of the proposed missions appear to have offered the scientific value NASA required. NASA hasn’t ruled out using the pair of probes for a different purpose in the future, but as of now, the Janus mission is over.
Skywatchers Corner
July and August are great for night-time skywatching, with multiple meteor showers over the summer that tend to produce brilliant fireballs. True to form, NASA’s all-sky camera network clocked seven fireballs last night alone. Now that July is coming to a middle, the Perseids are ramping up to their August peak, and we have the chance to see a shooting star (or Starlink) streaking across the Milky Way. Better yet, the night air is cooler, and the waning crescent moon presents little threat of moonlight washing out the night sky.
Credit: NASA
To get the best shot at seeing a shooting star, NASA experts say, lay flat on your back and look up at the sky. But before you do, take a moment to look toward the southern horizon. Under dark enough skies, the Milky Way will be visible as a diffuse, diagonal band of light arcing across the sky. Bonus points if you can spot the swift, glassy-smooth movement of a satellite in orbit.
Credit: NASA
Here are the phases of the moon for the rest of July. Stay cool, and we’ll see you next week!
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