An unusually close glimpse of black hole snacking on star.

January 30, 2023 12:18 PM

The Moon doesn’t currently have an independent time. It's time for another look at humanity's exploration of space, from 2022's end to the start of 2023. There's a lot going on, especially between the Earth's surface and orbit.

From Earth’s surface to orbit
China launched 64 orbital missions in 2022, just barely outpacing SpaceX, which launched 60. SpaceX did set some kind of record by having four rockets on launch pads and two Dragons in orbit simultaneously. Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from the United States for the first time. NASA and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT, seriously) satellite, which will monitor most of the world's waters.

A Chinese business, Jiuzhou Yunjian, successfully test-fired engines for a stainless steel rocket. NASA successfully tested a full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE). In Britain, Virgin Galactic launched a spacecraft from a plane, but an anomaly occurred and ended the mission. Sweden hopes to launch orbital missions from that country this year. The ESA fears losing European launch access this summer, due to a launch failure and the Russian war. A quickly-withdrawn job ad hinted at a Blue Origin project called Blue Ring, which apparently involves "a multi-mission, multi-orbit platform." The Canadian government started developing a framework for private space launches in that nation. A Cal Poly philosophy professor joined the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group (UAG).


In orbit
Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman to walk in space, worked on a framework for new solar panels on the ISS.

The European Space Agency (ESA)'s XMM-Newton orbital observatory, plus multiple NASA telescopes, including the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array (NuSTAR) (previously), detected a black hole "snacking" on another star. SpaceX seeks connections between its satellites in orbit and Earthbound users' phones.

Old Soviet space debris nearly struck the ISS. Astrodynamicist Moriba Jah is concerned that low Earth orbit is no longer sustainable. The United States Senate passed a bill requiring NASA to do more to clean up space debris. The ESA calls for a "zero debris" space launch policy. New research suggests climate change may make orbital messes worse.

Politics: the ESA won't send astronauts to China's space station. The United States sanctioned China's Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute for supplying satellite imagery to Russia's Wagner Group. The United States Space Force now is in charge of all Department of Defense satellite communications.

Back down to Earth
NASA and Roscosmos are hoping a new Soyuz launch can bring ISS astronauts and cosmonauts back home, after the ship attached to the station sprung a leak.

The Moon
ispace's lander HAKUTO-R successfully completed a second maneuver to keep it on course for an April lunar landing. NASA's Lunar Flashlight mission is having thruster problems. On the moon's far side Yutu-2 is still working, sending photos back to Earth.

Looking ahead, scientists are working on how to structure lunar time (previously). The United Arab Emirates is talking with NASA about building an airlock for the proposed Lunar Gateway station. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated that China was a major competitor for American lunar exploration. NASA also published plans for the Artemis III mission to land on the moon's south polar region. China is working on a new lunar rover, also aimed at the south pole, for 2026.

In the Earth’s L2 point
The James Webb Space Telescope produced "one of the first medium-deep wide-field images of the cosmos."

To the asteroids
As the Lucy spacecraft hurtles towards a series of asteroid encounters, NASA added another rocky stop to the trip and paused efforts to fully deploy its solar array.

Asteroid mining startup AstroForge announced it would launch its first two missions this year.

Mars
The Perseverance rover witnessed many Martian dust devils, but only recorded audio of one. The rover also built the first human depot on the red planet, then photographed the Ingenuity helicopter; Ingenuity completed its 40th flight. Meanwhile, the InSight lander ended service after four years of work. China's Zhurong (祝融) rover is having problems coming out of hibernation.

Looking ahead, NASA and DARPA are working on a nuclear engine to drive faster trips to Mars. MetaFilter's own Maciej Ceglowski is skeptical of the whole Martian effort.

Jupiter
The Juno probe swung by the moon Io and captured an image from 40,000 miles away. Juno will spend more quality time with Io this year.

posted by doctornemo (10 comments total)

Relativity is so amazing: Try prosecuting someone being killed in a different frame of reference.

*) Title intentionally not added so future people trying to find this link will fail.
posted by esoteric cruelties at 12:59 PM on January 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

That's a nice read esoteric cruelties.

"If anything, it only confirms that it’s never too late to learn. Even murder -cosmology."

Why that's tautological!
as always brilliant, thank you doctornemo.
posted by clavdivs at 1:09 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I almost posted that wonderful "skeptical" link to the front page this weekend; it's an amazingly detailed dissection (with footnotes!) of what the author considers an extremely stupid focus from NASA, Musk and too many others on the incredibly wasteful dream of human space colonization. I found it mostly persuasive and well-argued, with thoughtful arguments about the unlikelihood of "keeping such a program funded through fifteen consecutive Congresses," the appalling risk of contamination by sending "a septic spacecraft" to mask any life hidden in Martian soil/crust, instead of robotic explorers with a much lower chance of ruining any chance of clearly verifying life on another planet, and lots more, including laugh-out-loud bits like this:

I would compare keeping primates alive in spacecraft to trying to build a jet engine out of raisins. Both are colossal engineering problems, possibly the hardest ever attempted, but it does not follow that they are problems worth solving.

Funny because it's true!

What stopped me from posting the link was a complete inability to edit down the number of quotes I wanted to highlight, so I'm glad to see it included in this awesome post (many thanks, doctornemo).

Just to be clear, the author of that piece is no Luddite; they just think the absurd amount of money wasted on trying to keep 2 or 3 apes alive for a week on the hellhole of Mars would be much better spent elsewhere. Here's the most convincing point for me:

One path forward would be to build on the technological revolution of the past fifty years and go explore the hell out of space with robots. This future is available to us right now. Simply redirecting the $11.6 billion budget for human space flight would be enough to staff up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and go from launching one major project per decade to multiple planetary probes and telescopes a year. It would be the start of the greatest era of discovery in history.

Amen.
posted by mediareport at 1:17 PM on January 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

Even before his recent misadventures I'd been harboring doubts about SpaceX's Starship, which appears to me to be a complete folly. But attempts to find information always lead to articles by (um) boosters. Oh well, I guess we'll know "soon."
posted by sjswitzer at 1:25 PM on January 30, 2023

In other Moon and Mars news (sorry if it was mentioned and I missed it!), the Moon will occult Mars tonight for some folks in the western hemisphere, and pass real close for the rest. Map and timetable.
posted by indexy at 1:33 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

(voice-over) IN A WORLD WITHOUT TIDAL FORCES...

I'm not sure, but my guess is that Xavier would be observably spaghettified before the statute of limitations expires... Anyway, I nitpick. It's a good story.

And doctornemo, such a post! Please please keep them coming.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 1:43 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Rotating detonation engines are so cool. Scraping the last dregs of efficiency out of rocket engines by compressing the fuel with supersonic waves. For folks who like videos this video describes them well. Scott Manley also has a good primer.
posted by crossswords at 2:37 PM on January 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Recently, in space debris:

Defunct Satellite and Rocket Stage Nearly Collide in Potential ‘Worst-Case Scenario’
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:55 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

mask any life hidden in Martian soil/crust

It's highly unlikely that there is anything to find. Evidence of life that previously existed on the planet maybe but not anything currently living.

But, to expand on your point, FUCK MARS, icy moons with subsurface oceans is where it's at. Jupiter's 2nd moon Europa (SLYT) has a fair bit of evidence of a salty liquid subsurface water ocean that is in contact with it's rocky core . It turns out that Europa has a lot of tidal activity 'caused by Jupiter and it's other moons regularly deforming the planet and letting it relax back into shape which 'causes enough heat from friction to keep water liquid. We know the moon messes with Jupiter's electromagnetic field and a salty ocean is one such thing that can cause that. Basically all the ingredients are there and have been there for long enough to create the kind of chemical soup conductive to evolving life.

And, it's far enough away that there is no potential for some asteroid impact to launch a chunk of microbe laden rock out into space where it may have landed on Mars. So even if we find evidence of life on Mars, it may well have originated on Earth. Which would be almost as cool as finding it having independently emerged somewhere beyond Earth.

There had been a big, multi-agency, mission to orbit Europa a bunch and land a craft on the surface, take some samples of ice geysers, maybe find alien microbes being ejected out the thing right then and there. Instead, NASA is sending the Jupiter Europa Clipper for a series of fly-bys to try and learn more about what's down and in there as well as scout out a potential landing site for a future lander mission. And the European Space Agency is sending it's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) to do a bunch more fly-bys of all of Jupiter's icy moons (sorry Io, liquid water>volcanos).

I wish I had more time to dig up better links to these planned missions. I'm very excited about them and wanted to make sure they got mentioned. I've been learning a ton about our solar system, our galaxy, and our universe recently (the channel in the video I link is excellent and the guy has a bunch more excellent channels). I'm VERY excited for these missions and think that if we're going to find evidence of life outside of Earth in our solar system, we're going to find it on Europa. Though, in fairness, there are other moons and dwarf planets (Pluto!) with evidence of subsurface liquid oceans through the same sort of tidal/friction action. Any of which have a better chance at harboring signs of life than Mars but Europa has a bit more going for it than the other contenders.
posted by VTX at 8:12 AM on January 31, 2023

It's highly unlikely that there is anything to find. Evidence of life that previously existed on the planet maybe but not anything currently living.

Maybe, but after the Idle Words piece notes recent Martian radar evidence of "at least two subglacial lakes under the south polar cap, strongly implying a reservoir of geothermal heat," the next section offers something of a counterpoint to the above, focusing on the bizarre, totally unexpected places we've recently discovered Earth life, not least deep within our planet's crust:

These new techniques confirmed that earth’s crust is inhabited to a depth of kilometers by a ‘deep biosphere’ of slow-living microbes nourished by geochemical processes and radioactive decay. One group of microbes was discovered still living their best lives 100 million years after being sealed in sedimentary rock. Another was found enjoying a rewarding, long-term relationship with fungal partners deep beneath the seafloor. This underground ecology, which we have barely started to explore, might account for a third of the biomass on earth.

At this point, it is hard to not find life on Earth. Microbes have been discovered living in cloud tops, inside nuclear reactor cores, and in aerosols high in the stratosphere. Bacteria not only stay viable for years on the space station hull, but sometimes do better out there than inside the spacecraft. Environments long thought to be sterile, like anoxic brines at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, are in fact as rich in microbial life as a gas station hot dog. Even microbes trapped for millions of years in salt crystals or Antarctic ice have shown they can wake up and get back to metabolizing without so much as a cup of coffee.

The fact that we failed to notice 99.999% of life on Earth until a few years ago is unsettling and has implications for Mars. The existence of a deep biosphere in particular narrows the habitability gap between our planets to the point where it probably doesn’t exist—there is likely at least one corner of Mars that an Earth organism could call home.

I think that's a fascinating argument.
posted by mediareport at 10:20 AM on January 31, 2023