From Ukraine to deep space
June 12, 2022 5:42 PM Subscribe
April-June 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Stand by for rocky passengers, glitches, amazing images, a very French rocket name, Earthly politics, and lots of asteroids.
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
To and from orbit A NASA Astra launch failed to loft satellites into orbit. Spinlaunch conducted its eighth field test, and this time had a camera on board to show you what it looks like to be spun up into the sky. Blue Origin successfully conducted its fifth crewed suborbital flight. A helicopter briefly captured a RocketLab Electron as it fell back to Earth.
The next generation of Starlink internet connectivity satellites are too big to fit on most rockets, so they'll probably ride Starships. Also, a Chinese report called for having a plan to destroy Starlink satellites. Meanwhile, a new French rocket may actually be named Baguette.
Three Chinese taikonauts landed on Earth after spending 183 days in that nation's Tiangong space station. Three more taikonauts replaced them on board. An uncrewed Boeing Starliner successfully launched, docked with the International Space Station (ISS), then returned back to Earth safely.
Two astronomers claimed, with the help of Department of Defense satellites, that a meteor which struck the Earth in 2014 most likely came from beyond the solar system.
In Earth orbit Egypt orbited a communication satellite. Work continues on the Tiangong space station, with completion scheduled for the year's end. China also announced an upcoming satellite telescope mission to look for Earth-like exoplanets. A Japanese weather satellite, focused on Earth, also managed a useful glimpse of Betelgeuse.
Earth's L2 position The James Webb Space Telescope completed focus preparation, tracked an asteroid for practice, and got hit by a micrometeoroid. NASA is preparing for it to take its first images and to look for rocky planets. Meanwhile, the head of Russia's Roscosmos agency stated that they should take over the German hardware on board their Spektr-RG (Спектр-РГ) satellite.
Earth's Moon. The Chang’e 4 lander's telescope is running into problems with radio interference from Earth, despite being on the Moon's far side. China announced plans for a lunar base, in cooperation with Russia.
NASA is getting reading to send the CAPSTONE cubesat through an unusual path into an unusual lunar orbit.
Lunar Outpost, which hopes to conduct lunar mining, raised $12 million in seed funding.
The Sun The ESA Solar Orbiter created an immense photo of the sun. (on Flickr)
Mars The Perseverance rover observed Phobos eclipsing the sun (video) as well as a major dust storm, then picked up a little rock friend. Ingenuity took its 25th flight and viewed the Martian landscape below, while also imaging Perseverance's landing shell. Meanwhile, Californian scientists offered a new plan to power a human Martian settlement.
The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover mission is now in trouble even before launch, thanks to its reliance on Russian rocketry.
Asteroids The B612 Foundation used AI to find more asteroids. An exercise is using Apophis to practice detecting and responding to potential Earth-threatening asteroid. NASA's Lucy mission unfolded its solar array still further. Scientists continue to study the asteroidal materials returned to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa2 (はやぶさ2) mission. (previously)
Around Jupiter Juno hurtled very close to the giant planet, which yielded a dizzying video.
Interstellar space Voyager 1 continues to send data home, but now it's glitching.
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
To and from orbit A NASA Astra launch failed to loft satellites into orbit. Spinlaunch conducted its eighth field test, and this time had a camera on board to show you what it looks like to be spun up into the sky. Blue Origin successfully conducted its fifth crewed suborbital flight. A helicopter briefly captured a RocketLab Electron as it fell back to Earth.
The next generation of Starlink internet connectivity satellites are too big to fit on most rockets, so they'll probably ride Starships. Also, a Chinese report called for having a plan to destroy Starlink satellites. Meanwhile, a new French rocket may actually be named Baguette.
Three Chinese taikonauts landed on Earth after spending 183 days in that nation's Tiangong space station. Three more taikonauts replaced them on board. An uncrewed Boeing Starliner successfully launched, docked with the International Space Station (ISS), then returned back to Earth safely.
Two astronomers claimed, with the help of Department of Defense satellites, that a meteor which struck the Earth in 2014 most likely came from beyond the solar system.
In Earth orbit Egypt orbited a communication satellite. Work continues on the Tiangong space station, with completion scheduled for the year's end. China also announced an upcoming satellite telescope mission to look for Earth-like exoplanets. A Japanese weather satellite, focused on Earth, also managed a useful glimpse of Betelgeuse.
Earth's L2 position The James Webb Space Telescope completed focus preparation, tracked an asteroid for practice, and got hit by a micrometeoroid. NASA is preparing for it to take its first images and to look for rocky planets. Meanwhile, the head of Russia's Roscosmos agency stated that they should take over the German hardware on board their Spektr-RG (Спектр-РГ) satellite.
Earth's Moon. The Chang’e 4 lander's telescope is running into problems with radio interference from Earth, despite being on the Moon's far side. China announced plans for a lunar base, in cooperation with Russia.
NASA is getting reading to send the CAPSTONE cubesat through an unusual path into an unusual lunar orbit.
Lunar Outpost, which hopes to conduct lunar mining, raised $12 million in seed funding.
The Sun The ESA Solar Orbiter created an immense photo of the sun. (on Flickr)
Mars The Perseverance rover observed Phobos eclipsing the sun (video) as well as a major dust storm, then picked up a little rock friend. Ingenuity took its 25th flight and viewed the Martian landscape below, while also imaging Perseverance's landing shell. Meanwhile, Californian scientists offered a new plan to power a human Martian settlement.
The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover mission is now in trouble even before launch, thanks to its reliance on Russian rocketry.
Asteroids The B612 Foundation used AI to find more asteroids. An exercise is using Apophis to practice detecting and responding to potential Earth-threatening asteroid. NASA's Lucy mission unfolded its solar array still further. Scientists continue to study the asteroidal materials returned to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa2 (はやぶさ2) mission. (previously)
Around Jupiter Juno hurtled very close to the giant planet, which yielded a dizzying video.
Interstellar space Voyager 1 continues to send data home, but now it's glitching.
Wow. Extraordinary post. Thank you.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:09 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:09 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thank you again!
posted by mykescipark at 6:11 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mykescipark at 6:11 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
My understanding is most of the Starlink service in Ukraine is actually being paid for by USAID and American tax payers. Elon Musk is getting a substantial subsidy for SpaceX and having his PR spin it as charity.
posted by interogative mood at 6:23 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 6:23 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
while also imaging Perseverance's landing shell
Those are pretty amazing photos: an interplanetary probe captures images of a crashed spacecraft on an alien world! It could be the cover of a mid-list sci-fi novel, and I mean that in the best way.
posted by jedicus at 6:55 AM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
Those are pretty amazing photos: an interplanetary probe captures images of a crashed spacecraft on an alien world! It could be the cover of a mid-list sci-fi novel, and I mean that in the best way.
posted by jedicus at 6:55 AM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
Rotating mercury mirrors (like the ILMT) are neat, though their use is limited, given the lack of aiming. Still, it is a feasible way to make really big one mirror telescopes.
posted by bouvin at 7:33 AM on June 13, 2022
posted by bouvin at 7:33 AM on June 13, 2022
Rotating mercury mirrors (like the ILMT) are neat, though their use is limited, given the lack of aiming. Still, it is a feasible way to make really big one mirror telescopes.
Yeah, that idea made a certain kind of sense a number of years or decades ago before the advent of spin-casting very large mirrors, or astronomers started using very large scale interferometry and the use of laser guide stars to correct for atmospheric distortion, not to mention very large segmented and actively adaptive mirrors.
The problem with them isn't just aiming them and having a limited area of view.
You still need moving optics to track an observed target to prevent star trails and distortion. So in practice you only get to use part of the total size and aperture of that liquid metal mirror because your secondary optics need to have room to be able pan across the total surface to prevent star trails and planetary motion.
Essentially you end up with a very large mirror that can't track stars or the rotation of the Earth under the night sky, that can only do exposures of a certain length, and is so fragile that the slightest breeze, deviations in rotation speed and very small vibrations can degrade mirror performance and accuracy of the curvature so you have to coat the liquid mercury surface with a sheet of Mylar anyway, which just makes refractive indexes and interfaces even more complex and weird.
You'd be better off investing all of that engineering in better adaptive optics and interferometry algorithms and just going for larger arrays of smaller mirrors.
These problems with liquid parabolic mirrors aren't exactly unknown or new. I remember astronomers talking about these kinds of limitations ages and ages ago.
I also don't even want to know how they deal with liquid mercury oxidizing or how they clean that or account for it. Because it's going to oxidize and get dirty, even under a protective sheet of mylar film.
Really cool idea in theory. It might make more sense if you were trying to spin up a liquid mercury mirror the size of Arecibo to make a single continuous mirror the size of a small town.
But by the time you built it and solved the engineering challenges the advances in adaptive optics, interferometry and extremely large segmented mirrors will likely just leapfrog past it anyway.
All that being said I'm still surprised we have not launched a space based radio telescope. You could make a truly massive radio dish miles and miles across in space with little more than threads of metallic mesh and you could also steer it and aim it, unlike Arecibo. And that's something you would likely benefit from being spin-stablized to keep it parabolic.
posted by loquacious at 3:12 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that idea made a certain kind of sense a number of years or decades ago before the advent of spin-casting very large mirrors, or astronomers started using very large scale interferometry and the use of laser guide stars to correct for atmospheric distortion, not to mention very large segmented and actively adaptive mirrors.
The problem with them isn't just aiming them and having a limited area of view.
You still need moving optics to track an observed target to prevent star trails and distortion. So in practice you only get to use part of the total size and aperture of that liquid metal mirror because your secondary optics need to have room to be able pan across the total surface to prevent star trails and planetary motion.
Essentially you end up with a very large mirror that can't track stars or the rotation of the Earth under the night sky, that can only do exposures of a certain length, and is so fragile that the slightest breeze, deviations in rotation speed and very small vibrations can degrade mirror performance and accuracy of the curvature so you have to coat the liquid mercury surface with a sheet of Mylar anyway, which just makes refractive indexes and interfaces even more complex and weird.
You'd be better off investing all of that engineering in better adaptive optics and interferometry algorithms and just going for larger arrays of smaller mirrors.
These problems with liquid parabolic mirrors aren't exactly unknown or new. I remember astronomers talking about these kinds of limitations ages and ages ago.
I also don't even want to know how they deal with liquid mercury oxidizing or how they clean that or account for it. Because it's going to oxidize and get dirty, even under a protective sheet of mylar film.
Really cool idea in theory. It might make more sense if you were trying to spin up a liquid mercury mirror the size of Arecibo to make a single continuous mirror the size of a small town.
But by the time you built it and solved the engineering challenges the advances in adaptive optics, interferometry and extremely large segmented mirrors will likely just leapfrog past it anyway.
All that being said I'm still surprised we have not launched a space based radio telescope. You could make a truly massive radio dish miles and miles across in space with little more than threads of metallic mesh and you could also steer it and aim it, unlike Arecibo. And that's something you would likely benefit from being spin-stablized to keep it parabolic.
posted by loquacious at 3:12 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Chang’e 4 lander's telescope is running into problems with radio interference from Earth
Do you have a link for this? I can't find anything recent.
posted by neuron at 8:14 AM on June 14, 2022
Do you have a link for this? I can't find anything recent.
posted by neuron at 8:14 AM on June 14, 2022
Asteroids: I've recently learned about 10199 Chariklo, which is the largest Centaur (Centaurs are the asteroids between Jupiter and Neptune). It has a pair! of rings! as determined by stellar occultation.
posted by neuron at 8:35 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by neuron at 8:35 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Chang’e 4 lander's telescope is running into problems with radio interference from Earth
Do you have a link for this? I can't find anything recent.
That's all I could find, neuron. It should be a bigger story.
posted by doctornemo at 9:51 AM on June 14, 2022
Do you have a link for this? I can't find anything recent.
That's all I could find, neuron. It should be a bigger story.
posted by doctornemo at 9:51 AM on June 14, 2022
10199 Chariklo - very cool, neuron!
posted by doctornemo at 5:35 PM on June 14, 2022
posted by doctornemo at 5:35 PM on June 14, 2022
And the first Webb telescope pictures are coming out…
We live in an amazing universe
posted by Windopaene at 5:18 PM on July 11, 2022
We live in an amazing universe
posted by Windopaene at 5:18 PM on July 11, 2022
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LOL.
FTA: "Gen2 satellites are 22 feet long and weigh 2,755 pounds"
LOL WHUT I smell shenanigans. That's like black budget DoD/NRO "forced upgrades" size shenanigans.
Spinlaunch conducted its eighth field test, and this time had a camera on board to show you what it looks like to be spun up into the sky.
This is some amazingly kooky SF stuff that might be so crazy it might actually work, but I have doubts it will be able to do anything better than small cubesats to LEO on very specific orbital inclinations.
The mechanical engineering required for anything in the heavy lift category are totally bonkers, and that's before you start looking at the shockwaves of something large and hypersonic transitioning from a nearly hard vacuum in the launcher to atmospheric pressures anywhere even remotely close to sea level.
Earth's L2 position The James Webb Space Telescope completed focus preparation, tracked an asteroid for practice, and got hit by a micrometeoroid.
I'm non-metaphorically itchy to see the first JWST images. But I have a feeling we're not going to get the full mission duration even with the super-nominal parking orbit and extra fuel remaining.
Unfortunately I have a really bad feeling that it's going to get pelted and pummeled over the next few years with micrometeorids in ways that will eventually severely impact precision and optical integrity in ways we haven't had to deal with with Hubble or other satellites that don't have such a huge, exposed optical mirror with precision levels measured in fractions of a wavefront.
The mirror that was impacted can be adjusted and tuned to deal with the damage but it will never be the same as it was intended at launch, and there's probably a lot more micrometeorites and general debris and space dust out there than we currently think there is.
Space isn't just big but it's also dirty.
posted by loquacious at 6:06 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]