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Virgin Galactic’s fifth commercial spaceflight—and sixth successful human space mission in six months—was launched from Spaceport America, New Mexico, on November 2, 2023, at 09:00 local time. VSS Unity, the second SpaceShipTwo, transported three passengers: Dr. Alan Stern, Kellie Gerardi, Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge; as well as Colin Bennett (Astronaut Instructor). The flight reached an apogee of 54.2m miles (~87 km).
Astronaut 020 – Dr. Alan Stern, U.S. Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President in Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Sector
Astronaut 021 – Kellie Gerardi, U.S. Payload Specialist and Bioastronautics Researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS)
Dr. Stern flew with two human-tended experiments, including a biomedical harness to collect physiological data related to human spaceflight. He also conducted practice routines and procedures in preparation for a future NASA-funded suborbital research flight.
Dr. Alan Stern, U.S. Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President in Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Sector, said: “The success of this mission is another important step in the development of the scientific and educational use cases for commercial suborbital vehicles. The potential here is literally astronomical.”
Dr. Stern was the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto
Planet Saturn Takes a Spin | Hubble Space Telescope
Witness Saturn in motion! This timelapse animation combines 13 Hubble Space Telescope images obtained over a span of about 20 hours. Saturn’s day is just 10.5 hours long, so this video features nearly two full rotations of the planet.
The rotation is most evident by watching the bright cloudy patches near the planet’s north pole. The pole is noticeably darker than the butterscotch tones seen at lower latitudes.
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team, and J. DePasquale (STScI).
NASA's Space to Ground: Moghbeli & O'Hara Spacewalk | Week of Nov. 3, 2023
NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara concluded their spacewalk on Nov. 1, 2023, after 6 hours and 42 minutes. They had teamed up for their first spacewalks!
Moghbeli and O’Hara were able to complete one of the spacewalk’s two major objectives, replacing one of the 12 trundle bearing assemblies on the port solar alpha rotary joint. This allows the arrays to track the Sun and generate electricity to power the station. Mission Control told the station crew that the solar array is functioning well after the bearing replacement. The spacewalkers also removed a handling bar fixture to prepare for future installation of a roll-out solar array and properly configured a cable that was previously interfering with an external camera.
Moghbeli and O’Hara are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
China's iSpace Hyperbola-2 Rocket: Successful Vertical Takeoff & Landing Test
A Chinese commercial rocket company has successfully launched and landed a test vehicle on its path to developing a reusable rocket. iSpace’s Hyperbola-2 (SQX-2) launch vehicle performed a successful vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) test at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu Province, China, on Nov. 2, 2023, at 06:00 UTC (14:00 local time). Hyperbola-2 is a small, reusable, two-stage liquid-propellant launch vehicle, designed by iSpace (Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Corporation Ltd.) to launch up to 1.9 tons to low-Earth orbit.
The Hyperbola-2 methane-liquid oxygen reusable verification stage rose to a height of 178 meters during its 51-second flight. It performed a powered descent and soft landing, supported by four landing legs. The 3.35-meter-diameter, 17m-long test stage is powered by a variable thrust Focus-1 engine.
The vertical takeoff, vertical landing test marks progress towards a reusable medium-lift rocket to debut in 2025. It is also the latest marker in Chinese efforts to emulate the success of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket.
The flight verified iSpace’s variable thrust methalox propulsion, vertical landing guidance, navigation, guidance and control, and will be used to test recovery and reuse processes. The footage did not indicate a restarting of the Focus-1 engine, but the company has previously conducted ground restart hot fire tests.
The successful hop test “marks a major breakthrough in China’s commercial aerospace industry in reusable launch vehicle technology. It also signals the charge for China’s aerospace sector to catch up with the world’s most advanced levels in reusable launch vehicle technology” an iSpace statement read.
The test is part of the company’s plan to develop the Hyperbola-3 rocket with a reusable first stage. iSpace is skipping the previously-planned smaller Hyperbola-2, the company stated at the 9th China (International) Commercial Aerospace Forum in July this year.
The company is targeting a first flight of the 13.4-metric-ton to low Earth orbit (LEO) Hyperbola-3 rocket in 2025. A demonstration of reuse will follow in 2026. The 69-meter-long rocket will be able to lift 8.5 tons to LEO in reusable mode. iSpace says it aims to conduct 25 Hyperbola-3 launches per year by 2030.
The Hyperbola-3B, a triple-core version of the rocket, akin to the Falcon Heavy in configuration, will be capable of carrying no less than 15 tons to LEO, according to iSpace.
iSpace made history as the first privately-funded Chinese company to reach orbit in 2019 with the solid-fueled Hyperbola-1 rocket. The company however suffered three consecutive failures with the rocket, before a successful return to flight earlier this year. Further launches of the solid rocket are expected in the coming year, despite competition from Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1 and Expace’s Kuaizhou rockets.
iSpace is not the only Chinese company working on reusable rockets. Galactic Energy recently performed a hop test with a jet engine-powered article. CAS Space, a spin-off from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has likewise conducted such tests to verify algorithms. Deep Blue Aerospace completed a successful kilometer-level rocket launch and landing test in 2022.
Another competitor, Space Pioneer, is planning to launch its Tianlong-3 rocket in the first half of 2024. The rocket will be comparable to Falcon 9 in launch capability and eventually to be made reusable. Landspace’s methalox Zhuque-2 is also expected to be converted for reusability.
China opened up its space sector to private and commercial activity in 2014. This is seen as largely in reaction to the explosion of commercial space in the U.S. The central government has since implemented policies and published guidance to support the development of commercial space.
2023 has been a notable year for China’s commercial launch companies. CAS Space, Galactic Energy, iSpace, Expace, Space Pioneer and Landspace have all reached orbit. These include first Chinese commercial liquid propellant launch successes, achieved by Space Pioneer and Landspace.
The Tiangong Space Station is expected to provide an opportunity for commercial launch vehicles to gain contracts to deliver cargo. The national Guowang LEO broadband megaconstellation is also expected to provide opportunities for commercial actors.
Video Credit: iSpace (Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Corporation Ltd.)
Tonight's Sky: November 2023 (Northern Hemisphere)
In November 2023, hunt for the fainter constellations of fall, including Pisces, Aries, and Triangulum. They will guide you to find several galaxies and a pair of white stars. Stay tuned for space-based views of M74 and the Triangulum Galaxy, which are shown in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.
“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 product is based on work supported by NASA under award numbers NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
Flyby of Dinkinesh Reveals Binary Asteroid System | NASA's Lucy Spacecraft
On Nov. 1, 2023, NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew by the small Main Belt asteroid Dinkinesh (previously known as 1999 VD57) and revealed that it is actually a binary asteroid system.
“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” said Hal Levison, referring to the meaning of Dinkinesh in the Amharic language, “marvelous.” Levison is principal investigator for Lucy from the Boulder, Colorado, branch of the San-Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”
This asteroid flyby was added to Lucy’s list of targets in January 2023. The primary purpose of the Dinkinesh encounter was to test the spacecraft’s Terminal Tracking System. This will keep Lucy's instruments pointing at the asteroid as it flies by at 10,000 miles per hour. The Lucy mission’s record-breaking tour will explore at least ten small solar system bodies.
The Lucy spacecraft will now head back towards Earth for its second gravity assist in December 2024. This assist will send the spacecraft to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
NASA's "Espacio a Tierra" | Un paseo en el espacio: 27 de octubre de 2023
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
The Sounds of a New Planetary System | NASA Ames Data Sonification
This is the first planetary system where each planet is bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any in our solar system.
This sonification turns the orbits of a new seven-planet system, discovered by NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope, into sound. It begins at the center of the system with the innermost orbit and builds toward the outermost, introducing each orbit with a new sound that plays once per rotation around the central Sun-like star. It then focuses on two specific orbits in resonance. This creates a beating sound with the inner rotating twice in the same period as the outer rotates three times. Next, only the three outer-most planets are singled out as an orbital resonance chain before blending all seven together again.
The Kepler space telescope was NASA’s first planet-hunting mission, assigned to search a portion of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-sized planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. During nine years in deep space Kepler, and its second act, the extended mission dubbed K2, showed our galaxy contains billions of hidden "exoplanets," many of which could be promising places for life. They proved that our night sky is filled with more planets even than stars—knowledge that revolutionizes understanding of our place in the cosmos.
Kepler has opened our eyes to the diversity of planets that exist in our galaxy. Analysis of Kepler’s discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars. That means they are located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water—a vital ingredient to life as we know it—might pool on the planet surface.
Sierra Space Introduces Reusable Dream Chaser Spaceplane "Tenacity"
The First Spaceplane in the New Dream Chaser Fleet: Sierra Space has proudly revealed a product of passionate determination, innovations and relentless commitment—the remarkable Dream Chaser spaceplane. The first vehicle "Tenacity," is complete and will ship to NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio for environmental testing in the coming weeks.
It is the world’s sole commercial runway-capable spaceplane. Supported by a substantial contract from NASA to resupply the International Space Station, Dream Chaser is poised to lead the way in democratizing access to space, forging a path towards shared space exploration and international cooperation.
Dream Chaser Tenacity Spaceplane: “Today we have arrived at a profound milestone in both our company’s journey and our industry’s future—one that has been years in the making and is shaped by audacious dreaming and tenacious doing,” said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice.
“I am reminded of a comment made by Steve Jobs that every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. I think Dream Chaser is that product. This breakthrough shifts paradigms and redefines space travel. The Dream Chaser is not just a product; it’s a testament to human spirit, determination and the relentless pursuit of what lies beyond.”
Sierra Space team members gathered to celebrate this milestone moment on October 30th, at the company’s Louisville, CO, production facility.
Unlocking Opportunities for Space Access
The versatile Dream Chaser spaceplane fleet is meticulously designed to facilitate the transportation of cargo and, in the future, crew to low-Earth orbit (LEO). This multi-mission platform offers customization options to cater to the needs of both domestic and international customers, further enhancing its role in global space operations. Under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract, Dream Chaser has been selected to provide essential cargo delivery, return, and disposal services for the International Space Station.
Dream Chaser showcases its mettle by safely withstanding temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees during re-entry, all while being cool to the touch mere minutes after landing. The incorporation of the most advanced autonomous flight system, ensuring a minimum 15-mission lifespan, marks a monumental leap forward in space transportation.
Years of dedication have resulted in the creation of a new propulsion and oxidizer-fuel system, a more eco-friendly and responsible approach to space travel.
The inaugural Dream Chaser spaceplane, “Tenacity,” is poised to embark on its initial seven cargo missions to and from the International Space Station, carrying essential supplies such as food, water and scientific experiments. One of Dream Chaser’s groundbreaking features is its capability to safely return critical cargo to Earth at fewer than 1.5g’s, ensuring the preservation of invaluable payloads. This innovative spaceplane offers unparalleled flexibility and can land at any compatible commercial runway worldwide, just like a narrow body commercial airliner.
Setting New Standards for Reusability and Adaptability
Dream Chaser’s high reusability and adaptability set it apart, making it an optimal choice for a wide range of applications while ensuring rapid turnaround times to meet various LEO requirements. The launch for this extraordinary journey is schedule to occur from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Sierra Space’s launch provider, United Launch Alliance (ULA), will carry Dream Chaser into orbit on the second Vulcan Centaur rocket. Tenacity’s maiden resupply mission will culminate with the vehicle’s return, landing at the historic NASA Space Shuttle Landing Facility.
As “Tenacity” embarks on its maiden mission, it sets the stage for a brighter future of space transportation and cooperation, bringing humanity’s dreams of space exploration one step closer to reality.
NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli & Loral O’Hara on Spacewalk: Replay | International Space Station
[Spacewalk begins at 1 hour, 41 minute mark] NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara concluded their spacewalk today at 2:47 p.m. EST after 6 hours and 42 minutes. NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara began a spacewalk at 8:05 a.m. EDT today to conduct science research and station maintenance. They teamed up for their first spacewalks!
Moghbeli, designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1), was wearing a suit with red stripes. O’Hara, designated extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2), was in an unmarked suit.
Moghbeli and O’Hara were able to complete one of the spacewalk’s two major objectives, replacing one of the 12 trundle bearing assemblies on the port solar alpha rotary joint, which allows the arrays to track the Sun and generate electricity to power the station. Mission Control told the station crew that the solar array is functioning well after the bearing replacement. Spacewalkers also removed a handling bar fixture to prepare for future installation of a roll-out solar array and properly configured a cable that was previously interfering with an external camera.
The astronauts had planned to remove and stow a communications electronics box called the Radio Frequency Group, but there was not enough time during the spacewalk to complete the work. The duo lifted multilayer insulation to make a better assessment of how to approach the job before replacing the insulation and deferring the task to a future spacewalk.
During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost. Flight controllers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras. The tools were not needed for the remainder of the spacewalk. Mission Control analyzed the bag’s trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the onboard crew and space station are safe with no action required.
Moghbeli and O’Hara are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Panning across Interacting Galaxy Pair Arp-Madore 2339-661 in Tucana | Hubble
A dynamic duo . . . or trio?
This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661, so named because they belong to the Arp-Madore catalogue of peculiar galaxies. However, this particular peculiarity might be even odder than first meets the eye, as there are in fact three galaxies interacting here, not just two.
The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different color to the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed, but also considering direction) involved in the galaxy shows that this knot has a considerable additional redshift, meaning that it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733. This is actually one of the many challenges that observational astronomers face: working out whether an astronomical object really is just one, or one lying in front of another as seen from Earth’s perspective!
All three galaxies lie quite close to each other, roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Tucana, and, as this image shows, they are interacting gravitationally with one another. In fact, some science literature refers to them as a ‘merging group’, meaning that they are on a course to ultimately become a single entity.
Image Description: Two spiral galaxies. Each glows brightly in the center, where a bar stretches from side to side. The upper one is more round and its arms form two thin rings. The lower galaxy is flatter and its arms make one outer ring; a dusty knot atop its upper arm marks out a third object. Gravity is pulling gas and dust together where the galaxies come close. A number of small galaxies surround them on a black background.
Credit: European Space Agency/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory.
Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.
Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is "NASA’s premiere space flight complex and home to the nation’s largest organization of scientists, engineers, and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments, and new technology to study Earth, the Sun, our solar system, and the universe."
On Sept. 7, 2023, during its 54th close flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of an area in the giant planet’s far northern regions called Jet N7. The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet. The low angle of sunlight highlights the complex topography of features in this region, which scientists have studied to better understand the processes playing out in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
As often occurs in views from Juno, Jupiter’s clouds in this picture lend themselves to pareidolia, the effect that causes observers to perceive faces or other patterns in largely random patterns.
Citizen scientist Vladimir Tarasov made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument. At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 4,800 miles (about 7,700 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.
NASA's X-ray Telescopes Reveal the "Bones" of a Ghostly Cosmic Hand
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays and used them to image the bones in his wife's hand, kicking off a revolutionary diagnostic tool for medicine. Now two of NASA’s X-ray space telescopes have combined their imaging powers to unveil the magnetic field “bones” of a remarkable hand-like structure in space. Together, these telescopes reveal the behavior of a dead collapsed star that lives on through plumes of particles of energized matter.
A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. The story begins around 1,500 years ago when a giant star ran out of nuclear fuel to burn. This led to the star collapsing onto itself and forming an incredibly dense object called a neutron star.
Rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields are called pulsars. With today’s telescopes, astronomers use them as laboratories for extreme physics, offering high-energy conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth. For example, young pulsars can create jets of matter and antimatter moving away from the poles of the pulsar, along with an intense wind, forming a “pulsar wind nebula”. These are ideal places to study certain questions in physics.
In 2001, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory first observed the pulsar PSR B1509-58 and revealed that its pulsar wind nebula—known as MSH 15-52—randomly resembles a human hand. The pulsar is located at the base of the “palm” of the nebula. Finger-like structures extend to the north, apparently energizing knots of material in this neighboring gas cloud. The transfer of energy from the wind to these knots makes them glow brightly in X-rays (orange and red features to the upper right). The temperature in this region appears to vary in a circular pattern around this ring of emission, suggesting that the pulsar may be precessing like a spinning top and sweeping an energizing beam around the gas in MSH 15-52.
The combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the Galaxy. This generator drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the neutron star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy and create the elaborate nebula
Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1,700 years old as measured in Earth's time-frame (referring to when events are observable at Earth) and is located about 17,000 light years away. B1509 is spinning completely around almost 7 times every second and is releasing energy into its environment at a prodigious rate—presumably because it has an intense magnetic field at its surface, estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. B1509's nebula is 15 times wider than the Crab Nebula.
Now, NASA’s newest X-ray telescope, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), has observed MSH 15-52 for about 17 days, the longest it has looked at any single object since it launched in December 2021.
The IXPE data gives astronomers the first map of the magnetic field in the hand. The charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person’s hand.
These new data are revealing interesting aspects of this cosmic hand that researchers did not know before. By combining the data from these two telescopes, astronomers are learning more not only about MSH 15-52, but also other pulsar wind nebulae in general, with more discoveries yet to come.
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