May 12, 2023
Fireball ‘100 times the size of the solar system’ thought to have been caused by gas being sucked into supermassive black hole
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/12/astronomers-capture-largest-cosmic-explosion-ever-witnessed
Fortunately, this is about 8 billion light years away.
But it’s been going for over three years now.
Yow.
April 14, 2023
Led by the European Space Agency (ESA), the mission will orbit the largest planet in the solar system and explore its icy moons, which scientists think could support living organisms.
JUICE will explore three possible ocean-bearing moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Under their icy surfaces are thought to be huge oceans of water – a crucial ingredient for life as we know it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/13/explaining-juice-mission-to-jupiter-and-its-moons
The “Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer” is the first time an ESA-headed project will visit another moon.
If it launches successfully, of course.
Lift off in less than seven hours from French Guiana!
Great job by Alzajeera, although “Earth is about 4.1 times the size of Europa and is believed to have a young and active surface that may vent water vapour to space via plumes and geysers.” is a bit misleading (Europa, not Earth, is believed to have…)
Copy editor!
🤞 🚀 🇬🇫
UPDATE
The launch was successful, and the 90 m2 solar array also deployed successfully.
Now we just have to sit and wait until 2031!
April 12, 2023
The bankruptcy filing by Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc (VORB.O) has dealt a blow to Japan’s hopes of building a domestic space industry, with plans for a Kyushu-based spaceport designed to attract tourism on hold for lack of funding.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-casts-shadow-over-japans-space-dreams-2023-04-07/
Granted, this news is from four or five days ago.
Still, it’s jarring to see TV news about JAXA and NASA doing “joint” explorations of Mars, and then see a constant failure of JAXA to do anything based in Japan.
Something is seriously wrong with this space agency. And I suspect it has nothing to do with the scientists or astronauts.
March 30, 2023
Mercury is a planet that just doesn’t make sense. It’s incredibly small yet hosts a relatively massive core. Mercury is so strange that astronomers have not been able to explain its properties with simulations of the solar system’s formation. But now, researchers have found an important clue, and Mercury’s weirdness appears to be the fault of the giant planets.
https://www.space.com/mercury-weird-because-of-jupiter-outer-planets
Basically, Mercury is nearly as dense as the Earth despite being less than 6% the size. This is due to the gas giants in our solar system yanking material (“planetesimals” and protoplanets) and ejecting it from the solar system, leaving Mercury with very little material left to form itself.
But there are plenty of questions still…
February 25, 2023
“I was quite surprised by how simple the story hiding behind the curtain of complexity in the data,” Sneppen continued. “You have this immensely complex physics, unimaginable dense stars and the birth of a black hole — and then it all reduces to this beautiful sphere.”
The neutron stars that crashed into each other are “dense and compact,” Sneppen said. They only measured around 20 km in diameter — about 12 miles — but they are “heavier than the sun,” he said. “A teaspoon of neutron star matter weighs more than Mount Everest.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/02/16/kilonova-perfect-explosion-black-hole/
First reported in 2017, a new study in Nature gives more details about a “kilo nova” only detected by using gravitational waves. The collision led to the formation of a black hole.
Fortunately, this sort of cosmic event doesn’t occur too often. But..
…if a kilonova were to occur in the Milky Way — less than 30,000 light- years away — it would be the brightest star in the night sky, making it discoverable to the human eye…
Still, it’d be safer for Earth if it never happened…
February 24, 2023
It is this subsurface ocean, or rather its interaction with the ice shell that covers it, that a team of researchers led by the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium hope to better understand. More specifically, they wish to understand how the ocean’s depth and the pressure exerted by the icy shell on the underground water body influence the formation of tidal motions and currents inside of it.
https://www.space.com/saturn-moon-titan-ocean-tides-icy-crust-study
When I first heard of “Attack on Titan,” I was disappointed to learn that it didn’t take place actually on Titan. (The title in English is a mistranslation. It should be “Attack of the Titans” or “The Titans Attack” or even “Attacking Titans,” depending.) In any case, it’s a disgusting manga/anime with nothing to do with the icy moon of Saturn. Except for the name. And even that’s a misuse (they should have used “giant” as the storyline is very loosely based on Ymir and the frost giants of Scandinavian myth).
Anyway. It’s a fascinating moon the size of the planet Mercury with a liquid ocean and (mostly) nitrogen atmosphere, making it a candidate for extraterrestrial life. Here’s a cool view of it: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview/
February 18, 2023
At liftoff time, smoke was seen rising from the bottom of the rocket, indicating the ignition of the main engine. However, the rocket did not rise from the launchpad.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense-Industries/Japan-s-H3-rocket-launch-aborted-after-booster-fails-to-ignite
Not a great start to the year, JAXA. This, on top of the Episilon failure (zero, zero…DESTRUCT…zero…)
February 15, 2023
The agency earlier said the object was expected to “safely strike” the earth’s atmosphere near to the French city of Rouen.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64621721
“Near to”? OK.
Anyway, “SAR2667” provided some cross-cultural entertainment for people living in England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Lots of photos and videos online.
Interesting note from ESA: they were able to detect it and notify everyone exactly where and when it would disintegrate.
Since there are more than 30,000 of these things that orbit the Sun relatively close to Earth’s orbit, it’s a good thing we’re getting better at detecting them. Maybe we’d better up the ante on deflecting them…
February 9, 2023
Lots and lots and lots of new rockets in development now.
And the most well-known of the newbies is…
(Click here for a closer look at a rich man’s dream rocket.)
Also, see this one (pay wall, Washington Post) about NASA and DARPA working on one to reach Mars much faster to reduce astronauts’ exposure to radiation.
I still think “durp” every time I see that acronym 😝
February 4, 2023
A Japanese telescope positioned on top of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, captured video of an eerie flying spiral in the night sky on Jan. 18.
In the video, a small bright spot appears and slowly gets brighter and starts to dissipate into a spiral before getting small again and disappearing.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/japanese-telescope-captures-image-mysterious-180332172.html
In fact, it was the remains of a discarded Falcon 9 booster from the launch of a SpaceX satellite. And it isn’t the first time this has happened. Japanese TV talked about this, too (since it was a Japanese astronomy, at the Subaru Telescope, that first recorded it).
So, an Identified Flying Object!
Yay, more metallic junk.
(Thanks to Glen Hill for bringing this article to my attention.)
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