WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June 28 launched the NROL-186 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The rocket lifted off at 11:14 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
NROL-186 was the second batch of satellites of a new imaging satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. The number of satellites was not disclosed.
Just over eight minutes after liftoff, the first-stage booster landed on a drone ship, marking the company’s 326th booster landing to date.
The NRO designs and operates classified U.S. government surveillance and intelligence satellites. Just over a month ago SpaceX launched the first batch of the agency’s proliferated constellation in low Earth orbit.
This shows the “persistent pace of deployment that is expected with this program,” Chris Scolese, director of the NRO, said June 29 in a statement.
“Our new, proliferated systems enhance our ability to collect and deliver critical information,” he said.
Approximately half a dozen launches supporting NRO’s proliferated architecture are planned for 2024, with additional launches expected through 2028.
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In a rare stroke of celestial coincidence, two lumpy asteroids – one that could destroy a city, the other big enough to wipe out the planet – are zooming by Earth, close enough to excite observers but posing zero risk of hitting us.
Asteroids in our neighborhood always ignite interest, but these two are special because of their timing, size and orbits.
Their separate-path visits came 42 hours apart and, in yet another fluke, just ahead of this year’s Asteroid Day. That’s the annual observance of the Russian Tunguska meteor event in 1908, the largest asteroid impact in modern history.
Though their orbits are considered close to us in astronomical terms, neither was visible to the unaided eye.
When will asteroid pass Earth?
One of them has already come and gone: Asteroid (415029) 2011 UL21, a chunk of rock the size of Mount Everest, passed closest to Earth without incident on Thursday.
Though it’s much smaller than its companion, at 400 to 850 feet long, 2024 MK will come much closer to Earth. It’ll pass between us and the moon at a distance of about 180,200 miles. The moon is 238,900 miles from Earth.
Though larger, 2011 UL21 came no closer than 4.1 million miles to us.
You may be able to see the asteroid sometime Saturday with a telescope or a pair of strong binoculars, Smithsonian Magazine says. Those in Hawaii and South America have the best viewing opportunities. It might also be seen from the southern continental U.S. The asteroid's closest approach was at 9:46 a.m. Eastern time. It may be possible to see it Saturday night after the sun sets.
Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman
Source: USA TODAY Network reporting and research; NASA; European Space Agency; earthsky.org; asteroidday.org; space.com; Reuters; sciencealert.com
An asteroid will whiz harmlessly past Earth this weekend. With the right equipment and timing, you just might spot it.
Called 2024 MK, the space rock will make its closest approach to Earth Saturday morning, passing by at about three-quarters the distance from Earth to the moon. It was first spotted two weeks ago by a South African observatory and is about 393 feet to 853 feet (120 meters to 260 meters) wide.
Smaller objects shoot past Earth all the time, according to asteroid expert Davide Farnocchia with NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. Asteroids the size of this latest one fly by about every 25 years or so.
“We’re going to see a few of those during our lifetimes, but it’s not something that happens every other day,” he said.
A 7,579-foot (2,310-meter) asteroid flew safely past Earth Thursday, but it was farther away and was only visible to professional telescopes.
For Saturday, skywatchers will need to grab a small telescope since the asteroid isn’t bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. And it’ll be moving quickly across the southern sky, making it difficult to spot.
“The asteroid will be plowing through that field of stars,” said Nick Moskovitz, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory.
Viewers in the Southern Hemisphere will have the best chance of seeing it since the asteroid will appear higher overhead. Those in the U.S. may want to wait until Saturday night, when the asteroid may appear less bright but will be easier to spot without interference from the sun’s blinding light.
If you miss out, mark your calendar for April 13, 2029, when an asteroid called Apophis will fly by Earth and will be visible to the naked eye from parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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China's Chang'e 6 mission has successfully delivered to Earth the first-ever samples from the far side of the moon. But what became of the lander that collected the lunar material?
Chang'e 6 launched on May 3. The mission consisted of four spacecraft — an orbiter, lander, ascent vehicle and reentry capsule. The lander touched down in Apollo crater on June 1, with the main task of scooping and drilling for unique samples from the lunar far side and loading them into the ascender to be blasted into lunar orbit.
The samples eventually reached Earth on June 25, touching down as planned in grasslands in Inner Mongolia.
The Chang'e 6 lander, meanwhile, remains on the moon. It carried other payloads, including a panoramic imager and a tiny rover. Insights about the lander's fate came recently from the French space agency CNES, which contributed a radon-outgassing-detection payload called DORN to the mission.
"As planned, DORN was switched off shortly before Chang'e 6 lifted off from the lunar surface, when the ground platform became inactive," a CNES press attache stated in an email.
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If any activities were conducted after the ascender's liftoff, these would have ceased by nightfall over Apollo crater. Unlike the still-operational Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 landers on the lunar near and far sides, respectively, Chang'e 6's lander did not carry the radioisotope heaters needed for long-term activities on the moon, which requires surviving the deep cold of the long lunar night. Nighttime in Apollo crater began on June 11, and the sun rose again over the site on June 26.
Meanwhile, the ascender, which carried the samples from the moon to the waiting Chang'e 6 spacecraft in lunar orbit, is now also out of action. Though China's space authorities have not commented on the fate of the ascender, the rocket was likely responsibly deorbited into the moon after it docked with the orbiter and transferred the samples.
Radio amateur Scott Tilley tracked signals from the ascender, with their absence suggesting it had been instructed to impact the moon.
Quick update on Chang'e 6 mission. The Ascender was a no show today, indicative it has been deorbited and impacted on the Moon as CE5's did following expected mission timeline. The Orbiter is behaving normally and has been in and out of lock with Argentina throughout today.June 8, 2024
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China appears to have enacted the sample protocol with its Chang'e 5 mission, which returned samples from the moon's near side to Earth in late 2020.
With all other aspects wrapped up, the reentry capsule and the samples within it were transported to Beijing on Wednesday (June 26). The samples will soon be transferred to specially developed facilities for storage, analysis and distribution for research.
Meanwhile, the Queqiao 2 lunar relay satellite, which helped facilitate the far side sample mission, will continue orbiting with its science payloads. It will support the ongoing Chang'e 4 mission and the upcoming Chang'e 7 mission, which will target the lunar south pole around 2026.
For decades, a deadly fungal disease has been stalking the world’s amphibians, wiping out frogs, toads and salamanders from the mountain lakes of the United States to the rainforests of Australia. The disease, known as chytridiomycosis, or chytrid, has driven at least 90 species of amphibians extinct and has contributed to the decline of hundreds more, according to one estimate.
“Chytrid is this unprecedented pandemic of wildlife,” said Anthony Waddle, a conservation biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “We’re watching species and populations blink out.”
But, like many formidable foes, chytrid has an Achilles’ heel. The fungus that is the primary culprit — known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd — flourishes in cool weather and cannot withstand heat.
Now, a new study provides evidence that conservationists might be able to keep the fungus at bay by giving frogs a warm place to ride out the winter. A simple pile of sun-warmed bricks, the researchers found, attracts the green and golden bell frog, a vulnerable Australian species. These thermal shelters boost the frogs’ body temperatures, helping them beat back fungal infections and, perhaps, setting them up for long-term survival.
“If we give frogs the ability to clear their infections with heat, they will,” said Dr. Waddle, the first author of the new paper, which was published Wednesday in Nature. “And they’ll likely be resistant in the future.”
The green and golden bell frog, which used to be common in southeastern Australia, has disappeared from much of the landscape and is now listed as endangered in the state of New South Wales.
In Sydney, where some of the remaining bell frogs reside, chytrid often flares up in the winter and early spring, when daytime temperatures may max out in the 60s. In the first of several experiments documented in the new paper, Dr. Waddle and his colleagues found that the frogs preferred balmier climes when they were available. When placed in habitats with a temperature gradient, the frogs gravitated toward areas that were 84 degrees Fahrenheit, on average, warmer than is ideal for Bd.
In a second experiment, the researchers placed fungus-infected frogs in a variety of climates. Some frogs spent weeks in the relative cold, in habitats set to 66 degrees. Those frogs harbored high levels of fungus for weeks. Over the months that followed, more than half of them died, Dr. Waddle said.
But frogs housed in warmer environments, or given access to a wide array of temperatures, rapidly recovered from their infections, the researchers found.
Frogs that recovered from chytrid, with the help of this kind of “heat treatment,” were also less susceptible to the disease in the future. When they were exposed to Bd again six weeks later — without the benefit of a hot habitat — 86 percent of them survived, compared with 22 percent of the frogs that had not been previously infected.
Finally, the researchers put these findings to the test in large outdoor enclosures that more closely resembled real-world conditions. The scientists stacked some hole-riddled bricks in each enclosure, covering each pile with a small greenhouse. The greenhouses were exposed to the sun in half of the enclosures and shaded in the rest.
Then, they released an assortment of frogs into each enclosure. Some of the frogs had never been exposed to Bd before, while others were actively infected with the fungus or had previously survived an infection.
The shaded and the unshaded shelters each attracted frogs, which made themselves at home in the holes inside the bricks. But the frogs with access to the sun-warmed bricks maintained body temperatures that were roughly six degrees higher than frogs given shaded shelters, the scientists found. That elevation in temperature was enough to reduce the amount of fungus the frogs were harboring. “Just a few degrees difference can tip the scales for the frogs,” Dr. Waddle said.
Frogs that had survived previous encounters with chytrid also had relatively mild infections, the researchers found, even when they were not given access to the sun-warmed shelters.
The results suggest that thermal refuges might act as a sort of “crude immunization,” Dr. Waddle said, helping frogs survive their first bout with Bd and leaving them less susceptible in the future. “Then you’re seeding the population with resistant frogs that would drive down the population level of chytrid.”
The strategy won’t work for every threatened amphibian — not all of them are heat-seeking, for one — but it could be a low-cost intervention that benefits many, said Dr. Waddle, who is hoping to test the approach with other frog species.
In the meantime, he has installed the shelters at Sydney Olympic Park, which is home to a wild population of the frogs. He’s enlisting the public, too, encouraging local residents to “build a frog sauna,” he said. “We’re trying to get people to put them in their backyards.”
After a 53-day mission, the return vehicle successfully landed in Inner Mongolia at 2:07 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The landing marks "the complete success of the Chang'e-6 mission of the lunar exploration project and the world's first return of samples from the back of the moon," CNSA said in a news release.
The return vehicle is expected to be airlifted to Beijing to open the cabin and remove the sample container. There will be a formal handover ceremony, after which analysis and research can begin, according to CNSA.
The Chang'e-6 probe launched from the Wenchang Space launch site on the Chinese island of Hainan on May 3 and reached the moon on May 8. It orbited for 20 days before finding a landing site, according to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
Officials prepare to recover the landing module of the Chang'e-6 moon probe after it landed in Inner Mongolia, in northern China on June 25, 2024.
-/AFP via Getty Images
The lander separated from the orbiter and touched down on June 1 near the southern part of the Apollo crater, located within the South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest and oldest recognized basin. Researchers believe this is the site of an impact more than 4 billion years ago.
This region has been thought to be a key part of understanding what caused a massive number of impacts on the moon billions of years ago during a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, according to the nonprofit Planetary Society.
The mission objective of the Chang'e-6 was to drill as deep as 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) below the surface of the moon to collect about 2 kilograms (about 70.5 ounces) of samples, GSFC said.
Researchers estimate the samples will consist of volcanic rocks that are 2.5 million years old as well as materials left behind by meteorite strikes, according to predictions from geologists published in the journal The Innovation on Monday.
The samples "are expected to answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar science research: what geologic activity is responsible for the differences between the two sides?" Dr. Zongyu Yue, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a release.
Several countries are trying to grow their own lunar space programs.
Last year, India and Japan became the fourth and fifth countries, respectively, to land spacecrafts on the lunar surface.
The landing module of the Chang'e-6 moon probe is seen after it landed in Inner Mongolia, in northern China on June 25, 2024.
-/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile the U.S. is in the midst of preparing for its first-crewed missions to the moon in decades, with a moon flyby currently scheduled for September 2025 and an attempted landing on the moon scheduled for September 2026.
In August 2023, Russia had attempted to land a spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1976, but its Luna-25 lander ended up crashing into the moon's surface instead.
The CNSA has future lunar missions planned after Chang'e-6, including Chang'e 7, scheduled for 2026, which will make detailed surveys of the south pole of the moon, and Chang'e 8, scheduled for 2028, which will test technology necessary to construct a lunar science base, according to NASA.
SpaceX may be forced to come to the rescue of two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station after their Boeing Starliner suffered troubling helium leaks.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams soared into space on the Starliner on June 5 and were only supposed to remain at the ISS for nine days — but issues with their ship have left their return date still up in the air, and NASA is now furiously trying to help solve the problem.
Boeing-rival SpaceX could potentially end up being tapped to ultimately bring them home aboard its Crew Dragon spaceship.
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will remain aboard the International Space Station until at least July 2. REUTERSStarliner remains docked at the International Space Station as officials study the helium leaks it suffered. AP
The outcome would serve as a severe blow to troubled aerospace giant Boeing, which has spent about $1.5 billion in cost overruns — beyond its initial $4.5 billion contract with NASA — in hopes of making Starliner a second option to reach the ISS.
While NASA and Boeing officials have reiterated that the current problems aboard the Starliner don’t indicate the need for SpaceX to lend a hand, the Crew Dragon is up to the task.
The SpaceX ship, which recently ferried four astronauts to the ISS in March, is capable of carrying two to four passengers at a time, but it can fit additional occupants in an emergency.
SpaceX had served as the sole commercial company approved to transport astronauts and cargo to the space station since 2020.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment Tuesday.
Michael Lembeck, an aerospace engineering associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who served as a consultant for Boeing’s spaceflight division from 2009 to 2014, told The Post that the Starliner is still likely to be Wilmore and Williams’ ride back to Earth.
It’s possible that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon could be used to help bring the astronauts home. via REUTERS
“Right now, I’d say the need for SpaceX to step up is very low,” Lembeck said. “We would have to see a big problem come up in the next couple of days to warrant that reaction.”
Lembeck and Katsuo Kurabayashi, a professor of aerospace engineering at New York University, told The Post that NASA most likely delayed the return trip home so that they could spend more time studying the craft while it’s still attached to the ISS to learn more about what went wrong and how to avoid it for its next mission.
While the capsule carrying the astronauts will make it back to Earth, the service module — which stores the engines, fuel and the helium tanks — will not, Lembeck explained.
Starliner’s glitches have been an embarrassing blow for maker Boeing. NASA/AFP via Getty Images
“With ample helium gas remaining, it’s prudent for the teams to take sufficient time to ensure that Starliner is fully prepared and certified for the return journey,” Kurabayashi added.
The NYU prof noted that the situation remains fluid and that the next updates that come from NASA will be an indicator on how the issue has developed.
“If they start talking about a rescue mission by chance, it would indicate that there are some serious, potentially life-threatening hardware defects found with Sarliner,” Kurabayashi said.
Boeing is hoping to make its Starliner the second option for NASA scientists to reach the International Space Station. AP
The last time a NASA astronaut needed help returning to Earth was in 2022, when Russia’s Soyuz capsule sprang a leak with American Frank Rubio on board.
The incident extended Rubio’s six-month mission to one that lasted more than a year, or 371 days, a recording-breaking length for an American in space.
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For a tenth time in program history, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket roared off the launchpad at historic Launch Complex 39A. This was the beginning of the journey for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-U (GOES-U) satellite on behalf of NOAA. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
Update 6:12 p.m. EDT: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy second stage completed its second burn and is in a coast phase. Satellite deployment is anticipated around 9:56 p.m. EDT (0156 UTC).
The finale in a series of critical weather satellites for the United States surmounted some weather challenges as it began its journey to join its three fellow satellites on orbit. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-U (GOES-U) satellite is designed to provide critical weather, climate and solar data to meteorologists and other parties to enhance the safety of people and property.
The spacecraft, managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was launched to a geosynchronous transfer orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Launch of this fourth and final satellite for the GOES-R series happened at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 UTC). As of 6:12 p.m. EDT (2212 UTC), the upper stage of the rocket was in a coast phase with the GOES-U satellite attached to the payload adaptor.
During a prelaunch press conference, Brian Cizek, a launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, noted that there was only a 30 percent chance of favorable weather during the two-hour launch window. That improved to about 50 percent in the early part of the countdown and then 70 percent in time for launch.
The main weather concerns heading into the launch were the cumulus cloud rule, the anvil cloud rule and the surface electric fields rule.
“We evaluate a set of ten lighting launch commit criteria that are designed to protect not just against natural lightning, but rocket-triggered lightning,” Cizek said. “The rocket can actually trigger its own lightning strike if it flies through or near a cloud that could hold a charge by increasing the electric field in the atmosphere by up to 100 times. So, that’s what these rules are designed to protect against.”
A pair of sonic booms shook Florida’s Space Coast as SpaceX recovered the two side boosters on the three-core Falcon Heavy rocket, tail numbers B1072 and B1086. They touched down at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) and Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a little more than eight minutes after liftoff. The core booster, B1087, was expended following separation with the rocket’s upper stage.
All three of boosters being used on this mission were brand new.
“With reusability, we’re reusing our vehicles, but we also need to replenish the fleet. And the decision that we made in coordination with the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP)was that it makes sense for us to replenish the fleet now with these new boosters,” said Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA Science Missions, during a prelaunch press conference on Monday.
One of two Falcon Heavy side booster is seen making its way back towards the landing zone pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station prior to the start of the landing burn. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now
This tenth flight of a Falcon Heavy rocket was also the first time that a GOES-R series satellite launches on this vehicle. Denton Gibson, the NASA LSP launch director, told Spaceflight Now in an interview ahead of launch that he and his office worked with NOAA to help them adjust to a launch aboard a SpaceX rocket.
“It’s just a matter of our team helping them get familiar with this particular vehicle, how they operate, the culture, the things they need to be aware of that they may not have had to worry about on a previous mission and so on,” Gibson said. “So, it’s just a matter of our team getting them up to speed on this particular launch vehicle, which to this point has gone smoothly so far.”
Pam Calderwood, the deputy program manager of GOES-U for Lockheed Martin (the prime contractor) said during the design and construction of this satellite, they had to make some modifications to support a horizontal integration with the launch vehicle as opposed to the vertical integration used on previous Atlas 5 launches with United Launch Alliance (ULA).
“The tipping of the spacecraft, all of the mechanical, specialized equipment to do that, a lot of it had to be updated, redesigned,” Calderwood said. “And then, we had to also take a look at all of the support structure to make sure that when you have some thing that’s basically in the 11,000-pound range that you’re trying to sit on its side, to make sure that there’s the proper supports needed.”
SpaceX rolled its Falcon Heavy rocket out of the hangar at Launch Complex 39A on Monday, June 24, 2024, ahead of the planned launch of NOAA’s GOES-U satellite, scheduled for launch on June 25, 2024. Image: SpaceX
Following spacecraft separation about 4.5 hours after liftoff, the next big milestone for the spacecraft will be the deployment of four out of five of its solar array panels, which will allow it to start charging its batteries.
“The reason that’s so important is this spacecraft needs power to survive, if there’s any issues. And so, it’s very important to make sure that we have a really good solar array deployment,” Calderwood said.
About two days after launch, they will begin the liquid apogee engine burns to raise the apogee to a geosynchronous Earth orbit. That will be done with five separate burns over a 14-day period with the last burn coming at about July 8.
Over the next several months, the spacecraft will go through operational checkouts and calibrations, before it finally arrives at its final orbital position and will be renamed GOES-19. It will function as the primary “GOES East” satellite and will work alongside GOES-18, which is the primary satellite for “GOES West.”
Built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the GOES-U satellite is designed to further enhance the ability to track and predict weather conditions, both on the Earth as well as in space. Unlike the previous three spacecraft in the GOES-R series, GOES-U includes an instrument called the Compact Coronograph-1 (CCOR-1), which was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory.
Calderwood said it was a somewhat last-minute addition from NASA, but it will provide NOAA the ability to study the Sun’s corona with much greater frequency. It’s something that, on Earth, is only truly observable during a total solar eclipse.
Technicians prepare NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) for encapsulation inside payload fairing halves on Thursday, June 13, 2024, at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The fourth and final weather-observing and environmental monitoring satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series will assist meteorologists in providing advanced weather forecasting and warning capabilities. The two-hour window for liftoff opens 5:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Image: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
“The Sun, when it goes through and it has these types of geomagnetic storms or these eruptions, it can go through and create communication blackouts. It can create disruptions to power grids. I know there’s also errors in the GPS systems that can happen,” Calderwood said. “And really, what’s important is to also make sure that we’re keeping our astronauts safe. So, we’re really cognizant of the exposure, the added exposure to radiation.
“And we’re all really excited to have this new piece of equipment on there that’s going to go through and help with that early warning detection.”
.@NOAA‘s new #GOESU satellite will not just help us study weather on Earth, but also potentially harmful #SpaceWeather with the help of a BRAND NEW instrument—the compact coronagraph-1 (#CCOR1)!
The goal of CCOR-1 is to provide advanced warnings of between one and four days to allow preparations to take place to account for heightened solar activity. That work will be bolstered by GOES-U’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and the Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS), which “provide imaging of the sun and detection of solar flares,” according to NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS).
In addition, GOES-U includes two primary, Earth-facing instruments, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), built by Lockheed Martin; and the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), which was built by L3Harris.
The ABI scans the Earth every 10 minutes across 16 color bands, which range from the visible to the infrared spectrum. Chris Reith, L3Harris’ program manger for the ABI, said one of the most serendipitous parts of having the recent iterations of ABI has been its ability to detect fires.
“It can pick up a fire as small as a small barn fire from 22,000 miles above Earth,” Reith said. “So, that’s really one of the most amazing things, especially with all the wildfires we’ve seen in the western United States. It’s getting a lot of use in that way.”
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (#GLM) onboard @NOAA‘s #GOESU 🛰️ will collect data on #lightning activity to help recognize intensifying thunderstorms and tropical cyclones.
All of the learning from the GOES-R series of satellites will roll over into the next generation of weather satellites: NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO). In mid-June, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $2.27 billion cost-plus-award-fee contract to design and build the trio of spacecraft, which need to have a minimum 10-year on-orbit operational life plus five year in on-orbit storage.
BAE Systems was also tapped in late May to develop and build the GeoXO Ocean Color instrument (OCX), which “will monitor U.S. coastal waters, the exclusive economic zone, and the Great Lakes,” according to NASA.
Reith said they are also working on improvements to the ABI for the GeoXO constellation.
“The majority of the subsystems that we use on the ABI are being reused on GXI or GeoXO Imager. So, there’ll be two spectral bands that will be added for low-level water vapor and then, there are seven of the older bands, the previous bands that will get increased resolution,” Reith said. “So, most importantly, in the visible bands, we’re going down to 250-meter resolution, which is going to really enhance and sharpen the pictures of the weather that we’re seeing and the cloud formation and the oceans and everything else that the ABI observes.”
A rendering of the GeoXO constellation being build by Lockheed Martin. Graphic: Lockheed Martin
The first of the GeoXO satellites is targeting launch in 2032. NOAA has been working with Congress to appropriate the funds to support the endeavor. During a press briefing on Monday, Pam Sullivan, the director of the GOES-R program for NOAA, said they have been appropriated about $500 million towards a program that will cost about $20 billion over a 30-year timespan.
Calderwood told Spaceflight Now that the team at Lockheed Martin said they’re not wasting any time getting started on the first satellite.
“It’s a very aggressive timeframe and so, we do indeed need to hit the ground running. What’s key with that new GeoXO is that we’re basing it. Unlike GOES, which was off of the A2100 bus, we’re going to be using it off of the new LM 2100 and so, that has a lot of improvements in it,” Calderwood said.
She described the updates from the GOES-R series to the GeoXO as going from a car designed and built in the 80s or 90s to one designed and built today. That will include a component that allows the satellite managers wot update the software on the satellite periodically, like a phone.
“It’s providing a whole new capability of a brand new software suite and truly, it’s something that we’re working through,” Calderwood said. “We’re pulling in from key components within Lockheed and then of course, we’re also baselining it off of all the experiences that we’ve had with the GOES-R series.”
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Early one morning in late October 2013, Gerard Talavera, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual — a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in French Guiana.
The painted lady, or the species Vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in South America. Yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. Judging by their condition, the bleary-eyed Dr. Talavera, who works at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona in Spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight.
The insect is a champion of long-distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the Sahara on a trek from Europe to Southern Africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. Could they also have made the 2,600-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean without any place to stop and refuel? Dr. Talavera wanted to find out.
Following the long-range movements of insects is challenging. Tools like radio-tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. Scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen-scientist observations to piece together travel patterns.
“We see butterflies that appear and disappear, but we are not proving the links directly, we are just making assumptions,” Dr. Talavera said.
In 2018, he developed a way to use a common genetic sequencing tool to analyze pollen DNA. Pollen grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. Dr. Talavera used a method called DNA metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ DNA and determine which plant they came from. Later, the DNA could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path.
In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, Dr. Talavera and his team describe a crucial clue to cracking the mystery of the stranded butterflies: Pollen clinging to the butterflies in French Guiana matched flowering shrubs in West African countries. These shrubs bloom from August to November, which matches the timeline of the butterflies’ arrival. That suggested the butterflies had crossed the Atlantic. The idea was tantalizing. But Dr. Talavera and his team were careful not to jump to conclusions.
In addition to studying the pollen, the researchers sequenced the butterflies’ genomes to trace their lineage and found they had European-African roots. This ruled out the possibility that they had flown over land from North America. Then, they used an insect-tracking tool called isotope tracing to confirm that the butterflies’ natal origins were in Western Europe, North Africa and West Africa. By adding weather data showing favorable winds blowing from Africa to America, they were building up to a monumental finding.
“This is a brilliant piece of biological detective work,” said David Lohman, an evolutionary ecologist at the City College of New York who was not involved in the work. Dr. Talavera’s forensic-detective-like tracing supported the conclusion that the painted lady butterflies made the first transoceanic journey ever recorded by an insect.
It’s likely they were on their typical route through Africa when they were swept off course by a strong wind. Once over the ocean, the butterflies kept flying until they reached the shore.
Insect migrations are the largest movement of biomass around the world. Over southern England alone, a staggering 3.5 trillion insects migrate annually. Their ability to transport pollen, fungi and even plant diseases across vast distances highlights the global impact of these tiny critters. With the painted ladies’ oceanic migration, experts say, scientists may have a better way of tracking these journeys.
The finding showed that the delicate creatures could endure a difficult and dangerous journey, which most likely lasted between five and eight days. It also demonstrates how much scientists still have to learn. Jessica Ware, an evolutionary biologist at the American Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the study, called the study’s methods “innovative,” adding that it will “help us understand migrations.”
It's time to bring out the big engines. Those on the Space Coast will soon be in for a treat.
Not one, but three Falcon 9 first stage rockets making up the Falcon Heavy are tentatively scheduled to blast into the Florida sky in tandem this week to carry a weather satellite into orbit.
It's been awhile since Florida has seen this sight: two Falcon 9s supporting the main rocket tasked with carrying the second stage and payload into space. Falcon Heavy last rose into the Florida sky in late December from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A, carrying the secret Space Forcespaceplaneknown as X-37B. The only other comparable launch since then was the triple-core ULA Delta IV Heavy finale, which carried a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office back in April from Cape Canaveral.
Why is Falcon Heavy needed for this launch?
A bigger payload demands more power, and with NOAA and NASA ready to launch the GOES-U weather satellite as soon as Tuesday, June 25, they needed a bigger rocket. The satellite is comparable in size to a small school bus so one of the heaviest lift rockets will be utilized. Enter the Falcon Heavy.
SpaceX Space Coast rockets: Falcon Heavy vs Falcon 9
Simply put, the Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9 rocket first stages — which together give three times the lift. The center Falcon 9 is fully loaded with the second stage of the rocket and the payload atop. The payload, in this case the NOAA satellite, is encased in fairings to shield it on the way to space.
By comparison, the Falcon 9 that launches Starlink missions is a single rocket. Just one of these single rockets towers 229.6 ft tall with the second stage and has a diameter of 12 ft.
With three of these Falcon 9 rockets, the monster Falcon Heavy stands the same height. However, it's much wider, giving it a width of 39.9 ft, which is comparable to almost three cars parked bumper to bumper.
According to SpaceX, the Falcon Heavy has flown nine launches, 17 booster landings, and 14 booster reflights.
The first successful Falcon Heavy took to the skies in February of 2018, carrying as its payload a red Tesla Roadster, along with a mannequin dubbed 'Starman' − which was adorned in a SpaceX spacesuit.
Falcon Heavy thrust: how powerful is this rocket?
Three Falcon 9 rockets – each having nine Merlin engines of power —gives the Falcon Heavy vehicle the power of 27 Merlin engines at liftoff. Each of these 27 engines provides 190,000 lbs of thrust. According to SpaceX, this power provides more five-million pounds of thrust in total.
SpaceX says the Falcon Heavy can lift the weight comparable to a 737 jetliner, along with all its fuel, cargo, passengers, and get that weight into orbit.
Space X Falcon Heavy booster landing
SpaceX will recover the two supporting Falcon 9 boosters. If they follow the procedure of previous flights, the two boosters will land at the Cape Canaveral landing site – giving off a double sonic boom. Should SpaceX continue with the routine of past Falcon Heavy flights, the core Falcon 9 will break up over the ocean after it completes its task.
As the two supporting boosters land at SpaceX landing sites 1 and 2 on the coast of Cape Canaveral, two sonic booms will be heard on the Space Coast. As the boosters fall back to Earth, they travel faster than the speed of sound. This in turn breaks the sound barrier, letting off a noise comparable to a loud clap of thunder.
The sonic booms will come as the boosters are already landing, which may seem puzzling. Physics simply explains this situation as light travels faster than sound. The returning boosters will be seen before the sonic booms are heard.
It can be a startling sight, especially if one has never witnessed it − the boosters appear to land silently before a loud, Earth-shaking sound is heard.
When is SpaceX Falcon Heavy launching
On Tuesday, if weather on the Space Coast permits, the Falcon Heavy will blast off from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A, ferrying the NOAA/NASA GOES-U satellite into orbit.
GOES-U is NOAA's latest weather satellite, which promises continuing hurricane tracking. Weather observation satellites, such as the GOES series, are important to locations which experience these extreme weather phenomena − such as Florida.
GOES-U will provide a valuable watch from above − observing hurricanes as they form. "We know about them because of the GOES satellites. They sit above the equator about 22,000 miles above the Earth and keep a constant watch," Dan Lindsey, a NOAA program scientist, told FLORIDA TODAY.
Be sure to follow the FLORIDA TODAY Space Team for the latest updates from the Space Coast.
Tens of thousands of meteorites have been found on Earth, but a vast majority remain shrouded in mystery. These rocks come from space, of course, but pinning down their exact origins, in the solar system or even beyond, is difficult without knowing their flight paths.
But now, researchers believe they have connected a meteorite discovered in the Austrian Alps decades ago with bright flashes of light from a space rock hurtling through our planet’s atmosphere. It’s rare to link a meteorite with its parent “fireball,” and these results demonstrate the usefulness of combing old data sets, the research team suggests. Their findings were published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science in May.
In 1976, Josef Pfefferle, a forest ranger, was clearing the remnants of an avalanche near the Austrian village of Ischgl when he noticed an odd-looking rock. He brought the fist-size black stone back to his house and put it in a box.
Thirty-two years later, Mr. Pfefferle heard a news story about a meteorite discovered in Austria and wondered if his weird rock might also be from space. He decided to bring his rock to a university to be analyzed.
Mr. Pfefferle’s find did turn out to be a meteorite, and, at over two pounds, a relatively large one. Furthermore, its unweathered exterior suggested that it had fallen to Earth only shortly before Mr. Pfefferle picked it up.
“It was such a fresh meteorite,” said Maria Gritsevich, a planetary scientist at the University of Helsinki in Finland who led the recent study. “It was so well preserved.”
Dr. Gritsevich and her colleagues surmised that if the Ischgl meteorite had fallen to Earth relatively recently, perhaps its arrival had been captured on film. A network of 25 sky-viewing cameras spread across southern Germany had been collecting long-exposure images of the night sky since 1966. By the time the network ceased operations in 2022, it had recorded over 2,000 fireballs.
“It was most logical to track it back to the most recent fireball seen in the area,” Dr. Gritsevich said.
She and her team hunted down negatives of fireball-containing images stored at the German Aerospace Center in Augsburg. After digitizing the images, the researchers estimated various parameters about the incoming meteors, such as their masses, shapes, velocities and angles of entry. Using that data, the researchers homed in on a dozen events that had most likely produced sizable meteorites. Only three had occurred before 1976.
The team reconstructed the trajectory of each of those three fireballs, and calculated where meteorites would most likely be found. There was just one match with where the Ischgl meteorite was recovered. This led the researchers to conclude that the fireball that arced low across the horizon in the early morning hours of Nov. 24, 1970 birthed the Ischgl meteorite.
“This one matched exactly,” Dr. Gritsevich said.
She and her colleagues calculated that the incoming meteor fell to Earth at a speed of roughly 45,000 miles per hour. That’s fast but well within the range of meteoroids born in the solar system, Dr. Gritsevich said. Something that came from beyond the solar system, on the other hand, would have been traveling much faster, she added.
The meteoroid that produced the 1970 fireball once orbited the sun relatively close to the Earth, the team estimated. It probably didn’t come from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is the source of many meteoroids, Dr. Gritsevich said.
Linking a meteorite to where it was born is important, said Marc Fries, a planetary scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston who was not involved in the research. “It goes from being just a rock you find on the ground to a rock that comes from a specific place in the solar system,” he said. To date, roughly 50 meteorites have had their orbits determined; Ischgl is the third-oldest of them.
The case of the Ischgl meteorite isn’t closed yet, however, said Peter Brown, a planetary scientist at Western University in Ontario who was also not involved in the research. After all, he said, there’s always the possibility that this meteorite might have sat on Earth’s surface for far longer than six years. The alpine environment in which it fell could have preserved the rock quite well.
“It really could have been there for decades and potentially centuries,” Dr. Brown said.
Even so, he said, there’s a neat story here: “It’s great to show that there’s value to this older data.”
Article From & Read More ( An Odd Rock in a Box Gets Linked to a Shooting Star That Fell 54 Years Ago - The New York Times )
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Hausjärvi, FINLAND— A Chinese launch of the joint Sino-French SVOM mission to study Gamma-ray bursts early Saturday saw toxic rocket debris fall over a populated area.
A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 3:00 a.m. Eastern (0700 UTC) June 22, sending the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission satellite into orbit.
The launch was declared successful by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) a short time after liftoff.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are violent electromagnetic explosions which can release as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will emit over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.
SVOM is a collaboration between the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and France’s Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES).
The mission will look for high-energy electromagnetic radiation from these events in the X-ray and gamma-ray ranges using two French and two Chinese-developed science payloads. These include the Microchannel X-ray Telescope (MXT), a narrow-field-optimized lobster eye X-ray focusing telescope.
Studying GRBs, thought to be caused by the death of massive stars or collisions between stars, could provide answers to key questions in astrophysics. This includes the death of stars and the creation of black holes.
However the launch of SVOM also created an explosion of its own closer to home.
A video posted on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo appears to show a rocket booster falling on a populated area with people running for cover.
The booster fell to Earth near Guiding County, Qiandongnan Prefecture in Guizhou province, according to another post. An airspace closure notice for the mission established a temporary danger area containing Guiding County, Guizhou.
A number of comments on the video noted the danger posed by the hypergolic propellant from the Long March rocket. Some comments on the post suggested the event was related to a failed recovery of SpaceX’s Starship, while another suggested an American conspiracy.
The Long March 2C uses a toxic, hypergolic mix of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). Reddish-brown gas or smoke from the booster could be indicative of nitrogen tetroxide, while a yellowish gas could be caused by hydrazine fuel mixing with air.
Contact with either remaining fuel or oxidizer from the rocket stage could be very harmful to individuals.
Falling rocket debris is a common issue with China’s launches from its three inland launch sites.
China’s first three launch sites were established during the Cold War. Sites deep inland were thus selected to provide a measure of protection amid tensions with the U.S. and Soviet Union.
Authorities are understood to issue warnings and evacuation notices for areas calculated to be at risk from launch debris, reducing the risk of injuries.
The launch of SVOM was China’s 29th launch of the year. CASC stated China is aiming to launch around 100 times across 2024, including around 30 commercial missions.
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What if, in 14 years, a newly-discovered asteroid was likely to strike Earth?
But that's not all. This threatening space rock, some 330 to 1,050 feet in diameter (or 100 to 320 meters), has just disappeared behind the sun, making crucial observations impossible for the next seven months.
To prepare for such an unsettling scenario, NASA just completed an exercise to "inform and assess our ability as a nation to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet." A possible asteroid or comet collision can pose a number of uncertainties, which the space agency continued to test during the recent fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.
"A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent," Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer emeritus, said in a statement.
Importantly, there are no known asteroids on a collision course with Earth for at least 100 years, and the chances of a major impact in our lifetimes is extremely small, astronomers say. Planetary defense agencies have never needed to raise an alarm about a threatening impact — though you've undoubtedly seen sensationalized news about menacing asteroids over the years.
"We have never actually issued a warning," Johnson previously told Mashable. (But they have informed the public about what some asteroids of interest are doing.)
"We have never actually issued a warning."
But, at some point, an impact is inevitable. "Yes, asteroids have hit Earth over the course of its history, and it will happen again," NASA notes.
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In the latest asteroid collision scenario, the space agency presented a hypothetical object some 330 to 1,050 feet across that has a 72 percent chance of walloping Earth. Something in that range, while not nearly the biggest class of asteroid, could be hugely destructive. Take the 600-foot-deep "Meteor Crater," which landed in present-day Arizona 50,000 years ago. The culprit was likely some 100 to 170 feet across, but created a blast big enough to destroy Kansas City.
As the hypothetical trajectory below shows, this asteroid passes over some densely populated areas like Dallas, which would almost certainly create a national emergency, even if the exact trajectory is uncertain. The scenario's impact is expected in 14 years, in July 2038, giving countries a relatively short time to prepare — especially with a seven month gap in surveillance. From initial observations, the object's size, composition, and trajectory are uncertain.
"To complicate this year’s hypothetical scenario, essential follow-up observations would have to be delayed for at least seven months — a critical loss of time — as the asteroid passed behind the Sun as seen from Earth’s vantage point in space," the space agency said.
A hypothetical asteroid impact scenario created for the Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.Credit: NASA
A slide from the Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise showing courses of action for contending with a likely impact.Credit: Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise
This latest planetary defense exercise underscores how critical near-Earth object surveillance is (these are objects that come within some 30 million miles of Earth's orbit around the sun). Fourteen years is a rushed timeline.
"You need to know what's coming, when it's coming, and how hard it's going to hit," Eric Christensen, the director of the NEO-seeking Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, previously told Mashable.
"You need to know what's coming, when it's coming, and how hard it's going to hit."
Among the courses of action discussed by NASA, FEMA, and other partners included a flyby of the incoming object, which would vastly improve our grasp of its composition, rotation, speed, and beyond. Will it break apart into smaller pieces in Earth's atmosphere? Is it rubble-like, or solid? How likely is it to hit the ocean? Also discussed was the major operation, a "Purpose-Built Rendezvous," which implies using a spacecraft to deflect an object.
Asteroid deflection is a realistic future possibility. In 2022, NASA plunged a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into a stadium-sized asteroid, with hopes of simply nudging it. It was an unprecedented, successful test — proving humanity could alter the path of a menacing asteroid, should one ever be headed our way. The impact cut the asteroid Dimorphos' loop around its parent asteroid (they journey around the sun as a pair, or binary system) by a whopping 33 minutes and 15 seconds — when the original goal was to change it by at least 73 seconds.
Participants at the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / Ed Whitman
Ultimately, this latest tabletop impact exercise resulted in a number of "High-level Takeaways." A glaring problem is the uncertainties involved in planning for a likely impact. The participants recommended developing "the capability to rapidly launch an NEO [near-Earth object] reconnaissance mission," which could include repurposing existing spacecraft.
Thankfully, NASA and its planetary defense partners will continue exercising hypothetical asteroid threats. It behooves us to be prepared, even if the overall risk is low.
