Tag: Astronomy

If all goes according to schedule, a SpaceX Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon combination is due to lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre’s LC-39A on March 31st, 2025, carrying four private citizens into space for a 4-5 day mission.

Aboard Crew Dragon Resilience will be Chinese-born, but Maltese citizen and crypto currency entrepreneur Chung Wang, who will be the mission’s commander and is a co-bankroller of the flight; Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Scottish-born Norwegian cinematographer and a pioneer of VR cinematography, 3D animation and augmented reality, who is the other co-bankroller for the flight; Eric Philips, a 62-year-old noted Australian polar explorer, who will be the first “fully” Australian national to fly in space, and Rabea Rogge, a German electrical engineer and robotic expert.

What is particularly notable about this flight is that it will be the first time any human space mission will be launched into a high-inclination (90º) polar orbit at an altitude of some 420-425 km (giving it a 93-minute orbital period). The aim of the flight is to carry out research on the Earth’s poles and their space environment, hence its name: Fram2. This celebrates the ship used by (among other Norwegian polar explorers), Roald Amundsen. In fact, in a further tie to polar exploration, mission was originally due to be flown aboard Crew Dragon Endurance, named for Ernest Shackleton’s vessel, until scheduling issues meant the mission has to switch to using Resilience.

Given the time of year of the mission, flights over the North Pole and arctic will be carried out in daylight, allowing for direct observations of Arctic ice melt, whilst passage over Antarctica and the South Pole will be in darkness, during which times the crew hope to be able to more clearly study the phenomena known as STEVE.

According to data gathered by the European Space Agency (ESA), STEVEs are caused by a 25 km wide ribbon of hot plasma at an altitude of 450 km, with a temperature of 3,000 °C flowing at a speed of 6 km/s  (compared to 10 m/s outside the ribbon). They appear as a very narrow arc extending for hundreds or thousands of kilometres, aligned east–west, and  generally last for twenty minutes to an hour. STEVEs can appear in both southern and northern skies, and are a phenomenon with a quaintly curious history.

As an observable event, records on STEVEs go back at least as far at 1705 – but throughout that time, they have had always largely been dismissed as an off-shot of aurora because (until October 2024) one had never been observed in the absence of any aurora. However, this changed in 2016 thanks in part (and possibly inevitably) to social media.

It was in that year that a group of amateur aurora photographers in Alberta, Canada noticed the appearance of a nightly whilst observing aurora, and they started taking photographs of the events and posting them to Facebook, with one of them referring to the ribbon in his photos as “Steve”, in reference to the comic series (and film) Over the Hedge. The photographs rapidly went viral and sparked a lot of discussion as to what the ribbon might be.

In particular, the photos and discussions drew the attention of a couple of planetary physicists, one of whom connected the photos to the data gathered on the phenomenon by ESA, leading another – Robert Lysak – to come up with the backronym of STEVE, for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, which is the term now used to reference the ribbon scientifically. It is now hoped that that physical observations from orbit of STEVE events by the Fram2 crew will help further our understanding of the phenomenon.

In addition to this, the mission’s science programme includes the first attempt to grow mushrooms in space in an effort to further research into the ability to provide sustainable nutrition on space missions – something seen as key to missions to Mars.

While there have been successful efforts to grow foodstuffs on the International Space Station (ISS) such as red Russian kale, chilli peppers, dragoon lettuce, dwarf wheat, mustard, they have not been without their drawbacks. For one thing, even relatively small amounts of food cultivation require space and other resources quite out of keeping with the results: while a cubic metre of  growing space can generate a small crop of food in just 30-35 days, the amount produced tends to only be enough to help supplement a single meal (or perhaps two) for 7-8 people.

Mushrooms – in this case oyster mushrooms – potentially offer a more viable means of dietary supplement. They grow at a rapid pace (doubling in size every day), do not require an enormous amount of space, they have a rich nutrient profile and – when grown under UV lighting (as these will), they can produce the daily dose of vitamin D required by astronauts. They can also grow in inedible plant waste, do not require intensive cultivation in order to grow.

For Fram2, the plan is for the crew to prepare an oyster substrate in orbit, and then study its growth and fruiting process and then monitor the rate of the developing mushrooms, record their growth characteristics in microgravity and monitor for any unusual contamination. The fungi will then be returned to Earth for further studies, including whether or not the mushrooms are still safely edible and can deliver on their nutritional promise.

With a battery of human science objectives set for the mission – including testing a portable MRI unit, carrying out x-rays of the human body, studies into blood and bone health, and glucose regulation in the body in micro-gravity – Fram2 is set to be one of the most science-intensive short-during human space flight missions yet undertaken.

ISAR Spectrum Maiden Flight Ends with a Ka-Boom

Europe’s commercial launch companies are not having a lot of success.  In 2024, German company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) hoped to be the first European commercial launcher to get a rocket to orbit from European soil (excluding Russia) with its RFA One vehicle. However, that hope ended in August 2024, when the first stage of the vehicle was lost after it exploded during a static fire engine test at the UK’s SaxaVord Spaceport (see: Commercial activities and a fly-by).

That loss in turn came on top of the 2023 failure of a (now defunct) Virgin Galactic airborne launch of the company’s LauncherOne from their carrier aircraft, Cosmic Girl, flying out of Spaceport Cornwall (aka Newquay Airport) – see: Space Sunday: Exoplanets and updates. Now, a further company has added to the list.

Thus, Germany’s Isar Aerospace had – with finger’s crossed – hoped to claim the crown by reaching orbit from the Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, and albeit using a vehicle without any payload. The aim of the launch was intended to be a fully integrated test of the company’s two-stage Spectrum rocket and launch and flight systems to determine the vehicle’s readiness to commence payload carrying operations. Given this, the company did indicate actually reaching orbit would be a bonus.

Spectrum is designed to operate from multiple launch sites –notably Andøya, targeting Sun-synchronous (SSO) and polar orbits, and Guiana Space Centre (Spaceport Europe) for equatorial and medium inclination orbits. It is capable of lifting up to a metric tonne to low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and up to 700 kg to SSO. The first operational flight is expected to be out of the Guiana Space Centre, carrying seven small satellites, later in 2025.

The test flight – calling Going Full Spectrum – out of Andøya on March 30th, appeared to start off smoothly enough. The vehicle lifted-off cleanly at 10:30 UTC, the rocket and climbed away from the launch pad. But as the rocket commenced its programmed ascent roll at 18-seconds in the flight, attitude control was lost, the rocket pitching over onto its side.

At this point the webcast video froze, but the sound continued to play, and the rocket was heard exploding. Initial reports stated that the vehicle’s flight termination system (FTS) had been triggered. However, separate footage recorded from a cell phone and posted by Norwegian publication VG, showed the rocket falling horizontally to strike the waters close to the launch facilities and explode. Later video of the released to various organisations euphemistically referred to the vehicle’s fall and explosion as being in “a controlled manner”. That said, the flight did yield data.

Two more Spectrum rockets are currently being fabricated, but the company has yet to indicate whether either of these will be used for a further flight test or whether they will seek to go ahead with a payload launch.

China’s Planetary Exploration Roadmap

As I’ve noted in numerous past Space Sunday pieces, China is developing a multi-faceted robotic and human space exploration programme, with the latter focusing on Earth-orbital activities using the Tiangong space station (soon to be joined by a new crew-carrying space vehicle), then missions to the lunar South Polar Region commencing in the early 2030s, prior to progressing to human-to-Mars flights some time thereafter.

On the robotic front, China has already achieved a lot re: the Moon and Mars, and on March 26th, 2025, the country’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), part of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), unveiled what appears to be a roadmap of upcoming missions, to the general public.  In a slide offered during a presentation, DSEL highlighted a number of goals, commencing with the already in-development Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission. In all, the slide disclosed the following mission ideas:

• ~2028 (launch): Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return.
• ~2029 (launch) Tianwen-4 Jupiter / Callisto orbiter mission investigating the potential habitability of the latter.
• ~2030: Earth-based platform for simulating planetary environments and their habitability.
• ~2033 (launch): Venus atmospheric sample return mission (utilising aerodynamic space vehicle).
• ~2038 (launch): untended, automated Mars science outpost for long-term biology and environmental research (precursor to human missions).
• ~2039 (launch): Neptune / Triton mission to investigate habitability of outer planets and water worlds.

Also mentioned in the presentation was the Earth 2.0 Exoplanet Investigator – a TESS-like observatory for studying exoplanets, particularly those referred to a “exo-Earths” – planets of a size and location around their parent stars considered suitable for the potential development of life. Earth 2.0 (referred to as “ET” – geddit?) is currently due for a 2028 launch to operate at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (the same gravitationally-stable region of space on the far side of the Earth relative to the Sun in which the James Webb Space Telescope operates). Once there, it will attempt to continuously monitor 2 million stars within the Kepler mission star field in an attempt to locate more exoplanets.

To achieve this, ET will use a set of 6 28-cm aperture telescopes working in unison. Due to its location and optical capabilities, ET will be able to study large areas of our galaxy for extended periods, increasing its ability to both locate more planets and to do so across wider areas. In this respect, ET will not only try to detect “exo-Earths” but also characterise them – determine their size, atmospheric composition, potential for bearing liquid water, etc., working in collaboration with ground-based and other facilities. It further hoped that these studies will increase our understanding of the mechanisms at work in the formation of exoplanets, particularly given that the mechanisms observed without our own solar system do not necessarily seem to apply to all other planetary systems.

In addition, ET is to be equipped with a 35 cm microlensing telescope it will use in an attempt to locate “rogue” (aka “wandering”) planets. These are planetary bodies no longer tied to orbiting a particular star, but instead wander freely in interstellar space.

As such planets do not lend themselves to detection via the transit method – regularly passing between the observer and their parent star, causing the brightness of the latter to dip relative to the observer – ET will focus its 35-cm telescope on around 30 million stars within the galactic bulge in an attempt to detect gravitational lensing effects caused by the passage of rogue planets somewhere between the observatory and the “cloud” of background stars.

In all, ET is slated for a 4-year primary mission once launched and operational – although clearly, it could run for much longer than this. It is also the only high-volume, in-depth mission with a specific focus on worlds with potential habitability slated for launch in the near future; whilst NASA is developing the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), this is still very much at the conceptual stage, and unlikely to be ready for launch within the next 15-20 years.

The long-awaiting NASA Expedition 72 / SpaceX Crew 9 mission launched for the International Space Station (ISS) on the 28th September, 2024, with some media still quite wrongly calling the launch a “rescue” mission.

The mission continues to be dubbed as such most likely because it is an attention-getting headline, after the recent farrago with the Crew flight Test (CFT) mission involving Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. While the latter made a safe uncrewed return to Earth – albeit it with some additional thrusters issues and an unexpected software reboot – on September 9th (See: Space Sunday: Starliner home; New Glenn update), the vehicle’s crew of Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams remained aboard the space station, allowing the media to continue to play the “astronauts stranded in space!” tune.

Leaving aside the sensationalism of reporting, the Expedition 72 / Crew 9 mission is still something of a landmark mission for SpaceX, being the first time a crewed launch has ever taken place from Space launch Complex 40 at Canaveral Space Force Station, adjoining the Kennedy Space Centre. Referred to as SLC-40 (or “slick-40”) in US Air Force parlance when it was used by the military, from 1965 through 2007 been the launch point for payload missions using the Titan launch vehicle family.

In 2007 SpaceX leased the facility, and it has since become the highest-volume launch facility for the company’s Falcon 9 vehicles, hosting over 200 launches (the majority of these being non-direct revenue generating Starlink launches). Since 2023, SpaceX has been upgrading SLC-40 for launches of the Dragon capsule system, with the emphasis on cargo launches to the ISS, but also crewed launches once the necessary access, support and emergency escape systems, etc., had been integrated into the launch facility.

Crew 9 had originally been due to launch from Kennedy Space Centre’s Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), until now the only facility available to SpaceX for launching crewed missions, and also the Falcon Heavy launch system. However, as the launch date for Crew 9 continued to be pushed back from mid-August through September, it risked conflicting with the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission using Falcon Heavy, and which has to take place in October. So, to avoid scheduling issues, NASA and SpaceX agreed to move the Crew 9 launch over to SLC-40.

Crew 9, carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov lifted-off at 17:17 on September 28th, the launch having been delayed from this target date by Hurricane Helene. The flight proceeded smoothly, with the first stage of the rocket making a safe boost-back and landing some 8 minutes after launch, and the upper stage correctly delivering the Crew Dragon capsule Freedom to its initial orbit and the start of a 28-hour “chase” to rendezvous with the ISS, that latter being due at approximately 21:30 UTC on Sunday, September 29th.

However, whilst all has proceeded smoothly with the Crew Dragon vehicle, an anomaly with the Falcon 9’s  upper stage de-orbit burn meant it splashed down outside of its designated target area in the Pacific Ocean, prompting SpaceX to suspend Falcon 9 launches until the reason for the deviation to be investigating, per Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) requirements.

As to why Crew 9 is not a “rescue mission”, the explanation is simple: the mission is a part of NASA’s schedule of ISS crew rotations and not any specifically result of the issues pertaining to Boeing’s Starliner or the fact that Williams and Wilmore being “stranded in space”.  In fact, the two astronauts have always had the means to return to Earth, either using the Starliner vehicle or the SpaceX Crew 8 Dragon vehicle.

The former was demonstrated in June 2024, when Wilmore and Williams and the rest of the ISS crew were ordered into their respective vehicles in readiness for a possible emergency Earth return due to the risk of the ISS being hit by debris from the break-up of a Russian satellite in an orbit which intersected that of the space station (see:  Space Sunday: of samples and sheltering).

The latter was shown following the return of the Crew 8 mission aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour, when the additional seated rigged within the vehicle’s pressurised cargo area for use by Williams and Wilmore, had a return to Earth been required prior to the arrival of the Crew 9 mission.

Which is not to say either option was either optimal or entirely safe; ergo, the need for an abundance of caution on NASA’s part, coupled with the need to disrupt crew rotations to the ISS as little as possible, the decision to fly Crew 9 with only 2 on board and thus “reserve” the remaining two seats for Wilmore and Williams made the most sense, both ensuring they had an assured flight home, and could complete the planned Expedition 72 crew rotation on ISS in place for astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman.

SpaceX and FAA

In the meantime, SpaceX has entered into an aggressive head-to-head with the Federal Aviation Authority over both launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy earlier in the year and overall SpaceX’s Starship operations out of Texas.

In short, the FAA is seeking to impose fines on SpaceX to the tune of US $633,009 due to SpaceX having failed to comply with the requirements of licenses issued for the launches of both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which the FAA states violated the launch licenses it granted for the them on the basis of changes SpaceX made to the launch operations. The changes, relating to a new control centre and propellant farm, were subject to license modifications for the respective launches, but the FAA state SpaceX submitted the requests for modifications too late for them to be properly processed.

In response to this, SpaceX claims it sought to have the licenses modified for the launches in question, but the FAA is at fault for failing to process the modifications in time for the launches to proceed as scheduled, and that as SpaceX judged the changes to not be safety issues, decided to go ahead with them nevertheless.

The Starship issues are equally complicated, with the FAA stating the license for to carry out any further Starship launches is being held-up on two main counts.

The first is that SpaceX is in violation of Texas state and federal requirements relating to the water deluge system used during Starship / Super Heavy launches out of Boca Chica. SpaceX dispute this – although they are also fighting US $148,378 in fines levied by the US Environmental Impact Agency for violations in the use of said system. The second is that SpaceX has failed to carry out required sonic boom analysis relating to its plans to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch facility for “capture” during the next Starship flight. Both of these are viewed by the FAA as “safety” issues SpaceX must address prior to any license being granted.

For its part, SpaceX and its CEO have aggressively hit back at the FAA, claiming the agency’s senior management is “lying”, and that FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker should be fired by Congress. In particular, with the SpaceX CEO stating the FAA is targeting SpaceX over “petty issues” relating to safety whilst “neglecting real safety issues at Boeing”. Whilst uncalled for, these comments came at a time when FAA Administrator Mike Whittaker was testifying to the House Transportation Committee in relation to Boeing’s ongoing aviation issues; as a result, Rep Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) used the aviation-related hearing to accuse the FAA of “undue scrutiny” where SpaceX is concerned, and questioning whether the FAA treat SpaceX “equally” with Boeing.

In reply, Whittaker agreed that companies should be held to the same standards of safety – and pointed out that in this respect, Boeing has both a safety management system (SMS) programme in place and (however unwillingly) operates a whistleblower programme as a part of their SMS. By contrast, and despite 20+ years of operations, SpaceX has consistently failed to implement either.

The comments around Boeing have also prompted some SpaceX fans to question why the FAA is so quick to “ground” SpaceX but has not done the same with Boeing’s Starliner. The answer to this is simple: the FAA has jurisdiction over all commercial launches from US soil, but is not responsible for licensing or overseeing US government launches or the spacecraft craft carried on these missions. As Starliner’s issues were purely spacecraft related, decisions relating to the vehicle’s safety fall under the remit of NASA, not the FAA.

How Many Natural Moons does Earth Have?

The above should be a simple question to answer – “one”. However, between now and November 27th, 2024 one could argue the answer should be “two”, thanks to the arrival of a tiny asteroid called 2024 PT5.

Measuring roughly 10 or 11 metres across, the asteroid is technically referred to as a near-Earth object (NEO) – an asteroid in an elliptical orbit close to the Sun and on a path that frequently cross Earth’s as we move around the Sun. Officially “discovered” (observed for the first time) on August 7th, 2024, it passes around the Sun just over once a terrestrial year, but at a low relative velocity when compared to Earth’s.

Thus, at 19:54 UTC on September 29th, it will pass just outside of Earth’s Hill Sphere at a velocity low enough for it to temporarily pass into a short-order orbit around Earth. However, because the asteroid will be just beyond the Hill Sphere at the time of “capture”, it will resume its passage around the Sun on November 25th, 2024, after 57 days passing around Earth and the Moon, not quite completing a full orbit. Sadly, during the encounter, it will be too small to observe with anything but the largest of optical telescopes.

This is actually not the first time our planet has – at least briefly – has had a “mini-Moon” – and such events might actually be relatively frequent; the last recorded event like this was in 2020, and that as more and more attention is focused on NEOs, it is possible that more and more might be found to make similar temporary orbits around Earth. One of the more interesting questions around 2024 PT5 is whether it started life as an asteroid or whether it might have originated on the Moon and was blasted out into space as part of a significant impact at some point in the Moon’s history. After this little loop, orbital calculations show that the next time it comes close enough to enter a temporary orbit in this manner will be in 2055.

And where did the Moon Come From?

For the last 40 years, the going theory for the origin of the Moon has been that it was formed from material resulting from a very large collision between Earth and another large body some 60 million years after the solar system formed.

The theory was a consensus decision reached by planetary scientists at a 1984 conference called to discuss findings from studies of the rocks returned by the Apollo mission and held in Hawai’i. The basis for the consensus was that chemical and isotopic analysis of the returned material showed that it was similar to the rock and soil on Earth: calcium-rich and basaltic in nature and was of a near-identical age to similar rocks found on Earth.

However, according to planetary scientists from Penn State Behrend College, this might not be the whole story: there is a possibility the Moon might actually have actually formed elsewhere and was captured during a close encounter between the young Earth and a terrestrial binary.

In this theory, there were two objects in a binary orbit and orbiting the Sun in an orbit very similar to Earth, and most likely formed at around the same time (thus meaning their composition would be similar). Over time as the respective obits of the binary system and Earth came into proximity to one another, Earth’s gravity separated the binary, snagging one of the objects, which became our Moon.

As evidence of this, the researchers point to the Moon being more in line with the Sun than with Earth’s equator, suggesting it originated in solar orbit. They also note that such situations are not uncommon in the solar system – Neptune’s moon Triton, for example, is most likely a captured Kuiper Belt object. In addition, the team’s modelling show that a binary-exchange object of the Moon’s size and mass interacting with the Earth’s gravity would likely start in an elongated elliptical orbit as it is initially captured by the Earth, which overtime would become increasingly circularised to a point where it became tidally locked with Earth: always keeping the same face towards the planet. After this, tidal evolution would be reversed, causing the object to slowly start to move away from Earth once more.

Much of this matches the behaviour of the Moon, which is now roughly 382,400 kilometres from Earth and moving away at the rate of 3 centimetres a year. This might not sound like a lot, but it is far enough for the Moon to be entering what will, in the centuries ahead, become an increasing tug of war between Earth and the Sun for control of the Moon – one which the Sun will eventually win.

Even so, and as the researchers note, their work is not conclusive whilst raising new questions:

No one knows how the moon was formed. For the last four decades, we have had one possibility for how it got there. Now, we have two. This opens a treasure trove of new questions and opportunities for further study.

Professor Darren Williams, Penn State Behrend College

China Unveils Lunar Spacesuits

China has unveiled the new generation of its space suit intended for use in their upcoming lunar exploration programme.

The suit appears to be a further Feitian space suit developed for extravehicular activities aboard the Chinese space station; however it remains unnamed, with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) launching a competition to name the new suit.

Unveiled at the third Spacesuit Technology Forum hosted by the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre, with the press release highlighting the red strips on the suits, stating they are inspired by the famous “flying apsaras” of Dunhuang art (upper arms), and rocket launch flames (legs). It is said to be equipped with a multifunctional integrated control panel that is easy to operate, cameras for recording close-up and long-distance scenes and made from protective materials that can effectively shield astronauts from the lunar thermal environment and lunar dust.

Alongside the presentation of the new suit, CMSA released a video promoting the new suit and featuring taikonauts Zhai Zhigang and Wang Yaping. Zhai made history in the Shenzhou-7 mission as China’s first person to conduct a spacewalk; he also flew Shenzhou-13 with Wang, who became China’s first female taikonaut to complete a tour of duty aboard the Tiangong space station. Their use as models for the new suit has spurred speculation that they might be part of China’s first crewed lunar landing  – although given the first landing will be before 2030, this is purely an assumption.

Back in 2019 / 2020 the red giant star Betelgeuse caused considerable excitement among astronomers on account of it undergoing a period of exceptional dimming – far more than is customary, given it is a pulsating variable star – which fuelled speculation that what was being seen might be the precursor to the star having gone supernova some 643 years ago (that being the time it takes for light from it to reach us), and the dimming was actually the star going through the kind of collapse the comes before such a supernova explosion.

However, despite the rapid and unusual dimming witnessed over December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020, by April 2020, the star  had returned to its normal levels of brightness, and by August of that year, astronomers thought that had an explanation for the unwarranted dimming: the star’s pulsating nature gives rise to clouds of energetic particles to be ejected, some of which form a illuminate cloud around the star whilst more cool and form a blotchy cloud too dim an cold to be detected by optical or infrared means, and which can result in the star dimming significantly in addition to any normal variations in its brightness as see from Earth.

Because of the “great dimming”, astronomers have continued to observe Betelgeuse and gather a lot more data about it, particularly with regards to trying to understand the drivers of the star’s Long Secondary Period (LSP) of variability. Stars like Betelgeuse tend to have overlapping periods of variability: the first tends to be a fairly short cycle of dimming and brightening. In the case of Betelgeuse, this cycle of dimming and brightening again lasts some 425 days.

This overlaps a much longer period of variability – the LSP – which in the case of Betelgeuse lasts somewhere in the region of 2,100 terrestrial days, or roughly 6 years. These periods, short and long, can occasionally synchronise so that both reach a period of maximum dimness or brightness. Originally, it had be thought that such a period of synchronicity had caused with the 2019/2020 “great dimming”, until data and observations showed otherwise. However, and more to the point, the actual mechanisms which cause LSPs for variable red giant stars is not well understood, and have been ascribed to several potential causes.

One of these is the potential for the red giant to have a smaller companion star, one very hard to observe due to the behaviour and brightness  of the red giant. Such is the conclusion reached in a new paper: A Buddy for Betelgeuse: Binarity as the Origin of the Long Secondary Period in α Orionis published via arxiv.org (and thus still subject to peer review). In it, researchers  Jared A. Goldberg, Meridith Joyce and László Molnár walk through all of the accepted explanations for LSPs among red giant stars as they might be applied to Betelgeuse, concluding that perhaps the most likely is that the red giant has a very low-mass (comparatively speaking) companion orbiting it at roughly 2.43 times the radius of Betelgeuse.

This puts the companion within the observable and illuminated dust cloud around Betelgeuse, potentially making the companion – referred to as α Ori B – exceptionally hard to observe, as it would be subsumed in the brightness of the surrounding dust and Betelgeuse’s own corona. further, it would be unlikely to form its own accretion disk, something which might otherwise aid its observation.

In particular, the paper notes that such a low-mass companion orbiting at the calculated distance from the red giant would actually give rise to an LSP of some 2,000-2,100 days as seen from Earth.

The one wrinkle in the idea – as noted by the authors – is that the calculated mass for α Ori B is well in excess of the calculated potential mass for such theoretical binary companions as provided by established (and peer-reviewed) papers investigating possible causes for LSPs among variable red giants. As such, and given the unlikely ability to optically identify any companion to Betelgeuse, the paper’s authors outline upcoming periods when α Ori B might be particularly susceptible to detection via repeated targeted radio-interferometric observations, in the hope their theory might be proven or disproven.

But why is all this important? Well, notably because Betelgeuse, at around 10-12 million years of age, could have entered the period in which it might go supernova (such massive stars evolve and age much more quickly than main sequence stars like our on Sun). When it does so, even though it is over 640 light years away, it will shine in the night sky with a brightness equivalent to that of the half Moon for a period in excess of three months before it fades away; hence why the “great dimming” caused so much excitement.

However, we could equally be as much as 100,000 years from such an event occurring. By understanding precisely what is going on around Betelgeuse, such as the presence of a cooler, darker dust cloud orbiting it affecting its brightness and as potentially found by the Hubble Space Telescope, or confirmation that the star has a smaller companion which plays a role in its cyclical brightening and dimming, astronomers are better available to judge whether or not any prolonged or unusual dimming of the star might indicate it has started collapsing in on itself and is heading for a supernova explosion – or are simply the result of expected and identified events unrelated to any such collapse.

New Shepard Aces Return to Flight Mission

Blue Origin took six people, including a NASA-funded researcher, on a New Shepard suborbital spaceflight on August 29th, the first such flight after issues have kept the system grounded almost continuously for two years.

The NS-26 flight carried its occupants to an altitude of 105.2 km, thus passing through the Kármán line, which is seen by some as the “boundary” between Earth and space at 100km above mean sea level. Interestingly, whilst named for Theodore von Kármán, the limit was not actually defined by him; instead, he calculated a theoretical altitude for aeroplane flight at 83.8 km (52.1miles) above mean sea level, which has led to 80 km (50 miles) also being regarded as the “boundary” between the denser atmosphere and space – however, some nations and organisations raised this to 100km based on calculations which showed that any satellite dropping to or below that altitude without any attempt to boost its orbit will see its trajectory decay before it can complete one more orbit.

The flight, which took off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 13:07 UTC, lasted 10 minutes and 8 seconds, the New Shepard booster safely landing some 7 minutes 18 seconds after launch, having separated from the capsule First Step, which continued upwards under ballistic flight. Aboard the flight were six people, including Robert Ferl, a University of Florida professor who conducted experiments on how gene expression in one type of plant changes when exposed to different phases of the the flight, including microgravity.

Also aboard was Karsen Kitchen, a 21-year-old University of North Carolina student, who became the youngest woman to cross the Kármán Line – but not necessarily the youngest woman to reach the edge of space; in August 2023, Eighteen-year-old Anastatia Mayers flew aboard Virgin Galactic 02 and passed through the 80-km “boundary” (also becoming one half of the first mother-daughter duo to reach the edge of space with her mother, Keisha Schahaff).

The remaining passengers on NS-26 comprised Nicolina Elrick, a philanthropist and entrepreneur; Ephraim Rabin, an American-Israeli businessman and philanthropist; Eugene Grin, who works in real estate and finance; and Eiman Jahangir, a cardiologist and Vanderbilt University associate professor (making a sponsored flight, rather than for research, his seat paid for via cryptocurrency group MoonDAO).

As noted, the flight came after almost two years New Shepard during which the vehicles barely flew. In September 2022 Blue Origin launched the first of 2 planned uncrewed flights – NS-23 – utilising the capsule RSS H.G. Wells carrying a science payload. During ascent, the booster’s main engine failed, triggering the capsule launch escape system. Whilst the capsule successfully escaped and made a safe landing under parachute, the booster was lost, resulting in the system being ground for investigation.

It was not until December 2023 that flights initially resume, again with a payload-carrying science mission. However, whilst successful, that flight was followed by crew-carrying NS-25 in May 2024. While no-one was injured, this flight suffered a partial deployment failure with one of the capsule’s three main parachutes, prompting a further grounding whilst the matter was investigated and remedial actions taken. NS-26 is thus the first flight since that investigation and subsequent work on the parachute systems had been completed.

For Ferl, the flight was a vindication of the value of sub-orbital flight to carry out research, despite their brevity. A long-time advocate of the use of sub-orbital crewed flights for carrying out packets of research , his work was funded by NASA’s Flight Opportunities programme and supported by the agency’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division, and marked him as the first NASA-funded researcher to go on such a flight.

Brief Updates

Polaris Dawn

The first all-private citizen spaceflight scheduled to include a spacewalk by two of the crew is currently “indefinitely” postponed – although that could now once again change fairly soon.

As I noted in my previous Space Sunday article, the mission, financed by billionaire Jared Issacman and to be carried out using a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher and the Crew Dragon Resilience, had been scheduled for lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre at 07:38 UTC on the morning of August 27th. However, the launch was  scrubbed as a result of a helium leak being detected  in the quick disconnect umbilical (QDU) that connects the propellant feed lines to the launch vehicle. Helium is used to safely purge such systems of dangerous gases that might otherwise ignite. Ironically, helium leaks are a part of the issues which have plagued the Boeing Starliner at the ISS.

The launch was initially re-scheduled for August 28th, but this was then called off as a result of weather forecasts indicating conditions in the splashdown area for the capsule at the end of the mission would likely be unfavourable for a safe recovery and would probably remain so for several days. As the Crew Dragon will be carrying limited consumables for the crew and so cannot remain in orbit for an extended period, it is essential it is able to make a return to Earth and safe splashdown within n a limited time frame.

It was then postponed altogether later on August 28th after the longest-serving core stage of a Falcon 9, B1062 with 22 previous launches and landings to its credit, toppled over and exploded whilst attempting its 23rd landing – this one aboard the autonomous drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas. The accident prompted the US Federation Aviation Administration to suspend the Falcon 9 launch license pending a mishap investigation. However, following a request from SpaceX, the license was reinstated on August 30th, allowing launches to resume whilst the FAA continues its investigation into B1062’s loss.

SpaceX has yet to indicate when the Polaris Dawn mission might launch, with much depending on other operational requirements both for SpaceX and at Kennedy Space Centre.

Starliner Update: One Down, Two Up

Again in my previous Space Sunday article, I updated on the Boeing Starliner situation and NASA’s decision not to have astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams fly the beleaguered craft back to Earth. At that time, it had been decided to fly the next crewed flight – Crew 9 / Expedition 72 – to the International Space Station (ISS) with just two crew, leaving two seats on the Crew Dragon vehicle available to bring Williams and Witmore back to Earth at the end of that mission in February / March 2025.

Since then, NASA has confirmed that the two members of Expedition 72 who will launch on the Crew 9 flight will be NASA astronaut Tyler Nicklaus “Nick” Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Vladimirovich Gorbunov. I’d previous pointed to Hague making the flight, but had pegged mission commander Zena Cardman as flying with him. However, in order to keep the seating agreement with Roscosmos (who provide seats to NASA on their Soyuz craft flying to the ISS in return for NASA reciprocating with their flights), rookie Gorbunov was first announced as flying the mission, with Hague taking over the Commander’s seat on the basis of experience – he has flown into space previously aboard Soyuz TM-12, whereas Crew 9 would be Cardman’s first flight, and NASA does not fly all-rookie crews.

In fact, Hague has had something of an exciting time in his NASA career: his very first launch was on Soyuz TM-10 (Expedition 57) in October 2018 – only for that mission to suffer a booster failure mid-ascent to orbit. This triggered the crew escape system, which pushed the capsule containing Hague and mission commander Aleksey Ovchinin clear of the booster prior to the later breaking up, and then make a safe return to Earth under the capsule’s parachutes.

Currently, Crew 9 is slated for launch no earlier that September 24th.

Prior to that, and somewhat sooner than may have been expected, Boeing will attempt to bring their Starliner capsule Calypso back to Earth safely on September 6th. The announcement was made on August 29th, Boeing having indicated earlier in the month that it would take “several weeks” to prepare and upload the required software to the vehicle. Under the plan, the craft to undock from the ISS at 22:04 UTC on Friday, September 6th, and then complete a 6-hour return to Earth, the capsule landing at White Sands Space Harbour in New Mexico at 04:03 UTC. If this schedule holds, the vehicle will have spent exactly 3 months at the ISS on what should have been a week-long flight.

Of particular concern during the return attempt will be the performance of the vehicle’s primary propulsion thrusters, mounted on the Starliner’s service module. These are required for the vehicle to manoeuvre accurately and complete critical de-orbit burns prior to the service module being jettisoned to leave the Calypso capsule free to re-enter the atmosphere and make its descent.

Should the return be successful, it will enable engineers to carry out a complete assessment of the capsule and its systems to assess how it stood up to its unexpectedly extended stay at the ISS. However, determining what needs to be done to overcome the propulsion systems issues might take longer to resolve, as Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne (who built the thrusters systems on the service module) will only have data to work from – as the service module will be jettisoned to burn-up in the atmosphere, they will not be able to eyeball the faulty elements to determine more directly where root causes lay. Only after this work has been completed is it likely that Starliner will again carry a crew – although whether this is as part of an operational flight or as a second crew flight test (possibly completed at Boeing’s expense), remains to be seen.

The subject of water on Mars has been a topic of scientific debate and speculation for well over 100 years. Since the earliest reliable observations of Mars via telescope, it had been thought that water ice and water vapour existed on the planet and in its atmosphere as a result of the seeing the polar ice caps (although we now know the major stakeholder in these is carbon dioxide) and cloud formations.

However, the idea that Mars was still subject to liquid water flowing across its surface in our modern era became popularised in the late 1800s. In  1877, respective Italian Astronomer  Giovanni  Schiaparelli – already noted for his observations of Mars in which he correctly identified and named multiple visible surface features – used the Great Opposition of 1877 (when Mars and Earth were both on the same side of the Sun relative to one another and Earth was effectively “overtaking” Mars in their respective orbits, thus bringing the two into “close” proximity to one another) to carry out further observations. During these he noted the presence of multiple canali  on Mars.

Canali is an innocent term, meaning “channel”, and Schiaparelli simply used this term to differentiate what he thought is saw from other features he observed. But in English-speaking newspapers it was later translated as canals, evocative of artificial and intelligent construction. This resulted in wealthy Bostonian businessman Percival Lowell, following his return to the United States in the early 1890s to establish an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, specifically (initially at least) so he could observe these “canals” for himself.

Over the course of 15 years (1893-1908), Lowell saw his canals, which grew into a globe-spanning network and led to the publication of three books (Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908 – an original copy of which I actually own!) in which he expounded his theory that Mars had a network of canals built by an ancient civilisation in a last-ditch effort to carry liquid water from the planet’s poles to their equatorial and temperature cities as the planet increasingly became more desert-like.

Lowell stuck to this belief throughout his observations in spite of increasing scientific evidence that Mars was likely incapable of supporting liquid water on its surface and observations from other observatories with larger telescopes than his which could not find any evidence of “canals”, and that at least some of what he was seeing was actually (as Schiaparelli had believed) lines of demarcation between different elevations / terrains.

As a result of this belief, Lowell has become regarded as a bit of a crackpot  – which is a same, as he led a remarkable life with multiple achievements as a traveller, diplomat, writer and armchair scientist, and did gain recognition in his lifetime for his work – He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892 and then to the American Philosophical Society in 1897, whilst the volume of work he carried out as an astronomer outside of his theories about Mars saw him receive the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société Astronomique de France, in 1904.

This volume of work include daytime studies of Venus and the search for “planet X”, a planetary body believed (and still believed by some) to be orbiting the Sun far out beyond the orbit of Neptune. In fact, the Lowell Observatory became a centre for this work, for which it was rewarded in 1930 when Clyde Tombaugh located Pluto using the observatory’s telescopes and equipment.

Of course, whilst liquid water does not exist on the surface of Mars today and hasn’t for billions of years, we have found plenty of evidence for its past presence on the planet’s surface.

In my previous Space Sunday article, for example, I wrote about the Great Lake of Mars, Lake Eridania, whilst both the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and Mars 2020 rover Perseverance have literally been following the evidence for free flowing water in both of the locations on Mars they are exploring. Prior to them, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity both uncovered evidence of past liquid water on Mars, as have orbital vehicles from NASA, Europe and other nations. But the two big questions have always been – where did it go, and where did it come from?

In terms of where it went, the most common theories are that the water either evaporated and was lost to space along with Mars’ vanishing atmosphere relatively early in the planet’s life or retreated down into the Martian crust where it froze out into icy “reservoirs”. The first is likely for a certain volume of water, whilst subterranean tracts of water ice have been located not too far under the surface of Mars. However, the latter cannot possibly account for the amount of water believed to have existed on the surface of Mars in its early history, not could simple evaporation account for the disappearance of to greater majority of it. So where did the rest go? And where did it come from originally?

Well, in a new report published this month a team of scientists believe they have the answer, and it lay within data obtained by NASA’s InSight (INterior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander.

This ambitious craft landed on Mars in 2018, with the mission running from November of that year through until the end of December 2022. In particular, the lander carried with it two unique instruments it deployed onto the Martian surface using a robot arm. One of these was the French-lead Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), designed to measure marsquakes and other internal activity on Mars and things like the response to meteorite impacts, in order to better understand the planet’s internal structure. The data continues to be studied, and has revealed much about the planet’s internal structure and its history.

Most recently, a US team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, Berkeley, have been reviewing the SEIS findings specifically to try to answer the question of where the water went. In particular, they have been using mathematical models employed here on Earth to locate aquifers and oil and gas fields deep underground. By adjusting the models so they provided results consistent what is largely known about the Martian crust down to a depth of several kilometres below the surface, they ran a series of passes on data gathered from deeper and deep within the planet’s crust, In particular, the came across two interesting results. The first indicated that while deposits of water ice do exist below the surface of Mars, and less than 5 km from the surface, they are likely to be far less commonplace than had been thought. The second result they took note of was consistent with those indicative of layers of water-saturated igneous rock deep within the Earth’s crust.

Most interestingly, the results of the SEIS data modelled suggest this deep layer of rock and water – laying some 11.5 to 20 km below the surface of Mars could be widespread across the planet to the extent that it could contain more water than would have been required to fill the oceans and seas of ancient Mars.

Taken together, these result indicate that while the theories about water on Mars being lost to space or frozen into subsurface ice are still valid, the vast majority of the water most likely retreated deep down into the planet, possibly returning to the reserves from which it might have originally burst forth to flood parts of Mars during the planet’s late Noachain / early Hesperian period of extreme volcanic activity.

One intriguing question that arises from this work is related to the potential for Mars to have harboured life, and what happened to it as the water vanished. if the modelling in the study is correct, and the water did retreat deep under the surface of Mars and form aquifers and pools with the rocks there, did any ancient microbial life gone with it, and if so – might it have survived? The pressure and temperatures at the depth which the water appears to reside would keep it both liquid and warm and provide energy, as would mineral deposited within the rock; so the question is not without merit.

Establishing that there is a big reservoir of liquid water provides some window into what the climate was like or could be like. And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why [the underground reservoir] is not a habitable environment. It’s certainly true on Earth — deep, deep mines host life, the bottom of the ocean hosts life. We haven’t found any evidence for life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life.

– Michael Manga, Professor of Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley

But the is a question that’s unlikely be to answered any time soon. Determining if the environment is at the very least amenable to life, much less actually finding evidence for life within it – or even simply reaching any of the water deposits –is going to be pretty much impossible for a good while yet. Current deep drilling techniques here on Earth for extracting oil and gas only go down to around 2 km; getting that sort of equipment to Mars and enabling it to dill down at least 11-12 km will pretty much remain the stuff of dreams for a good while to come.

 JUICE to Swing by the Moon and Earth

The European Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission will be making a first-of-its kind fly-by of the Moon and Earth this week, the first in more than 5 gravity assist manoeuvres the vehicle will make (excluding those made while orbiting Jupiter) during its mission to study the icy moons on the Jovian system.

Such manoeuvres are often used with space missions and for a variety of reasons. With JUICE, it means the craft could be flown into space using a medium-lift launch vehicle and make (and albeit relatively sedate) flight to Jupiter, involving a total of three fly-bys of Earth and one of Venus to accelerate it to a peak velocity of 2.7 km per second using the minimum of fuel and then slingshot it out to a point in space where it will intercept the Jovian system, and they use further flybys of the planet and its Moons to both slow itself down into orbit around them and then adjust its course so it can study the icy moons of Jupiter – Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.

This first fly-by comes 16 months since the launch of the vehicle, and will be the very first Earth gravity assist which also employs the Moon as a critical component. On August 19th, Juice will as around the Moon at a distance of just 700 km (reaching the altitude at 21:16 UTC), using the Moon’s gravity to swung it onto a trajectory that will see it pass by Earth just over 24 hours later, passing over north-eastern Asia and the Pacific at an altitude of just 6,807 km on the morning of August 20th (local time) before heading back out to loop around the Sun. After this it will get a further gravity assist from Venus in August 2025 and then two more from Earth (without the Moon helping) in 2026 and 2029, that latter of which will  slingshot the vehicle on it way to rendezvous with Jupiter and its moons.

On August 15th, Juice briefly caused a stir when it was mistaken as a near-Earth object (NEO) on a potential collision course with Earth. At 27 metres across, most of which is some 85 square metres of solar arrays, Juice is a strong reflector of sunlight, and this briefly confused systems at the ATLAS Sky Survey, Hawai’i, which attempts to locate, identify and track potentially threatening NEOs. However, the system’s confusion was quickly identified as actually being the Juice spacecraft and the alert corrected.

This was actually the second time an ESA deep-space vehicle has been mistaken as a hazardous NEO; in November 2007, and as it approached Earth for a flyby, Europe’s Rosettta mission spacecraft  – also with a large span of solar arrays – was also briefly mis-identified as a NEO on a possible collision course with Earth. On that occasion, it was mis-identified by a human observer, and further manual checking was required before it was confirmed the object being tracked was actually the Rosetta spacecraft and not of any threat to Earth.

Following its arrival at the Jovian system, Juice will spend 1259 days orbiting the system, the majority of which will be in Jupiter-centric orbits that will allow it to study Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, with numerous gravity-assists of both Ganymede and Callisto used to alter its trajectory and velocity, allowing it to study them from different orbital inclinations and also to dip down into the inner Jovian system to study Europa.

However, the final 284 days of the time (from early 2035) will be spent in a dedicated orbit around Ganymede, allowing the spacecraft to complete some 6 months of dedicated studies of the moon once it has settled into a 500 km circular orbit around Ganymede. By the end of 2035, the spacecraft is expected to have expended the last of its 3 tonnes of manoeuvring propellants, bringing the mission to an end. without the ability to manoeuvre, Juice is expected to quickly fall victim to further Jupiter gravitational perturbations and crash into Ganymede within weeks of running out of propellants.