The thread for space cadets!

@hobbsyoyo and what is pogo oscillation?
Thank you for asking!

Pogo oscillation is a lot like it sounds - an oscillation that goes up and down the long axis of the rocket like a pogo stick. A lot different things can start it but essentially what happens is that the rocket begins to 'bounce' (vibrate in low frequencies) along the long axis and this causes fuel to rush into the engine which causes thrust to go up, then as the bounce recedes the fuel gets cut off, causing thrust to taper off. This cycle begins to feed on itself, with each thrust surge and rescission feeding into the overall cycle, building in amplitude until stuff starts to break. It's very, very difficult to simulate and test against this on the ground so designers will frequently build-in lots of excess damping from the get-go to prevent it in the first place.

VO has not said explicitly this is what happened but they have said that a high pressure oxygen line inside the engine broke which is consistent with pogo.
 
Nasa decides to rename various celestial bodies.

https://nypost.com/2020/08/08/nasa-to-remove-offensive-names-from-planets-and-other-heavenly-bodies/

Nytimes said:
Under the new rules, the “Eskimo Nebula,” discovered in 1787 by William Hershel, will only be referred to as NGC 2392.

The so-called “Siamese Twins Galaxy” will likewise be known only as NGC 4567 and NGC 4568.

Not sure if this was needed. Also, how is "Siamese" a PC issue? Cause if it is about the "siamese twins" phrase, that is just a condition and not about nationalities; obviously only a tiny fraction of conjoined twins are from Siam.
 
Nasa decides to rename various celestial bodies.

https://nypost.com/2020/08/08/nasa-to-remove-offensive-names-from-planets-and-other-heavenly-bodies/



Not sure if this was needed. Also, how is "Siamese" a PC issue? Cause if it is about the "siamese twins" phrase, that is just a condition and not about nationalities; obviously only a tiny fraction of conjoined twins are from Siam.
"Siam" no longer exists. The country's name is now Thailand. About the only "Siamese" term I know of that is still acceptable is "Siamese cat".

Ceres may be a mini Europa with an ocean, saltwater found at a 20 million year old crater shows an impact released water from that subsurface reservoir.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dwarf-planet-ceres-ocean-world.html
So much for the portion of Bova's Grand Tour series that's set in the asteroid miners' colony under the surface of Ceres. I'd have to re-read the Asteroid Wars arc to see if it's just become obsolete.
 
I suppose you refer to them as cosmonauts ;)
Thorgalaeg is right. NASA doesn't have naming rights. The IAU does.

At least they decided that "Horsehead Nebula" isn't a racist slur (why anyone would think it was in the first place, I can't fathom). I get why "Eskimo" was changed. That's a word that's been out of favor for decades.
 
Perhaps Betelgeuse is not going nova, just being a little sternutatory:
betelgeuse.jpg

The light from the red supergiant Betelgeuse dimmed to a record low earlier this year, leading stargazers to speculate it was about to explode as a supernova. But now it appears the aging sun merely had a stellar sneeze.
“With Hubble, we had previously observed hot convection cells on the surface of Betelgeuse and in the fall of 2019 we discovered a large amount of dense hot gas moving outwards through Betelgeuse’s extended atmosphere,” said Andrea Dupree, CfA’s associate director and lead author of a study into the winking sun, published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“We think this gas cooled down millions of miles outside the star to form the dust that blocked the southern part of the star imaged in January and February."
“Maybe when it had that huge sneeze from September to November 2019, when we saw the material being ejected, maybe that changed the structure of the outer atmosphere? Maybe there is another outburst going on and more dust is forming,” she told The Register.
“All stars are losing material to the interstellar medium, and we don’t know how this material is lost. Is it a smooth wind blowing all the time? Or does it come in fits and starts, perhaps with an event such as we discovered on Betelgeuse.
"We know that other hotter luminous stars lose material and it quickly turns to dust making the star appear much fainter. But in over a century-and-a-half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It’s very unique."
The mystery doesn’t stop there. The dust may have dispersed, yet Betelgeuse is once again growing fainter before our eyes, and has been fading away since June. “We do not know why. It has one brightness and dimming cycle of about 420 days, and this does not seem to fit,” Dupree added.
 
So what is NASA going to do about:

That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.
It's a bit late to do anything about it. It's not like they can send them back to re-record it.

Perhaps Betelgeuse is not going nova, just being a little sternutatory:
betelgeuse.jpg

The light from the red supergiant Betelgeuse dimmed to a record low earlier this year, leading stargazers to speculate it was about to explode as a supernova. But now it appears the aging sun merely had a stellar sneeze.
“With Hubble, we had previously observed hot convection cells on the surface of Betelgeuse and in the fall of 2019 we discovered a large amount of dense hot gas moving outwards through Betelgeuse’s extended atmosphere,” said Andrea Dupree, CfA’s associate director and lead author of a study into the winking sun, published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“We think this gas cooled down millions of miles outside the star to form the dust that blocked the southern part of the star imaged in January and February."
“Maybe when it had that huge sneeze from September to November 2019, when we saw the material being ejected, maybe that changed the structure of the outer atmosphere? Maybe there is another outburst going on and more dust is forming,” she told The Register.
“All stars are losing material to the interstellar medium, and we don’t know how this material is lost. Is it a smooth wind blowing all the time? Or does it come in fits and starts, perhaps with an event such as we discovered on Betelgeuse.
"We know that other hotter luminous stars lose material and it quickly turns to dust making the star appear much fainter. But in over a century-and-a-half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It’s very unique."
The mystery doesn’t stop there. The dust may have dispersed, yet Betelgeuse is once again growing fainter before our eyes, and has been fading away since June. “We do not know why. It has one brightness and dimming cycle of about 420 days, and this does not seem to fit,” Dupree added.
Betelgeuse might not be going supernova yet, but it will some day.

In the meantime:

Betelgeuse: AH-CHOO! :cringe:
Astronomers: Betelgeuse is going to blow up! :eek:
Betelgeuse: I can has kleenex? And chikken soup? :(
 
this Tyler dude who runs a blog , this will be a rant and ı do not doubt it will make its way there , but ı do hate the invasiveness of the guy's java scripts and what not . You see , mostly to follow the Aliens versus the US , now that the latest US lawmaker proposal for an investigative committee has it that foreign powers are flying their quadcopters right across US airbases on the Continental US or whatever . So , ı finished the downloads of the day , because of coronavirus ı maintain a set amount of time for the webcafe and while moving them to the USB ı checked what was going on . Because every subroutine in that blog wants its share it regularly drives up to using 100% of the CPU , so much that the computer closed itself , shorting out much of the downloads . Hello , this is 2020 ! Computers should not stop with browsing on the web ...!

learned Trump's Air Force One had a little brush with a quadcopter ; elsewhere on the web was noteworthy for the thing that an USAF helicopter like from the same place has been "brought down" with small arms fire , with people telling each other that it must be some accident , unintentional , no one can hit an helicopter at 300 meters altitude with a G-3 or similar . Embrassing , let me tell you , with my reputation and all . Also ı have never heard of Kentucky and hence have no clue on what a Kentucky windage skills is . Apparently it involves eating birds at dinner . And the link provided is from the BBC , with the extras that some American soldier was caught before he could go on a shooting spree in his unit .

ı think it was the conversations thing , where we were just about to learn that Nimitz had just shot down an Andromedan Boeing 737 and the tictocs -if you think long and hard enough- would be like those shields that were manually moved around in the Macross/Robotech cartoons , America is like 20 to 80 years ahead of the world and so on . Would have managed to write a juicy piece , if the lust to penetrate had not made the computer die on me !

translation : America is like totally uncapable of realising it is just a country in the world . Am a guy who remembers the times the silly Russians were laughed at because of the Geofizika , a very long span high altitude plane which were offering as an U-2 substitute for civilian observation , currently provided by satellites . lncidentally developed to carry a gun turret to hit American spy ballons in the 1970s in a situation where Americans had already stopped using ballons for ages . Because elsewhere ı just learned that Russians were using the spy ballons and the only one case it was seen it never strayed and arrived right on Area 51 and the only American thing capable of interception was an A-12 and it never achieved visual contact anyhow . lf you are asking me what connection ı make between that it is possible to operate at will against America and the dentist watched the assistant and the thing was fully fitting in my mouth at the second try , or the city wise grumbling by people to whom it is no relevance for starters , it is clear .

this post surely chronicles American elections and the ways to solidify the voter base in some aeronautical angle ! Fear against the alien inspires confidence in the fearless supreme leader .
 
SpaceX got second place in the Air Force's competition to win contracts to launch national security payloads. I think everyone expected Northrop and Blue Origin (the two outright losers) to sue the government, but it turns out that so far the only company to sue is actually SpaceX. It's pretty shameful in my opinion. SpaceX lost the first round of the contract which awarded development funds but not launch contracts. They lost because they bid a vehicle (Starship) that the government wasn't interested in and the overall proposal itself was poorly written, as admitted by Musk himself. Despite this, they managed to rally and win second place for the actual launches (which is way more lucrative than just development money) and as part of that they got a lot of money for development anyways. But that's not enough for Musk so he's suing, arguing the Phase I loss was wrong and also that it unfairly tilted the Phase II award. It's pretty stupid in my opinion.

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https://www.defensenews.com/global/...cialist-reaction-engines-with-new-investment/
Reaction Engines (the guys that were building an airbreathing rocket engine) are still alive and pulling in funds:
Spoiler :
JUBPFGGBBRCL3MBCTRKY523XPE.jpg

Rolls-Royce backs hypersonic-power specialist Reaction Engines with new investment

It does seem though that they've given up on development of their own launch vehicle. It's probably just as well at any rate, the launch vehicle market is massively overcrowded with new entrants at the moment.

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Blue Origin delivered a mock-up of their lunar lander to NASA for testing and the Chinese announced plans to build an international lunar base.


 
The ISS has sprung a slow leak and the crew are sheltering near the Soyuz vehicles while they investigate it.

The first full Crew Dragon mission is launching in October. It will carry 3 NASA astronauts and 1 astronaut from JAXA (Japan).

Northrop Grumman is considering cancelling their OmegA rocket now that they've lost the Air Force's launch competition. Publicly they're saying it's under review but the media reports they've sent emails to staff saying it is now cancelled. Not really surprising to be honest but it's sad to see one of the last vestiges of Orbital ATK (where the capitalized O and A in OmegA come from) disappear forever - the program was started by OA before NG bought the out.
 
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We have learned a lot about planetary formation processes in the last decade but the biggest takeaway is just how little we actually know. So I would not discount a theory because it disagrees with one aspect (location of water bearing rocks) of our models of planetary formation. The existence of hot jupiters was pretty close to preposterous in the context of traditional planetary formation models before we began finding them all.over.the.place and had to build radical new models.
 
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Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. - Gen 1:2

Wet and dark...maybe the Earth didn't form this close to the Sun
 
people in this thread will have heard of the US Congress committee for investigations into UFO phenomena and whatever and stuff like that . Apparently with strict concentration on whether enemies of the US have stuff America does not . And how they did get it . This might include UFOs from other planets that might have crashed on earth , but there will be no attempt to establish whether Aliens exist . Like something like a Klingon Bird of Prey might have gone down in Taklamakan and the Chinese might have been busy tearing apart it with a view to clone , indeed , Chinese copy it and the US lawmakers will specifically not deal with the fact that Klingons exist . Am an idiot , ı might fail in reading comprehension but this is what ı understand from a reported altercation between a guy whom ı know online and a guy who "believes" ...

there are of course various ideas on why this happens . Am in the camp of Trump-does-it-for-votes notion : Some losers that might be impressed that crazy Trump is crazy enough to challenge the statusquo , the debunkers , the whole Men in Black mentality , even the dreaded actual Men in Black . This guy ı know thinks it a rough shaking up of the US Defence Industry . As UFOs are criss-crossing the US , the old school methods do not work , there should be new people , the celebrated Black Projects should be accelarated . With less control on expenses and the whole bunch . He estimates a possible extra 25 billion US dollars next year . You know , wealth transfer , no questions asked , no results expected . If it was to happen in other countries , the US media would no doubt call it corruption .


so , this guy and the believer exchanges ideas and what not . Over a couple of days , where the guy inevitably declares the final outcome , a gold plated - diamond studded quadcopter killer ! Then , suddenly ...

(the interest of many CFC readers has ended just about here , because some history , some pointless history follows)

Spoiler :


you know this blog that follows the latest ? The one Yandex hence Russian establishment does not want you to read , because the browser refused to find pertaining results ? Possibly because it looks like it has credibility to negate Russian PR on the latest deadliest Russian stuff ? (So what , ı used another browser in the webcafe computer) So , it appears back in 1975 , there were UFOs over the Loring USAF airbase , nukes and B-52s . People actually see an helicopter , Huey , or maybe Huey type and size . The blog actually gives a lot of stuff on how the helicopter seemed to know when people were just about to see it and stuff , you know as if it had an USAF Colonel on board listening to USAF radios . Like when the base people got excited and tried to open fire , Pentagon ordered them to stand down and F-106 interceptors were given a different heading to cover for Russian "jamming" as in traitors or an expert English language speaker ... All designed to see whether it was feasible ...


like whether Spetsnaz , that's Russian commandos to those who haven't heard the term , could attack US bomber bases on US soil . Killing one or two guards won't do anything to stop an American "second strike" , ICBMs from Siberia will take 30 minutes , a quarter or half of the B-52s on the targeted base might have been launched during that time and even a backpack nuke will not exactly stop things . Even if it was to go off and close the runways , Americans would simply bring in an helicopter and move the bombs to a different base to different B-52s . Because there would be multiple storage sites . But if Russian spies were to come years before and buy an helicopter or two and smuggle in properly sized bombs and the ground team would place beacons for the helicopter to approach in the darkest of nights and its extremely patriotic Russki pilot would blow it up in the right place ? A proper mushroom ... Might have saved hundreds of thousands of Russians , at least for a week or two , before fallout got them . Nobody tells me anything , but the old gang's fault is probably having heard that Russians were exercising to that end or whatever .

and of course the USAF Colonel much impressed with the possibilities , you know , if one had a stealth helicopter . Yeah , one finally got bin Ladin afterall ... Writes a glowing report on how one could catch evil enemies of US busy with goats . ı don't know what you make of this last sentence , but in 10 years time , US Army will have a special unit where people stare at goats . To get them dead with burst heart vessels , you know , to ruin the enemies of US . By driving them nuts ,with destroying what they hold dearest . Yeah , this is what watching Star Wars did to Pentagon . (There is actually a movie , Ewan McGregor , George Clooney and so on ...) And well , one helicopter of the initial development batch was later involved in a car chase , by volunteering itself unbidden . This to be seen in a TV series . Remember Fargo ? Its producers then made a TV series where the guy in Hobbit accidentally kills his wife and then turns crook . A policewoman turns out to be essential and this then leads to a sequel where her father , similarly a policeman is involved in a deadly shoot-out . Must be at or later than November 1980 when Hollywood kinda learned things were flying in Area 51 for real .

but this is not the thing of this post . Because there were like repercussions in Turkey . Nobody tells me anything on this either , but ı can imagine . By this time there is a Yüzbaşı Volkan comic series , appearing partially in newspapers and magazines . The publisher gets young people in need of work , gives them a foreign comics book , a pencil and "carbon paper" . Which ı myself used in primary school . Put it between two pieces of paper and what you write on the first will appear on the second ... Pictures are traced line by line , re-appearing on a production ready thing . Fix the faces , refill the boxes and there you have a comic you yourself draw ... Of course , r16 will not figure out this until the 1990s ... Imagine , they have ordered F-16s and are flying them in , and you must also know "Captain Volcano" is an Airforce pilot with widespread interests and great experience and every enemy of this country wants to get those F-16s down . Volkan gets abducted in Reykjavik , sees DC-6s about to land in the airport , has a party balloon around to be flown according to the wind , gets saved etc etc . Me mumbling incoherently . ı know DC-6s are still being flown in cargo business . As the F-16s look like drawn by computer (neat from all angles) while DC-6s have only 4 engines and otherwise are a blob ... Like blew my mind when they had 4 or 5 issues of the adventures of a P-80 pilot training to fly F-16s . You know , ı am an idiot who will be adamant that we only had T-33s and never had the P-80 . The publisher was a legend for being interviewed repeatedly by the so called intelligence service for knowing things nobody out of the Military could know ; how couldn't he know the difference between the '80 and '33 ! Yeah , these days everyone has internet connection and know which foreign comics were pillaged . The P-80 story in question must be a Dan Cooper or whatever from the 1950s , because the it involves a satellite jammed by Russians that has to be recovered by all means and unmarked Russian jets are those early MiG-19s , namely Ta-183/Pulqui IIs terribly drawn as blobs ...


anyhow , within 6 months of Loring and the USAF Colonel "I want, I want" , Volkan started being published as its own brand . A very young r16 , plane crazy idiot even at that tender age , was a fan but they were hard to come when pocket money was just about nothing and the market for comic books was something else . Buy them from the newstands , tape them cover to cover and wax 'em . Really , when the surface is slippery enough you will go out on the street , lay it on the ground and other kids will try to capture it by throwing coins from a distance . If the coin manages to stay on the cover , the book is gone , but you might have made enough coins to cover the losses ... Anyhow the launch issue involves the airliner from Beyrut having gone missing . Volkan on patrol notices it , returns to base , gets a pal and an helikopter , because you didn't think there was any other pilot in the airbase who could dare/manage to fly an helicopter in the coming snowstorm , did you ? A few wounded , maybe one or two dead . ı suspect , while reading it in early 80s that it might be the Leftist who went to Palestine to fight the West , but it will turn out there are two Russian spies ! Who sabotaged the plane , ı don't remember what secret they were hiding but Volkan must stop them . So , a stealth Russian helicopter arrives ! Which makes the young r16 shudder , like wait , wait , what do you mean ..? Volcan throws a piece from his sabotaged Huey and destroys the whirling rotor of the Russian . The spies must run on foot , and Volkan borrows a pair of skies from the Army patrol that finally arrives and the Army Patrol takes no part in the chase so that Volkan can kill the commies like dogs . Yes , it is time for pictures or it didn't happen


vo1.jpg

check his cool as he abandons the Turkish Mirage , or in front of the Turkish Harrier , or the actual Foxbat and also seen in the Turkish F-18 . Of course a day will come when Americans will have to answer Senate investigators about all this nonsense Americans have had to suffer over all these years and as ı am a troll with a good heart ı shall just give them a talking topic regarding accuracy . Panic on the Greek island would be a fact if they were ever given a rain of Copperheads back in the 80s and do not scoff at the one about those fighting on the moon , they have obviously crashed back on earth . (He looked like Tony Curtis on the covers many times .)


vo2.jpg


ugh , reach no conclusions yet . Because the same Volkan will have this steamy relationship with Olga , the hottest MiG-25 pilot ever ! Nor he is a racist , because he chases the enemies of the country to Angola , so that publishing company could use the comics they lifted from abroad , involving some Black woman . Yeah , her translated name was a given , with all those Slyvia Kristel movies then around . The guy's punches landed like bullets from a machine gun in a fight , how dare you question the power of his kisses ! He stopped the rogue Russian pilot who try to unleash the deadliest biological agent , that Red Flower of Death somewhere above . He stopped the rogue American pilot / POW in Vietnam who tried to nuke Incirlik with a C-47 . Running short of normal stuff , the guy for some reason destroyed the Chicom plot to turn Skylab into a nuke by going up there , his second or third trip into space . First time was when he stopped the rogue American scientist who had fake UFOs and a Saturn rocket in an oil rig in the Med . He would discover Atlantis (ı think) while flying the Space Shuttle back to earth for his fourth and willingly have his memories deleted . Considering he once joined forces with Wolverine and Conan to fix some irregularity in time , you know it was just another day in the office . ı don't like the original Wolverine ever since , a jerk in a clown suit and nothing else .

another twist on how successful the regular people were , a supplementary addition to the Ergenekon Conspiracies was the playboy who was involved with Ajda Pekkan (the very superstar in Turkish pop music) and found time to go to Vietnam in 1978 (!) and steal the plans of MiG-28 , as seen in Top Gun ... Because by this time the regular people were on the defensive and one of them was married to Filiz Akın or whatever . And it was just days ago ı finally noticed Kaptan Venüs , another comic brand of the same publisher and involving a Barbarella (in Space) was always resembling the movie star named above . Much more modest in dress and behaviour , ı will add for accuracy . She was one of the big four of cinema in this country . Made up stuff moved across the board to clear the way for Congregation . And , yeah nobody had said anything about helicopters or anything . And more yeah , New Turkey is doing eveeeeeeeerything , unlike loserssssssss .

the guy ı know ? Of course knows it , but he can't remember the helicopter destroyed by Volkan in like the winter of 1973 so that America could reverse engineer it for Loring '75 . Like at once . Takes a couple of minutes to search . And here , for the first time , the Russian , yeah , with the internals fully exposed :


captain_scarlet_spectrum_helicopter_by_arthurtwosheds.jpg


you are like propeller heads , you all , aren't you ? See the maqnifique of old days . We are looking for stuff online to see whether it was somehow modified . And , oh my , will people even have one day with no mistranslations ?

oh-kay , translation time , because like obviously it will be entirely mistranslated in the form above . ı don't know which of them in the old gang wore the Blue , Somebody or Someone ... But after joining stuff you or ı don't know , all his records were burned in like 67 or 68 , joined the list of enemies of the state in '71 when he didn't lift a finger to help Muhsin Batur to become the Joint Chief of Staff ; but for the 1974 stuff , there might have been Civil War in the country , instigated along the Left /Right divide in the Military itself . So , it was like "No, Mr. Prime Minister, the reports are wrong! They are misusing money! See, he is paying money to have comics, where he does things he didn't do! It is all lies! And let us get rid of Lord Vader, too!!" As such, when the commander of Loring protested at the negative remarks issued at his security plans (by Americans , especially the USAF Colonel onboard) and this might have curtailed promotion plans , USAF used media connections to claim UFOs probing Americans instead being busy with goats ... Right , you don't need a translation of this , too ? Only natural , to see Someone or Somebody blamed to pay money to claim Loring was his doing , when he wouldn't pay or even claim Loring was his work ... Just give up , if you can't ...

because , there will be kids on the street today , laughing at me , thinking ı claim things while ı don't and people explain my wrongs and idiocy while actually turning my stuff 150 or 180 degrees off . They will be rightly proud of their beards , these kids , because most likely they didn't have them last year . Which will be certain proof that they were in diapers when people in the gardens of the Metropolitan bus repair shop were laughing at me , for knowing Yüzbaşı Volkan was failing to defend me , so glorious they were . You know , replacing the regulars in the so called national intelligence service with creating a whole new heroism story involving the MiG-28 , they were like surprised when old style Americans asked when the old gang's turn would come . The answer ? They claimed Bedrettin Dalan was number one ! (The former mayor of Istanbul , the root of all evil in the country , because he was abroad and America didn't let Congregation to have him extradited , because ı don't know , maybe he once called Snot - the spritual leader of the Congregation- a fool ?) Because old Americans , finding solace in their newly found ability to mock this country without any risk of being mocked back , described one was this white haired , blue eyed guy ... New Turkey asked for a trip to Red Flag where this F-16 team played as Reds and one of them got 15 simulated kills in one sortie , which would naturally make Yüzbaşı Volkan go purple if he had ever existed , all the media going crazy here and of course the next year or the year after that , the 15 kill guy was arrested as a coupist . You know , New Turkey . He must have been released at the general release thing when the Party and the Congregation fell on each other ... And of course when the guy ı know online says stuff about the comics , the lack of transparency here having caused lack of continuity , Ankara thinks Loring was really connected ! The feeling that permeates even goes abroad . Without the finesse . People abroad are like what ? Would have given you a tricorder survey and all about Loring , but am like tasked with maintaining global peace these days , because the old gang is so retired and they all like to pick on me ...



yeah , how possible it is for NASA to answer by discovering a TIE fighter shaped galaxy like 500 million light years away ? Surely that's an Interceptor , with one wing set shadowed by the other , right ?

BB18soLH.jpg
 
From the Albuquerque Journal this morning.

The BELT less traveled

Medium Earth orbit mission aims to make spacecraft more radiation-hardy

An Air Force Research Laboratory mission to study the impact of Van Allen belt radiation on satellites could pave the way for more military and civilian spacecraft to fly safely in the harsh environment of medium Earth orbit.

Most of today’s satellites either fly in geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles out, or in low Earth orbit below about 1,200 miles. Few vehicles fly in between those ranges, because radiation from Van Allen’s “inner” and “outer” belts is high there, making medium Earth orbit particularly hazardous for spacecraft.

Now, two AFRL satellites are working together to measure and map radiation in that zone and study the impacts on spacecraft components. That data will help in developing new radiationhard electronics for vehicles to operate there.

The satellites are also studying the interaction between very low frequency radio waves and particles in the Van Allen belts, which could provide critical insight into the potential of VLF waves to mitigate intense radiation from a nuclear explosion.

That’s something the AFRL has been working on for at least 15 years, and for the military, it’s the primary mission of the dual-satellite experiments currently underway, said Michael Starks, a lead scientist at AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate and program manager for the Radiation Belt Remediation program.

“That’s the heart of the mission,” Starks told the Journal. “If you set off a nuclear weapon above 50 kilometers (about 31 miles), it creates a manmade radiation belt that’s a thousand times more intense than natural ones, and the impact on spacecraft is much worse. With today’s efforts to puts lots of satellites into low Earth orbit, we don’t want to lose them if someone does something irresponsible.”

The U.S. Department of Defense experienced the devastating effects of nuclear fallout on satellites during highaltitude missile tests in the Pacific Ocean in 1962.

“Those tests accidentally killed about a dozen satellites,” Starks said.

And as other countries have pursued ballistic technology, the DOD recognized high-altitude nuclear explosions as an emerging threat to spacecraft. DOD research has since led to employing VLF waves as a potential defense, because they can be used to clear away nuclear-induced radiation belts by basically pushing radioactive particles out of the magnetosphere. “A nuclear radiation belt works the same as the Van Allen belts, where radiation generated by the sun is trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field,” Starks said. “The particles, or electrons, go away when they run into our atmosphere and get lost.”

VLF waves can “de-trap” particles in a nuclear radiation belt by scattering them. “The VLF wave comes through and causes the particle paths to change,” Starks said. “We can put exactly the right VLF wave at exactly the right point to scatter the radiation.” To do that, the AFRL launched a Demonstration and Science Experiments, or DSX, satellite into medium Earth orbit in June 2019. It’s now studying radiation there and testing the performance of an antenna that emits VLF waves.

A second satellite — the Very Low Frequency Propagation Mapper, or VPM — was also placed into low Earth Orbit in February. That satellite collects and measures the VLF waves coming from the DSX. Together, the two satellites are actively probing the response of Van Allen radiation belt particles to weak radio waves that could, in the future, be used to “wash out” nuclear radiation, said DSX principal investigator James McCollough.

Kevin Robinson-Avila covers technology, energy, venture capital and utilities for the Journal. He can be reached at krobinson-avila@abqjournal. com.


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An Air Force Research Laboratory employee works on the Demonstration and Science Experiments, or DSX, satellite the Air Force launched in June 2019. It will work with another AFRL satellite to help researchers understand the workings of the Van Allen radiation belt.

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Air Force Research Laboratory personnel work on the Demonstration and Science Experiments, or DSX, satellite the Air Force launched in June 2019. It will work with another AFRL satellite to help researchers understand the workings of the Van Allen radiation belt. COURTESY OF AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY

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The solar panels of the The Very Low Frequency Propagation Mapper or VPM are deployed. The VPM was launched in December on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and carried to the station in a SpaceX Dragon resupply capsule
 
Plutonium is used to power deep space probes that are too far away from the sun to use solar power or require so much power that solar panels would be impractical. The US stopped producing plutonium for space use when they stopped manufacturing nukes as the plutonium for space was a by-product of nuke manufacturing. For the last two decades, US probes have drawn down all the reserves that were left and even had to buy plutonium from Russia. There was an effort a while back to start up a new plutonium manufacturing process that doesn't depend on new nukes and it has paid off:
NASA’s Mars Rover Will Be Powered by US-Made Plutonium

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When Bob and Doug returned from the ISS in their Crew Dragon capsule, a bunch of boaters rushed out to greet them. This was especially stupid as the Crew Dragon uses hypergolic (read: hyper-toxic, hyper-carcinogenic) fuels which vent overboard of the ship. Any of those boaters could have been lethally poisoned as they paraded around the capsule. Moreover, they interfered with recovery operations which directly endangered Bob and Doug because the capsule is not meant to sit in the water indefinitely and could sink if left alone long enough.


As if the asshattery wasn't enough, the boaters proudly waived Trump 2020 flags as they swarmed the spacecraft. The enthusiasm is nice but it is not cool that they all ignored warnings to leave the area over radio, bullhorns and by news announcement prior to splashdown. As this splashdown was in international waters, the Navy did not have the right to forcefully eject the boaters but the Navy and NASA are currently looking at ways to prevent a repeat after the next mission.

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NASA found the Nexus from Star Trek
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It's the remnant of a supernova explosion and it's rad af.
 
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