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The thread for space cadets!

hobbsyoyo said:
The Chinese lunar sample return mission is almost over. It landed, scooped soil and blasted back into orbit. Then the ascent stage performed and autonomous rendezvous and docking with the return stage (a world first) and handed off the sample. They crashed the ascent stage on the moon (planned) and now the return stage is on the way back.
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Seems a pretty complicated mission to do unmmaned. The Chinese knows his stuff.
Was doubting if buying this torque wrench in Aliexpress but i think i will now. :)
 
Bummer for life, Proxima has a planet in its 'habitable zone' where temps are about right, but the star is a red dwarf and is irradiating the planet only 4-5 million miles away. If this is common long living red dwarfs may not be suitable, planets may require more distance and thats a problem for stars with weaker outputs.
 
Window opens for Virgin Galactic test

First flight from NM spaceport will depend on the weather

BY SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The window opened Friday for Virgin Galactic’s first rocket-powered test flight from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico as the company prepares for commercial flights next year, but the exact timing of the launch will depend on the weather.
Virgin Galactic posted on social media that the flight crew is ready but does not plan to fly before Saturday.

“We have range clearance through the weekend and can extend into next week if necessary,” the company tweeted. “Evaluating high-level winds and turbulence. Stay tuned for updates.” The flight was initially planned for November. But it was pushed back because of COVID-19 restrictions stemming from the state’s public health orders. CEO Michael Colglazier said the company has minimized the number of people on-site at its headquarters at Spaceport America in accordance with state mandates and that only spaceport staff critical to the mission will be present.

Officials with Virgin Galactic and the state financed spaceport said the test flight will mark another key milestone in the march toward commercial flights. The impending flight will be the third space flight for Virgin Galactic and the first from New Mexico. “We are thrilled about hosting the first human spaceflight from New Mexico. This is an incredible moment for the entire state,” Scott McLaughlin, the spaceport’s interim executive director, said in a statement. It has been years since British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and then Gov. Bill Richardson hatched the idea of erecting the world’s first purpose built spaceport in a remote stretch of the New Mexico desert. Branson will be among the first passengers sometime in the first quarter next year.


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The Zia Sun Symbol can be seen on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity. QUINN TUCKER/VIRGIN GALACTIC



More than 600 customers from around the world have purchased tickets to be launched into the lower fringes of space where they can experience weightlessness and get a view of the Earth below. The suborbital flights are designed to reach an altitude of at least 50 miles before gliding to a landing. In addition to those who have put down deposits for a ride with Virgin Galactic, several thousand more have registered their interest online. The test flight will give Virgin Galactic an opportunity to evaluate the interior space of the cabin where customers will be seated and to check fight controls during boost. The flight will carry payload belonging to NASA as part the space agency’s Flight Opportunities Program.

Chief Pilot Dave Mackay and copilot CJ Sturckow will crew the spacecraft during the test flight. Assuming everything goes well and the engineers sign off, Virgin Galactic can then move to the next phase, which will involve company mission specialists and engineers being loaded into the passenger cabin. They will evaluate all the hardware, camera settings and which angles will provide the best views. With the upcoming flight, Sturckow will become the first astronaut to have flown into space from three different U.S. states.

Before joining Virgin Galactic, he completed four flights from Florida to the International Space Station during his time as a NASA astronaut. He also was in the cockpit during Virgin Galactic’s first flight to space from California in December 2018.

“In the months leading up to this flight, our engineering and maintenance teams have been working hard to prepare both our mothership, VMS Eve, and SpaceShipTwo Unity for the flight,” Sturckow said in a recent blog post. “It will be great to validate that their efforts have been highly successful to prepare the SFS (space flight system) for this flight and subsequent test flights.”

WINDOW from page A1 to A2

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Virgin Galactic preflight operations take place at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. QUINN TUCKER/ VIRGIN GALACTIC
 

The Geminids are this weekend and will peak near a new moon making them particularly visible

on the 21st Jupiter and Saturn will be low in the SW sky soon after sunset
 
Birdjaguar said:
Window opens for Virgin Galactic test

First flight from NM spaceport will depend on the weather

BY SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The window opened Friday for Virgin Galactic’s first rocket-powered test flight from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico as the company prepares for commercial flights next year, but the exact timing of the launch will depend on the weather.
Virgin Galactic posted on social media that the flight crew is ready but does not plan to fly before Saturday.

“We have range clearance through the weekend and can extend into next week if necessary,” the company tweeted. “Evaluating high-level winds and turbulence. Stay tuned for updates.” The flight was initially planned for November. But it was pushed back because of COVID-19 restrictions stemming from the state’s public health orders. CEO Michael Colglazier said the company has minimized the number of people on-site at its headquarters at Spaceport America in accordance with state mandates and that only spaceport staff critical to the mission will be present.

Officials with Virgin Galactic and the state financed spaceport said the test flight will mark another key milestone in the march toward commercial flights. The impending flight will be the third space flight for Virgin Galactic and the first from New Mexico. “We are thrilled about hosting the first human spaceflight from New Mexico. This is an incredible moment for the entire state,” Scott McLaughlin, the spaceport’s interim executive director, said in a statement. It has been years since British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and then Gov. Bill Richardson hatched the idea of erecting the world’s first purpose built spaceport in a remote stretch of the New Mexico desert. Branson will be among the first passengers sometime in the first quarter next year.


ajax-request.php
zoom_in.png

The Zia Sun Symbol can be seen on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity. QUINN TUCKER/VIRGIN GALACTIC



More than 600 customers from around the world have purchased tickets to be launched into the lower fringes of space where they can experience weightlessness and get a view of the Earth below. The suborbital flights are designed to reach an altitude of at least 50 miles before gliding to a landing. In addition to those who have put down deposits for a ride with Virgin Galactic, several thousand more have registered their interest online. The test flight will give Virgin Galactic an opportunity to evaluate the interior space of the cabin where customers will be seated and to check fight controls during boost. The flight will carry payload belonging to NASA as part the space agency’s Flight Opportunities Program.

Chief Pilot Dave Mackay and copilot CJ Sturckow will crew the spacecraft during the test flight. Assuming everything goes well and the engineers sign off, Virgin Galactic can then move to the next phase, which will involve company mission specialists and engineers being loaded into the passenger cabin. They will evaluate all the hardware, camera settings and which angles will provide the best views. With the upcoming flight, Sturckow will become the first astronaut to have flown into space from three different U.S. states.

Before joining Virgin Galactic, he completed four flights from Florida to the International Space Station during his time as a NASA astronaut. He also was in the cockpit during Virgin Galactic’s first flight to space from California in December 2018.

“In the months leading up to this flight, our engineering and maintenance teams have been working hard to prepare both our mothership, VMS Eve, and SpaceShipTwo Unity for the flight,” Sturckow said in a recent blog post. “It will be great to validate that their efforts have been highly successful to prepare the SFS (space flight system) for this flight and subsequent test flights.”

WINDOW from page A1 to A2

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zoom_in.png

Virgin Galactic preflight operations take place at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. QUINN TUCKER/ VIRGIN GALACTIC
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They had their flight but the motor failed to ignite and they aborted.
 
BBC said:
Hayabusa-2: Pieces of an asteroid found inside space capsule

Scientists have been greeted by the sight of jet black chunks of rock and soil from an asteroid after opening a capsule that returned from deep space a week ago.

It's the first significant sample of material to be delivered to Earth from a space rock and was grabbed last year by Japan's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft.

Researchers began opening the capsule on Monday (GMT) in Sagamihara, Japan.

The material was retrieved from an asteroid called Ryugu.

Hayabusa-2 reached the object in June 2018; it is believed to be one of the building blocks left over from the formation of the Solar System.

Scientists at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) curation facility at Sagamihara have now opened one of three sample chambers inside the capsule.

This was hoped to contain particles of rock and soil from Hayabusa-2's first touchdown on the asteroid in 2019. The spacecraft grabbed the material by firing a tantalum metal bullet into the surface and letting debris float up a collection tube under the low gravity.

Scientists had already been excited when they saw black grains from the asteroid caught at the entrance to the sample catcher (where the material is stored) on Monday. And they were not disappointed when they opened it: Inside was material ranging in size from pebbles to tiny particles of dust.

'Pristine material'
However, this is just one of three chambers inside the capsule. Sample chamber B should be empty, but chamber C is thought to hold material collected from beneath Ryugu's surface.

Scientists wanted to collect pristine material from Ryugu that had not been altered by exposure to the environment of space - including its radiation - for aeons. In order to do this, they had to use an explosive charge to propel a copper projectile into the surface of the asteroid.

This blasted a 20m-wide crater in Ryugu, allowing Hayabusa-2 to descend into the crater and grab the pristine particles, depositing them in chamber C.

Scientists should open this chamber in due course.

Jaxa has also announced that gas collected from the capsule is from the asteroid.

It was likely to have been liberated by the soil collected from Ryugu and is the world's first sample of gas returned from deep space.

Asteroids are leftover building materials from the formation of the Solar System. They're made of the same stuff that went into making rocky worlds like the Earth, but they continued to roam free, rather than being incorporated into planets.

Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive class of space rock known as a C-type (or carbonaceous) asteroid.

In the early Solar System, such objects could have delivered much of the Earth's water along with the ingredients necessary for life to get started.

When the spacecraft arrived at its target in 2018, scientists were surprised by just how dark Ryugu was. Its unexpected hue even forced controllers to adjust the laser altitude sensor used when the spacecraft approached the asteroid's surface.

The Hayabusa-2 sample capsule returned to Earth on Saturday 5 December, parachuting down safely in the Australian desert near Woomera.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55315502
 
SpinLaunch expands operation at Spaceport

Company is building a centrifugal launch system

Copyright © 2020 Albuquerque Journal

BY KEVIN ROBINSON-AVILA

JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

California-based SpinLaunch Inc. is expanding its operations at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, where it plans to test new technology to literally fling rockets into space. The company has already built a $7 million, 10,000-square-foot facility at the Spaceport after announcing plans last year to conduct all testing there on its new technology. Now, the company is doubling down, with plans to hire an additional 59 people and invest another $46 million over 10 years. The state Economic Development Department will support the expansion with $4 million in Local Economic Development Act funding, said EDD Secretary Alicia J. Keyes.

“SpinLaunch is part of a growing community of businesses creating jobs and innovating new technologies at New Mexico’s Spaceport America,” Keyes said in a statement. SpinLaunch is headquartered in Long Beach, California, where it operates a 140,000-square-foot test and manufacturing facility. The company, which launched in 2014, has raised about $80 million in venture investment to date. Spin Launch is developing a unique centrifuge system that rapidly spins a rocket around on the ground until it reaches hypersonic speeds. It then releases the vehicle like a catapult to hurl it to the edge of space.

The company says its technology could radically cut expenses for satellite launches, while providing a more environmentally friendly method to reach space without rocket emissions. “Our technology enables a 10 times reduction in the current costs and complexities of reaching orbit,” SpinLaunch founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney said in a statement. Under its expansion, the company plans to actually build the centrifuge launch system at the spaceport, with test launches to start next year.

“We expect by next summer to begin flight test operations at the spaceport, and we expect to continue to test new flight designs there for the foreseeable future,” Yaney told the Journal. “We see it as a permanent facility for us.”

LEDA funding will be delivered in four stages, with the first $1 million released when SpinLaunch receives a certificate of occupancy for the building it already constructed, Keyes said. A second tranche will come after SpinLaunch conducts its first rocket test and hires 30 new employees, she said, followed by a third payment at 40 new hires, and final payment when it reaches 56 new employees.
 
China’s Moon Probe Returns to Earth With Rock Samples

BY JAMES T. AREDDY

China’s space program executed the final stage of an ambitious mission to capture moon fragments and return them to Earth, state media reported, as its space vehicle touched down in a northern China landscape covered in snow.

The parachute landing early Thursday local time amid darkness in Inner Mongolia came more than two weeks after China landed its Chang’e 5 probe on the moon on Dec. 1. The successful return of a lunar landing craft to Earth is the world’s first since a Soviet mission in 1976. China Central Television coverage showed the craft intact and nestled in the snowy ground and being approached by helicopters. It took some time after it touched down for ground crews to locate the roughly 3-foot-wide capsule in the dark and state media cited challenges in getting vehicles across the flat expanse to retrieve it. China’s complicated Chang’e 5 mission began on Nov. 24. The space vehicle included orbiter, lander and ascender with maneuvers that included reuniting spacecraft 200 miles from the lunar surface for a transfer of captured moon material before firing off for a return to Earth.

The Chang’e 5 probe, China’s third exploration on the moon’s surface, had spent 19 hours on the surface and used robotic equipment to drill about 2 feet deep to recover around 4.4 pounds of rock and material. “These samples will be studied to uncover clues to the moon’s multi-billion-year history,” according to a report by CCTV, the state broadcaster.

The China National Space Administration’s updates throughout the mission have cited success with Chang’e 5’s tricky maneuvers and pride in “retrieving China’s first samples from an extraterrestrial body.” Reports by Xinhua News Agency said that while on the moon the probe withstood temperatures exceeding 212 degrees Fahrenheit and deployed technology such as dust- and rock-penetrating radar. “Diverse samples at different sites have been gathered,” Xinhua said, adding that the material was vacuum-sealed for safe return to Earth.


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The Chang’e 5 probe is studied by a recovery crew Thursday after it parachuted onto a snowy expanse in northern China. JUNCHUAN/XINHUA/ASSOCIATED REN

A statement from Chinese President Xi Jinping called the mission a success and a step forward for the country’s aerospace program.
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Pentagon to hear NM’s pitch for Space Command

Officials to highlight ABQ’s military industry, geography, workforce

Copyright © 2020 Albuquerque Journal
BY KEVIN ROBINSON-AVILA

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will lead a brigade of local officials and area experts today, Monday, in a virtual battle to persuade the Pentagon to locate the new U.S. Space Command in Albuquerque. The city last month made the short list of possible locations being evaluated by the Department of Defense, which is conducting virtual and on-site visits with representatives from six cities under consideration. Albuquerque’s pitch will be heard in an online meeting in what could be the make-or-break opportunity to land the new command, said Sherman McCorkle, founder of the Kirtland Partnership, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve and expand Kirtland Air Force Base.

“We’ve already provided detailed written answers to the DOD’s key questions,” McCorkle said last week. “Monday is our opportunity to seal the deal.” A DOD delegation was scheduled to visit Kirtland and other installations Friday to see Albuquerque’s
assets firsthand, but a DOD team member contracted COVID-19, forcing the tour’s postponement until January, McCorkle said.

The Kirtland Partnership is directly assisting in efforts to highlight the advantages New Mexico can offer the Space Command, which could bring up to 1,400 new jobs to Albuquerque, plus potential for billions in spending and contracts for local companies over time. Those assets include an array of Air Force and space-related entities at Kirtland and other locations around the state, along with major Department of Energy installations. “Taken together, this is probably the No. 1 national security complex that the U.S. has, period,” McCorkle said. “Other bases have joint operations, but none have the kind of extensive, critical infrastructure, researchand- development capabilities, and test-and-operation centers that are located here.”

Kirtland already houses six Air Force commands, including the global strike, air combat, materiel, education and training, special operations, and space system commands. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Missile Defense Agency, National Assessment Group and Joint Navigation Warfare Center also operate here. And many of the agencies managed by those commands are directly focused on space, McCorkle said. That includes the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, which are at the forefront of developing, rapidly deploying and operating defense-related space systems.

Many others also directly contribute to space technology and management, such as the AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate, which develops laser systems, high power electromagnetics and electro-optics that are critical to space systems. That directorate also operates the Star Fire Optical Range at Kirtland — a center of excellence for space domain awareness that offers comprehensive ground-based monitoring of space assets and activity. Capping it all off are the DOE entities, McCorkle said. That includes Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration — a semiautonomous agency that oversees Sandia and LANL operations. And DOE’s Office of Secure Transport for nuclear weapons, components and material, plus its National Training Center, are also located here.

“There’s nowhere else in the Air Force with the concentration of science-and-technology expertise and research-and-development capabilities that we have located all in one place at Kirtland,” McCorkle said. “And it would all be located just across the street from the Space Command. It’s all right next door to rapidly address the constant requests and inquiries that the Space Command headquarters will undoubtedly ask if it’s set up here.” Just as important, Albuquerque is midway between critical Air Force installations in Colorado and the Air Force’s central node for testing, operations and communications at White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico.

That midpoint status is essential for the Space Command, which needs easy access to all facilities without having them located too close together to avoid a conglomerated military target for adversaries, McCorkle said. “We’re the ‘Goldilocks’ location — not too close and not too far,” he said. Albuquerque will highlight all those advantages in Monday’s virtual presentation, said city Economic Development Director Synthia Jaramillo.

“We have so many federal operations and assets in close proximity to one another,” Jaramillo said. “That really sets Albuquerque apart.” Proximity to mutually supporting space entities accounts for 10 of the 100 points listed in the DOD’s evaluation factors. Emergency and incident response, combined with easy mobility, account for another 10 points, something Kirtland excels at after decades of security enforcement at the base.

The city team will also focus on the readily available, highly skilled workforce in New Mexico, Jaramillo said. That accounts for another 20 points in the DOD evaluation. Nearly 36,000 people are employed in science, computer, math and engineering, or STEM, careers in the state, according to the New Mexico Partnership. The proportion of local workforce employed in science jobs is 1.7 times higher than in the U.S. overall, and employment in engineering specifically is 1.5 times higher. That reflects New Mexico’s history as a world-class research center with two DOE labs, the AFRL, and three research universities, Jaramillo said. And all three universities have partnerships with the labs that provide hands-on STEM training for career paths.

The command could employ 1,400 people, 800 of them civilians, according to an Air Force briefing to Congress in November. Of the roughly 22,000 current employees at Kirtland and Sandia, about three-fourths are civilians. “We have a huge brain trust already in place, and a pipeline of professionals from our flagship (University of New Mexico) just up the street,” McCorkle said. “UNM and our other universities have all cooperated with the DOE, the DOD and the AFRL since those entities were created.”

Albuquerque scores high on most other evaluation factors as well, such as cost of living, housing affordability, construction costs, and facility and parking space. New Mexico still faces some stiff competition from cities under consideration in Colorado, Nebraska, Florida, Texas and Alabama. But the state has endured months of scrutiny that started with DOD evaluations of 50 locations in 26 states. “We’re incredibly excited New Mexico has been selected as one of the final candidates,” Lujan Grisham told the Journal in an email. “Our state’s emphasis on aerospace development and exploration, history in groundbreaking science and national security work, and appetite for game-changing economic development opportunities all serve to put us in a strong position to become the home of the new Space Command.”


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A Department of Defense delegation will visit Kirtland Air Force Base, above, in January as Albuquerque is being considered as the permanent home of U.S. Space Command. ADOLPHE PIERRE-LOUIS/JOURNAL
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One factor rules out most space mining at the outset: gravity. On one hand, it guarantees that most of the solar system’s best mineral resources are to be found under our feet. Earth is the largest rocky planet orbiting the sun. As a result, the cornucopia of minerals the globe attracted as it coalesced is as rich as will be found this side of Alpha Centauri.
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From a yahoo article explaining the prohibitive costs of mining the asteroid belt. The material sank forming the Earth's core, but about 4 bya large objects demolished much of the surface crust so the heavy metals we mine today arrived long after the planet formed and shortly before life appeared.
 
Tonight, Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction and are as close to each other in the sky as they have been in 600 years. They are calling it the "Christmas Star" and it is really quite brilliant and obvious. I thought I'd have to search for it in the sky but I merely looked in the right direction and it popped out at me, despite being next to a streetlight from my vantage point. Go out and see this once in a lifetime conjunction! (they do say it will happen again in 60 years but then will be several centuries after that)
 
I saw them thru binoculars, really needed a telescope but I figure those images will be on the internet

judging by their positions it looks like Jupiter has been catching up to Saturn and just passed it on the inside. So I didn't see them at their closest, that would have been yesterday or the day before. Wouldn't Jupiter have just about eclipsed Saturn?
 
Today was their closest conjunction. They move further apart after tonight. Jupiter will not eclipse Saturn.
 
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