Expedition Space: Space Launch, Events, News

Brilliant, blue, supergiant star Rigel marks the foot of Orion the Hunter in planet Earth's night. Designated Beta Orionis, it's at the center of this remarkably deep and wide field of view. Rigel's blue color indicates that it is much hotter than its rival supergiant in Orion the yellowish Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), though both stars are massive enough to eventually end their days as core collapse supernovae. Some 860 light-years away, Rigel is hotter than the Sun too and extends to about 74 times the solar radius. That's about the size of the orbit of Mercury. In the 10 degree wide frame toward the nebula rich constellation, the Orion Nebula is at the upper left. To the right of Rigel and illuminated by its brilliant blue starlight lies the dusty Witch Head Nebula. Rigel is part of a multiple star system, though its companion stars are much fainter. via NASA https://ift.tt/LCRGUXx

Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. When you gaze at the star cloud with binoculars or small telescope you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars fill this gorgeous starscape. Covering over 3 degrees or the width of 6 full moons in the constellation Sagittarius, the telescopic field of view includes dark markings B92 and B93 just above center, along with other clouds of dust and glowing nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way. via NASA https://ift.tt/CM3KBUf

by Brian Berger T he triumphant landing of the Perseverance rover has inspired all Americans, and indeed much of the world. President Biden should follow it up by launching the program to send humans to Mars. While robotic rovers are wonderful, they cannot resolve the fundamental scientific questions that Mars poses to humanity, which relate to the potential prevalence and diversity of life in the universe. The early Mars was very much like the early Earth; a rocky warm and wet planet with a carbon dioxide dominated atmosphere. Life appeared on Earth virtually as soon as our planet was cool enough for liquid water. Did it appear on Mars, too? If so, did it use the same DNA-RNA information system underlying all life on Earth, or something else? We now know that billions of stars have planets. Is life likely to be found everywhere? Is life as we know it on Earth what life is? Or is it just a particular example drawn from a vast tapestry of possibilities? These are questio...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Denver-based Voyager Space Holdings, which has been buying businesses to build a vertically integrated space exploration company, has appointed former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine to chair its advisory board. It is the second corporate announcement in a week for Bridenstine, who joined satellite operator Viasat’s board of directors April 1. Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager, said his expertise will help guide its “aggressive and ambitious growth plan.” Voyager has acquired four companies since it started in October 2019. Its latest deal came in December 2020 when the company bought a majority stake in Nanoracks , which facilitates commercial satellite deployments from the International Space Station. The other acquisitions comprise on-orbit satellite servicer Altius Space Machines , space research firm Pioneer Astronautics and component provider The Launch Company . Matthew Kuta, president and COO of Voyager, told SpaceNews...

by Andrew Jones HELSINKI — The heads of the European Space Agency and China National Space Administration held a video call April 1 to outline respective plans for the coming years. Zhang Kejian, administrator of the CNSA, and new ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, who entered the post March 1, discussed a range of topics according to a short CNSA press release ( Chinese ). The parties outlined upcoming activities, with China recently approving a 14th Five-year plan for 2021-2025, and discussed lunar and deep space exploration, Earth observation, and cooperation in ground station. Josef Aschbacher tweeted after the meeting that he had congratulated Zhang on the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission, which in December 2020 delivered to Earth 1.73 kilograms of lunar samples from Oceanus Procellarum on the moon’s near side. I just met with Mr Zhang Kejian, Head of the Chinese National Space Administration. I congratulated him on the recent recovery of lunar samples through t...

by Jeff Foust WASHINGTON — Telesat expects to finalize the financing for its Lightspeed broadband constellation in the next few months, along with contracts to launch the fleet of nearly 300 satellites. Telesat selected Thales Alenia Space Feb. 9 as the prime contractor to build the constellation of low Earth orbit satellites. That contract, which includes network management software and integration of the satellites with gateways, was valued at $3 billion, with Telesat estimating the total cost of the system at $5 billion. During a session of the Satellite 2021 LEO Digital Forum April 6, Dan Goldberg, president and chief executive of Telesat, confirmed the $5 billion total cost for Lightspeed. The system will be financed with a mix of debt and equity, with 60% of the financing from debt and 40% from equity. “We’re almost done on the journey to put the financing in place,” he said. “I expect that will get done in the next couple of months.” He offered a similar time frame for f...

Found in far southern skies, deep within the boundaries of the constellation Dorado, NGC 1947 is some 40 million light-years away. In silhouette against starlight, obscuring lanes of cosmic dust thread across the peculiar galaxy's bright central regions. Unlike the rotation of stars, gas, and dust tracing the arms of spiral galaxies, the motions of dust and gas don't follow the motions of stars in NGC 1947 though. Their more complicated disconnected motion suggest this galaxy's visible threads of dust and gas may have come from a donor galaxy, accreted by NGC 1947 during the last 3 billion years or so of the peculiar galaxy's evolution. With spiky foreground Milky Way stars and even more distant background galaxies scattered through the frame, this sharp Hubble image spans about 25,000 light-years near the center of NGC 1947. via NASA https://ift.tt/3mn75KU

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft announced plans April 6 to move automated satellite image processing technology developed by Thales Alenia Space into its Azure Orbital platform. With Thales Alenia’s DeeperVision software, “images downlinked by Earth observation satellites can be immediately and systematically analyzed as soon as they are produced,” according to a Thales Alenia news release. Since Microsoft unveiled Azure Orbital last year to connect satellites to its cloud infrastructure, the software giant has been equipping datacenters with ground stations to help customers retrieve information from Earth observation, remote sensing and communications satellites. “We continue to build ground stations in other locations and integrate with partner ground stations to further our customers’ ability to communicate with their satellites for data ingestion,” Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure Global corporate vice president, said in an April 6 blog. Microsoft is working with vario...

by Sandra Erwin WASHINGTON — As SpaceX continues to expand its Starlink communications network and promote its services, established satellite operators are figuring out strategies to remain competitive.   During the Satellite 2021 LEO Digital Forum April 6, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer, said the company is moving forward with plans to offer Starlink satellite internet services directly to consumers and also is eyeing the U.S. government as a customer. Meanwhile, executives from commercial operators of geostationary satellites argued that low Earth orbit services like Starlink should not be viewed as the only solution to fix customers’ communications problems. SpaceX has about 1,320 satellites in orbit and plans to launch hundreds more this year. This summer it will begin to deploy satellites in polar orbits. Shotwell said the Defense Department is now becoming more interested in communications services from low Earth orbit and is bui...