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First commercial lunar lander delayed to January

It seems Santa Claus will be the only one carrying a load of goodies on Christmas Eve this year. An incomplete launch rehearsal on Friday (December 8, 2023) set back the Christmas Eve launch date for the inaugural flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Vulcan Centaur rocket. Its mission is to carry the first commercial lander to the moon. Now it looks like January 8, 2024, is as soon as we’ll see a liftoff.

ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno announced the delay on X (formerly Twitter):

#VulcanRocket WDR update: Vehicle performed well. Ground system had a couple of (routine) issues, (being corrected). Ran the timeline long so we didn't quite finish. I'd like a FULL WDR before our first flight, so XMAS eve is likely out. Next Peregrine window is 8 Jan.

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) December 10, 2023

The company planned another wet dress rehearsal of the flight system on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, Bruno said in a follow-up message.

Preparing for Artemis

NASA is working with several American companies in preparation for future Artemis missions to the moon. NASA calls it the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project. Part of having a human presence on the moon requires payloads sent to the moon to supply the astronauts with all their needs. As NASA said, these first commercial deliveries will:

… perform science experiments, test technologies and demonstrate capabilities to help NASA explore the moon as it prepares for human missions.

Moon flight will be packed with payloads

The Vulcan Centaur’s first flight will carry Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One, the first commercial lander targeting the moon. It was supposed to fly on December 24, 2023, and that would have been fitting, as the lander will be as packed with goodies as Santa’s sleigh.

Funded in part by NASA, the Peregrine Mission One will carry several small scientific instruments for the American aerospace agency. The Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and European Space Agency (ESA) will also fly science packages on Mission One.

Launching with the science payloads will be a variety of memorial, advertising, archival and citizen participation packages. Included are collections of photos of footprints from around the world, messages from children and even a lunar Bitcoin.

Solar system’s smallest rover and tiny robots

The Peregrine Lander isn’t a large vehicle, standing just 1.9 meters (6.2 feet). The rover it will take to the moon, however, is tiny. Built by Carnegie Mellon University students in Pennsylvania, the Iris lunar rover weighs in at just 2 kilos (4.4 pounds). The smallest and lightest rover ever sent into space, it’s also the first American rover heading to the moon. The Iris website says:

Iris’s shoebox sized chassis and bottle cap wheels are made from carbon fiber, attributing to its lightweight design and another first for planetary robotics. Along with testing small, lightweight rover mobility on the moon, Iris is collecting scientific images for geological sciences, as well as UWB RF ranging data for testing new relative localization techniques.

That’s still enormous compared to the robots the Mexican space agency is sending to the moon with Peregrine. Called COLMENA – Spanish for the hive – the project from the AEM will test the ability of a swarm of robots to act autonomously:

The five robots each weigh less than 60 grams (0.1 pounds) and measure 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) in diameter. All of their electronics will be less than two centimeters from the rocky rubble on the moon’s surface known as the lunar regolith.

NASA on the first commercial lunar landing

The Vulcan Centaur rocket will fly out of America’s East Coast space center in Florida. NASA provided all the technical details here:

Launch will take place from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket in the VC2S configuration, with 2 GEM-63XL solid boosters, a standard short faring, and two RL10 engines in the Centaur upper stage.

NASA also gave a timeline for the journey to the moon:

After a 3-to-33-day Earth orbit and cruise to the moon, followed by a 4 to 25 day lunar orbit phase, it will descend and land in Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness) adjacent to the Gruitheisen Domes on the northeast border of Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). It is planned to land 55-110 hours after local sunrise and to operate for about 192 hours.

Bottom line: Peregrine Mission One – the first commercial lunar lander – will launch in January 2024. Its payload includes science, memorial, and citizen packages, and more.

The post First commercial lunar lander to launch in January first appeared on EarthSky.

It was a picture-perfect liftoff for the 2nd orbital test flight of the SpaceX Starship. But it ended with a bang. Two, in fact.

The 20-minute test window for the 2nd launch of SpaceX’s mighty Starship opened at 7 a.m. CT (13 UTC) on Saturday, November 18, 2023. After a brief delay, the powerful rocketship lifted off slowly and majestically from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.

Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/qXnGXXZP5k

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

The 2024 lunar calendars are here! Best Christmas gifts in the universe! Check ’em out here.

Unfortunately, neither stage of the test vehicle survived the flight. Following a successful stage separation about 165 seconds into the mission, the main stage flipped itself around for its planned touchdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Then it exploded. The RUD – rapid unscheduled disassembly – came about 30 seconds after stage separation.

Stage separation! pic.twitter.com/PipaCW1PDT

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

Starship’s 2nd stage continued its journey despite the booster’s explosion. Mission control, however, lost contact with the vehicle soon after. A 2nd stage RUD is suspected. Given the speed and altitude when the 2nd stage stopped communicating, it’s likely it continued well along its planned path.

So I did some back of the envelope math, and based on the velocity and altitude it likely made it to the Atlantic ocean and burned up there

— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) November 18, 2023

A replay of the epic launch is available on the SpaceX official Twitter account.

Watch Starship’s second integrated flight test ? https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK https://t.co/cahoRQ72lm

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

The greatest rocket ever flown

In case you haven’t heard, Starship is the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket. And this 2nd Starship test launch has been anticipated for some months, at least since the first test launch – which sent aloft the most powerful rocket ever flown, in April 2023 – ended in a dramatic mid-air explosion. Among other problems, the launch also obliterated the concrete launch pad beneath the mighty rocket and blew out some windows.

Afterwards, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had questions. And SpaceX could not launch Starship without further FAA approval. In the nick of time, on Wednesday of this week, the FAA granted SpaceX a license to fly its 2nd Starship.

The nod from the FAA – which was much awaited by both space fans and SpaceX – arrived just three days before the hoped-for launch.

We need to replace a grid fin actuator, so launch is postponed to Saturday

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2023

FAA approval at last

In an email statement, the FAA said the aerospace company addressed all the agency’s concerns following Starship’s first test flight in April 2023.

SpaceX recently provided the FAA with additional information regarding operation of a deluge system, addition of a forward heat shield interstage to the vehicle, and expansion of the Area of Potential Effects for cultural resources.

The FAA has given license authorization for the second launch of the @SpaceX Starship Super Heavy vehicle. The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.https://t.co/gmSbhHGohv

— The FAA ?? (@FAANews) November 15, 2023

Musk said Starship was ready in September

Space fans got excited in September about a possible launch of Starship. It would have been the 2nd launch of a Starship; the first one launched successfully but ended in a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) – an explosion – over the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2023.

There was excitement for the 2nd launch of Starship, but there were also maritime warnings both in the Gulf of Mexico and near Hawaii. CEO Elon Musk had announced on September 6, 2023 – via X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter – that everything was in order.

Then paperwork intervened …

Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval https://t.co/WjENkdudo9

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023

63 corrective actions needed

Starship must have FAA approval to launch. Finally, on September 8, 2023, the FAA broke its silence. On the day some were hoping to see Starship’s 2nd flight, we instead got a statement from the FAA, saying SpaceX had a lot of work left to do:

The final report cites multiple root causes of the April 20, 2023, mishap and 63 corrective actions SpaceX must take to prevent mishap reoccurrence.

SpaceX, the agency said, needed a safer approach to testing its monster rocket:

Corrective actions include redesigns of vehicle hardware to prevent leaks and fires, redesign of the launch pad to increase its robustness, incorporation of additional reviews in the design process, additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems and components including the Autonomous Flight Safety System, and the application of additional change control practices.

For its part, SpaceX said in a quickly issued response (also September 8, 2023) that it was already taking steps to address the FAA’s concerns. The company said it learned “numerous lessons” from the first flight.

And SpaceX said in its September 8 statement that the company must maintain its breakneck pace. It said that rapid pace is key to the company’s success:

This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink.

It’s likely SpaceX knew generally what the FAA had to say, as the company said its investigation was overseen by the FAA, NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

What went wrong with SpaceX Starship the 1st time?

SpaceX also gave a rundown of how its first attempt to get Starship to orbit went wrong. From the moment the engines ignited, there were problems that continued until the vehicle finally exploded about 39 km (24 miles) over the Gulf of Mexico.

The company provided a brief timeline of the flight and how they’re going to prevent a repeat of its mishaps:

During ascent, the vehicle sustained fires from leaking propellant in the aft end of the Super Heavy booster, which eventually severed connection with the vehicle’s primary flight computer. This led to a loss of communications to the majority of booster engines and, ultimately, control of the vehicle. SpaceX has since implemented leak mitigations and improved testing on both engine and booster hardware. As an additional corrective action, SpaceX has significantly expanded Super Heavy’s preexisting fire suppression system in order to mitigate against future engine bay fires.

Also addressed was the disintegration of a massive reinforced concrete slab under the launchpad during liftoff. SpaceX’s new fire suppression system will prevent another storm of concrete during the next test flight.

SpaceX also made significant upgrades to the orbital launch mount and pad system in order to prevent a recurrence of the pad foundation failure observed during the first flight test. These upgrades include significant reinforcements to the pad foundation and the addition of a flame deflector, which SpaceX has successfully tested multiple times.

So the previous attempt in April 2023 to get Starship to orbit ended in a bang. It also added RUD – rapid unscheduled disassembly – to the list of nerdy things space geeks like to say.

Bottom line: SpaceX’s Starship – world’s most powerful rocket – launched successfully Saturday, November 18, 2023. But it ended with a bang. Two, in fact.

The post SpaceX Starship 2nd test flight: A blast! And a success first appeared on EarthSky.

You can watch a recorded livestream of the Starlink launches on SpaceX’s feed, on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Successful Starlink launches in October 2023

Starlink Group 6-21: October 5, 2023, 1:36 a.m. EDT (5:36 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 7-4: October 9, 2023, 12:23 p.m. PDT (7:23 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 6-22: October 13, 2023, 7 p.m. EDT  (23 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 6-23: October 17, 2023, 8:36 p.m. EDT (0:36 UTC October 18)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 7-5: October 21, 2023, 1:23 a.m. PDT (8:23 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 6-24: October 21, 2023, 10:17 p.m. EDT (2:17 UTC October 22)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 7-6: October 29, 2023, 2 a.m. PDT (9 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | SUCCESS

Starlink Group 6-25: October 30, 2023, 7:20 p.m. EDT (23:20 UTC)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | SUCCESS

After launch, look for a train of lights

Following every Starlink launch, the internet buzzes with people asking:

What’s that long line of lights in the sky that looks like a train?

What you’re seeing is the Starlink satellites moving into a higher orbit. You can check to see if they will pass over your area using the Find Starlink website.

Growing numbers amid controversy

According to Wikipedia, as of August 2023, Starlink consists of over 5,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit that communicate with designated ground transceivers. They provide internet access to more than 2 million subscribers.

Love ’em or hate ’em, these Starlink satellites are part of SpaceX’s vision for a global internet communication satellite constellation. They deliver high-speed internet service worldwide, mainly to locations where ground-based internet is unreliable, unavailable, or expensive. The private company is well-known for launching batches back-to-back, several times a month, regularly lofting 60 satellites at a time. And SpaceX plans to build up to perhaps as many as 30,000 eventually.

Most thought it was exciting to see the first few Starlink satellites traveling together in the night sky. But then more were launched, and then more. And astronomers began to worry.

Because Starlinks are bright, astronomers say they’re photobombing astronomical images. Therefore, they have the potential to interfere with the professional astronomical observations that have brought us our modern-day view of the cosmos. And although SpaceX has tried to address the issue, they remain far from what astronomers say is acceptable.

Bottom line: SpaceX’s final Starlink launch for the month took flight from Florida at 6:20 p.m. EDT (23:20 UTC) on October 30, 2023.

Read more from EarthSky: Starlink satellites can look like a plume or train of light

Via Next Spaceflight

The post SpaceX wraps up Starlink launches for October first appeared on EarthSky.

Astronomers – already suffering from noctalgia, aka sky grief or sadness at the loss of dark skies – had their worst fears confirmed this week when a new study showed that the BlueWalker 3 satellite can at times shine as brightly as 99% of all the stars. It shone this brightly twice during a months-long international optical observation campaign, designed to measure its impact on the night sky. AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched the satellite in late 2022. It’s the largest communications satellite yet. And AST SpaceMobile plans to launch some 150 of these satellites in all.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on October 2, 2023.

An accompanying article in Nature said the satellite hit its maximum brightness (a magnitude of +0.4) when it first unfurled its 690-square-foot (64-square-meter) antenna in November of 2022. The Nature article explained:

If it were a star, it would have been one of the 10 brightest in the sky.

But its apparent brightness changes as the satellite rotates. And by late December, it had dimmed to a magnitude of +6 [barely at the limit of visibility to the unaided eye].

It then brightened again, reaching magnitude +0.4 once more on April 3, 2023.

How bright is it?

By comparison, the 8th-brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere – Procyon in Canis Minor – is barely brighter than BlueWalker 3 at its brightest.

The satellite is the same magnitude as 9th-brightest Achernar in the constellation Eridanus, another one of our sky’s brightest stars.

When shining at its brightest, BlueWalker 3 is easily visible to the unaided eye. To find out when it will be passing overhead from your location, check Heavens-Above.com.

New satellite has raised concerns before

AST SpaceMobile launched the massive satellite in September 2022. It’s meant to be a prototype for a satellite fleet designed to make mobile broadband available almost anywhere. Unfurled, this satellite is more than 26 feet per side (about 8 meters per side). That makes Bluewalker 3 the largest commercial communications satellite currently in low-Earth orbit. And it means BlueWalker 3 has the potential to reflect a huge amount of sunlight back toward Earth.

It’s a prototype. So you won’t be surprised to learn that AST SpaceMobile has plans to launch a lot of these satellites eventually. Last we heard, the plan was for six per month, with possibly more than 150 total.

BlueWalker 3 has raised worries within the world’s community of professional astronomers before this. In late 2022, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) issued an announcement, voicing its concerns about the satellite’s brightness.

The IAU on BlueWalker 3

The IAU said then it believed that Bluewalker 3 had become one of the brightest objects in our night sky. The new study – published this week in Nature – confirms that speculation.

It’s not just the visible brightness that astronomers find concerning. It’s also the strong radio waves that Bluewalker 3 and its successors will emit. These radio waves will interfere with the work of astronomers. The director-general of the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, Philip Diamond, said a year ago:

Astronomers build radio telescopes as far away as possible from human activity, looking for places on the planet where there is limited or no cell phone coverage. Frequencies allocated to cell phones are already challenging to observe even in radio quiet zones we have created for our facilities.

New satellites such as BlueWalker 3 have the potential to worsen this situation and compromise our ability to do science if not properly mitigated.

A statement from AST SpaceMobile

Dave Mosher from AST SpaceMobile reached out to EarthSky a year ago with a statement about BlueWalker 3:

AST SpaceMobile’s mission is to help solve the major global problem of lack of connectivity, which affects billions of people around the world. We are building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network; one that is designed to provide coverage to areas currently beyond the reach of today’s networks.

Our planned network aims to connect devices around the world and support a universal good. Cellular broadband for more people globally would help ease poverty, support economic development, build a more equitable and diverse digital society, and save lives.

We are eager to use the newest technologies and strategies to mitigate possible impacts to astronomy. We are actively working with industry experts on the latest innovations, including next-generation anti-reflective materials. We are also engaged with NASA and certain working groups within the astronomy community to participate in advanced industry solutions, including potential operational interventions.

As part of this work, AST SpaceMobile is committed to avoiding broadcasts inside or adjacent to the National Radio Quiet Zone in the U.S. and additional radio astronomy locations that are not officially recognized, as required or needed. We also plan to place gateway antennas far away from the National Radio Quiet Zone and other radio-quiet zones that are important to astronomy.

While other constellations may require thousands of satellites — there could be as many as 58,000 in orbit by 2030, according to a recent U.S. government report — we plan to provide substantial global coverage with a network of 168 or fewer satellites.

What is BlueWalker 3?

AST SpaceMobile appeared very proud of Bluewalker 3’s size when the satellite unfurled last year:

BW3 is the largest-ever commercial communications array deployed in low-Earth orbit and is designed to communicate directly with cellular devices via 3GPP standard frequencies at 5G speeds. Now that it has been unfolded, the satellite spans 693 square feet [64 square meters] in size, a design feature critical to support a space-based cellular broadband network. The satellite is expected to have a field of view of over 300,000 square miles [777,000 square kilometers] on the surface of the Earth.

Abel Avellan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AST SpaceMobile, had said:

The successful unfolding of BlueWalker 3 is a major step forward for our patented space-based cellular broadband technology and paves the way for the ongoing production of our BlueBird satellites.

Array fully deployed in space!!!!
See photos from BlueWalker 3 unfolded in orbit with different sun angles. So proud of the team. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????#5G pic.twitter.com/jC1GpR2fbz

— Abel Avellan (@AbelAvellan) November 14, 2022

As bright as the Big Dipper

People have reported seeing Bluewalker 3 passing overhead in dark skies. And they have indeed compared it to some of the brightest stars. In the tweet below, you can see the satellite passing through the bowl of the Big Dipper. The short streak of light that is Bluewalker 3 looks every bit as bright as the 2nd-magnitude stars in the bowl.

@AST_SpaceMobile's very bright #bluewalker3 passed over our bay area imaging site early this morning at about 5:15 AM local (GMT-8). pic.twitter.com/IhscthdnfN

— Exclosure (@TheExclosure) November 12, 2022

Can you see BlueWalker 3? Sure!

If you want to see for yourself just how bright BlueWalker 3 is in your skies, visit Heavens-Above.com to find when it will pass over your area.

Note that the couple of hours after sunset and before sunrise are when you’ll have an opportunity to see Bluewalker 3.

EarthSky’s Kelly Kizer Whitt wrote:

I observed BlueWalker 3 for three nights in a row in late November 2022. On all three nights (November 20, 21 and 22), the satellite took a similar path across the sky and appeared close to 3rd magnitude. Each time it cut across the sky near Jupiter. When it was lower near the horizon, I was unable to spot it due to light pollution. Not until it was closer to 25 degrees high in the sky could I spot it from the background murk. Below is a simple, handheld iPhone video I took of one of the passes. You can spot the dim light (similar in brightness to other satellites) passing just below Jupiter:

I’ve spotted #BlueWalker3 2 nights in a row now. Not particularly bright. Here’s a poor quality iPhone video of it passing right below Jupiter tonight. pic.twitter.com/bUQTLOEdBA

— Kelly Kizer Whitt (@Astronomommy) November 22, 2022

Increasingly crowded skies

So the issue of increasing satellites in our skies is a complicated one. How can humans balance the racing technological advances but still preserve our dark skies?

Astronomers are trying to work with the satellite companies such as SpaceX with its burgeoning Starlink satellites to find some kind of compromise. You can read more here: How satellites harm astronomy: what’s being done.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, astronomers have begun using a new word to describe how they feel about the loss of night skies to bright satellites. The word is noctalgia, which, they say, can be described as sky grief.

Bottom line: A new study – published in Nature on October 2, 2023 – confirms astronomers’ worst fears. The study confirmed that AST SpaceMobile’s satellite BlueWalker 3 does outshine 99% of the stars.

Astronomers have noctalgia (sky grief), or sadness at the loss of dark skies

Source: The high optical brightness of the BlueWalker 3 satellite

Via Nature

The post Confirmed! BlueWalker 3 satellite outshines 99% of stars first appeared on EarthSky.

Earthlike planet in distant Kuiper Belt?

Japanese researchers said this month (September 7, 2023) that a possible Earthlike planet – with a mass some 1.5 to 3 times that of our home world – is lurking in the far, frozen reaches of our own solar system. And its presence could explain the unexpected behaviors of some of the strangest objects orbiting our star.

Astronomers Takashi Ito and Patryk Sofia Lykawa probed this realm of space using a special computer program – called an N-body simulation – that simulates the gravitational interactions of solar system bodies.

They looked not within the primary Kuiper Belt, which might be said to begin at Neptune’s orbit (at 30 Earth-distances from the sun, or 30 AU) and to extend to perhaps 50 AU.

They looked beyond 50 AU, into what’s sometimes called the distant Kuiper Belt, or scattered disc, a realm whose boundaries are not well defined. And they learned that the odd behaviors astronomers have witnessed in the motions of icy bodies beyond 50 AU might be explained by the gravitational influence of an Earth-size planet.

Their peer-reviewed study is published in the September 2023 Astronomical Journal.

Where, what, how far?

We know the small icy bodies that live in the scattered disc region – in the distant Kuiper Belt, beyond 50 AU – sometimes have highly eccentric orbits. And the question has always been … why?

The results of the new simulation by Lykawa and Ito were unexpected, these astronomers said. A report from Kindai University, where part of the work was conducted, said:

Remarkably, the simulation’s best results suggested that there should be an undiscovered planet with a mass 1.5-3 times that of the Earth orbiting the sun at distances between about 200 and 500 AU (or even ~200-800 AU).

Earthlike planet fits the bill best

Most objects beyond Neptune – aka trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs – behave themselves. They keep to well-understood orbits in the massive toroid-shaped cloud of millions of icy, comet-like bodies that is the primary Kuiper Belt.

But objects in the distant Kuiper Belt – such as dwarf planet Sedna – are rogues that follow highly elliptical paths. By this, we mean Sedna’s closest and farthest points from the sun lie at very different distances. Sedna – which takes approximately 11,400 Earth-years to orbit the sun once – comes as close to the sun as 76 AU. Its farthest distance isn’t known with certainty, but one estimate places it at 937 AU.

That’s halfway to the realm of the comets, the Oort Cloud, which is often said to begin around 2,000 AU.

Misbehaving bodies like Sedna also leave the confines of the ecliptic plane of the solar system – demonstrating high orbital inclinations – rising above then sinking below the pathway most bodies follow around the sun.

So far, no model of the solar system – migrating ancient planets, resonance with the gas giants, passing stars or rogue planets – could explain all of this behavior. The researchers, in their recently published paper describing their computer simulation, say these models only give partial answers.

More than 1,000 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) that belong to distinct dynamical classes have been discovered, allowing for important advances in our understanding of the trans-Neptunian region. However, a single evolutionary model that explains the entire TNO orbital structure has not been developed.

But, they said, an Earth-mass planet circling at an inclined orbit might do the trick:

Thanks to the palpable mass and an inclined orbit of about 30 degrees, such a planet could have generated the large number of detached TNOs, the highly inclined TNOs, as well as the extreme TNOs with peculiar orbits, in line with our current observations.

Not Planet Nine, not Planet X, not Niburu

Back in 2016, another set of researchers using a different simulation also concluded a ninth planet – unoriginally dubbed Planet Nine – was orbiting somewhere in the Kuiper Belt.

The creators of the new model are quick to point out theirs is a different body of a much different size:

Planet Nine is much more massive and hypothesized to be located on more distant orbits.

In addition, while Planet Nine was proposed to address possible peculiar properties of some distant TNOs, our scenario addresses the structure of the distant Kuiper Belt. …

And – if you’re a student of the history of science – you’ll enjoy knowing the newly hypothesized planet isn’t Percival Lowell’s Planet X either. That earlier theoretical ninth planet – searched for by Lowell and others in the early 1900s – was based on bad math and probably doesn’t exist at all. But the search for it did lead directly to the discovery of Pluto, now categorized as a dwarf planet, which orbits in the realm of the TNOs at 39 AU.

And, fortunately for everyone, the newly predicted planet is absolutely not Nibiru, a rogue planet said by doomsday conspiracy theorists to be heading for Earth to wreck the place and kill us all.

If we look, what’ll we find?

Often in science, mistaken theories lead to real results. That was true of the search for Planet X, which was spawned by apparent perturbations in the orbit of the 8th planet, Neptune. It turned out those perturbations didn’t exist. But they led 25-year-old Clyde Tombaugh to find Pluto in 1930, decades after Lowell’s death.

In this case as well, Ito and Lykawa believe, if we search the far reaches of our solar system for an Earthlike planet, we might find something interesting and unexpected:

Furthermore, this scenario also predicts the existence of new populations [of trans-Neptunian objects], located beyond 150 AU, generated by the Kuiper Belt planet’s perturbations. [If so, they] can serve as observationally testable signatures of the existence of this planet.

More detailed knowledge of the orbital structure in the distant Kuiper Belt can reveal or rule out the existence of any hypothetical planet in the outer solar system.

Bottom line: A recent computer model predicts a new Earthlike planet that lies hidden in the outermost solar system. Will we search for it? Will we find it?

Source: Is There an Earth-like Planet in the Distant Kuiper Belt?

Via Kindai University

The post A new Earthlike planet in the distant Kuiper Belt? first appeared on EarthSky.

Crew-7 to dock with ISS Sunday

Following a successful liftoff in the early hours of Saturday, August 26, 2023, the Crew-7 mission is now speeding to the International Space Station. The trip will last nearly 30 hours. And the crew capsule is expected to dock with ISS at 8:39 a.m. EDT (12:39 UTC) Sunday, August 27, 2023.

Coverage of the docking will be streamed as it happens on NASA Live. Or watch in the video player above. Here is Sunday’s broadcast schedule:

6:45 a.m. EDT (10:45 UTC) – Coverage of the rendezvous and docking of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 with the International Space Station followed by hatch opening and welcoming remarks by the crew.

8:39 a.m. EDT (12:39 UTC) – Docking scheduled.

10:33 a.m. EDT (14:33 UTC) – Hatch opening scheduled.

11:30 a.m. EDT (15:30 UTC) – Welcoming remarks scheduled.

The four members of the Crew-7 team will relieve the four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-6 mission. Crew-6 is expected to return shortly after Crew-7 arrives. ISS crews typically stay six months (though some crew members stay longer).

Crew-7 is beginning a six-month ISS expedition.

Crew-7 launched to ISS predawn Saturday

A brand-new Falcon 9 booster carried the Dragon crew capsule Endurance into orbit early Saturday morning, August 26, 2023. And riding it were space travelers from four different nations. So, excitingly, that makes the Crew-7 launch the first Dragon flight ever crewed by four different space agencies.

The Crew-7 mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Coverage of the launch on the SpaceX YouTube feed – embedded below on this page – is available to rewatch.

SpaceX standing in for Boeing

Overall, the mission is the 8th time a SpaceX vehicle will deliver crew to the International Space Station. It was, however, supposed to be the 1st crewed trip of the Boeing Starliner.

The problem-plagued Starliner program has suffered yet another delay in getting to the launchpad. This time, Boeing discovered flammable adhesive tape – and a whole lot of it – used in Starliner’s construction. The vehicle’s parachute recovery system also has multiple defects that could cause it to fail.

Regardless, when covering the most recent Starliner fiasco, NPR reported Boeing won’t give up on its spaceship:

[Boeing] says they’ll take the next several weeks to investigate the design issues and come up with potential solutions. For now, Boeing says it’s fully committed to the program and has no plans to stop developing Starliner despite being years behind schedule.

Boeing has not announced a rescheduled date for Starliner’s next attempt to get a crew into orbit.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9 booster that flew Saturday – B1081 – went up for its 1st time. After delivering the spacefarers to orbit, the 230-foot (70-meter) spaceship returned for a soft landing back at Kennedy.

Bottom line: The Crew-7 launch to ISS was delayed to Saturday morning. It then launched successfully into dark Florida skies with four on board.

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Russia moon mission ends in failure

In a blow to the Russian space program, the uncrewed Luna-25 moon lander mission has crashed into the lunar surface, according to the British news agency Reuters on Sunday, August 20, 2023.

This first attempt by Russians in 47 years to reach the moon ended with the lunar craft spinning out of control during its final lunar orbit. Then it crashed into Earth’s natural satellite. According to Reuters:

Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft at 11:57 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit.

A soft landing had been planned for Monday.

Luna-25 ‘ceased to exist’

Reuters quoted a terse statement from the Russian space authority Roscosmos following the failure:

The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon.

Luna-25 was meant to land at the moon’s south polar region. Once there, it was to study the regolith – the dust that covers the lunar surface – and sample the dust and plasma of the moon’s exosphere.

It was Russia’s first attempt to reach the moon in nearly half a century. Reuters said:

Though moon missions are fiendishly difficult, and many U.S. and Soviet attempts have failed, Russia had not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin.

Russian aerospace industry in decline

Reuters described the failed mission as a blow to Russia’s international prestige at a time when it is already ebbing. The mission failure highlights the post-Soviet decline of the country’s once mighty space program:

Russian scientists have repeatedly complained that the space program has been weakened by poor managers who are keen for unrealistic vanity space projects, corruption and a decline in the rigor of Russia’s post-Soviet scientific education system.

So the failure is a cause for frustration among Russian scientists. Reuters quoted Mikhail Marov, 90, once a leading Soviet physicist and astronomer.

It is so sad that it was not possible to land the apparatus. This was perhaps the last hope for me to see a revival of our lunar program.

Marov was hospitalized following the announcement of Luna-25’s failure.

Bottom line: The uncrewed Russian lunar lander Luna-25 has crashed into the moon.

Via Reuters

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Can we predict earthquakes?

A pair of French researchers claim to have discovered the holy grail of seismology: a means of predicting major earthquakes hours before we feel them. If their discovery is real, will accurate and timely earthquake prediction become a reality? Possibly. It’s hopeful, because timely earthquake prediction would save lives and help protect critical infrastructure. So is it true? And, if it is, can we use this discovery to predict earthquakes?

Earthquake researchers Quentin Bletery and Jean-Mathieu Nocquet of Université Côte d’Azur in Géoazur, France, described their dramatic finding on July 20, 2023 in a paper published in the journal Science.

Before this, most experts had said earthquake prediction would never be possible because there was no preliminary sign an earthquake would occur until the ground actually started shaking. But Bletery and Nocquet said their analysis of 90 past earthquakes has suggested that:

… large earthquakes start with a precursory phase of slip …

And they said the “precursory slip” phase comes within two hours before the earthquake itself happens. That’s time enough for officials to provide warning in affected areas.

Is this “slip” real? That remains to be seen. The study still needs to be confirmed. And other researchers will no doubt be trying to duplicate and advance the work of Bletery and Nocquet.

What’s more, even if it is real, will the finding let us predict earthquakes? And, as Quentin Bletery told Scientific American:

[Our finding] doesn’t mean we know how to predict earthquakes. But it means that it’s physically possible.

Why didn’t we think we could?

At present we can’t predict earthquakes, despite the fact that geologists have sought a reliable earthquake prediction method for decades.

What’s needed is a prediction that comes not minutes before, but hours before the earthquake. It’s only on a timescale of hours that people can move themselves out of the earthquake zone, or at least to an open area, where they’re not likely to be injured or killed by falling debris.

And there are other issues, notably that making a system like that implied by the work of Bletery and Nacquet will require an expensive retooling of the GPS system. If it works at all, it’ll require the construction of an extensive GPS sensor network along major earthquake rupture faults. As explained in an article accompanying the paper in Science, the systems in place to monitor movement of earthquake faults aren’t currently sensitive enough to detect warning signals as they happen.

So implementing the techniques implied by this new discovery – if it’s real – will not be cheap.

Still, if it’s true, it’s a start that could ultimately save millions of lives. And the hope is that the discovery by the two French researchers will eventually lead to reliable and timely predictions. Even the prospect has seismologists anxious to know more. Seismologist Richard Allen at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the work, said in the Science article:

It’s just tantalizing. The whole idea of being able to predict the onset of [an] earthquake rupture is a really big deal.

How did they discover the ‘slip’?

So how did French earthquake researchers Quentin Bletery and Jean-Mathieu Nocquet make their discovery of a “slip” before an earthquake? The researchers analyzed very precise historical GPS data showing fault line movement in 5-minute increments. They specifically examined 48-hour periods before 90 different major earthquakes.

They discovered a recurring signal that appears long enough before an earthquake occurs that authorities will have time to issue a warning. According to the article in Science:

They found that on average, horizontal movements of the stations exponentially accelerated in a direction consistent with slow fault slip near the eventual earthquake nucleation point in the last two hours before the earthquake ruptures.

These scientists say the signs a major earthquake is coming emerge from the background about 110 minutes before the quake strikes.

To make sure their discovery wasn’t just a random occurrence, the researchers also analyzed 100,000 48-hour windows of GPS data that didn’t end in major temblors.

Despite finding a model to forecast seismic activity, the technology to use the technique isn’t in place yet. But the researchers believe it could be:

Although present instrumental capacities do not allow us to identify precursory slip at the scale of individual earthquakes, our observation suggests that precursory signals exist and that the precision required to monitor them is not orders of magnitudes away from our present capabilities.

More details from GeologyHub

The popular YouTube channel GeologyHub says the paper might represent “the most important scientific discovery in the field of geology during the past 20 years.”

In the GeologyHub video (below), the host presents a hypothetical example of how earthquake prediction might save lives. Imagine a 7.7-magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault in California. A major quake occurs along it every 140 years on average. The prediction scheme would likely produce a handful of false alarms, as well as saving perhaps millions of lives when the Big One finally hits. According to the GeologyHub video:

During an average 140-year period one actual signal would be detected preceding a major earthquake along with an average of seven to eight false positives.

That is pretty great.

Hypothetically, people could be told for each of these 110-minute windows to simply move to a safe area which can withstand a possible earthquake, possibly in a field far away from where large objects could fall.

Has an earthquake ever been predicted?

Before this new discovery, the USGS was adamant that any useful prediction – any earlier than, say, a few minutes before an earthquake struck – was impossible. USGS says on its FAQ page:

Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake.

We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future.

USGS scientists can only calculate the probability that a significant earthquake will occur in a specific area within a certain number of years.

There was a single case of what now appears to have been good luck, with regard to earthquake prediction. It happened in Haicheng, Liaoning, China, on February 4, 1975. There’d been foreshocks, and much of the city had evacuated before the earthquake, after an order from Chinese officials. Then a magnitude 7.5 earthquake – a very strong earthquake – did strike. So there was a prediction, and it did save lives.

But the 1975 Haicheng earthquake “prediction” – which was based on the preceding foreshocks – later was deemed to be a fluke.

Bottom line: A pair of French earthquake researchers claim to have discovered the holy grail of seismology: a means of predicting major earthquakes hours before they happen.

Source: The precursory phase of large earthquakes

Via Science

Via Scientific American

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World’s biggest permafrost crater

Newly captured aerial footage of the world’s biggest permafrost crater, Russia’s Batagaika Crater, has revealed never-before-seen details. The crater is located in the far eastern Siberian taiga (that is, boreal forest). It’s a rapidly growing 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) pit. Scientists call it a mega-slump. The expanding crater highlights rapid changes occurring even to Earth’s geology, as Earth’s climate changes in this century.

As reported by the London-based news service Reuters earlier this month (July 21, 2023), the crater first formed after the area was cleared for lumber in the 1960s. Now it’s expanding at a rate of about 10 meters (33 feet) per year. Reuters said:

[The crater] began to form after the surrounding forest was cleared in the 1960s. The permafrost underground began to melt, causing the land to sink.

Erel Stuchkov, one of the adventurous locals who braved a recent descent into the crater, said many of his neighbors refer to it simply as the cave-in. Others use the more ominous name gateway to the underworld.

Quickening cycle of permafrost collapse

Scientists have long known that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. And this part of Russia – at some 67 degrees north latitude – is warming at a rate 2.5 times more quickly than the global average.

About 2/3 of the territory of the Russian Federation has been covered by a frozen tundra. In other words, it’s covered by permafrost – whose name comes from “permanent” and “frost” – now defined as ground that’s continuously below 0 degrees C (32 degrees F) for two or more years. Permafrost is known to store massive quantities of greenhouse gases. These gases are released to the air when the ground thaws.

Nikita Tananayev is lead researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute. He issued a frightening warning about this ongoing human-made crisis to Reuters.

In future, with increasing temperatures and with higher anthropogenic pressure, we will see more and more of those mega-slumps forming, until all the permafrost is gone.

According to the USGS, dozens of similar collapsed areas already litter the Siberian landscape. Batagaika Crater is by far the largest, driven by a feedback loop of melting and collapsing.

And now it appears to be growing faster. The USGS explained:

This so-called “mega-slump” is being enlarged on a hillslope that leads down to the floodplain of the Batagay River. As the active soil slumps, more of the surrounding and underlying frozen soil is exposed and melts, causing the land to slump further and the extent and speed of the permafrost thawing to increase.

Based on satellite image records, the crater is expanding by more than 10 meters [33 feet] per year.

The USGS video below shows the crater’s striking growth from 1991 to 2017:

Affecting Earth’s climate and geology

So, Batagaika Crater is expanding about 10 meters (33 feet) per year. It’s hard to make that number precise, because the amount of variation changes from year to year.

Both the crater’s current size, and its potential impact on the environment, are enormous. Nikita Tananayev told Reuters that the soil beneath the slump, which is about 100 meters (328 feet) deep in some areas, contains an “enormous quantity” of organic carbon that will release into the atmosphere as the permafrost thaws.

This release of carbon will further fuel Earth’s warming.

Also, as it digs its way into the ground, the crater has so far exposed some 200,000 years sediments that record the planet’s climate history. A study of what the sediments reveal was published in 2017.

Geologist Trevor Nace, writing for Forbes at the time of the study’s publication, said that looking at Siberia’s environmental past can teach us about what lies ahead:

Measuring the sediment record at the crater will allow temperature and chronological records to be compared with ice sheets at the poles to regionally characterize warming and cooling periods.

Bottom line: New drone footage has revealed details of the world’s largest permafrost crater and its rapid growth.

Via Reuters

Via USGS

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Not an ex woodpecker!

Ornithologists from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have become the latest group to challenge the notion that the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct. Academic wisdom has proclaimed the bird extinct since some time in the middle of the 20th century. Yet mysterious “sightings” have continued to suggest that reports of its extinction are wrong.

The latest study was published last month (May 18, 2023) in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

The last “widely accepted” sighting of the bird – Campephilus principalis – came in 1944. But reports from experienced observers continue to this day. Perhaps the best-publicized flurry of activity came after a supposed sighting in Arkansas in the early part of the 21st century. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, which was involved in a multi-year search for the bird after that, explained:

Teams searched more than 523,000 acres in eight states, beginning in Arkansas where multiple compelling sightings and a few seconds of video were captured in 2005. No definitive evidence of a surviving ivory-billed woodpecker population was found during the subsequent searches.

And now the National Aviary ornithologists – authors of the new paper – have continued the search. The evidence they’ve gathered during the last decade is extensive. They told the New York Times, in a story by Catrin Einhorn, than ran on May 18:

We provide multiple lines of evidence, including visual observations, audio files, trail camera photographs and drone videos, with evidence suggesting the intermittent but repeated presence of multiple individual birds with field marks and behaviors consistent with those of ivory-billed woodpeckers.

The possible proof was gleaned from around 70,000 hours of audio, nearly half a million hours of monitoring via trail cameras and more than 1,000 hours of drone video footage. It was gathered at an undisclosed location in the Louisiana bottomland hardwood forests. The researchers told the Times:

Our findings, and the inferences drawn from them, suggest that not all is lost for the ivory-billed woodpecker, and that it is clearly premature for the species to be declared extinct.

And, of course, not all experts agree, leading to a somewhat Monty Python-like existential disagreement. Is the ivory-billed woodpecker dead or not?

Ivory-billed woodpecker is blurrier than Bigfoot

Even with the paper’s large volume of evidence – showing the ivory-billed woodpecker might still fly in the forests and wetlands of the U.S. southeast – other experts say the evidence in the paper isn’t convincing.

According to the New York Times article, many endangered species experts remain skeptical. That includes Chris Elphick, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology. The evidence in the new study isn’t good enough to satisfy Elphick, who told the Times:

There are these incredibly rare birds that live in the middle of the Amazon that people can get good, identifiable photographs of.

And yet people have spent hundreds of thousands of hours trying to find and photograph ivory-billed woodpeckers in the United States.

If there’s really a population out there, it’s inconceivable to me that no one could get a good picture.

Despite criticism, Steven Latta, the study’s lead author and head of conservation and field research at the National Aviary, is certain Campephilus principalis hasn’t gone the way of the dodo. He told the New York Times:

It’s this cumulative evidence from our multiyear search that leaves us very confident that this iconic species exists, and it persists in Louisiana and probably other places as well.

Besides, he says, he saw one himself in 2019. And, afterward, he said:

I couldn’t sleep for, like, three days.

US Fish & Wildlife to decide bird’s status

The question of whether the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists or not has taken on greater importance recently, as U.S. Fish & Wildlife is proposing removing the bird from the list of endangered species. Its final decision is expected later in 2023.

The paper’s authors say removing Campephilus principalis’ protected status could threaten the remaining population, if there is one.

Leaving it on the list, however, could be bad for other threatened species protected by the Endangered Species Act. That’s according to Richard Prum, professor of ornithology at Yale University, who told the New York Times:

Whether or not limited federal conservation funds should be spent on chasing this ghost, instead of saving other genuinely endangered species and habitats, is a vital issue.

Bottom line: A recent paper presents evidence the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. U.S. Fish & Wildlife will decide whether to remove the bird from the list of endangered species this year.

Source: Multiple lines of evidence suggest the persistence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in Louisiana

Via the New York Times

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