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They say it takes a village to raise a child. To launch a rocket, we have the combined expertise and passion of Space Team Europe. Aline Decadi is one of many making the first Ariane 6 launch possible and has been interviewed as part of a series highlighting some of the people that make up this dream team.
Working for ESA, Aline Decadi is Launch System Dependability and Safety Lead engineer on Ariane 6 meaning her role is to predict what could go wrong at any moment to protect the people working at Europe’s Spaceport. Passionate about space with an international career in spacecraft and rockets, Aline is also a happy motorcyclist.
Stay tuned for more from #SpaceTeamEurope: an ESA space community engagement initiative to gather European space actors under the same umbrella sharing values of leadership, autonomy, and responsibility.
Europe’s newest rocket soon launches, taking with it many space missions each with a unique objective, destination and team at home, cheering them on. Whether launching new satellites to look back and study Earth, peer out to deep space or test important new technologies in orbit, Ariane 6’s first flight will showcase the versatility and flexibility of this impressive, heavy-lift launcher. Read on for all about 3Cat-4, then see who else is flying first.
File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch at pad 39A on a mission to deliver another 23 Starlink satellites to orbit. Image: Spaceflight Now.
SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets is poised to exceed the total number of Space Shuttle missions from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The combination of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches currently matches the total number of shuttle flights seen at that pad.
With the Starlink 6-56 mission, which is set to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), SpaceX will hit 83 orbital launches from its KSC pad. That’s one more than the 82 shuttle launches that took place over the 30-year history of that program.
The SpaceX flights are a combination of 74 Falcon 9 launches and nine Falcon Heavy launches. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.
The first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1083 in the SpaceX fleet, will be launching for a third time. It previously launched the Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station as well as the Starlink 6-48 mission.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, the booster will touchdown on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This will mark the 68th booster landing for ASOG and the 305 first stage landing for SpaceX to date.
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 N22 rocket with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on top as seen the day before its planned May 6 launch. A problematic valve in the Centaur upper stage of the rocket caused the mission to scrub two hours before liftoff. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is going to have a wait a bit longer before its first astronaut mission can take place. Following the decision to scrub the Crew Flight Test mission about two hours prior to liftoff, teams with United Launch Alliance (ULA), Boeing and NASA concluded that more work was needed to prepare the Atlas 5 to launch.
In order to do that, the rocket will need to be rolled back to the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex 41. The anticipated timeline for the work will push the launch back to no earlier than May 17, according to NASA. The new liftoff time is now 6:16 p.m. EDT (2016 UTC).
During a post-scrub news briefing, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno discussed an issue with a liquid oxygen self-regulating solenoid relief valve on the Centaur upper stage of the rocket, which created an audible buzzing noise heard by crew working at the launch pad. He said the valve vents pressure from the liquid oxygen tank and is “not dissimilar to many other valves like that,” adding that homeowners “have one in your home on your hot water tank.”
Bruno said that if the valve needed to be replaced, the Atlas 5 rocket would need to make a return to the VIF. However, he noted that the work to replace the valve likely wouldn’t require them to unstack the Starliner spacecraft.
He said because the Centaur upper stage is “a pressure-stabilized stage it has to be either stretched or under pressure to be structurally stable,” and therefore, they could use some tooling to stretch it in the VIF.
The Gum Nebula is an emission nebula almost 1400 light-years away. It’s home to an object known as “God’s Hand” among the faithful. The rest of us call it CG 4.
Many objects in space take on fascinating, ethereal shapes straight out of someone’s psychedelic fantasy. CG4 is definitely ethereal and extraordinary, but it’s also a little more prosaic. It looks like a hand extending into space.
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NSF’s Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope captured the image. DECam’s primary job is to survey hundreds of millions of galaxies in its study of dark energy. But it’s also a general-purpose instrument used for other scientific endeavours.
CG 4 is called a cometary globule because of its appearance. But it’s actually a star-forming region. It has a head that’s about 1.5 light-years in diameter and a tail that’s about 8 light-years long. The head is dense and opaque and is lit up by a nearby star. The globule is surrounded by a diffuse red glow, emissions from ionized hydrogen.
This excerpt shows a close-up of CG 4. The hand looks like it’s about to grasp an edge-on spiral galaxy named ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338). But the galaxy is more than a hundred million light-years beyond CG 4. Only a chance alignment makes it seem close. Near the head of the cometary globule are two young stellar objects (YSOs). They’re stars in their early stage of evolution before they become main-sequence stars. Image Credits: Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURAImage Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab)
There are lots of cometary globules in the Milky Way. They’re a sub-class of objects called Bok globules, after astronomer Bart Bok, who discovered them. Both types of globules are dark nebulae, molecular clouds so dense they block optical light. Astronomers aren’t absolutely certain how cometary globules get their shape.
Earth is naked without its protective barrier. The planet’s magnetic shield surrounds Earth and shelters it from the natural onslaught of cosmic rays. But sometimes, the shield weakens and wavers, allowing cosmic rays to strike the atmosphere, creating a shower of particles that scientists think could wreak havoc on the biosphere.
This has happened many times in our planet’s history, including 41,000 years ago in an event called the Laschamps excursion.
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles, usually protons or atomic nuclei, that travel through space at relativistic speeds. Normally, they’re deflected into space and away from Earth by the planet’s magnetic shield. But the shield is a natural phenomenon and its strength fluctuates, as does its orientation. When that happens, cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere.
That creates a shower of secondary particles called cosmogenic radionuclides. These isotopes become embedded in sediments and ice cores and even in the structure of living things like trees. There are different types of these isotopes, including ones like Calcium 41 and Carbon 14.
Showers of high-energy particles occur when energetic cosmic rays strike the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. Illustration Credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA.Some of the isotopes are stable, and some are radioactive. The radioactive ones have half-lives ranging from only 20 minutes (Carbon 11) up to 15.7 million years (Xenon 129.)
![Each map shows the intensity of Earth's geomagnetic field at different snapshots in time, according to Panovska's reconstructions that are constrained by both paleomagnetic data and records of cosmogenic beryllium-10 radionuclides. DM stands for Dipole Moment, which is a measure of the field's polarity or separation of positive and negative. Age [ka BP] is the age measures in thousands of years before the present. Image Credit: Sanja Panovska.](https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Panovska-summary-map.jpg)
No human being will ever encounter a black hole. But we can’t stop wondering what it would be like to fall into one of these massive, beguiling, physics-defying singularities.
NASA created a simulation to help us imagine what it would be like.
Jeremy Schnittman is an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and he created the visualizations. “People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” he said. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”
In one, the viewpoint plunges directly into the black hole like a free-falling astronaut, with explanatory text to guide us through what we’re seeing. The other is a 360-degree view of the black hole.
Schnittman created them with a NASA supercomputer called Discover in only five days, generating about 10 terabytes of data. The computer used only about 0.3% of its power. The same visualization would’ve taken more than a decade to create on an average laptop computer.
From tracking hazards in the ocean to predicting the strength of hurricanes, NOAA's GeoXO series continues on the legacy of the GOES-R series — but with exciting upgrades.
The rings that circle gas giants like Saturn are composed mostly of water-ice particles. Could life exist in these beautiful and enigmatic structures?
The mystery of how early universe supermassive black holes grew so quickly may be solved, with the James Webb Space Telescope finding the first evidence of "heavy seeds."
The Dark Energy Camera has imaged a ghostly hand claw reaching out to grab a distant galaxy. There's nothing supernatural about this structure known as "God's Hand," but it's awe-inspiring nonetheless.
Disney+ releases a new trailer for its upcoming series "Star Wars: The Acolyte" that delves into the High Republic era and seems to depict a deep awakening of the Sith.
Astrophotographer Miguel Claro explains how taking a high resolution solar image like this one represents an enormous amount of personal and professional effort and months of planning.
To launch Black Hole Week, NASA released this new Hubble image of spiral galaxy NGC 4951.
Astronomers will be alerted to gravitational waves faster than ever before as LIGO and other detectors "listen" to a universal symphony.
Is GRB 191019A a typical burst of gamma rays from a dying star, an anomalously long burst from colliding objects, or something else entirely?
The post Is This Gamma-Ray Burst a Shredded Star in Disguise? appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
The new moon of May 2024 will see the bright constellations of summer begin to rise just as those of winter sink below the horizon.
The Sun is increasing its intensity on schedule, continuing its approach to solar maximum. In just over a 24-hour period on May 5 and May 6, 2024, the Sun released three X-class solar flares measuring at X1.3, X1.2, and X4.5. Solar flares can impact radio communications and electric power grids here on Earth, and they also pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts in space.
NASA released an animation that shows the solar flares blasting off the surface of the rotating Sun, below.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flares — as seen in the bright flashes in the upper right — on May 5 and May 6, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDOPredicting when solar maximum will occur is not easy and the timing of it can only be confirmed after it happens. But NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) currently estimates that solar maximum will likely occur between May 2024 and early 2026. The Sun goes through a cycle of high and low activity approximately every 11 years, driven by the Sun’s magnetic field and indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots and other activity on the surface. The SWPC has been working hard to have a better handle on predicting solar cycles and activity. Find out more about that here.
Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release powerful bursts of energy and radiation coming from the magnetic energy associated with the sunspots. The more sunspots, the greater potential for flares.
Flares are classified based on a system similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, which divides solar flares according to their strength. X-class is the most intense category of flares, while the smallest ones are A-class, followed by B, C, M and then X. Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. The number that follows the letter provides more information about its strength. The higher the number, the stronger the flare.
Scientists fighting to save coral reefs amid the climate crisis suggest sending genetic coral material to be preserved on the moon. Is it a good idea?
