SPACE
Virgin Galactic set for final spaceflight before two-year pause
Agence France-Presse
June 8, 2024
Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson speaks at a press conference at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California on November 1, 2014 (AFP Photo/Josh Edelson)
Virgin Galactic is poised on Saturday for its last spaceflight before heading into a two-year pause on commercial operations to upgrade its fleet, as the company seeks to finally turn a profit.
The "Galactic 07" mission is scheduled to begin at around 8:30 am Mountain Time (1430 GMT) from the company's base in Spaceport, New Mexico, a spokesman said.
A huge carrier plane takes off from a runway, gains altitude for around 50 minutes, and then releases from under its wings a spaceplane that soars at supersonic speed to the edge of space, where passengers can enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness and admire the Earth's curve.
On board will be two pilots and four private astronauts. One of them is Tuva Atasever, a Turkish space agency astronaut whose seat was contracted through another space company, Axiom, while the names of the other three will likely be disclosed afterwards.
It will be the seventh commercial flight for the company founded in 2004 by British tycoon Richard Branson, in an emerging suborbital tourism market where its main competitor is Blue Origin, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
It will also be the final flight for its current spaceplane called VSS Unity, which it intends to replace with two next-generation "Delta class" ships, currently under construction in Arizona, with test flights due in 2025 before commercial operations in 2026.
The future of the company is at stake as it seeks at long last to get into the black. Virgin is burning through cash, losing more than $100 million in each of the past two quarters, with its reserves standing at $867 million at the end of March.
It also laid off 185 people, or 18 percent of its workforce, late last year. Its shares are currently trading at 85 cents, down from $55 in 2021, the year Branson himself flew, garnering global headlines.
While similar in appearance to Unity, the Delta ships will carry six passengers, compared to the current four. Seat prices will be set at $600,000 and up to 125 flights are projected per year, the company says, hoping to turn around its fortunes.
Some are skeptical, however.
"Virgin Galactic investors can look forward to owning a stock generating essentially zero revenue for the next 18 to 30 months -- and that's if everything goes as planned, and the Delta program doesn't get delayed," The Motley Fool wrote in a note to investors this week.
Blue Origin, which launches on a small suborbital rocket, resumed crewed flights in May after its own hiatus of nearly two years, though it experienced an anomaly with one of the three landing parachutes failing to fully inflate, which could delay the next mission.
U.S., Germany double down on space exploration
Future collaborations include gravity studies, information sharing on Earth-surface changes and national threat assessments regarding possible hostile uses of space
By Ehren Wynder
Germany played a critical role in developing the propulsion modules for the Orion spacecraft, which will carry the first crewed mission in NASA's Artemis Program in late 2024. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo
June 7 (UPI) -- U.S. and German officials this week met in Berlin to discuss ongoing and future collaborations in space exploration and Earth science.
Leaders at the inaugural U.S.-Germany Space Dialogue highlighted a shared commitment to continue ongoing cooperation in space exploration and research, including through NASA's Artemis campaign.
The Artemis campaign is a series of missions with the robust goal of returning to and establishing a long-term presence on the moon with the help of international partners.
Germany has played a critical role in developing the propulsion modules for Artemis' Orion crew spacecraft, which will be used to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon, according to a memo from the State Department.
The White House last December said the United States plans to land an international astronaut on the moon by 2030.
Earth-gravity study
The United States and Germany also highlighted an agreement between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to continue gravity field measurements through the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity, or GRACE-C mission.
The GRACE-C, which is projected to launch no earlier than 2028, involves a pair of satellites flying one behind the other in polar orbit to measure how Earth's gravity changes from place to place due to shifting ice, water and land masses.
According to NASA, different mass distribution on the Earth's surface -- such as mass loss from melting ice sheets -- leads to slight variations in gravitational pull, which researchers can track by measuring the change in travel distance between the two GRACE-C satellites.
Researchers hope the data from this mission will yield new insights into how climate change affects the water cycle.
The United States and Germany have been partnering on climate research since the launch of the first GRACE mission in 2002, and the GRACE-C mission is a continuation of that effort.
Representatives for both countries this week also shared information on respective national space policies, such as Germany's Space Strategy and upcoming Space Security Strategy and the United States' Space Priorities Framework.
Both sides expressed a desire to continue cooperation in areas such as addressing climate change, national security as it pertains to space, information sharing and commercial space cooperation.
Nuclear weapons, satellites in space
The United States and Germany shared their commitment to promote compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, which includes a prohibition on the placing of objects carrying nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Earth's orbit.
President Joe Biden has emphasized increased cooperation with allied countries, including Germany, on space activities and information sharing "for mutual benefit in response to growing space and counterspace threats and to protect U.S. forces from hostile uses of space."
Both countries also discussed a range of programs that use satellites to help monitor weather patterns, support agriculture and infrastructure planning, respond to disasters and provide telecommunications services.
Sharing Landsat Next info
The two countries also expressed an intent to partner on NASA's Landsat Next Mission, which will provide the most up-to-date observational data of changes to the Earth's surface.
Landsat Next will be able to capture fast-changing processes such as crop growth, floods and algae blooms. The United States and Germany hope to share this data to support economic development, environmental management and to combat climate change on a global scale.
More than two-dozen private American and German space companies also were part of a discussion to highlight existing public-private partnerships in their respective countries and explore more opportunities for cooperation in the commercial space sector.
The next U.S.-Germany Space Dialogue will be held in the United States at a yet-to-be-determined date, according to the State Department.
'Nicely done!' Boeing Starliner astronauts welcomed to ISS at last
June 6 (UPI) -- Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were welcomed aboard the International Space Station Thursday at 3:45 p.m. following a successful 1:34 p.m. EDT docking.
Williams floated into the space station first, joyously greeting the space station crew. Wilmore floated in shortly afterward.
The astronauts hugged the ISS crew as they entered from the Starliner spacecraft.
Boeing said in a statement on X, "Slow and steady. Ground controllers will carefully equalize and monitor Starliner's pressure to match the space station."
Boeing welcomed Wilmore and Williams to the ISS, congratulating them.
"Butch and Suni nicely done! Welcome back to the ISS!, " Boeing Space posted on X.
Wilmore replied, "Outstanding. Great place to be. We're looking forward to staying here for a couple of weeks and getting things done in Starliner that we need to get done. We're on station, ready to work."
There are two American-crewed spacecraft docked at ISS now -- SpaceX's Dragon was there when Starliner arrived.
The spacecraft docked within the second docking window Thursday. It experienced a thruster malfunction with the B1 A3 thruster, so it was shut down while others were used to control the spacecraft as it docked.
At about 10 meters away a planned hold was implemented to perform the final line-up for docking.
During the docking, both the ISS and Starliner were traveling at 17,000 mph. But the docking maneuvers were conducted very slowly, making it seem as though the ISS and spacecraft were suspended in space.
Throughout the docking process,the astronauts were in radio communication with ground crews at Starliner Mission Control & International Space Station Mission Control.
As the spacecraft docked, they also were in communication with the ISS.
An automated system on Starliner docked the spacecraft, but at times the astronauts took manual control.
At 1:06 p.m., darkness inhibited the visual camera images but Lidar and infrared cameras continued to capture data of the docking.
The docking approach was livestreamed on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency's website.
NASA said the Starliner and crew will remain at the space station for about a week.
NASA said three new helium leaks were found in Starliner. A helium leak caused one of the several delays Starliner experienced before successfully launching the ISS mission.
"One of these was previously discussed before flight along with a management plan, and the other two are new since the spacecraft arrived in orbit," a NASA statement said. "Two of the affected helium valves have been closed and the spacecraft remains stable."
NASA said that to monitor and manage these leaks, the three helium manifolds have been isolated. They have all been reopened prior to a Starliner height adjust burn, called NHPC and all affected manifolds will stay open during docking operations.
The astronauts will spend about eight days at the ISS.
The Starliner crewed mission launched Wednesday from Florida atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Two previous launch efforts were scrubbed.
When it launched ULA said in a statement that Wilmore and Williams' names "now join Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra and Cooper as American astronauts to launch into space atop Atlas rockets."
Agence France-Presse
June 7, 2024
Astronaut Suni Williams, seen on the right, performed a short dance to celebrate her third arrival on the ISS (Handout)
A Boeing Starliner capsule carrying its first ever astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Thursday after overcoming unexpected challenges arising from thruster malfunctions and helium leaks.
The spaceship dubbed "Calypso" rendezvoused with the orbital lab at 1:34 pm ET (1734 GMT) over the southern Indian Ocean, allowing crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to enter a while later.
"We're ready to get to work," declared Wilmore, while Williams performed a little dance to celebrate the arrival, the third stay aboard the ISS for both of the ex-Navy test pilots.
Docking was delayed by more than an hour after some of Starliner's thrusters that provide fine maneuvering initially failed to kick in, forcing the astronauts to perform a "hot fire" to activate them.
"I would say Starliner made us work a little harder to get docked," Steve Stich, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, later told reporters, explaining that ground teams now had to work to understand the issues that had emerged during flight.
Wilmore and Williams are the first crew to fly Starliner, which Boeing and NASA are hoping to certify for regular rides to the ISS -- a role SpaceX has been fulfilling for the past four years.
The spaceship blasted off from Florida atop a United Launch Alliance Altas V rocket on Wednesday following years of delays and safety scares -- as well as two recently aborted launch attempts that came as astronauts were already strapped in and ready to go.
- Leaks and thruster problems -
Prior to launch, it was known that there was one helium leak affecting Starliner.
While non-combustible, the helium provides pressure to the propulsion system. But it was determined the leak was too small to cause much of an impact.
During the flight, however, two more leaks emerged, and another was discovered after docking for a total of four.
That makes it more likely that a common issue is at play, rather than a one-off fault like a bad rubber seal.
Engineering teams believe there is more than enough helium left in reserve, and Starliner won't leak anymore while docked to the ISS.
But the issue will have to be monitored and further studied in other Starliners under construction at Boeing's factory, said Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program.
And while four of the five thrusters that failed were subsequently revived, it's not fully understood what triggered the fault in the first place, said Stich.
Teething issues with new spaceships aren't uncommon, he stressed. The Space Shuttle program in its early days faced its share of problems, as did SpaceX's Dragon program in the early 2010s, when that vessel was a cargo-only spaceship.
- Select club of spaceships -
Starliner is just the sixth type of US-built spaceship to fly NASA astronauts, following the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011, and SpaceX's Crew Dragon from 2020.
The United States was left reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets to go to the ISS between 2011 and 2020.
Boeing's program faced setbacks ranging from a software bug that put the spaceship on a bad trajectory on its first uncrewed test, to the discovery that the cabin was filled with flammable electrical tape after the second.
A successful mission would help dispel the bitter taste left by the years of safety scares and delays, and provide Boeing a much-needed reprieve from the intense safety concerns surrounding its passenger jets.
During their roughly weeklong stay on the orbital outpost, Wilmore and Williams will continue to evaluate the spacecraft systems, including simulating whether the ship can be used as a safe haven in the event of an emergency on the ISS.
After undocking, Starliner will reenter the atmosphere, with the crew experiencing 3.5G as they slow down from 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour to a gentle parachute- and airbag-assisted touchdown in the western United States.
Stealth gas contracts awarded amid high-profile crewed Starliner mission
The Boeing Starliner docks with the International Space Station
June 7 (UPI) -- NASA has awarded key contracts to a half dozen companies that will supply liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen in support of operations at agency centers and facilities across the United States for the next five years, the space agency announced Thursday.
While not the most high-profile element of the space program, scientists would be unable to perform the work they need to without access to large amounts of critical gasses.
"The commodities will support current and future aerospace flight, simulation, research, development, testing and other operations at the following NASA centers and facilities," the administration said in a statement.
NASA will use almost 657 tons, or nearly 30.4 million gallons, of liquid nitrogen for pressurizing, cooling and other functions, and 243,000 tons, or about 2.1 million gallons, of liquid oxygen, which is mostly used as an oxidizer in cryogenic engines.
Air Products and Chemicals Inc. of Allentown, Pa., and Linde Inc. of Danbury, Conn., were among the biggest contract winners, bringing in $36.9 million and $42.2 million, respectively. Messer LLC, of Bridgewater, N.J., was the biggest winner at $62.3 million.
Airgas USA with locations in Georgia and Oklahoma were also awarded close to $10 million dollars between the two sites.
While much more low profile, the announcement of the gas contracts came against the backdrop of much bigger space news Thursday.
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft docked with the International Space Station Thursday afternoon after Wednesday launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The launch had been scrubbed numerous times and the craft was forced to stand down before docking due to some technical issues.
"As Starliner began its approach to the space station, five reaction control system thrusters failed off during flight," the NASA Starliner mission website said.
"Mission teams performed a series of hot-fire tests which re-enabled four of the thrusters while the crew manually piloted the spacecraft at the station's 200-meter hold point."
Eventually, the Starliner docked with the ISS and shortly after that, the Starship astronauts made their way through an open hatch into the orbital and were greeted by resident crew members already on board. This was the first crewed flight for the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
SpaceX's Starship completed its fourth test launch from Texas on Thursday, successfully completing re-entry and splashing down in the Indian Ocean. Screen capture/SpaceX/X
June 6 (UPI) -- SpaceX's massive Starship made it through re-entry and the ship's first landing burn, taking another step in its fourth test flight.
The spacecraft splashed down in the Indian Ocean after taking off from Texas about an hour earlier.
It appeared to surpass the third test run, where the Starship broke up during re-entry. NASA is counting on SpaceX to use the Starship for future Moon and Mars trips.
After splashdown, It was unclear how much of the ship survived the fiery re-entry. One camera SpaceX was monitoring cracked and became partially covered with debris as the Starship returned to Earth, to applauds from the SpaceX headquarters.
SpaceX will need some time to gather data collected from the flight but it appeared to be a clear advancement in the evolution of the Starship.
"Despite the loss of many titles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on X. "Congratulations SpaceX team on an epic achievement."
Starship launched at the SpaceX Starbase near Boca Chica Beach in Texas on Thursday morning, where all the test flights have taken off from. The first two test flights, using a new Super Heavy rocket booster with 33 Raptor engines ended with the rocket failing.
The first launch was criticized because it caused significant damage to the launch pad, with debris left outside the testing area.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and demanded SpaceX conduct 63 corrective actions that included a redesign of hardware to prevent leaks and fires, fortifying the launch pad, testing safety systems, and applying other charge-control practices.
Planet-forming disks around very low-mass stars are different
JWST discovers a large variety of carbon-rich gases that serve as ingredients for future planets around a very low-mass star
IMAGE:
ARTIST’S IMPRESSION OF A PROTOPLANETARY DISK AROUND A VERY LOW-MASS STAR. IT DEPICTS A SELECTION OF HYDROCARBON MOLECULES (METHANE, CH4; ETHANE, C2H6; ETHYLENE, C2H2; DIACETYLENE, C4H2; PROPYNE, C3H4; BENZENE, C6H6) DETECTED IN THE DISK AROUND ISO-CHAI 147.
view moreCREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) / MPIA
Planets form in disks of gas and dust, orbiting young stars. The MIRI Mid-INfrared Disk Survey (MINDS), led by Thomas Henning from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, aims to establish a representative disk sample. By exploring their chemistry and physical properties with MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the collaboration links those disks to the properties of planets potentially forming there. In a new study, a team of researchers explored the vicinity of a very low-mass star of 0.11 solar masses (known as ISO-ChaI 147), whose results appear in the journal Science.
JWST opens a new window to the chemistry of planet-forming disks
“These observations are not possible from Earth because the relevant gas emissions are absorbed by its atmosphere,” explained lead author Aditya Arabhavi of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. “Previously, we could only identify acetylene (C2H2) emission from this object. However, JWST’s higher sensitivity and the spectral resolution of its instruments allowed us to detect weak emission from less abundant molecules.”
The MINDS collaboration found gas at temperatures around 300 Kelvin (ca. 30 degrees Celsius), strongly enriched with carbon-bearing molecules but lacking oxygen-rich species. “This is profoundly different from the composition we see in disks around solar-type stars, where oxygen-bearing molecules such as water and carbon dioxide dominate,” added team member Inga Kamp, University of Groningen.
One striking example of an oxygen-rich disk is the one of PDS 70, where the MINDS program recently found large amounts of water vapour. Considering earlier observations, astronomers deduce that disks around very low-mass stars evolve differently than those around more massive stars such as the Sun, with potential implications for finding rocky planets with Earth-like characteristics there. Since the environments in such disks set the conditions in which new planets form, any such planet may be rocky but quite unlike Earth in other aspects.
What does it mean for rocky planets orbiting very low-mass stars?
The amount of material and its distribution across those disks limits the number and sizes of planets the disk can supply with the necessary material. Consequently, observations indicate that rocky planets with sizes similar to Earth form more efficiently than Jupiter-like gas giants in the disks around very low-mass stars, the most common stars in the Universe. As a result, very low-mass stars host the majority of terrestrial planets by far.
“Many primary atmospheres of those planets will probably be dominated by hydrocarbon compounds and not so much by oxygen-rich gases such as water and carbon dioxide,” Thomas Henning pointed out. “We showed in an earlier study that the transport of carbon-rich gas into the zone where terrestrial planets usually form happens faster and is more efficient in those disks than the ones of more massive stars.”
Although it seems clear that disks around very low-mass stars contain more carbon than oxygen, the mechanism for this imbalance is still unknown. The disk composition is the result of either carbon enrichment or the reduction of oxygen. If the carbon is enriched, the cause is probably solid particles in the disk, whose carbon is vaporised and released into the gaseous component of the disk. The dust grains, stripped of their original carbon, eventually form rocky planetary bodies. Those planets would be carbon-poor, as is Earth. Still, carbon-based chemistry would likely dominate at least their primary atmospheres provided by disk gas. Therefore, very low-mass stars may not offer the best environments for finding planets akin to Earth.
JWST discovers a wealth of organic molecules
To identify the disk gases, the team used MIRI’s spectrograph to decompose the infrared radiation received from the disk into signatures of small wavelength ranges – similar to sunlight being split into a rainbow. This way, the team isolated a wealth of individual signatures attributed to various molecules.
As a result, the observed disk contains the richest hydrocarbon chemistry seen to date in a protoplanetary disk, consisting of 13 carbon-bearing molecules up to benzene (C6H6). They include the first extrasolar ethane (C2H6) detection, the largest fully-saturated hydrocarbon detected outside the Solar System. The team also successfully detected ethylene (C2H4), propyne (C3H4), and the methyl radical CH3 for the first time in a protoplanetary disk. In contrast, the data contained no hint of water or carbon monoxide in the disk.
Sharpening the view of disks around very low-mass stars
Next, the science team intends to expand their study to a larger sample of such disks around very low-mass stars to develop their understanding of how common such exotic carbon-rich terrestrial planet-forming regions are. “Expanding our study will also allow us to understand better how these molecules can form,” Thomas Henning explained. “Several features in the data are also still unidentified, warranting additional spectroscopy to interpret our observations fully.”
Background information
The study was funded in the framework of the ERC Advanced Grant “Origins – From Planet-Forming Disks to Giant Planets” (Grant ID: 832428, PI: Thomas Henning, DOI: 10.3030/832428).
The MPIA scientists involved in this study are Thomas Henning, Matthias Samland, Giulia Perotti, Jeroen Bouwman, Silvia Scheithauer, Riccardo Franceschi, Jürgen Schreiber, and Kamber Schwartz.
Other researchers include Aditya Arabhavi (University of Groningen, the Netherlands [Groningen]), Inga Kamp (Groningen), Ewine van Dishoeck (Leiden University, the Netherlands and Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), Valentin Christiaens (University of Liege, Belgium), and Agnes Perrin (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL CNRS, Palaiseau, France).
The MIRI consortium consists of the ESA member states Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The national science organisations fund the consortium’s work – in Germany, the Max Planck Society (MPG) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The participating German institutions are the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, the University of Cologne, and Hensoldt AG in Oberkochen, formerly Carl Zeiss Optronics.
JWST is the world’s premier space science observatory. It is an international program led by NASA jointly with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Logo of the MINDS Project
JOURNAL
Science
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Abundant hydrocarbons in the disk around a very-low-mass star
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
7-Jun-2024
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