SPACE/COSMOS
SpaceX launches rocket with crew to rescue stranded ISS astronauts: Watch
Daniel Hampton
March 14, 2025
NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 crew Pilot Nichole Ayers looks to her family as the crew walks from the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center for transport to Launch Complex 39-A ahead of their launch to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., March 14, 2025. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
A SpaceX crew was launching to space Friday evening after originally planning to launch earlier this week, to rescue two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.
The launch has faced multiple delays due to technical issues and weather conditions. The mission aims to transport four new crew members to the ISS and help rescue NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who have been stranded aboard since June due to problems with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
Watch the launch live below or at this link.
Daniel Hampton
March 14, 2025
RAW STORY
NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 crew Pilot Nichole Ayers looks to her family as the crew walks from the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center for transport to Launch Complex 39-A ahead of their launch to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., March 14, 2025. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
A SpaceX crew was launching to space Friday evening after originally planning to launch earlier this week, to rescue two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.
The launch has faced multiple delays due to technical issues and weather conditions. The mission aims to transport four new crew members to the ISS and help rescue NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who have been stranded aboard since June due to problems with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
Watch the launch live below or at this link.
By AFP
March 14, 2025
This screengrab image from NASA's live broadcast shows the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida bound for the International Space Station - Copyright NASA TV/AFP -
Gregg Newton with Issam Ahmed in Washington
Not long to go now: After more than nine months on the International Space Station, two astronauts are a step closer to returning home following the launch of a crew swap mission on Friday.
A Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon fixed to its top blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 pm (2303 GMT), carrying a four-member team bound for the orbital outpost.
“We celebrate the countless individuals all over the world that have made this journey possible,” said astronaut Nichole Ayers, the designated pilot of the Crew-10 mission, just before launch.
But the real focus is what their arrival enables: the long-overdue departure from the ISS of NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The two former US Navy pilots have been stuck aboard the orbital lab since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
Instead, Starliner returned empty, without experiencing further major issues — and what was meant to have been a days-long roundtrip for Wilmore and Williams has now stretched past nine months.
That is significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months.
But it is much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio aboard the ISS in 2023, or the world record held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station.
Still, the unexpected nature of their prolonged stay away from their families — they had to receive additional clothing and personal care items because they hadn’t packed enough — has garnered interest and sympathy.
– ‘Maybe they love each other’ –
What began as a technical failure has also spiraled into a political flashpoint, as President Donald Trump and his close advisor, Elon Musk — who leads SpaceX — have repeatedly suggested that former president Joe Biden “abandoned” the pair intentionally and rejected a plan to bring them back sooner.
That accusation caused uproar in the space community, especially since Musk did not provide any specifics.
The plan for the duo’s return has been unchanged ever since they were reassigned to SpaceX’s Crew-9, which arrived in September aboard another Dragon carrying only two crew members — instead of the usual four — to make room for Wilmore and Williams.
When Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen pointed this out on X, Musk lashed out at him, using a slur for mentally disabled people.
Some retired astronauts rushed to Mogensen’s defense — while Wilmore appeared to back Musk, saying his comments must have been “factual,” though he admitted he was not privy to any details.
Trump, meanwhile, has drawn attention for his bizarre remarks about the situation, referring to Williams, a decorated former naval captain, as “the woman with the wild hair” and speculating about the personal dynamic between the two.
“They’ve been left up there — I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” he said during a recent White House press conference.
Only after the Crew-10 spaceship docks — scheduled for 11:30 pm Saturday — can the Crew-9 team begin preparing for departure and their ocean splashdown off the Florida coast, no sooner than March 19.
Along with Wilmore and Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will also be aboard the returning Dragon capsule.
Space remains an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia despite the Ukraine conflict, with cosmonauts traveling to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragons and astronauts doing the same via Soyuz capsules launched from Kazakhstan.
The Crew-10 team consists of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. During their mission, the new crew will conduct a range of scientific experiments, including flammability tests for future spacecraft designs and research into the effects of space on the human body
White dwarf and red dwarf interaction emits a radio blast every two hours
By Dr. Tim Sandle
March 13, 2025
Red dwarfs are very-low-mass stars. Image by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Chris Smith (USRA): Lead Producer - Public Domain
Northwestern University scientists have detected the first radio pulses that can be traced to a dead-star binary. This was after astronomers detected constant stream of radio pulses emitted from across the galaxy. The stars’ orbit is so tight that their magnetic fields interact, causing the pulses.
This discovery marks the first radio pulse traced to a binary source. The readings began to be detected a decade ago when astronomers detected a pulse of radio emission every two hours, which was coming from the direction of the Big Dipper. However, the significance of the data was only realised last year.
The information was drawn from Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), the largest radio telescope operating at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth. Follow-up observations were made at the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Observatory in Arizona and the McDonald Observatory in Texas. Those observations revealed the source was not one flashing star — but two stars pulsing together.
These additional observations allowed the scientists to track variations in the system’s movement and gain optical spectra from the red dwarf. By taking light emitted from a star and splitting it into its component colours (or spectra), the researchers were able to gain information about the star itself.
After combining observations from multiple telescopes, the researchers identified the point of origin: a binary system with a dead star. This is in the form of a red dwarf and white dwarf orbiting each other so tightly that their magnetic fields interact. Each time they ‘bump’ together — which is every two hours — the interaction emits a long radio blast.
Each radio pulse, a type of fast radio burst, lasts anywhere from seconds to minutes in length. The pulses also repeat at regular intervals, like a cosmic clock that ticks once every two hours.
This shows the movement of stars within a binary system also can emit long-period radio bursts, adding to previous findings that highly magnetized neutron stars exhibit radio pulses.
These stars are located just 1,600 lightyears from Earth. Both orbit a common centre of gravity, making a full revolution every 125.5 minutes.
Initially the spectroscopic lines showed the presence of a red dwarf, one moving back and forth very rapidly with exactly the same two-hour period as the radio pulses. It was realised that the “back-and-forth” motion was due to a companion star’s gravity, pulling the red dwarf around.
By precisely calculating the variation in these motions, the scientists measured the mass of the much fainter companion. The calculated mass aligned with the typical mass of a white dwarf. While white dwarfs can range from low- to medium-mass, red dwarfs are much smaller and cooler.
In the future, astronomers plan to study the ultraviolet emission of the binary source, dubbed ILTJ1101, in more detail. The findings could help determine the temperature of the white dwarf and reveal more about the history of white and red dwarfs.
The research paper appears in the journal Nature Astronomy and it is titled: “A white dwarf binary showing sporadic radio pulses at the orbital period.”
By Dr. Tim Sandle
March 13, 2025
Red dwarfs are very-low-mass stars. Image by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Chris Smith (USRA): Lead Producer - Public Domain
Northwestern University scientists have detected the first radio pulses that can be traced to a dead-star binary. This was after astronomers detected constant stream of radio pulses emitted from across the galaxy. The stars’ orbit is so tight that their magnetic fields interact, causing the pulses.
This discovery marks the first radio pulse traced to a binary source. The readings began to be detected a decade ago when astronomers detected a pulse of radio emission every two hours, which was coming from the direction of the Big Dipper. However, the significance of the data was only realised last year.
The information was drawn from Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), the largest radio telescope operating at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth. Follow-up observations were made at the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Observatory in Arizona and the McDonald Observatory in Texas. Those observations revealed the source was not one flashing star — but two stars pulsing together.
These additional observations allowed the scientists to track variations in the system’s movement and gain optical spectra from the red dwarf. By taking light emitted from a star and splitting it into its component colours (or spectra), the researchers were able to gain information about the star itself.
After combining observations from multiple telescopes, the researchers identified the point of origin: a binary system with a dead star. This is in the form of a red dwarf and white dwarf orbiting each other so tightly that their magnetic fields interact. Each time they ‘bump’ together — which is every two hours — the interaction emits a long radio blast.
Each radio pulse, a type of fast radio burst, lasts anywhere from seconds to minutes in length. The pulses also repeat at regular intervals, like a cosmic clock that ticks once every two hours.
This shows the movement of stars within a binary system also can emit long-period radio bursts, adding to previous findings that highly magnetized neutron stars exhibit radio pulses.
These stars are located just 1,600 lightyears from Earth. Both orbit a common centre of gravity, making a full revolution every 125.5 minutes.
Initially the spectroscopic lines showed the presence of a red dwarf, one moving back and forth very rapidly with exactly the same two-hour period as the radio pulses. It was realised that the “back-and-forth” motion was due to a companion star’s gravity, pulling the red dwarf around.
By precisely calculating the variation in these motions, the scientists measured the mass of the much fainter companion. The calculated mass aligned with the typical mass of a white dwarf. While white dwarfs can range from low- to medium-mass, red dwarfs are much smaller and cooler.
In the future, astronomers plan to study the ultraviolet emission of the binary source, dubbed ILTJ1101, in more detail. The findings could help determine the temperature of the white dwarf and reveal more about the history of white and red dwarfs.
The research paper appears in the journal Nature Astronomy and it is titled: “A white dwarf binary showing sporadic radio pulses at the orbital period.”
No comments:
Post a Comment