Lockheed Martin spacecraft set to study asteroids near Jupiter

The spacecraft is set to make a 12-year journey to the Trojan Asteroids, the oldest objects in the solar system.

Volume 90%

 

Author: Cory Reppenhagen

Published: 6:50 AM MDT July 10, 2021

 

LITTLETON, Colo. — Scientists think the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter are perfectly preserved time capsules from the creation of the solar system, and a NASA mission to explore those asteroids is one step closer to reality.

Lockheed Martin workers have finished building the spacecraft they call Lucy at their campus in Littleton. Its 12-year journey to explore the Trojan Asteroids will start this fall. The first opportunity to launch will be Oct. 16, and the window will stay open for three weeks

The asteroids orbit Jupiter, and the gravity-pull of the giant planet has protected them from the harsh environment of deep space, scientists said.

“That gives the scientists the idea that they’ve been there for a very long time, and they’ve come from different areas as the solar system was being created,” said Rich Lipe, manager for the Lucy project.

Lipe said the asteroids are likely the oldest objects in our solar system – about four and a half billion years old.

They’re often referred to as the fossils of the solar system, which explained why scientists named the spacecraft Lucy.

The famous Lucy skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 was thought to be evidence of the earliest humans to walk the Earth, about 3 million years ago. The team of archaeologists that found the fossil named it Lucy, after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which was played often and loudly at the dig site.

“Just as the fossil itself has led to a lot of discovery, the Trojan Asteroids are going to lead to a lot of discovery for our science team on how the solar system was created and formed billions of years ago,” Lipe said.

Lucy’s course will be one of the most complicated in the history of space exploration. It will need three loops around the Earth, using the planet’s gravity as propulsion, and will visit eight destinations.

After its launch, it will loop out into space and then swing back toward Earth for its first fly-by about one year later, in October 2022. The gravity assist will propel Lucy out farther for another loop.

The second loop will take about two years. Lucy will make its second fly-by of Earth in December 2024. That gravity assist should give the spacecraft sufficient momentum to make its first leg of the mission.

Lucy will encounter its first asteroid on Apr. 20, 2025, but it won't be one of the Trojan Asteroids. It will be an asteroid called Donaldjohansen, in the main asteroid belt.

Donald Johansen was one of the archaeologists that discovered the Lucy skeleton on Nov. 24, 1974. He was present at a ceremony Friday at the Lockheed Martin complex in Colorado at which scientists dedicated a plaque that included some of his words of wisdom.

Lipe said the plaque also included messages from others like Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein and Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

Lucy's first encounter with one of the Trojan Asteroids will be on Apr. 12, 2027, when it makes it to Eurybates and its newly discovered satellite Queta.

Then it will visit three more Trojan asteroids over the next 15 months before it swings back by Earth for another gravity assist on Christmas Day 2030.

That momentum will carry Lucy to its last five asteroids with binary pair Patroclus and Menoetius, ending the mission on Mar. 2, 2033.

Lipe said that Lucy will not return home after the mission. It will remain in that final orbit for what could be millions of years. That was why they decided to put messages and recordings from Earth on its payload.

La. scientists the first to see black hole swallow dead star

JAMES FINN, The Advocate
July 10, 2021


LIVINGSTON, La. (AP) — More than a billion years ago and hundreds of millions of light-years away, a ravenous mass of gravitational power known to scientists as a black hole swallowed a smaller, dead star whole, like an alligator eating its fill of nutria. Then it happened again.

The ripples created by the two collisions finally reached Earth in January 2020, marking a revelation in the burgeoning field of gravitational wave astrophysics. Scientists now regularly study the gravitational waves emitted by black holes meeting other black holes, but they had long-anticipated examining the more subtle ripples they hoped would emanate from a black hole consuming a smaller neutron star.

Last January, a group of researchers working on an isolated patch of wooded land in the middle of Livingston Parish were among the first humans to detect them.

“We’ve gotten quite used to the discovery process at this stage,” said Dr. Brian O’Reilly, a senior scientist at the LIGO center in Livingston, “but this was a good one. It’s kind of a landmark achievement to detect this new type of system.”

LIGO Livingston — the acronym stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory — is one of two such sites in the United States dedicated to mind-bending study of ruptures in the fabric of space-time.

Once impossible to detect, scientists at LIGO Livingston and its sister site in Hanford, WA, along with a third observatory in Italy, now regularly observe gravitational waves that emerge from those ruptures. To date, the waves have almost always emitted from ancient collisions of one black hole with another.

LIGO scientists describe the observatories behind the discoveries, like the one in Livingston Parish, as “remarkable physics experiments.” Each center consists of two four-kilometer-long, vacuum-sealed tubes in which are suspended some of the world’s finest mirrors — the only way to offer a reading on the infinitesimally small gravitational waves.

Studying the waves, they say, offers new windows into the very fabric of how light, time and space coalesce to form the universe. Each new discovery bolsters Albert Einstein’s famous theory of gravity.

For many years, scientists thought the gravitational waves offering evidence of those theories might be a myth, or were simply undetectable. The invention of LIGO, O’Reilly said, was like “watching a silent movie, and then somebody turned on the sound.”

Run by scientists from both LSU and the California Institute of Technology, the Livingston observatory has regularly played a role in groundbreaking gravitational wave discoveries — around 50 of them over the past several years, according to O’Reilly. Between 2015 and 2017, the observatory logged waves from a series of black hole collisions that helped form a base of knowledge in the young field.



Those collisions generally involved black holes of similar mass and size — until an event the Livingston scientists saw on April 12, 2019, when one black hole with a mass 30 times greater than the sun swallowed up another one about one-fourth its own size.

Working alongside colleagues at the Virgo observatory in Pisa, Italy, the Livingston scientists reported in a new paper this week of observing two even- rarer-still instances of black holes colliding with neutron stars.

The first merger, detected on Jan. 5, 2020, involved a 9-solar-mass black hole and a 1.9-solar-mass neutron star, according to an LSU spokesperson. The second merger was detected 10 days later and involved a 6-solar-mass black hole and a 1.5-solar-mass neutron star.

The gravitational-wave signals that emerged from the two collisions offered evidence of “a new kind of astrophysical system not previously observed,” said Guillermo Valdes, who until December of 2020 was a postdoctoral researcher at LSU and contributed to the paper announcing the discovery.

Rather than being a cataclysmic event, the collisions were likely fairly subdued.

“We looked for evidence that before the black hole and the neutron star merged that the neutron star was basically ripped apart by the black hole,” O’Reilly said. “But in this case, the neutron star basically disappeared into the black hole without a lot of being shredded apart, because the size differences were big enough between the two.”

Now, O’Reilly and the other LIGO scientists are upgrading their detectors as they keep their eyes peeled for the arrival of a supernova in the earth’s galaxy. Such an event would offer the next big data point for gravitational astrophysicists to work with, O’Reilly said.

Supernovas appear about as often as a 100-year flood.

“It goes to show that even after discovering dozens of events, there’s still a lot of new science to be explored,” O’Reilly said.

Why is Russia threatening to leave the International Space Station?

Desk 2021-07-09


But in April, in response to ongoing American sanctions and new ones imposed by the Biden administration, Roscosmos—the Russian space agency—called for the Russian state to leave the ISS. It reiterated this position in June while discussing plans for Russia’s own space station. While the current agreement for the ISS ends in 2024, most of the five core partners (the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency) are working on an extension until at least 2028. NASA may even try to extend the life of the space station for longer by replacing key pieces of station infrastructure—or use planned module additions to create a long-term replacement. Roscosmos has repeatedly and publicly claimed that the aging infrastructure of the space station is putting its cosmonauts at risk; however, the evidence backing these claims is mixed. It is true that malfunctions in the Russian portion of the ISS have occurred, like an oxygen leak back in September 2020. But to say that these maintenance needs are actively threatening cosmonauts might be a stretch—the ISS crew was able to fix the oxygen leak and was never in any serious danger. Not to mention when real danger presents itself, ISS crewmembers can head for a Russian Soyuz escape pod.

And while some Russian space actors have expressed concern over the state of Russia’s modules, other space experts like former NASA engineer Keith Cowing point out that overcoming malfunctions and completing maintenance work is just a part of space exploration. It turns out, operating complex machinery in space is in fact fraught with challenges—no matter how old or new your craft or station is. Given that Nauka suffered from massive time delays and underfunding, it seems unlikely the Russians will have their own station operational anytime soon, let alone by the middle of this decade. Russia itself has estimated the station wouldn’t be in orbit until 2030. Roscosmos’ entire yearly budget is pretty much equal to the 12 percent budget hike NASA is receiving in 2021. Not to mention, NASA chief Bill Nelson claimed in June that many Russian government officials don’t agree with leaving the ISS and that “the space workers, they want to continue with the Americans.”

It’s also doubtful that Roscosmos—an agency facing budget decreases as it struggles to launch new hardware—could thrive in space on its own. In 2015, the Russian government’s decadal planning process provided less than half of the expected budget for Roscosmos. This budget was further cut in 2020, and these constraints have stifled multiple Russian space projects. As one former Roscosmos official put it to France24 earlier this year: “Russia doesn’t have any new spacecraft, there is only a model.” So what, then, is motivating the Russians to make the threat? Almost certainly money. Some state-level anger about U.S. sanctions. And maybe China’s new orbital facility.


But it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Russia to pull out entirely. Rather, this threat reeks of political and/or financial posturing by the Kremlin. For one thing, the Russians plan to launch one of their largest-ever contributions—Nauka, aka the Multipurpose Laboratory Module—to the ISS this month (more than a decade late following technical and budget issues). Furthermore, they also recently launched smaller module additions to the orbiting laboratory. Does that sound like someone leaving to you? Still, the U.S. is highly reliant on Russia to play its part in maintaining the space station—especially since it has joint control over many key systems. So, a verifiable threat from Russia to pull out of the project could truly threaten the longevity of the station.

Whatever Happened to the Lyme Disease Vaccine? Since the end of the NASA space shuttle program, Russia has made a great deal of money transporting U.S. astronauts into orbit via its Soyuz spacecrafts. NASA payments to Roscosmos for those trips totaled nearly $4 billion between 2011 and 2019. That was manageable when Roscosmos reached its budget peak of nearly $10 billion in 2013, but it has dropped considerably since then. In 2018 the budget was just $4.17 billion—which is higher still than the just over $2 billion Roscosmos received in 2020. But now private companies are able to ferry astronauts for the U.S., greatly reducing the importance (and value) of the Russian Soyuz capability. And while NASA signed a deal in 2020 to reserve extra seats on Soyuz launches, this monetary well is running dry for Roscosmos. With that funding source gone, the Russians are likely desperate to raise capital elsewhere. And being part of the ISS is expensive: Russia expected to spend roughly $4.1 billion in maintenance costs between 2016 and 2025. Perhaps Russia hopes that by threatening to leave, the country hopes to gain a new source of financial commitments from NASA to help its space budget now that the Soyuz isn’t bringing in the big bucks. Some space writers have speculated that Russia could threaten to leave and then ask to receive maintenance fees to keep its systems on the ISS operational. This seems plausible given that Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin (who is himself currently under U.S. sanctions) openly expressed concerns about paying to maintain the ISS and establish the Russian station at the same time—which Rogozin also admitted was almost certainly going to be necessary to launch a national station.

Space junk flies at 1.8 km distance from orbital outpost — Roscosmos

According to the Russian space agency, there was no need for the International Space Station to conduct an avoidance maneuver


International Space Station© NASA

MOSCOW, July 8. /TASS/. A piece of space junk flew at a distance of 1.8 km from the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Thursday.—

"According to the data of Russian specialists, an uncatalogued piece of space debris flew at a distance of 1.8 km from the International Space Station at around 4:15 p.m. Moscow time," the statement says.

It was highly unlikely that the orbit paths of the orbital outpost and the space junk would intersect and, therefore, there was no need for the ISS to conduct an avoidance maneuver, the Russian space agency explained.

Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday that the space object dubbed Unknown would pass by the orbital outpost at a distance of 4.8 km. He stressed that Roscosmos agreed with the US side only in the assessment of the near-miss distance.

"We do not confirm the threat and continue monitoring the situation," he explained.

Roscosmos later specified that the minimum distance between the International Space Station and the piece of space junk that might fly close to it had narrowed to 1.5 km from its earlier predicted figure of 4.6 km.

The Russian space agency said earlier on Thursday that the probability for the space debris to collide with the ISS was zero and no orbit adjustment of the station was required.

Head of the Information Analytical Center at the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building (TsNIIMash, part of the space agency Roscosmos) Igor Bakaras earlier told TASS that Russia’s Automated Warning System of Hazardous Situations in near-Earth Space registered 220 space junk near-misses with the International Space Station in 2020.

The space station’s orbit had to be adjusted twice in 2020 to avoid a collision with space junk, he added.

Quest to retrieve 50-year-old UK space debris

Erin Clark
July 9, 2021

Prospero’s mission was to study the space environment

Edinburgh-based rocket company Skyrora is issuing a challenge to find a way to retrieve the Prospero satellite.

The object was the first and only UK spacecraft to be launched on a British rocket, from Australia in 1971.

It’s defunct now, obviously, but is still circling the globe on an elliptical orbit some 1,000km up.

Skyrora, who will soon start sending up rockets from Scotland, regards the satellite as an important piece of UK space heritage.

The company has already recovered part of the Black Arrow vehicle that placed Prospero in orbit.

This fell back to Australia in the course of the mission where it languished for decades in the Outback until the firm had it shipped home and put on display.

Now, Skyrora is looking for ideas as to how best to approach and grab hold of the 66kg satellite, whose original mission was to investigate the space environment.

Skyrora had the part of the launch rocket that fell back to Earth returned to the UK

It might not be possible to bring it all the way home through the atmosphere intact. This would be very difficult. For starters, it would need protection from the heat of re-entry, but, at the very least, just de-orbiting what is now a piece of junk would be a statement of Britain’s commitment to the sustainable use of space.

Orbits above the Earth are becoming cluttered with old hardware, which risks colliding with, and destroying, those operationally useful spacecraft that provide us with important services such as Earth observation, meteorology, and telecommunications.

“This is a challenge to ourselves, to the space industry in the UK,” said Alan Thompson, Skyrora’s head of government affairs.

“Ultimately, we’d love to recover Prospero and bring it all the way down, but we recognise that would be very difficult.

“The point here, though, is to accentuate industry principles of responsibility and sustainability,” he told BBC News.

The company held a reception on Wednesday evening to discuss ideas. This took place at the inaugural UK Space-Comm Expo, which is being staged this week at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in Hampshire.

Prospero and its launch rocket, Black Arrow, represented something of a false dawn for Britain’s space efforts. Even as the lipstick-shaped rocket climbed skyward, the government had already decided to cancel the technology development programme.

The UK remains the only country to have developed a successful launch capability and then abandon it.

Half a century on, an indigenous capacity is being revived in the form of Skyrora, Orbex and a handful of other start-ups who wish to launch from the UK proper – not this time from Australia.

Regulations are in the process of being signed off by government with the intention that operating licences will be open for application later this year.

Skyrora is determined to pursue its activities in as green a way as possible.

Black Arrow was known as the lipstick rocket – for obvious reasons


Although burning a carbon-based fuel, kerosene, in its rockets, this will be made from recycled plastic. It also wants the top section, or third stage, of its orbital vehicle to not only place satellites in orbit, but be capable of removing redundant spacecraft as well.

It’s been busy testing a “space tug” that would do just this kind of work.

“The challenge of removing space debris and either knocking it into the atmosphere so that it burns up, or bringing it back to Earth, is one of the most important and topical challenges in space,” commented Lord Willetts, the former UK space minister.

“It would be great if British enterprise and British entrepreneurship played a role in tackling this challenge.”

In order to retrieve Prospero, you’d first have to locate it. Although the satellite is no longer communicating with Earth (last contact was in 2004), its orbit is known, says Ralph Dinsley from space surveillance experts Northern Space & Security Ltd.

“It’s in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, coming as close as about 522km and going out as far as about 1,300km,” he said.

“Not only is Prospero up there, but part of the rocket body that put it there is up there as well.

“Finding Prospero is all about applying inspiration to what we need to do for the future. There’s a lot of discussion about active debris removal, a lot of discussion about the threat of the space junk apocalypse. Wouldn’t be great if the UK actually took responsibility for some of that junk?”

Prospero - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero

Prospero is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, whose usurping brother, Antonio, had put him (with his three-year-old daughter, Miranda) to sea on a "rotten carcass" of a boat to die, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda had survived and found exile on a small island. He has learned sorcery fr…