ICYMI

Innocent Black Man Spent 50 Years in Prison, His Compensation Will Annoy The Hell out of You

Kalyn Womack
Thu, December 21, 2023 

Photo: Doug Hoke/The Oklahomian (AP)


A man found guilty in a 1975 murder has spent what the National Registry of Exonerations calls the longest prison sentence on a wrongful conviction. Glynn Simmons, now 71 years old, was named a suspect in an armed robbery that left the clerk of a liquor store in Edmond, Okla. dead, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

A witness to the incident and a patron who was shot but survived both told the police they couldn’t make out who the robbers were. However, somehow Simmons ended up getting swept into a lineup and was charged with both robbery and capital murder.

The ruling makes Simmons eligible for up to $175,000 in compensation from the state for wrongful conviction and opens the door for a federal lawsuit against Oklahoma City and law enforcement involved in Simmons’ arrest and conviction, defense attorney Joe Norwood said Wednesday.

Compensation, though, is likely years away, Norwood said and Simmons is currently living on donations while undergoing treatment for cancer that was detected after his release from prison.

Oklahoma law states that the maximum compensation an exonerated person can receive is $175,000. However, democratic state Rep. Cyndie Munson is behind a bill to change that to $50,000 for every year they spent in prison, per KOCO News. So far, 35 states have implemented this into law.

Until the bill becomes law, Mr. Simmons is living off GoFundMe donations which have now reach up to over $100,000, surpassing his goal of $50,000. Simmons plans to use the funds to put a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food and pay for the medical treatments he needs for liver cancer.

“I plan to use my remaining time to help others who are still stuck where I was. We need to fix this system so that what happened to me will never happen to anyone else, ever again!” Simmons’ donation page reads.



Glynn Simmons declared innocent after serving 48 years in prison – believed to be the longest of any exoneree

Dakin Andone, CNN
Thu, December 21, 2023 

An Oklahoma judge on Tuesday declared innocent a man who spent 48 years in prison for a murder he did not commit – believed to be the longest amount of time served by anyone wrongfully convicted in the United States.

“This is a day we’ve been waiting on for a long, long time. It finally came,” Glynn Simmons, 70, told reporters, according to local news outlet KFOR, after the hearing where an Oklahoma County District Court judge issued an order formally declaring him innocent.

“We can say justice was done today, finally,” he said. “And I’m happy.”

Simmons served 48 years, one month and 18 days following his conviction, earning him a grim distinction: He served the longest wrongful incarceration of any exoneree in the US, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. The average length of a wrongful incarceration is just over nine years, per the registry, which tracks and catalogs exonerations going back to 1989.

“Obviously, we’re just very happy,” Joe Norwood, an attorney for Simmons, told CNN in an interview Thursday. “He felt vindicated to have his name … cleared, that he is innocent and didn’t do this. I’m just real happy that all the work paid off for him.”

Simmons was released on bond in July, when the judge vacated the 1975 judgment and sentence at the request of the Oklahoma County District Attorney, who said in a news release her office found evidence was withheld from Simmons’ defense attorneys — a so-called Brady violation.

In September, District Attorney Vicki Behenna announced she would not seek a retrial, pointing, in part, to a lack of physical evidence.

Simmons’ four-plus decade ordeal officially ended Tuesday with Judge Amy Palumbo’s amended order dismissing the case against him with prejudice.

“This Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the offense for which Mr. Simmons was convicted, sentenced and imprisoned in the case at hand, including any lesser included offenses, was not committed by Mr. Simmons,” Palumbo stated in the order.

CNN has reached out to the prosecutor for comment on the judge’s declaration of innocence.

Glynn Simmons is seen after Judge Amy Palumbo ruled to approve his "actual innocence" claim during a hearing at the Oklahoma County Courthouse on Tuesday. - Doug Hoke/The Oklahoman/AP

State law limits compensation to $175,000

Simmons was just 22 when he and another man were convicted of murdering Carolyn Sue Rogers during a liquor store robbery on December 30, 1974, according to the district attorney’s office and the National Registry of Exonerations.

The prosecution’s case at trial depended on the testimony of an 18-year-old woman who was shot in the head during the robbery, the Registry said.

Interviewed by police days later, the woman said she couldn’t remember much. But by the time of the trial, the woman said she had identified Simmons and his co-defendant in a lineup, the Registry said. She testified she had identified no other suspects when, in fact, she had identified four other individuals during eight separate lineups, per the Registry.

None of them were Simmons or his co-defendant, Norwood said.

At trial, Simmons testified he wasn’t even in Oklahoma at the time of the robbery: He was in Harvey, Louisiana, he said, playing pool. Several witnesses also testified that they saw him in Harvey that day and the day after, the Registry said.

Ultimately, Simmons and his co-defendant were convicted, the district attorney’s office news release said, and, at first, sentenced to death. Their sentences were later modified to life in prison ultimately as the result of a Supreme Court ruling that found the death penalty was unconstitutional due to arbitrary and uneven application, the Registry said.

Simmons’ co-defendant was released on parole in 2008, the district attorney’s office said.

Through the years, Simmons maintained his innocence, the Registry said. Eventually, a private investigator located a report that the 18-year-old witness had identified other subjects and had considered her identifications overnight before deciding she was confident in them. That report was never shared with Simmons’ defense attorneys at the time of his trial, Norwood and the Registry said.

Now, Simmons and his attorneys are hopeful he can receive some compensation for the time he was wrongfully incarcerated, Norwood told CNN.

Tuesday’s order, he said, allows them to begin the process of seeking that compensation which, in Oklahoma, is capped at $175,000. But there is no guarantee, Norwood added, and it’s possible they will have to fight for it in court.

In the meantime, Simmons is seeking financial help through a GoFundMe – his only source of income after nearly five decades during which he was unable to gain skills he could use to make a living, Norwood said. On top of that, Simmons has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.

“Between his medical condition and being 70 years old and (having) the ability to provide for himself robbed from him,” Norwood said, “he needs help from people.”

Oklahoma judge rules Glynn Simmons, man who wrongfully spent nearly 50 years in prison for murder, is innocent

Jessie Christopher Smith and Kayla Jimenez, USA TODAY NETWORK
Wed, December 20, 2023 

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma man who served the longest wrongful imprisonment in U.S. history has now been formally declared innocent of a murder he has always maintained he did not commit.

Oklahoma County District Court Judge Amy Palumbo ruled in favor of Glynn Simmons, 71, updating the dismissal of his murder conviction with a declaration of "actual innocence" Tuesday.

Simmons had been convicted of the December 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers, who died after being shot during an Edmond liquor store robbery. He was imprisoned for more than 48 years and a former death row inmate, according to data from The National Registry of Exonerations.

Palumbo said she had reviewed decades' worth of transcripts, reports, testimony and other evidence while preparing to make her decision before granting Simmons' request.

"This Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the offense for which Mr. Simmons was convicted, sentenced and imprisoned in the case at hand, including any lesser included offenses, was not committed by Mr. Simmons," Palumbo said.

Simmons said Palumbo's ruling Tuesday was a confirmation of something he had known all along for nearly 50 years: that he was an innocent man.

"This is the day we've been waiting on for a long, long time. It finally came," Simmons said. "We can say justice was done today, finally, and I'm happy."
Simmon's attorney: 'He has 50 years stolen from him'

One of Simmons' attorneys, Joe Norwood, said the state of Oklahoma wrongfully took a chunk of his life away.

“He had 50 years stolen from him, the prime of his work life when he could have been getting experiences, developing skills. That was taken from him, by no fault of his own, by other people,” he said.

Kim T. Cole, a civil rights attorney based in Texas, supported Simmons on Tuesday and said the state needed to be held accountable for “robbing” Simmons of five decades of his life.

"It’s too late for justice, at this point, but it’s not too late for retribution," Cole said. "Retribution is due."
Prosecutors, attorneys dispute 'failure of proof' in Simmons case

After 48 years of incarceration, Simmons was released from prison earlier this year when Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna determined that prosecutors had violated Simmons' right to a fair trial by not disclosing a police lineup report to his trial lawyer.

While Behenna had decided not to pursue a retrial and agreed to dismiss Simmons' murder conviction, she had been reluctant to describe Simmons' case as "exonerated." Her office had objected to Simmons' actual innocence claim, saying that the state could not prove Simmons' guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" and that an eyewitness would not recant her identification of Simmons in 1975.

"The state had a failure of proof — that’s the only reason for the requested dismissal," Behenna wrote in court filings dated Oct. 18. "This simply is not an 'actual innocence' case where DNA was used to exonerate a person; or a conviction was obtained using ‘forensic’ evidence that was later debunked; or where an eyewitness recanted their identification; or where the actual perpetrator of the crime confessed to the commission of the crime and the details of that confession were later corroborated by independent evidence."

Simmons' attorneys, Joe Norwood and John Coyle, said that the lineup report was "powerful innocence evidence" because it showed the eyewitness, who had survived being shot in the head during the robbery, did not actually identify Simmons.

"Not only would the withheld lineup report have changed the outcome of Simmons trial, but it would also have prevented the State from being able to try Simmons at all," the lawyers wrote on Nov. 17. They also pointed to the testimony of a dozen witnesses who said that Simmons had been in Louisiana at the time of the murder.

His attorneys also said that the "actual innocence" claim was a necessary first step in Simmons being able to pursue monetary compensation from the state for the several decades he spent wrongfully imprisoned. But any compensation, Norwood cautioned, was not guaranteed and could be long into the future.

Glynn Simmons reads the court order Tuesday as his attorneys Joe Norwood and John Coyle, left, niece Cecilia Hawthorne and Madeline Jones, right, look on after Judge Amy Palumbo ruled to approve Simmons' u0022actual innocenceu0022 claim.
Will Simmons be compensated by the state?

Simmons is eligible for up to $175,000 in compensation from the state of Oklahoma for the wrongful conviction but it could be years before he sees any of that money, Norwood said.

Norwood added that Simmons is living off of donations, primarily from GoFundMe, while he's undergoing treatment for cancer, The Associated Press reported.

“Whatever compensation he has coming is down the road, but I would just encourage people to donate to Glynn's GoFundMe, because money ain’t showing up in his bank account tomorrow," Norwood said.

Simmons can also file a federal lawsuit against Oklahoma City and law enforcement officers who were involved in Simmons’ arrest and conviction, Norwood said.
'Black people's voices need to be heard'

Don Roberts, Simmons' co-defendant in 1975, also was convicted of Rogers’ murder. At the time, both men received the death penalty, but their sentences were modified to life in prison after a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Roberts was released on parole in 2008.

The University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations lists Simmons as the longest-served wrongful incarceration in its database of exonerees.

Simmons’ exoneration comes amid a time of heightened scrutiny of both mass incarceration and the death penalty throughout the United States. Counties with high numbers of wrongful convictions show patterns of systemic misconduct from police and other officials, and researchers argue that race often plays a role.

Perry Lott — another high-profile exoneree who saw his 1988 Pontotoc County rape conviction officially overturned this year thanks to DNA testing — appeared at the court Tuesday in support of Simmons. He was visibly moved as Palumbo revealed she would grant Simmons’ request, and he later told The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, that he noticed the parallels in the cases between him and Simmons.

"People need to understand that Black people’s voices need to be heard, once and for all," Lott said. "We’re not angry, we’re not upset, but there’s an enemy out here and he’s not seen."

"Don’t be scared to stand up for what’s right," Lott added. "We need your voice in this war against injustice."

Who are the 11 people?: Oklahoma tied for the 2nd most death row convictions overturned in the US.
Who else has spent decades in prison before being exonerated?

The University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society, the University of Michigan Law School, and the Michigan State University College of Law are tracking the lengths of time exonerees have been incarcerated across the country.

"While the average time spent in prison for all of the exonerees in the National Registry of Exonerations is just over nine years, there have been some prisoners who spent an extraordinary amount of time imprisoned for crimes they did not commit," the project database reads.

Before Simmons' exoneration, Anthony Mazza spent the longest time incarcerated after he served 47 years and two months in prison in Massachusetts. He was originally sentenced to life in prison without parole for a murder in Boston. He was exonerated in 2020.

Richard Phillips was imprisoned for 46 years in Michigan after being sentenced to life in prison for murder before he was exonerated in 2018. Isaiah Andrews was imprisoned for more than 45 years in Ohio in 2020. He died at the age of 83 in 2022. And Wilbert Jones served more than 44 years in prison in Louisiana before he was cleared of rape charges in 2018.

Dozens of other exonerees across the nation have spent more than 30 years in prison, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

'The truth has finally set him free.' Man released after serving 28 years for crime he didn't commit

Contributing: Associated Press

Alexys Woods, with the Oklahoma County public defender's office, takes a selfie with Glynn Simmons on Tuesday after the ruling.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Glynn Simmons formally exonerated in Oklahoma after 48 years in prison

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Cummins to pay record-setting $1.675 billion US environmental fine


Fri, December 22, 2023 

Illustration shows Cummins logo

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Truck engine maker Cummins Inc has agreed in principle to pay a $1.675 billion fine for installing devices on hundreds of thousands of engines to allow them to emit excess pollution, the largest-ever civil penalty for a Clean Air Act violation, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

The Department said Cummins allegedly installed so-called "defeat devices" to bypass or disable emissions controls such as emission sensors and onboard computers.

The department said Cummins used defeat devices on 630,000 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines and undisclosed auxiliary emission control devices on 330,000 2019 to 2023 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines to cheat emissions control requirements.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said "preliminary estimates suggest that defeat devices on some Cummins engines have caused them to produce thousands of tons of excess emissions of nitrogen oxides." It is the second largest environmental penalty deal ever reached, the department said.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said "vulnerable communities are more likely to reside near highways where these harmful emissions are concentrated, making this agreement critical to advancing our environmental justice agenda."

Cummins said it expects to take a nearly $2.04 billion charge in the fourth quarter to resolve regulatory claims relating to nearly one million engines from the Justice Department and California Air Resources Board.

"The company has seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing," Cummins said in a statement.

The formal settlement, which will need court approval, will be made public as early as next month.

RAM-owner Stellantis declined to comment. The 960,000 vehicles have been recalled and the emissions control software will be updated, Cummins said, which previously took a $59 million charge for emissions recalls.

Cummins first announced in April 2019 it was internally reviewing its emissions certification process and compliance.

Cummins previously said U.S. regulators were scrutinizing Nissan Titan trucks from the 2016 to 2019 model years and that it was developing a new software calibration and hardware fix and would recall the trucks.

Cummins previously took $59 million in charges to address the costs of the RAM and Titan recalls. Nissan did not immediately comment Friday.

The company, which also counts PACCAR and Daimler Trucks North America as its customers, said about $1.93 billion is expected to be paid in the first half of 2024.

Jeffries said in a research note the charge "is significant but is not expected to impact normal business operations." Cummins shares were down 2.3% in early afternoon trading to $238.47.

In August 2022, the U.S. business of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles -- now a unit of Stellantis -- pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy and paid nearly $300 million to resolve a multi-year U.S. Justice Department diesel-emissions fraud probe. FCA US LLC was also sentenced to a three-year term of organizational probation.

Volkswagen paid $1.45 billion in U.S. civil penalties in 2017 after the German automaker in 2015 disclosed that it had cheated emissions tests by installing defeat devices" in 11 million vehicles worldwide, using sophisticated software to reduce emissions only during emissions tests.

Volkswagen in total settled U.S. civil and criminal actions prompted by the emissions scandal for more than $20 billion.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Josie Kao)

Firefly's Alpha rocket reaches orbit for the fourth time

Aria Alamalhodaei
Fri, December 22, 2023 

Firefly Aerospace sent its Alpha rocket to orbit this morning, with the company carrying a payload from Lockheed Martin to space. However, the company has yet to update the public on whether it successfully deployed the satellite to its destination orbit – which could suggest an issue with the rocket's second stage.

Today’s launch marks the fourth-ever flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket. The vehicle took off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 9:32 AM local time. The mission, called Fly the Lightning, was a commercial launch for customer Lockheed Martin. The rocket was carrying Lockheed’s demonstrator payload, called the Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) technology demonstrator, to low Earth orbit.

At around 9:40 am local time, Firefly tweeted that it would relight Alpha's second stage engine to circularize its orbit in around 40 minutes. From there, the Lockheed Martin payload should have been deployed. But the company has yet to provide an update four hours later.

ESA is a type of antenna array that can be electronically steered. Lockheed says its proprietary design will enable the company to calibrate the new ESA sensor at a fraction of the time compared to traditional on-orbit sensors, which can take months to power on and be ready for operation. The company’s ESA demonstrator payload was integrated on a satellite bus built by Terran Orbital (Lockheed owns nearly 7% of the outstanding shares in Terran).

While the primary aim of the mission is deploying the payload, Firefly said that its mission team is also tracking the total working hours from when they received the payload to launch readiness, to continue demonstrating to the Space Force that it’s capable of providing rapid launch capabilities.

Rapid launch is top-of-mind for the Space Force; Firefly already demonstrated it once during the last Alpha mission that set a new record for launch readiness. For that mission, Firefly had just 24 hours to complete final launch preparations, encapsulate the payload and mate it to the rocket.

After 2 years in space, the James Webb telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?

Ben Turner
Fri, December 22, 2023 

An artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Something is awry in our expanding cosmos.

Nearly a century ago, the astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the balloon-like inflation of the universe and the accelerating rush of all galaxies away from each other. Following that expansion backward in time led to our current best understanding of how everything began — the Big Bang.

But over the past decade, an alarming hole has been growing in this picture: Depending on where astronomers look, the rate of the universe's expansion (a value called the Hubble constant) varies significantly.

Related: 'It could be profound': How astronomer Wendy Freedman is trying to fix the universe

Now, on the second anniversary of its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has cemented the discrepancy with stunningly precise new observations that threaten to upend the standard model of cosmology.

The new physics needed to modify or even replace the 40-year-old theory is now a topic of fierce debate.

"It's a disagreement that has to make us wonder if we really do understand the composition of the universe and the physics of the universe," Adam Riess, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who led the team that made the new JWST measurements, told Live Science. Reiss, Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for their 1998 discovery of dark energy, the mysterious force behind the universe's accelerating expansion.

Starting with a bang

On this much cosmologists can agree: It started with a bang.

Then in an instant, the young cosmos was formed: an expanding, roiling plasma broth of matter and antimatter particles that popped into existence, only to annihilate each other upon contact.

Left to their own devices, the matter and antimatter inside this plasma mire should have consumed each other entirely. But scientists believe that some unknown imbalance enabled more matter than antimatter to be produced, saving the universe from immediate self-destruction.

Gravity compressed the plasma pockets, squeezing and heating the matter so that sound waves traveling just over half the speed of light, called baryon acoustic oscillations, rippled across their surface.

Meanwhile, the high energy density of the early universe's crowded contents stretched space-time, pulling a small fraction of this matter safely from the fray.

As the universe inflated like a balloon, the standard story goes, ordinary matter (which interacts with light) congealed around clumps of invisible dark matter to create the first galaxies, connected together by a vast cosmic web.

Related: James Webb telescope detects the earliest strand in the 'cosmic web' ever seen

Initially as the universe's contents spread out, its energy density and therefore its expansion rate decreased. But then, roughly 5 billion years ago, galaxies began to recede once more at an ever-faster rate.

The cause, according to this picture, was another invisible and mysterious entity known as dark energy.

An illustration of the expansion of the Universe. The Big Bang is immediately followed by a rapid expansionary period called inflation. Then, as protons and electrons combine to form atoms, light can travel freely; leaving the cosmic microwave background imprinted upon the sky. The universe's expansion slowed around 10 billion years ago, and it began to fill with galaxies, stars and giant black holes. Around 5 billion years ago, dark energy caused this cosmic expansion to rapidly accelerate. To this day, it shows no signs of stopping.

The simplest and most popular explanation for dark energy is that it is a cosmological constant — an inflationary energy that is the same everywhere and at every moment; woven into the stretching fabric of space-time. Einstein named it lambda in his theory of general relativity.

As our cosmos grew, its overall matter density dropped while the dark energy density remained the same, gradually making the latter the biggest contributor to its overall expansion.

Added together the energy densities of ordinary matter, dark matter, dark energy and energy from light set the upper speed limit of the universe's expansion. They are also key ingredients in the Lambda cold dark matter (Lambda-CDM) model of cosmology, which maps the growth of the cosmos and predicts its end — with matter eventually spread so thin it experiences a heat death called the Big Freeze.

Many of the model's predictions have been proven to be highly accurate, but here's where the problems begin: despite much searching, astronomers have no clue what dark matter or dark energy are.

"Most people agree that the universe's present composition is 5% ordinary, atomic matter; 25% cold, dark matter; and 70% dark energy," Ofer Lahav, a professor of astronomy at University College London who is involved in galaxy surveys of dark energy, told Live Science. "The embarrassing fact is, we don't understand the last two of them."

But an even greater threat to Lambda-CDM lurks among the stars: Depending on what method astrophysicists use, the universe appears to be growing at different rates — a disparity known as the Hubble tension. And methods that peer into the early universe show it expanding significantly faster than Lambda-CDM predicts. Those methods have been vetted and verified by countless observations.

"So the only reason that I can understand, at this point, for them to disagree is that the model that we have between them is perhaps missing something," Riess said.
Climbing the cosmic ladder

The cosmic microwave background: The universe's 'baby picture' taken by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite

Measuring the universe's expansion takes a little bit more than a radar gun.

The first method to measure this growth looks at the so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB), a relic of the universe's first light produced just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The imprint can be seen across the entire sky, and it was mapped to find a Hubble constant with less than 1% uncertainty by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite between 2009 and 2013.

In this cosmic "baby picture," the universe is almost entirely uniform, but hotter and colder patches where matter is more or less dense reveal where baryon acoustic oscillations made it clump. As the universe exploded outward, this soap-bubble structure ballooned into the cosmic web — a network of crisscrossing strands along whose intersections galaxies would be born.

Related: $100,000 Breakthrough physics prize awarded to 3 scientists who study the large scale structure of the universe

By studying these ripples with the Planck satellite, cosmologists inferred the amounts of regular matter and dark matter and a value for the cosmological constant, or dark energy. Plugging these into the Lambda-CDM model spat out a Hubble constant of roughly 46,200 mph per million light-years, or roughly 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec is 3.26 million light-years.)

Let's pause on this number for a moment: if a galaxy is at a distance of one megaparsec distance away from us, that means it will move away at 67 kilometers per second. At twenty megaparsecs this recession grows to 1,340 kilometers per second, and continues to grow exponentially there onward. If a galaxy is any greater than 4,475 megaparsecs away from us, it will recede from us (and us from it) faster than the speed of light.

A second method to find this expansion rate uses pulsating stars called Cepheid variables — dying stars with helium-gas outer layers that grow and shrink as they absorb and release the star's radiation, making them periodically flicker like distant signal lamps.

In 1912, astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt found that the brighter a Cepheid was, the slower it would flicker, enabling astronomers to measure a star's absolute brightness, and therefore gauge its distance.

It was a landmark discovery that transformed Cepheids into abundant "standard candles" to measure the universe's immense scale. By stringing observations of pulsating Cepheids together, astronomers can construct cosmic distance ladders, with each rung taking them a step back into the past.

"It's one of the most accurate means that astronomers have today for measuring distances," Wendy Freedman, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, told Live Science.

To build a distance ladder, astronomers construct the first rung by choosing nearby Cepheids and cross-checking their distance based on pulsating light to that found by geometry. The next rungs are added using Cepheid readings alone.

RS Puppis, a Cepheid star located 6,000 light-years away in the constellation Puppis and imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope..

Then, astronomers look at the distances of the stars and supernovas on each rung and compare how much their light has been redshifted (stretched out to longer, redder wavelengths) as the universe expands.

This gives a precise measurement of the Hubble constant. In 2019, the method was used by Riess and his collaborators, who trained the Hubble Space Telescope on one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Their result was explosive: an impossibly high expansion rate of 74 km/s/Mpc when compared to the Planck measurement.

Yet Hubble lacked the necessary precision for the crowded regions of space the team was studying, causing some distant Cepheids to blur into neighboring stars. Dissenting cosmologists had some room left to argue that the result, however shocking, could have come from a measurement error.

Related: Hubble Telescope captures a galaxy's 'forbidden' light in stunning new image

So when JWST launched in December 2021, it was poised to either resolve the discrepancy or cement it. At 21.3 feet (6.5 m) wide, JWST's mirror is almost three times the size of Hubble's, which is just 7.9 feet (2.4 m) wide. Not only can JWST detect objects 100 times fainter than Hubble can, but it is also far more sensitive in the infrared spectrum, enabling it to see in a broader range of wavelengths.

By comparing Cepheids measured by JWST in the galaxy NGC 4258 with bright Type Ia supernovas (another standard candle because they all burst at the same absolute luminosity) in remote galaxies, Riess and his colleagues arrived at a nearly identical result: 73 km/s/Mpc.

Other measurements — including one made by Freedman with the Hubble Space telescope on the rapid brightening of the most luminous "tip of the branch" red giant stars, and another with light bent by the gravity of massive galaxies — came back with respective results of 69.6 and 66.6 km/s/Mpc. A separate result using the bending of light also gave a value of 73 km/s/Mpc. Cosmologists were left reeling.

"The CMB temperature is measured at the level of 1% precision, and the Cepheid distance ladder measurement is getting close to 1%," Ryan Keeley, a cosmologist at the University of California, Merced who has been working to explain the Hubble tension, told Live Science. "So a difference of 7 kilometers per second, even though it's not very much, is very, very unlikely to be a random chance. There is something definite to explain."

A collection of some of the most recent measurements of the Hubble constant. From left to right, the sources used to measure its value are: The cosmic microwave background images by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite; gravitational lensing and tip of the Red Giant Branch stars measured by NASA's Hubble space telescope; and cepheid stars measured by the James Webb space telescope

Cosmology in crisis

The new result leaves the answer wide open, splitting cosmologists into factions chasing staggeringly different solutions. Following the Hubble Space telescope result, an official attempt to resolve the issue at a 2019 conference at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in California only caused more frustration.

"We wouldn't call it a tension or problem, but rather a crisis," David Gross, former director of the KITP and a Nobel laureate, said at the conference.

How things can be fixed is unclear. Riess is pursuing a tweak to the Lambda-CDM model that assumes dark energy (the lambda) isn't constant but instead evolves across the life of the cosmos according to unknown physics.

However Keeley's research, published Sept. 15 in the journal Physical Review Letters, contradicts this. He and his colleagues found that the expansion rates matched the predictions of Lambda-CDM all the way back to the CMB. So, if the model needs fixing anywhere, it's most likely in the very early universe, Keeley said.

It could be possible to add some extra dark energy before the emergence of the cosmic microwave background, Keeley said, giving some additional oomph to the universe’s expansion that needn't make it break from the standard model.

Another group of astronomers is convinced that the tension, alongside the observation that the Milky Way resides inside an underdense supervoid, means that Lambda-CDM and dark matter must be thrown out altogether.

What should replace it, according to Pavel Kroupa, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Bonn, is a theory called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND).

The theory proposes that for gravitational pulls ten trillion times smaller than those felt on Earth's surface (such as the tugs felt between distant galaxies) Newton's laws break down and must be replaced by other equations.

The Keenan-Barger-Cowie supervoid. Proponents of the theory of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) argue that our Milky Way's presence near the center of the 2-billion-light-year wide underdensity of galaxies is skewing our measurements of the Hubble constant.

Other astronomers say that their own calculations nix the MOND claims, yet Kroupa insists that cosmologists looking to tweak the standard cosmological model are "basically adding additional complications to an already very messy and complicated theory."

"What I am experiencing and witnessing is an essential breakdown of science," Kroupa said.

Lahav is agnostic. It's possible Lambda-CDM just needs a tweak, he said, or maybe dark matter and dark energy are the modern-day equivalent of epicycles, the small circles ancient Greek astronomers used to model planets orbiting Earth. "The orbits of planets were described very accurately by epicycles," Lahav said. "It was a good model! It fitted the data."

But once astronomers placed the sun in the center of the solar system in newer models, epicycles eventually became irrelevant, he added.

"If we want to go philosophical, maybe that's what's going on," Lahav said. "But maybe also there is dark matter and dark energy and it's just not been discovered yet."

RELATED STORIES

— What is the cosmological constant?

— James Webb telescope discovers oldest black hole in the universe

— James Webb Telescope spots galaxies from the dawn of time that are so massive they 'shouldn't exist'

Cosmologists are looking for answers in a number of places. Upcoming CMB experiments, such as the CMB-S4 project at the South Pole and the Simons Observatory in Chile, are searching for clues in ultraprecise measurements of the early universe's radiation. Others will look to the dark matter maps produced by ESA's Euclid space telescope or to the future dark energy survey conducted by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument.

Although it now seems less likely, it's also still possible the Hubble tension could be resolved by figuring out some unseen systematic flaw in current measurements.

For Freedman, a solution, or possibly further riddles, will come from the JWST. Her team is using the telescope’s powerful eye to make ultradetailed measurements of Cepheid variables; tip-of-the-red-giant-branch stars; and a type of carbon star called JAGB stars all at once distance.

"We'll see how well they agree and that will give us a sense of an overall systematic answer," Freedman said.

Freedman has looked only at stars in one galaxy so far but is already seeing a difference from the Hubble space telescope measurements.

"I'm really excited because I think we're going to have something really interesting to say," Freedman said. "I'm just completely open. I don't know where this is going to fall."



8 stunning James Webb Space Telescope discoveries made in 2023

Ben Turner
Fri, December 22, 2023 

An illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope in outer space.


Dec. 25 is a pretty special birthday for many around the world, but it's also a big deal for fans of astronomy — who will be celebrating the second anniversary of the launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since coming online in mid-2022, the most powerful telescope ever built has both blown our minds with its stunning images and swept away many of our preconceptions about the early universe.

From inexplicably bright galaxies to life on alien planets, and even the potential demise of our standard model of the universe, here are the JWST's biggest findings of 2023.

Spotting six 'impossible' galaxies at the dawn of time

A collage of six images showing galaxies that contain as many stars as the present-day Milky Way.

Not long after coming online, the JWST immediately discovered six enormous "universe breaker" galaxies, containing what seemed to be almost as many stars as the Milky Way, dating to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

The finding caused a stir in the astronomical world, with some scientists suggesting that it had put our current view of galaxy evolution, or even our understanding of the universe, into doubt.

Related: James Webb telescope finds 'vanishing' galaxy from the dawn of the universe

The strange discovery pointed to a deepening mystery around how large galaxies first bloomed in our universe. After running simulations, other astronomers suggested that the galaxies might not contain as many stars as first seemed, and could instead just be glowing unusually brightly. Whatever the answer, follow-up observations of the mysterious galaxies are in order before scientists can be certain.

Casting doubt on the standard model of cosmology

A James Webb Space Telescope image showing numerous stars and celestial objects.

Besides throwing out seeds of potential new crises in astronomy, the telescope also cemented an old one: the Hubble tension.

Put simply, the universe is expanding, but depending on where cosmologists look, it's doing so at different rates. In the past, the two best experiments to measure the expansion rate were the European Space Agency's Planck satellite (which gave a most likely expansion rate of 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec) and the Hubble Space telescope, which studied pulsating stars called Cepheids and found a higher value of 73 km/s/Mpc.

Cosmologists thought this tension might be down to uncertainty caused by Hubble not distinguishing between Cepheids and background stars, but the JWST snuffed out that hope with a result of 74 km/s/Mpc.

Since then, cosmology has lurched deeper into a "crisis" that could reveal new physics or even break the standard model. What might resolve it? More measurements by the JWST, of course.

Finding the oldest black hole in the universe — twice

An artist's interpretation of a black hole's accretion disk with a planet close by

There weren't just inexplicably large ancient galaxies on the JWST's list of discoveries this year, but whopping black holes too. The first, CEERS 1019, had a mass 10 million times that of our sun and was found by the JWST just 570 million years after the Big Bang — making it the oldest black hole ever spotted at the time of its discovery in April 2023.

We say "at the time" because the JWST didn't rest on its laurels. Earlier this month, the telescope discovered an even older massive black hole 440 million years after the universe began.

How these gigantic space-time ruptures swelled to such staggering scales so early on is an ongoing mystery. Astrophysicists are currently exploring options that include the black holes being formed from the rapid collapse of giant gas clouds, although they haven't ruled out that some may have been seeded by hypothesized "primordial" black holes, thought to be created moments after — and in some theories even before — the universe began.

Spotting dozens of rogue objects floating through space in pairs

An image of the Orion Nebula showing a swirl of orange, green and purple..

The telescope's ultrapowerful eye has also revealed glimpses of completely new, unexplainable objects. After being trained on the Orion Nebula, the JWST found 42 pairs of Jupiter-mass binary objects, or "JuMBOs" — Jupiter-sized planets drifting through space in pairs, some as far apart from each other as 390 times the distance between Earth and the sun.

Related: James Webb telescope finds universe's smallest 'failed star' in cluster full of mystery molecules

The JuMBOs are too small to be stars, but as they bafflingly exist in pairs, they are unlikely to be rogue planets ejected from solar systems. Their discovery has alerted astronomers to a brand-new formation mechanism for planets or even for failed stars.
Spying potential signs of alien life on a distant watery world

An artist's interpretation of the potentially ocean-covered exoplanet K2-18 b, which is around 120 light-years from Earth.

Another feature of the JWST is its ability to measure a spectrum of the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, a toolkit which enabled it to spot the potential signs of life in "alien farts" on a Goldilocks water world 120 light-years away.

The exoplanet it found, K2-18 b, is a sub-Neptune planet (weighing in somewhere between the mass of Earth and Neptune) orbiting the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. After taking an atmospheric spectrum, the JWST found it rich with hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide — all chemical markers of a hydrogen-rich hycean world that is a prime contender for extraterrestrial life.

More tantalizing still was the detection of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a cabbage-smelling compound only known to be produced by microscopic algae in Earth's oceans. The researchers want to take more peeks at K2-18 b and worlds like it to find further evidence for extraterrestrial life beyond our planet.

Finding the oldest strand in the 'cosmic web' ever seen

An artist’s impression of the cosmic web. It looks like a vast cobweb-like structure or mostly purple and some orange filaments on a black background.

Stars and galaxies aren't evenly spread throughout our universe. Instead, they're connected by an enormous cosmic web — a gigantic network of crisscrossing celestial superhighways paved with hydrogen gas and dark matter.

Taking shape in the chaotic aftermath of the Big Bang, the web's tendrils formed as clumps from the roiling broth of the young universe; where multiple strands of the web intersected, galaxies eventually formed.

Insights into the structure of this web not only give us a glimpse of the chaotic particle interactions that led to a universe existing in the first place, so astronomers using the JWST were stunned when they spotted the earliest strand of this web ever seen — a gassy tendril made of of 10 closely packed galaxies spanning more than 3 million light-years in length.

Related: James Webb telescope discovers 'Cosmic Vine' of 20 connected galaxies sprawling through the early universe

The filament formed when the universe was just 830 million years old, and is partially wrapped around a bright black hole. By finding more, researchers hope to find answers as to how the very first galaxies formed.

Snapping an eerily perfect 'Einstein ring', the most distant gravitationally lensed object ever seen

In the field of one of JWST's largest-area surveys, COSMOS-Web, an Einstein ring was discovered around a compact, distant galaxy. It turns out to be the most distant gravitational lens ever discovered by a few billion light-years.

Another addition to the JWST's long list of cosmic distance records this year was its discovery of the most distant gravitationally lensed object ever seen — an "Einstein ring" produced by the warping of light from a distant galaxy around a mysteriously dense foreground galaxy.

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—James Webb telescope discovers 2 of the oldest galaxies in the universe

How distant? A mind-bending 21 billion light years away, which, given the universe's 13.8 billion years of age, means that the light from the galaxy traveled almost twice that distance due to the cosmos's expansion.

Besides making for a very pretty picture, distantly-lensed light shows like this could help astronomers to understand the puzzling nature of dark matter: the unseen substance believed to make up 70% of the universe's matter.

Zooming in on a gory 'preview' of the sun's distant future

Imagine taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of the Ring Nebula (Messier 57). It looks like a glowing green eye surrounded by purple gas.

James Webb has mostly revealed insight into how everything began, but what about our eventual demise? Fear not (or maybe fear away), doom-mongers: The JWST had you covered this year with a spectacular light show from a dying star, a preview into the demise of our solar system.

The donut-shaped Ring Nebula, also known as Messier 57 (M57), is a 2,200 light-years distant corpse of an exploded star, harboring at its center a tiny pinprick of a white dwarf that is the last remaining piece of the star's core.

As it reached the end of its life, the star exploded outwards, hurling its innards far and wide to form what looks like a gigantic eye. The explosion likely obliterated or ejected any unfortunate planets in its way — a fate that will similarly befall our own solar system in 5 billion years time.

What we’re looking forward to seeing from the space industry in 2024

Aria Alamalhodaei
Updated Thu, December 21, 2023 


It was a jaw-dropping year for the space industry, and while we all know by now that progress isn’t linear, we feel pretty confident that 2024 will be even more astonishing.

This year was tough for many space companies, and we aren’t trying to paper that over with our optimism. The world of zero-interest-rate policy, or ZIRP, officially ended; cash got more expensive and fundraising became more challenging. Nevertheless, 2023 also produced a number of tailwinds that we think will make next year one of the most eventful so far.

Here’s a brief list of what we’re most excited for next year. This is TechCrunch, so the list skews toward venture-backed startups; keep that in mind before you complain about the absence of Artemis II.

Even more Starship tests

SpaceX had a landmark year this year, and not only because it executed nearly 100 launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The company also launched Starship -- the most powerful launch vehicle ever built -- not once, but twice.

The first test took place in April; the second in November. Both ended in mid-air explosions and both fell far short of completing the full mission profile: sending the upper stage (also called Starship) on a flight halfway around the world with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, and landing the Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet, both missions were profound successes.

Part of that has to do with SpaceX’s culture of quickly and iteratively improving hardware. During the six-month stretch between the two launches, SpaceX implemented a ton of improvements to the ground infrastructure and the launch vehicle. Those included an improved launch-mount design, a water deluge system and upgrades to the Raptor engines. These changes helped Starship fly even further the second time around; most impressively, the company pulled off an experimental hot staging, a way to separate the rocket’s two stages by lighting the upper stage’s engines while the booster is still connected and firing its engines.

We expect to see further improvements and an even higher testing cadence next year. We wouldn’t even be surprised if they manage to pull off the full orbital flight plan.
Historic lunar lander missions

More private companies will attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon next year than ever before, by an order of magnitude. We’re excited to see companies including Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Firefly Aerospace and ispace all take their shot. So far, only four nation states have landed spacecraft on the moon -- so if even one company is successful, it will make history.

2024 will kick off with launches from Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic. Right now, it’s looking highly likely that both could attempt a landing in the same week -- the third week of February. Firefly is targeting sometime in the third quarter for the launch of their Blue Ghost lander, while ispace is aiming to conduct their mission late in the year.
Advanced satellite operations demonstrations

In the broadest possible terms, a huge portion of space startups are interested in increasing the number of things a satellite can do in space. A good example is something called rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), which is when two spacecraft intentionally maneuver to dock or otherwise interact with each other. Another hot area of satellite operations involves in-space manufacturing and satellite reentry.

Next year, we expect to see more demonstrations from startups looking to execute state-of-the-art satellite operations. Off the top of our head, a few that we’re looking forward to (though this is by no means an exhaustive list):

True Anomaly, a defense-focused space startup, will be demonstrating RPO with two of its Jackal satellites early next year


In-space logistics startup Atomos Space will launch its first two orbital transfer vehicles that could eventually help reposition satellites in orbit


Japanese firm Astroscale is partnering with Rocket Lab to launch a spacecraft that will conduct an orbital debris-removal demonstration


Varda Space Industries will bring home its first in-space manufacturing spacecraft, which successfully grew crystals of the drug ritonavir on orbit


Impulse Space, a startup founded by ex-SpaceX propulsion expert Tom Mueller, will launch two more missions of its Mira spacecraft for last-mile orbital delivery and satellite constellation deployment
More rocket testing from newer entrants and established players

We already mentioned SpaceX, but they are far from the only game in town. 2024 should be chock full of exciting tests and new developments from other companies looking to take their slice of the launch market. We're especially excited for first launches -- of Blue Origin's New Glenn, Rocket Lab's Neutron and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane -- and getting updates from Stoke Space and Relativity, both companies which have rockets that won't launch until later in the decade. We'll also be looking out for the second flight test of ABL Space System's RS1 rocket.


SpaceX dominated private spaceflight in 2023, but its competitors (mostly) aren't quitting

There were 200 successful orbital launches before the end of the year, and SpaceX alone was responsible for 92.

Cheyenne MacDonald
·Weekend Editor
Thu, December 21, 2023 

CHANDAN KHANNA via Getty Images


It’s been a busy year for spaceflight — the busiest ever, in fact. This fall, space companies once again broke the record for successful orbital launches in a single year with 2023’s 180th flight. That record was broken when SpaceX sent up Starlink satellites on November 22, according to Ars Technica. The number has since climbed to 200.

That pace has been driven in no small part by Elon Musk’s aerospace venture, which set a goal of hitting 100 launches in 2023 and is nearly there, with 92 as of December 7. Private companies have become key players in the new space race, not only vying to serve as launch providers for science and communications missions but also ushering in the era of space tourism (for anyone rich enough to nab a ticket). But spaceflight is hard, especially if you’re trying to change the game with design innovations, and for all the wins in 2023, there have been plenty of hiccups. Here’s a look at how some of the leading private space companies made out this year.

SpaceX

The Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule, carrying 4 crew members to the International Space Station, lifts off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, U.S., May 21, 2023. REUTERS/Joe Skipper (REUTERS / Reuters)

SpaceX seemingly didn’t stop once to catch its breath in 2023. The company managed a record-setting run of orbital launches with its reusable Falcon 9 and partially reusable Falcon Heavy rockets, with the lion’s share dedicated to delivering its Starlink internet satellites to orbit (there are now more than 5,000 of them circling Earth). SpaceX also delivered payloads for other entities, including NASA, and carried out multiple crewed flights with its Dragon capsule. Four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station in March aboard a Crew Dragon, and Axiom Space contracted SpaceX for a private astronaut mission that flew to the ISS in May.

As for its experimental Starship flights, things were expectedly a bit more volatile. Starship is the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle built to date, and is designed to support future human spaceflight missions, including NASA’s return to the moon as soon as 2025. The spacecraft itself is 165 feet tall, and when stacked on top of the Super Heavy rocket, the two tower at a combined 397 feet. Both Starship and Super Heavy are planned to be fully reusable. It’s all still in development, and after a few years of suborbital flight tests without Super Heavy — Starship has six of its own Raptor engines that enable flight — the vehicle advanced to orbital tests in 2023.


SpaceX launched Starship for the first time in an integrated flight with its Super Heavy rocket on April 20, and there were problems from the moment liftoff began. Multiple engines failed, and when Starship started its flip maneuver that allows for stage separation about 3 minutes in, it just kept spinning. It was eventually given the command to self-destruct, ending the test with an explosion.

The launch left behind a lot of damage on the ground, too, tearing up the launchpad at SpaceX’s Boca Chica test site, creating a sizable crater and starting a 3.5 acre fire on the grounds of a protected wildlife refuge. But for SpaceX, it was still considered a success — its goal was just to clear the tower. Starship made it to an altitude of about 24 miles before it got caught in that uncontrolled spin. Nevertheless, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship after the destructive test, and ordered the company to complete dozens of corrective actions before it could fly again.

Starship did fly again before the end of 2023, and again Starship exploded. This time, though, Starship officially made it to space, climbing to about 92 miles above Earth. It also performed SpaceX’s first attempt at hot staging — where the upper stage begins to fire its engines while still attached to its lower stage — and was able to complete separation from the Super Heavy booster. It fell well short of the planned 90-minute flight, lasting only around eight minutes, but it demonstrated hot staging was possible.
Blue Origin

Blue Origin's New Shepard on the launchpad on December 19, 2023 (Blue Origin)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin had a strong run between late 2021 and 2022 with its reusable New Shepard suborbital booster and capsule, completing six crewed flights to the edge of space following years of tests and payload missions for industry clients including NASA. But in September 2022, one of its rockets suffered a main engine failure during an uncrewed research mission, and New Shepard spent a subsequent 15 months grounded.

After investigations into the cause of the event, the company’s then-CEO Bob Smith — who is stepping down in the new year — said in June 2023 that New Shepard would again “be ready to go fly within the next few weeks” pending FAA approval. The FAA closed its investigation at the end of September and gave Blue Origin 21 corrective actions to complete before New Shepard could take to the skies again. Around that time, Ars Technica reported that sources close to the matter said Blue Origin was targeting an October return to flight, but that window came and went with no liftoff or further updates. While it was starting to look like Blue Origin wouldn’t fly at all in 2023, the company finally announced New Shepard’s return in mid-December, and pulled off a successful suborbital payload flight on December 19.

It’s mostly been crickets for Blue Origin’s still-in-development New Glenn, as the company races to get it ready for its debut. New Glenn, a partially reusable heavy lift vehicle, is expected to make its inaugural flight sometime in 2024. It’s already been tapped by NASA to send a pair of small satellites to Mars later that year, but the timeline keeps slipping. It was originally supposed to launch in 2020, but was later rescheduled to 2021, then 2022 and now 2024. The company shared some photos of the rocket’s first and second stage being assembled at its Florida factory over the summer, and confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel that it was still shooting for next year.

Blue Origin has also been busy building engines for another launch provider, United Launch Alliance, which will be used for ULA’s heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur rocket. Both New Glenn and Vulcan will rely on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, and have faced delays tied to its development. Most recently, in July, CNBC reported that one of these engines exploded during testing at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility.
United Launch Alliance

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off carrying Amazon's two prototype relay stations for a space-based internet service it calls Project Kuiper, from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., October 6, 2023. The launch is the first to test Amazon's internet satellites in space before deploying some 3,200 more. REUTERS/Joe Skipper (REUTERS / Reuters)More

ULA had a quiet year as well, carrying out only three launches in 2023 with its Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets — down from eight the year before. Both rockets are in the process of winding down their operations ahead of their official retirement. Delta IV Heavy has just one flight left, which is expected to take place in 2024, and all of Atlas V’s remaining flights have been sold and scheduled out over the next several years. One of ULA’s few 2023 launches was the first flight in its partnership with Amazon, and an Atlas V rocket successfully delivered two of the company’s prototype Project Kuiper internet satellites to orbit.

Most of ULA’s attention right now is focused on putting the final touches on Vulcan ahead of its maiden flight. Vulcan has been in development for roughly a decade, and it, too, has faced years of delays. There was some hope it would finally launch in the first half of 2023, with the company targeting liftoff in May, but after the explosion of a Centaur upper stage during tests, it pushed this target to the end of the year. In October, ULA had said it was planning to launch Vulcan for the first time on Christmas Eve from Cape Canaveral, Florida. But, in an update posted this week, the company confirmed Vulcan wouldn't be flying in 2023 after all.


The rocket completed some critical tests in December, and is now scheduled to fly on January 8, 2024. Vulcan’s first flight, dubbed Certification-1, will send Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander to the moon. Once Vulcan is in operation, ULA will start ramping up flights again. It’s already got a contract with Amazon for 38 Project Kuiper launches on Vulcan. It just needs to get off the ground first.
Rocket Lab

An Electron rocket launches from the pad for the (Rocket Lab)

Over the last few years, Rocket Lab has risen as a company to watch in the launch sector. In the first few months of 2023, it seemed on track to beat its 2022 record of nine orbital launches in one year with its Electron rocket. The company told SpaceFlight Now it was targeting 15 launches this time around. It made it to seven by the end of August, but in September, a problem with the rocket’s upper stage resulted in its failure to reach orbit. Rocket Lab has at least three dozen successful Electron flights under its belt, and only a handful of failures, but the latest is the third such failure in as many years.

Whether or not it proves to be a major setback has yet to be seen. The FAA in October cleared Rocket Lab to resume flights following the finalization of its investigation into the issue, which wrapped up in November. According to Rocket Lab, the problem was caused by “the rare interaction” of “three rare conditions” in the low-pressure space environment that created “an unexpected electrical arc” within the power supply system for the engine’s motor controllers, “shorting the battery packs that provide power to the launch vehicle’s second stage.” The company was still able to return to flight before the end of the year. On December 15, an Electron rocket delivered a Japanese satellite to orbit in a mission dubbed “The Moon God Awakens.”

Rocket Lab has been experimenting with different ways to recover its Electron boosters after flight —including mid-air catch attempts via helicopter — as it works toward rocket reusability. It’s also developing a medium-lift, partially reusable launch vehicle, Neutron, that’s expected to be completed in 2024.
Virgin Galactic & Virgin Orbit

Virgin Orbit's modified Boeing 747 and LauncherOne rocket (Virgin Orbit)

Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, managed a steady cadence of flights this year with its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane. The rocket-powered craft made six flights in six months in 2023, including its first ever space tourism trip in August. In addition to research missions, it’s now completed a total of four flights with paying tourists on board, all of them completed between this summer and fall.

The company took a bit of a hit on the stock market in December, though, after Branson said he wouldn’t be putting any more of his own money into it. Speaking to the Financial Times, Branson said, “We don’t have the deepest pockets after COVID, and Virgin Galactic has got $1 billion, or nearly. It should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own.” Following his comments, shares took a nosedive. But, they’ve since climbed back up.

Virgin Orbit, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well in 2023. Branson’s Virgin Galactic spinoff announced in May that it was shutting down a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company was formed in 2017 with the intention of becoming a launch provider for small satellite missions. It had a unique approach to getting payloads to space; Virgin Orbit used a modified Boeing 747 plane to launch its rocket, LauncherOne, from the air.

But it struggled to keep up with the competition, and in January, it suffered a failure during what was the first ever orbital launch from the UK. As a result, the satellites it had been commissioned by the UK and US governments to deliver didn’t make it to orbit. It was the company’s second failure out of a total of just six missions, and it proved unable to rebound.

Newcomers hit hurdles

California-based Relativity Space has been working for years to build the first fully 3D-printed reusable rockets, with plans for an eventual medium-to-heavy-lift vehicle that could send missions to the moon and Mars. Its first rocket, Terran 1, had its inaugural launch in March this year, but it failed not long after liftoff. It hit some key milestones, though, making it through Max-Q (the point of maximum dynamic pressure on a spaceship during flight) and stage separation. Now, Relativity Space is turning its attention to its larger vehicle, Terran 2, which it plans to have ready for launch in 2026 from Cape Canaveral.

ABL Space, also based in California, conducted its own first flight in 2023 with the launch of its RS1 rocket. Shortly after liftoff, all nine of RS1’s engines shut down, causing the vehicle to crash back down to Earth. In a Substack post at the end of October, CEO Harry O’Hanley detailed some of the work the company has been doing in the months since the first flight to prepare for its second launch, but no date for Flight 2 has been announced just yet.

More to come in 2024

Illustration of Ariane 6 rocket in flight (David Ducros/ ESA/ Arianespace)

In many ways, 2023 has felt like a primer for what’s to come in 2024, which is shaping up to be a big year for spaceflight based on the timelines of current projects, both private and government-sponsored. SpaceX has already said it’s planning to hit 12 launches a month in 2024, which would bring it to 144 by the end of the year.

This year marked the end of the road for Arianespace’s long-running Ariane 5 rocket, which has become the leading launch vehicle in Europe for heavy missions over its 27 years of service. Ariane 5 had its final flight in July, leaving the continent with few launch options for big missions until the release of its successor, Ariane 6. Like others, though, Ariane 6 has been hit by delay after delay over the years, pushing it way behind its originally targeted 2020 debut. The rocket, which Arianespace is developing for the European Space Agency, is expected to make its first flight in summer 2024.

NASA and Boeing are planning the first crewed flight of the Starliner reusable spacecraft capsule, which after being back for the umpteenth time this year, is now slated to be ready around March 2024. NASA also plans to launch the next phase of its moon mission, Artemis II, as early as November 2024. It will be the second flight for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and will have four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule for a lunar flyby. But as always, it’d be reasonable to expect some delays.

Voyager 1 Is Sending Nonsensical Ones and Zeros Back to Earth

Darren Orf
Fri, December 22, 2023 

Voyager 1 Is Phoning Home Glitchy Nonsense DataCaltech/NASA-JPL

• The first spacecraft to ever leave our heliosphere, Voyager 1 is a legendary spacecraft. Now, after 46 years, it is beginning to show its age.

• According to NASA, a glitch in the spacecraft’s Flight Data System (FDS) is causing Voyager 1 to send back a repeating series of ones and zeroes rather than science and engineering data.

• The Voyager team is currently working on a fix for the issue, but its 15-billion-mile distance and outdated tech means that a solution is likely weeks in the making—if it arrives at all.

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Few NASA missions ignite the imagination like Voyager 1. First launched in September of 1977, the roughly 1,800-pound space probe (carrying one of the famous Golden Records, which contain the sounds of planet Earth) careered toward the outer edges of the Solar System. Surpassing the distance of its sibling Voyager 2 (which actually launched before Voyager 1) in December of that same year, Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to exit our heliosphere—becoming humanity’s first emissary among the stars.

Some 46 years after that initial launch, the science phase of Voyager 1’s mission may be about to come to an end. Last week, NASA announced that it was working to resolve a computer glitch aboard the spacecraft—part of its Flight Data System (FDS) was causing Voyager 1 to not ‘phone home’ any scientific or engineering data. Commands that take almost an entire day to reach Voyager 1—which is now, at 15 billion miles away, almost 11 times further away from Earth than Earth is from the Sun—combined with decades-old documents mean that a potential fix will likely be weeks in the making.

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“Finding solutions to challenges that the Voyager probes encounter often entails consulting original, decades-old documents written by engineers who didn’t anticipate the issues that are arising today,” a NASA press release explained. “As a result, it takes time for the team to understand how a new command will affect the spacecraft’s operations in order to avoid unintended consequences.”

The precise issue affecting Voyager 1 is that the FDS is not communicating with one of the spacecraft’s subsystems, called the telemetry modulation unit (TMU). As the FDS gathers information—whether that be astronomical data or simple health check-ups—the TMU sends a single data package back to Earth. But right now, according to NASA, the TMU is only returning a “repeating pattern of ones and zeroes as if it were stuck.” The Voyager team has already tried restarting the FDS, but the classic “unplug it and plug it back in” didn’t resolve the glitch.

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This isn’t the first mishap to showcase the Voyager spacecrafts’ age. This summer, NASA lost contact with Voyager 2 when a human error caused its antenna to tilt away from Earth—not good if you want steady, reliable communication with your far-flung probe. And in 2022, Voyager 1 experienced a glitch in its attitude articulation and control system (AACS) that made it send back similarly garbled telemetry data— a problem for which it took engineers several months to find a work around.

NASA hopes to keep both spacecraft operating with at least one science instrument until 2025, and to be able to send engineering data back to the probes for many more years with Deep Space Network (DSN)—an international array of radio antennas. If all goes according to plan, the DSN could still reach the twin spacecraft well into the mid-2030s.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have far exceeded their original mission parameters, and are currently the oldest operating spacecraft in history—some “senior moments” are to be expected.