Everybody’s Gotta Live🎵 (In Deep Space)
All the money – and kombucha – NASA needs to have a chance at sustaining life in deep space
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
Some big releases this week! And no, I’m not just talking about the new Elon bible. The inspiring new astronaut biopic, ‘A Million Miles Away,’ which tells the powerful true story of astronaut José Hernández’s journey to space is available to stream today on Amazon. I had the privilege of seeing an early screening of this film, and also had the opportunity to sit down with the film’s producer, Mark Ciardi, on the Continuum podcast.
If you are looking for an empowering story about a marriage of equals, following your dreams, and searching to understand why space beckons us - then give this film a watch over the weekend. If you are looking for something else, well I hear there is a new book making the rounds. I’ll probably still read it though - because space.
And now, here is the space beat you came here for…
Top Headlines
Crew 6 – On September 4th, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, the UAE’s Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos’ Andrey Fedyaeva – all of whom had spent six months on the International Space Station – splashed down in the newly calmed waters off the Florida coast. Delayed two days due to Hurricane Idalia’s wrath on the area, the flight was the fourth for Endeavor, a Crew Dragon capsule from SpaceX. While NASA has capped their use of Crew Dragon spacecraft to five flights, SpaceX believes they can stretch these capsules to fifteen uses, with a “certain amount of additional refurbishment.” So, basically SpaceX is that boyfriend who only replaces the head of his electric toothbrush once a year (but with a “certain amount of additional refurbishment," i.e. running his fingers through the bristles of the water every once in a while).
Will You Still Need Me, When I’m 64 I’ve Had 63 Corrections – The largest rocket ever made can now break free of its FAA-shaped shackles and plan for its next launch less abstractly. The Federal Aviation Administration's investigation into April’s chaotic Starship launch concluded this past week with a laundry list of 63 corrections to be made on the rocket before it’s approved for launch. That may sound like a real wrench, but the checklist has been in SpaceX’s hands for some time now because – they’re the ones who wrote it. We’re sure this was masked as a favor to make the FAA’s lives easier, but that’s right: SpaceX conducted their own investigation of the launch and identified the changes required, got right to work, and handed it off to the agency for approval. Not willing to pass on an opportunity to one-up, Elon Musk recently claimed the team actually made “well over a thousand” changes to the Starship. So, demonstrating the 63 key safety adjustments to the federal agency should be no problem – unless the FAA is tied up in court defending themselves for not digging deeper in their review.
Military Network – The last few months have been dotted with updates on the Space Development Agency’s military satellite constellation, as many top contractors have struck deals, started building and even completed launches. Last week, the SDA announced that they’re close to putting their first satellites into action. With twenty three Tranche 0 satellites now in orbit as of September 2nd – when SpaceX made their second launch for the project – the SDA will be able to begin testing the spacecraft’s communication with one another and with their terrestrial systems. Namely, the DoD plans to test the satellites’ ability to connect to Link 16, an encrypted network used by the U.S. military and NATO platforms. The only hold up now is – you guessed it – the FAA, which still has to ensure the Tranche 0 test transmissions to Link 16 do not interfere with air traffic control. Here’s hoping the sky remains big enough to support all lines of communication in this changing world.
I Want To Thank The Academy… – A survey dropped this week found that NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences division is “severely underfunded compared to investments made in the space shuttle era.” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine – the organization behind the decadal study – identified three themes in NASA’s research that the agency will need to bolster if they’d like to maintain leadership in the space arena, including how life adapts in space, the impacts of long-term space travel on the human body, and the scientific possibilities of microgravity. These research questions are nothing new, and we’ve studied them in relation to the International Space Station plenty. However, as we anticipate sustained life on the moon and Mars, we’ll be looking at much longer periods of time spent in space, beyond the reaches of LEO. The survey concludes that NASA’s BPS budget would have to “rise by a factor of 10” before the end of the decade in order to achieve these research goals.
Nishimura – A bright green “snowball”-like comet graced our skies last weekend, named for its discoverer Hideo Nishimura who photographed it on August 12th. Comet Nishimura’s discovery story is interesting – and maybe a little scary – because most comets these days are detected through established observatories and their automated surveys – not amateur photographers. Apparently, these telescopes are at a disadvantage late in the summer, when the typically-clear desert skies fall dark in monsoon season. To that, we say excuses excuses. Beat that, machines! Humans still got it.
In Other NASA News – Something is always cooking in the renowned space agency we know as NASA. In fact, many things are cooking. It’s like The Bear up in there (yes chef). So of course, we’d be remiss to not mention these other few agency updates this week. First up, NASA’s Lucy asteroid probe snapped its first shot of Dinikinesh during its travels the first week of September. From 14 million miles away from the asteroid, the newly released images are only a glimpse of Dinikinesh – shown as only a small speck in a smattering of celestial bodies – compared to what it will capture in November at 265 miles away. Speaking of celestial bodies, this man wasn’t going for a record, but he ended up breaking one: NASA astronaut Frank Rubio has now outlasted the longest U.S. space mission of 355 days, accomplished by Mark Vande Hei. Rubio arrived at the ISS last September (2022) on a Soyuz rocket accompanied by two Roscosmos astronauts, all of whom were stranded when their return ride sprung a leak six months ago. With their new capsule returning them to Earth later this month, they’ll have spent over a year in space. Last but not least, NASA’s alien squad UAP team released their official report yesterday, and with its release the agency also announced a forthcoming appointment of a UAP research director. To be clear, the study made public this week focuses on what data is available and how the agency can use it to make (transparent) discoveries moving forward; it is, sadly, not a report full of confirmed UAP sightings.
The JWST Download
Rivaling only the viral news of Timothee Chalamet cuddling Kylie Jenner at the US Open was the JWST’s new intel on K2-18 b, a potential Hycean exoplanet with signs of life.
FEAST your eyes on the latest image from JWST’s Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers collection, the M51 spiral galaxy, a “grand design” of galactic dust.
Another recent target of JWST was a supernova with “clumpy gas” obstructing the center. Don’t make fun, we’ve all had clumpy gas obstructing our center. Sorry, had to.
While Northeasterners prepare for a colorful autumn here on Earth, Saturn prepares for the same season – only theirs will last 7.5 years.
A Global Space
India – Exhausted from being so amazing, Chandrayaan’s lander Vikram entered sleep mode on the 4th. This followed the power-down of the accompanying rover Pragyan on the 2nd, after it had rolled a total of 101.4 meters (just over 332 feet) in pursuit of “lunar secrets.” The spacecraft is prepared to see the sun again on September 22nd after this period of lunar night, at which time it may reactivate. That said, any additional accomplishments of Vikram will be a bonus, as the mission has already exceeded ISRO's expectations of soft-landing, roving and conducting on-site experiments. Taking rightful pride in the Chandrayaan-3 success story, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has deemed the landing day of August 23rd “National Space Day” in India. And there may be more national holidays to follow, as the agency has already launched a new exciting mission known as Aditya-L1, a solar probe named after the Hindu god of Sun. The spacecraft will take around 125 days to reach Lagrange 1, a specific spot between the Sun and Earth where the two respective gravitational forces cancel each other out. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place glowing ball of hot gas.
JAXA – Last Thursday morning, Japan sent two crucial payloads into space: the black hole-hunting, x-ray imaging mission we’ve been anticipating for weeks known as XRISM, and SLIM, the self-proclaimed “Smart” Lander for Investigating Moon. While the former is a collaboration between JAXA and the ESA that hopes to kickstart the “spectral revolution” of x-ray imaging, the latter is a purely JAXA mission, which will spend four months traveling to and one month orbiting the moon before it attempts touchdown. Perhaps this slow approach will cause Japan to miss out on achieving the next lunar touchdown – considering the more direct routes chosen by U.S. companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines – but if Chandrayaan-3 taught us anything, it’s that slow and steady sometimes wins the race.
JAXA & ISRO – If you thought we were done talking about Japan and India, you’d be wrong, because the space agencies in these two nations have been busy. ISRO and JAXA are teaming up for a Lunar Polar Exploration Mission, or LUPEX, now slated for a 2025 launch. LUPEX intends to investigate the presence and useability of water on the moon’s polar regions, in an effort to build on Chandrayaan-3’s accomplished research. While the launcher and rover system will be led by Japan, the lander system will be led by India, who has of course earned a sterling reputation in lunar landing.
Russia – Recently spotted by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), there’s a new crater on the moon likely created by Luna 25. The LRO team were able to conclude this based on Roscosmos’ estimated impact point near the Pontécoulant G crater. The stark reminder of a failed operation is not slowing Russia down, though. According to the Russian News Agency, the engineers behind the lunar project are “eager” to try again, with plans to send their next mission in 2025-2026. In other news, nuclear aficionados Vladimir Putin met with Kim Jong Un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Wednesday to discuss military cooperation, both in the short term with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the long term with the nations’ continued isolation from the West. The location of the meeting suggests that at least some of those military strategies involve space. We’re all feeling great about it.
China – A Chinese cargo craft once used to deliver propellant, supplies and experiment resources to taikonauts aboard Tiangong space station carried out a controlled reentry earlier this week. The Tianzhou-5 spacecraft has been docked at the orbiting station since November of last year, able to witness the “fruitful” science projects made possible by its delivery. But like all good things, the Tianzhou-5 had to come to an end, and in this case a fiery one via Earth’s atmosphere.
ESA – At a briefing on September 4th, the European Space Agency teased a launch date would be coming in October for the anticipated Ariane 6, after the completion of a couple key static-fire tests with the rocket’s core stage. Though ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher assured the press that the team has finally now “stabilized the schedule” of the slippery rocket, he dodged clarifying whether the launch would fall in the first or second half of 2024. Here’s hoping the agency and manufacturer Arianespace can get the Ariane 6 up and running in step with its time-pressed contracts, including one with Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation, which faces a FCC deadline of July 2026.
Space Reads!
Will the death of the Twitter bird also be the demise of the online science community? With thousands of science accounts newly lying dormant, it’s not hard to imagine the echo chamber that will be left behind on X. Personally, it’s not a chamber we want to be locked in.
Fans of The Hitcher (and yes, we mean the Sophia Bush one, obviously), listen up: there are new nefarious hitchhikers in town and they are the microbes hitching on ISS cargo ships, making astronauts ill and clogging pipes.
It may not be Taurus season, but this bull will not be outshined by a Virgo. Astronomers now believe that hidden with the Taurus constellation – in the Hyades star cluster – are nearby black holes only 150 light years from our Sun.
As much as we love Eddie Redmayne, we may never have a Theory of Everything when it comes to space. Simply, there will never be “enough computer power in the universe to keep track” of all the discoveries we’ve made and have yet to make.
Similarly, we might not have enough manpower to keep the discoveries coming. Read about the serious competition between companies for skilled labor during a time when engineering degrees are dropping like meteorites.
Space salad is one thing, space cheese another, but space booch?! Shoot me to the moon because it’s – about – to go – off. According to recent kombucha research, not only does the centuries-old fizzy elixir survive well in space, but it’s also inspired research around its bacteria’s ability to protect organisms from cosmic radiation. So when we say “kombucha is a life saver,” we may actually be able to follow that with the correct form of “literally.”
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out this coming Monday for MOONSHOT, our paid subscriber newsletter covering the commercial space sector. A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and for keeping up with the cosmos! We hope you enjoyed reading Continuum this week and will share it with your friends. And if you really, really like us, then consider becoming a paid subscriber or gifting a subscription to the space bestie in your life.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
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