Moon Milestones
Space news from around the globe and part two in our series on galaxy expansion
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers, and welcome to the official start of the second half of 2022. Maybe you’re wondering how we got here, maybe you’re waiting to see what stranger than fiction tweet Elon will make next, or maybe you are waiting with bated breath to find out who will win the race to Mars - oh wait how did that last one make it in there? Either way, here’s wishing you a restorative long weekend to recharge for all the space activity coming later this year.
And if you don’t already have your holiday weekend reading plans, then let me suggest Lori Garver’s new book Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. Without exaggeration, I could literally not put this one down. Stay tuned for our conversation about NASA, implications of Roe v. Wade for gender equity in STEM, and the rise of the commercial space sector - coming soon to Celestial Citizen Podcast.
Enjoying Continuum? Tag us on twitter (@continuum_hq) and let us know how we’re doing! And without further ado, here’s the space beat for the week…
Understanding Expansion - Standard Candles and Standard Sirens
by Jackie Appel
For most scientific questions, the more data scientists collect, the closer they get to an answer. But there are also times where gathering more information can introduce just as many new questions as answers.
As the last piece in this series established, calculating and understanding the Hubble constant is an area of scientific investigation that fits the latter description far more closely than the former. But scientists keep trying to answer those questions, and they employ several different methods to search for the “eureka” piece (or pieces) of information.
In this part of our Understanding Expansion series, we will explore the two “standard” methods of using measurements of far-away objects to calculate the Hubble constant — standard candles and standard sirens.
Top Headlines
One of the first stories we covered at Continuum was about a piece of space debris that was hurtling towards the Moon. At first, scientists thought it was part of a SpaceX rocket, but now the prevailing thinking is that it came from China’s space operations, which they have denied. Regardless of origin, it crashed on the Moon - and now there’s an image of the impact. From Gizmodo, the crash site is near the Hertzsprung Crater on the far side of the Moon and appears to have created two craters. Scientists are puzzled by this double crater - could it have been that the object was super large? Or just the angle that the debris landed? We’ll be following the mystery of the double crater as it unfolds.
But enough about space trash getting to the Moon, what about humans? Well over the last two weeks, we’ve made some real progress on that goal… Last week, the wet dress rehearsal of Artemis 1’s SLS rocket was a success. After a series of failures and delays, NASA was finally able to run through pre-flight procedures and perform a simulated countdown. But even this is not without a snag - a hydrogen leak was detected while fueling the rocket. This would have raised issues on the day of actual launch, but in this case, NASA “intentionally ‘masked’ [the] data” in order to continue the countdown. The Artemis Team still sees the rehearsal as a success, and as the last step Artemis needed before launch, the work lies ahead to get the rocket ready for a full launch, targeting a launch window at the end of August.
As for who will be in charge of the missions to get us to the Moon, we’ve got a whole bunch of shiny new options. NASA announced last Wednesday a new class of flight directors that adds seven more people to the roster - including Celestial Citizen Podcast guest, Diana Trujillo. They all bring an impressive wealth and variety of experience, which will come in pretty handy as they’ll be, in the words of acting NASA Chief Flight Director Emily Nelson, “critical in humanity’s return to the Moon and future exploration of Mars.” You can read more about them, as well as the full press release here.
In more lunar news, NASA’s cube satellite CAPSTONE is headed for the Moon after being launched out of New Zealand earlier this week. The cubesat will settle down in near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), the future zip code of the GATEWAY moon station. CAPSTONE will conduct stability testing and provide key orbital data for the Gateway, Orion, and Artemis missions.
Speaking of space stations, Cygnus —Northrop Grumman’s cargo spacecraft—gave the ISS a little boost! Before its planned destructive re-entry on Wednesday, Cygnus fired its main engine while docked to the ISS to adjust the station’s orbit for its upcoming operations. Until then, this had only been handled by the Russian Progress spacecraft, according to Space.com. This is a huge step for Cygnus and is just the latest in a series of upgrades since the expendable craft was first launched in 2013. The continual monitoring and improvement of Cygnus will be important as Northrop Grumman stated that “Cygnus is the basis of the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, or HALO, the first module planned for NASA’s Lunar Gateway which will orbit the moon and serve as a staging point for exploration of the lunar surface and enable future exploration beyond the moon.”
Netflix may have not renewed Space Force for another season, but that doesn’t mean the real Space Force is stopping. The National Space Intelligence Center will now be formally established at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base. It will be under the direction of a new unit, Delta 18, whose focus will be “analyzing foreign threats to the United States in the Space Domain.”
Additionally, Space Force and Boeing’s collaboration, the X-37B Space Plane continues to soar above us, just days away from breaking a record for orbital flight. As of Wednesday, the plane has logged a whopping 773 days in orbit, having been flying since May 17, 2020. The current record is 780 days, also held by X-37B. But don’t worry - there’s no pilot onboard the robotic plane. So although we might not have Top Gun 3: Dogfighting in Space, we can’t deny that a plane that’s been up in orbit since 2020 is pretty cool!
A Global Space
This week, there’s a lot of news from around the globe! So we created a new segment:
If you hadn’t heard from our international correspondent Chewbacca already, South Korea put satellites into orbit for the first time, on their rocket KSLV-2 or Nuri rocket. It was the rocket’s second flight - the first was last year and failed to deliver its payload, crashing just south of Australia.
NASA launched the first of three “sounding” rockets out of Australia’s commercial spaceport, the Arnhem Space Center. Not only is this the first rocket to leave Australian soil in 26 years, but it’s also NASA’s first commercial launch outside of the US. The Arnhem Space Center’s proximity to the equator is a key selling point to owner/operator Equatorial Launch Australia, as they hope it will entice more users to user their facility.
In other news, India launched “three satellites and an orbiting platform” early Thursday. The three satellites are owned by Singapore, and one of its satellites, DS-EO, will “provide full color images for land classification, and [serve] Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief needs” according to the Indian Space Research Organization. The orbiting platform will play host to in-orbit scientific experiments.
And lastly, China announced yesterday that its Tianwen-1 probe has photographed the entirety of the Martian surface. Having reached Mars with the Zhurong rover last May, the probe has spent the last two years orbiting the red planet, circling it over 1300 times. We can’t wait to see more photos as they get released!
Source: CNSA
Moonshot
If we’re going to get to space, we’re going to need a lot of help. In our Moonshots section, we’ll share highlights from some of the commercial companies that are taking us there:
Sierra Space has signed an agreement with the Turkish Space Agency for cooperation on human spaceflights and lunar missions down the line. The organizations have laid the foundation to work together on a variety of projects for the next five years.
OneWeb is starting back up again. After being delayed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the mega constellation has new launch agreements with SpaceX and NewSpace India Ltd. Speaking last week at the Fourth Summit for Space Sustainability, vice president of space infrastructure development and partnerships at OneWeb Maurizio Vanotti said that OneWeb will be “back on the launchpad in quarter four” and aims to complete the full deployment of the constellation by quarter two next year. By the end of 2023, Vanotti says that OneWeb hopes to have global coverage, 24/7. And in more good news from OneWeb, a prototype network in low Earth orbit is fully functioning and providing high speed internet to US troops at the remote Thule Air Base in Greenland. The internet is fast enough “to enable video conferencing, streaming video and interactive games.” Here’s hoping it also comes with subscriptions to HBO Max and Hulu since the only good thing on Netflix these days is Stranger Things.
Los Angeles based software startup Epsilon3 has raised $15 million to “expand its suite of space project management solutions.” With customers like Sierra Space, Virgin Galactic and the US Air Force, Epsilon3 hopes to create space tailored versions of programs to replace word processing software and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. And if you’re taking pitches for the name, how about Asteroid Field? ;)
Space Tweet of the Week
Space Reads!
Can’t get enough stellar content? Here are the pieces of space-adjacent news we’ve been reading this week.
From Wired: Here Comes the Sun to End Civilization
From SpaceNews.Com: Op-Ed: Deterring Aggression in Space
From The Daily Beast: Why There’s a Chance We Heard From Aliens Back in 1977
Things Found on the Internet…
And with that - you’re officially ready to dazzle friends and family this weekend with knowledge of global space happenings! Thanks for choosing us as source for your space news and we’ll be back here in two weeks for our next edition of Continuum.
A special thank you to Evan Yee for writing this week’s edition with me, and also Helen Floersh for additional writing support.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum