On Destroying Space or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Black Holes
An explainer on space’s destructive systems, a launch from Blue Origin, SLS wet dress rehearsal, and our latest roundup of moonshots
Hello celestial citizens and Continuum readers, this week has already been chock-full of space news and we still have a weekend launch and SLS wet dress rehearsal to look forward to! Not to mention, part three of Obi-Wan Kenobi just dropped on Disney+...what a time to be alive.
In this edition, we’re covering the self-destructive tendencies of space, the upcoming Blue Origin NS-21 flight, newly-awarded NASA contracts for spacesuit design, and of course, all the top stories for the week. Plus, we’ve added a new segment called “Moonshot” which will cover all the latest from the commercial space sector. This past week was a big one for funding announcements, so definitely check it out to stay in-the-know. 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…
How Space Destroys Itself
by Jackie Appel
Recently, a multi-national team of scientists detected a record-breaking stellar system: a black widow binary in which the two primary stars orbit each other every 62 minutes. Named after the species of spider where the large females are known for devouring their much smaller mates, black widow binaries are composed of a bigger pulsar slowly destroying a much less energetic companion star.
The system reiterates one very important truth: space isn’t safe — not for humans and not for celestial bodies. For a human, the vacuum of space means death and destruction. For the planets, stars, moons, and other objects that populate the universe, it’s each other they need to worry about.
Top Headlines
Clear your calendars, because this weekend’s gonna be a big one! First up, Blue Origin’s NS-21 has set a new launch date! As we know, the space industry is no stranger to delays and rescheduling. NS-21 was originally slated to launch on May 24, but after a back up system failed to perform as expected, Blue Origin delayed the launch. Now, we can look forward to THIS Saturday, June 4, when six more commercial astronauts will take to space. The crew includes Katya Echazarreta, the first Mexican-born woman going to space, and Evan Dick, who will be flying on New Shepard for a second time.
NASA will begin another attempt at a wet dress rehearsal for SLS. Call to stations will be on June 5, with the intended rollout of SLS to start at midnight. The wet dress rehearsal consists of “filling the core and upper stage of the rocket with 730,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and performing a simulated countdown without igniting the engine.” NASA remains optimistic that SLS will launch later this year, potentially as early as July. SLS has previously attempted a wet dress rehearsal three times to date without success - so I guess as the saying goes, fourth time’s the charm…?
Work will continue on China’s Tiangong Space Station, or “Celestial Palace.” China will be sending three astronauts to continue work on the station, despite finding a potential launch jammer near the site earlier this week. They expect Tiangong will be completed this year, with two more laboratory modules slated to go up in July and October. If Tiangong is completed, China will be the only country to operate its own space station. As US and Russia relations become increasingly strained, it is unknown if Roscosmos will pursue a relationship with China on their new venture.
The uncrewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner was (mostly) a success! The Spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral and docked on the ISS for four days after which it undocked and landed in New Mexico. Starliner experienced a few snags - at one point losing communication with its GPS systems, and at another experiencing a main thruster malfunction (which was mitigated by other thrusters), but overall the mission was a success. Boeing and NASA will plan on a crewed flight soon, which will add Starliner as an option to bring astronauts up to the ISS, alongside SpaceX.
This past week NASA’s budget was criticized by members of the House Science Committee… for asking for less money? In their 2023 budget NASA is asking for less money than last year to fund a telescope that would study near Earth objects. Last year, the agency asked for $143.2 million - this year, a paltry $39.9 million. This reduction comes from NASA’s intent to “support higher priority missions,” like the Mars Sample Return and Europa Clipper. Subcommittee members criticized this move, citing the urgency posed by the decadal survey to establish this telescope that would aid in “detecting 90% of hazardous objects [in space] at least 140 meters across.”
They don’t call it Ingenuity for nothing! The tiny helicopter on Mars undertook a record breaking flight at the beginning of April: a distance of 2,310 feet, at a speed of 12 miles per hour, while flying roughly 33 feet above the surface. This past week, NASA released video from the flight - a series of black and white images that give us a sense of what it would be like to glide over a grayscale Mars. With Ingenuity hibernating for the Martian winter, we can’t wait to see what other images we’ll get back when spring arrives. This also might be time to petition for Ingenuity day on Mars - If the helicopter sees its shadow, there might be another 6 weeks of dust storms!
Soon there might be another type of rainbow in the sky - well kind of. NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has chosen to advance a diffractive solar sails project to the final phase of the program. These sails, in theory, would use tiny grates in the sail material to diffract light in all directions, utilizing the sunlight more efficiently than other solar sail designs. This would also cause the sails to appear to take on a rainbow pattern when under light. Amber Dubill and her team at Johns Hopkins University, as well as co-investigator Grover Swartzlander who led the project in its first two NIAC phases, will have two years and two million dollars to develop the product.
Imagine you were mushroom hunting in a lush forest but you only picked the mushrooms that were easy to reach. What about all the tiny nooks and crannies? Would you check if there were mushrooms there? Now imagine those mushrooms were… black holes. This is kind of what happened to faculty-graduate students Sheila Kannapan, Mugdha Polimera and their team at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where they hunt for black holes across the universe. They applied new thinking to examining dwarf galaxies, which previously had been tossed aside for black hole study in favor of bigger and brighter galaxies. After extensive research and simulations, the team concluded that, “highly star forming dwarf galaxies contain a growing massive black hole,” which led Polimera to discover that growing massive black holes were more common in dwarf galaxies than previously thought. Further research on these black holes may reveal more information about how our Milky Way’s supermassive black hole was formed.
Moonshot
And now, introducing our new segment: Moonshot - if we’re going to get to space, we’re going to need a lot of help. Here’s some highlights from the commercial companies that are taking us there:
This week, Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace were selected by NASA “to advance spacewalking capabilities in low-Earth orbit and at the Moon.” Through 2034, the companies will design spacesuits to aid NASA in lunar exploration and spacewalks!
Ursa Major, a privately funded rocket propulsion company announced its Arroway engine - a “200,000-pound thrust reusable liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine for medium and heavy launch.” They’re available for order now - with initial hot fire testing in 2023 and delivery in 2025. Arroway joins a very small group of engines that can replace the Russian made engines that are no longer available to the US.
Astroforge closed on a “$13 million round of ‘seed-plus’ funding” last week. With the goal of mining platinum on asteroids to sell on Earth, Astroforge is planning the launch of a satellite in 2023 which will perform a refining demonstration in low Earth orbit. The company is also planning two deep space missions in the future.
Lunar Outpost also closed on a seed funding round of $12 million. With this funding, the company aims to “launch a new class of autonomous lunar rovers, deploy Lunar Outpost’s robotic technologies in additional environments, and invest in new technologies to improve its existing platforms.”
And lastly this week, Stratolaunch unveiled the test version of their Talon-A aircraft TA-0. TA-0 will be carried into low earth orbit by the company’s gargantuan Stratolaunch Roc aircraft, and will be used to test the release mechanism from the Roc, in preparations for a rocket-powered Talon-A.
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 The Atlantic: What Really Happens When Mercury is Retrograde
From The New York Times: Killer Asteroids are Hiding in Plain Sight. A New Tool Helps Spot Them.
From Wired: How Ants Inspired a New Way to Measure Snow with Space Lasers
From NPR: What Does a Black Hole Sound Like? NASA Has An Answer
Continuum Podcast
Only have time for the highlights? Check out our companion podcast! Whether you’re a space enthusiast or just starting to look up at the stars, we’ll give you a quick rundown of all the biggest space news headlines every other week.
Things Found on the Internet…
And now you are officially caught up on the latest and greatest from the space industry this week! Thanks for reading and taking your celestial citizenship seriously enough to stay up-to-date on all the stellar happenings. We’ll see you back here in two weeks for our next edition of Continuum.
Big thanks to Evan Yee for co-writing this week’s edition with me, Helen Floersh for additional writing support and hosting Continuum Podcast, Victor Figueroa for podcast sound editing, and Brooke Edwards for research contributions.
Keep it celestial everybody!
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum