Some Like It Hot
A Starship launch ends once again in fiery destruction, NASA makes progress with laser communication, and North Korea welcomes the global heat from their alleged spy satellite launch.
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
Hope you all had a gratitude-filled Thursday with friends and family, and also found some opportunities to be thankful for the big, beautiful cosmos we’re all floating around in.
And now that it is socially acceptable to break out the Christmas (for those who celebrate) tunes, I share with you this mellow, little jam from an aptly named band, Lunar Vacation.
And now, the space beat you came here for...
Top Headlines
It’s Getting Hot (Stage Separation) In Here – Welcome to our second installment of analyzing a Starship annihilation over Boca Chica. There may be no dust puns this round, but we’re still going to examine the November 18th SpaceX test launch from various angles. For those of you who voted in our poll last newsletter, the minority 38% should be hyped to claim victory, as SpaceX did end up nabbing their last regulatory approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) required before launching at the absolute bleeding edge of last week. The test flight – from the new-and-improved launch mount – was technically an improvement from the company’s April attempt, this time achieving hot stage separation, the first successful real-world trial of this method on a rocket of this size. The booster then exploded over the Gulf, the upper stage following in those same footsteps after reaching suborbital space. While in a perfect world, the booster would have slowly descended back to Earth and the upper stage would have flown over Hawaii before splashing down, the test was still met with claps and cheers of success. Now, many of us have had the displeasure of watching some “fail upwards” while others are not granted the same grace. State and federal regulators seem to have paved a smooth path for SpaceX to advance, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the bipartisan Texas representatives who pressed the FWS in the final stretch. Still, we can’t deny the SpaceX approach – government aid aside – has led to reliable space travel. The Falcon 9 failed four times before achieving successful stage separation, and today it’s the world’s most frequently launched rocket. Many argue that these explosive “failures“ are really just the progress of rocket science that is typically hidden behind closed doors; SpaceX is simply giving the public a peek behind the curtain. Still, we should stay vigilant here; the global space race creates a certain demand for success that could foster a potentially dangerous leniency. After all, we’re talking about future human Artemis passengers as well as the present-day human workers building these rockets; while some lawmakers are seriously examining the workplace safety accusations reported by Reuters a couple weeks back, others are focused on the next launch license. Big ethical questions aside, Starship’s intact mount and successful launch deluge system will likely be SpaceX’s golden ticket to a speedy approval process.
Orion – Just as SpaceX charges toward a human transport to and from the Moon, NASA continues to cautiously refine their transport to and from Earth. At a November 17th meeting, the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee discussed the Orion crew capsule, scheduled to deliver Artemis astronauts to cislunar orbit late next year. In 2022, the Orion spacecraft spent nearly a month circling the moon before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, concluding Artemis’s first mission. Almost a year later, Orion engineers are still studying erosion observed on Orion’s heat shield, caused by that always-spicy Earth reentry. While the erosion did not damage the spacecraft itself – thanks to a nice margin of Avcoat, or protective material – the team still plans to identify the root cause of the damage by “late next spring,” in hopes of avoiding it altogether next time. Of course, clarity on the heat shield will have to come before any astronauts take off in Artemis 2, so we could be looking at a schedule push if the Orion erosion remains a mystery.
Major Lasers – A challenge that has long plagued deep space travel is communication efficiency, prompting engineers to develop laser transceivers to replace or at least augment radio techniques. Last week, with their Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, NASA successfully received a laser beam message from 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away, the farthest distance yet for optical communication technology. Laser, or infrared light waves are tighter than radio waves, allowing for more data to be transmitted at a time; these encoded messages are then picked up by receivers on the ground, though they are invisible to the naked eye. Sneaky. The agency hitched the DSOC to Psyche, the asteroid probe launched on October 13th, hoping to demonstrate optical messaging from deep space distances similar to that of Mars.
Let’s Split It – Speaking of efficient communication (you are welcome – encouraged, even – to read that sarcastically), the White House released a long-awaited proposal last week clarifying oversight on emerging private space endeavors, such as in-space servicing and commercial space stations. The proposed arrangement divides regulation between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce, both of which will expand their current purview to be more inclusive of emerging technology. The move is not just a nice-to-have but a need-to-have, in order to uphold the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s requirement for nations to ensure non-government space activities are properly supervised. On the note of international space regulation, the World Radiocommunication Conference, or WRC-23 kicked off this week in Dubai, where the U.S. has representation from agencies such as NASA, the Department of Commerce, and the FCC. Along with the other nations present at the conference, the U.S. has and will continue to make efforts to balance spectrum allocations between private and government priorities. U.S. Ambassador for cyberspace and digital policy, Nathaniel Fick acknowledges that this harmony is no easy task, as the conference includes “193 UN member states, all of which are sovereign, and all of which have their own points of view.”
The JWST Download
Following its call to action, the Webb has produced a detailed view of Sagittarius C, a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core. Complete with a protostar cluster, “chaotic” ionized hydrogen emissions and infrared dark clouds, this imagery will give astronomers unparalleled insight into star formation. Here’s hoping Lady Gaga returns to voice the massive protostar 30 times the size of our sun in the inevitable space remake of A Star Is Born.
A study published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters voiced the importance of “teenage galaxies,” old enough to have formed some stars but still experiencing the volatility of growth. Webb has looked closely to see that these galaxies are chemically immature, but what we want to know is if it’s listened closely enough to hear Iron Maiden emanating from these teen star factories?
Keeping the JWST humble this week is the Gemini South telescope, which recently captured a foreboding image of the violent wake of a two spiral galaxy collision one billion years ago. We say “foreboding” because the image serves as a window into the fate of our Milky Way, which is destined to merge with the Andromeda galaxy. It’s only scheduled for 4 billion years from now.
A Global Space
North Korea – Perhaps, “third time's the charm” for North Korea, who (allegedly) launched a reconnaissance satellite via a Chollima-1 rocket on Tuesday, after two previous failures. Whether or not this is actually true, the claim has serious implications for the nation, with South Korea suspending a surveillance pact – part of a 2018 military agreement designed to keep peninsula tensions at bay – and resuming their reconnaissance efforts at the inter-Korean border. FWIW, there is yet to be confirmation of the satellite’s arrival in orbit from any other entity outside of North Korea, and the nation does have a history of, erm, embellishing the truth?
Russia – Russia is getting SIRIUS about their space program – SIRIUS-23, that is. With the year-long deep space analog similar to NASA’s CHAPEA, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBPM) will examine the effects of human isolation inevitable in deep space travel. The 360-day mission commenced on November 14th, and comes after three previous missions within the Scientific International Research In Unique terrestrial Station (SIRIUS) program. Unlike CHAPEA, SIRIUS-23 does not simulate life on Mars but life of an astronaut exploring the moon, including flybys of the rocky body, landings and remote roving operations. SIRIUS-23 is also unique from its predecessors in that the volunteer group is composed of more women than men, and without NASA’s involvement it is completely Russian-speaking.
Australia – It’s been a busy couple weeks down under, with Australia announcing and opening submissions for its 24th annual space awards, to be held in May 2024. Previous awards have gone to prominent players such as solid rocket fuel manufacturer Black Sky Aerospace, as well as to individuals like Senior Engineer and Project Manager Sarah Cannard from Nova Systems, who went on to become a TEDxSydney speaker this past September. Additionally, the Australian Space Agency (ASA) is holding a public vote to name their sovereign lunar rover, having narrowed 8,000 submissions to four meaningful, “quintessentially Australian” options: Coolamon, Kakirra, Mateship and Roo-ver. Were we hoping to get Bluey (an actual submission) back on the ticket? Who’s to say. Not that we could do anything about it, as the election is limited to Australian residents only, perhaps to avoid a repeat of John Oliver’s interference in the New Zealand’s Bird of the Century competition. And yes, we did check their terms and conditions.
China – Last week, a research team out of Arizona found that China’s Chang’e 5-T1 booster – left behind after a 2014 launch – plus an attached, unknown payload are responsible for two nearly identical lunar craters that have puzzled the space community since their formation last year. While crashes of defunct spacecraft on the moon’s surface are nothing new, the fact that these two craters were about the same size meant that the two perpetrators were separate yet roughly equal in mass. So we know there was something riding along with the booster, but we may never know what, given that Chinese officials have rejected the findings.
Scotland – Hope is not lost, but perhaps halted at the UK spaceport-in-progress based on Shetland, an archipelago north of Scotland. The Daily Record reports that one of the SaxaVord Spaceport’s construction contractors spent roughly €1 million out of pocket before dropping off the project, a debt that still has yet to be paid. Though private investors as well as the UK Space Agency have contributed to the spaceport and SaxaVord claims the project is “firmly on track,” with “launches in the coming months,” German launch provider HyImpulse – while still declaring loyalty to SaxaVord – has booked its maiden flight from Australia. We would love to see the UK complete its first vertical satellite launch facility, but the proof will be in the pudding paper.
Space Reads!
There’s a lot of talk about possible ISS successors, but what will happen to the ISS post-retirement? Like that old, cat-mangled couch you have to pay a junk-removal service to collect from the curb, the ISS will cost NASA a pretty penny to safely deorbit. Oh International Space Station, how we hate to see you go – and we also don’t love to pay for you to leave.
In honor of the JWST’s mission to
Mordorthe center of the Milky Way, composer Sophie Kastner translated telescopic data into music, as part of NASA’s “sonification project.” You musicians out there can even download the sheet music.Engineers created a simulation of the actual 1969 Apollo 12 lunar landing – or as skeptics would say, a simulation of a deep fake – in preparation for future Artemis missions. Take a peek at the colorful results of the supercomputer.
The International Astronomical Union recognizes five official dwarf planets in our solar system – yes, there are more planets in our solar system – and we now know a bit more about one of them, so far away that it takes 557 Earth years to orbit the sun.
While “generative AI has taken the world by storm,” from ChatGPT to Musk’s always-elegant Grok, the risk of deep fakes remains as true in the space industry as it does in others.
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 so we can keep putting out more space content.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
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