We Built This (Asteroid) City
We Built This (Asteroid) City
Bad news for VERITAS, solar storms, the Guardians get tactical, and…space doughnuts?
Hello Continuum readers and Celestial Citizens,
Hope everyone’s week was more stellar than a planetary parade! This week has been a busy one for all of us at Celestial Citizen as we prepped for the public release of our short film, “Take Up Space,” which sheds light on the gender discrimination and sexual harassment faced by women and non-binary individuals in the space industry. And, I also gave a candid enough interview about the film and my thoughts on gender equity in space, to ensure that this Women’s History Month would go down like a blazing piece of space debris. What can I say, I’m not the type to celebrate when there is still so much work to be done.
In other space-related film news, the trailer for Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” graced the interwebs this week…and I am more than a little bit disappointed to report that I saw only one person on the whole of space twitter celebrating this windfall for the space industry. To that person, I say — you go, Glenn Coco!
Dropping lines cooler than lunar ice, like “sometimes I think I feel more at home outside the Earth’s atmosphere,” and showcasing a cast that’s likely to have more chemistry than the Venusian atmosphere - you can bet I’ll be first in line on opening day of this film. Does the space industry know how lucky it is to be getting the Wes Anderson treatment? Likely not.
All the more reason for this extended and indulgent intro…and now the space beat you came here for.
Top Headlines
Changing Tides at NASA – Even with the White House’s 2024 budget request, NASA faces difficult project financing decisions in the new year. This week, the VERITAS mission – an on-track, on-budget mission that would map Venus using radar and infrared spectroscopy – was effectively postponed until at least 2028. While the VERITAS team takes the fall, other projects move full steam ahead. The four Artemis 2 crew members – the first to venture to the moon in half a century – will be announced on April 3rd. And after three decades at the agency, space operations head Kathy Lueders announced her retirement at the end of April, at which time she’ll hand the reins to her deputy Ken Bowersox. The first woman to head space operations and human spaceflight at the agency, Leuders leaves behind a lasting legacy.
It’s All Relative – The highly anticipated Terran 1 – the world’s first 3-D printed rocket created by Relativity Space – finally carried out its mission whimsically dubbed “Good Luck, Have Fun” last week. Despite a second stage failure, Relativity Space expressed satisfaction with the launch, celebrating that this was the first time a 3-D printed rocket made it to 'max-q.' Successful 3-D printed rockets could really change the game in the space industry, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on Relativity’s progress.
Black Holes and Revelations – Using a technique called gravitational lensing, astronomers were able to better examine a black hole hundreds of millions of light years away from Earth. In combination with Hubble images, this magnifying technique allowed scientists to confirm the monstrous size of the black hole, which is 30 times the mass of the sun.
Under the (Frozen) Sea – Scientists are breathing new life into old data yet again, having reexamined the radiation readings from NASA’s Voyager 2 and its 1984 trip to Uranus. The team discovered plasma particles which point to the fact that two of the planet’s moons, Ariel and Miranda, “may possess a liquid ocean beneath their frozen surface that's actively blasting plumes of material into space.”
All the Leaves are Brown, and the Sky is Aflame – Contrary to the demands of Adam McKay’s 2021 Netflix film, the people of Sacramento, California DID look up last week when streaks of light darted across the night sky. Though these strange beams sparked alien intrigue across social media, the reality is arguably more anxiety-inducing: what Californians witnessed were likely pieces of a discarded 683-pound antenna – decommissioned by JAXA in 2017 and dislodged from the ISS in 2020 – burning up as they reentered the atmosphere. As with the recent game of space junk dodgeball covered in our last newsletter, not to mention the “more than 50,000 additional satellites expected to launch and begin orbiting the Earth by 2030,” this incident begs for more space debris regulation – especially when it moves at 17,000 miles per hour.
Space Conflict – Ever wonder if we are nearing the day we wage our wars in space with TIE Fighters? As conflicts on Earth transition to outer space, the U.S. Space Force budget – revealed in more detail this week – focuses on becoming more “tactically responsive” in orbit. Of the $30 billion budget for 2024, $340 million will go towards intense virtual training for Guardians, or members of the force, to hone remote maneuvering skills like quickly repairing or replacing satellites incapacitated by an adversary's robotic arm. Simply put, “earthbound tactics don’t work in space” when it comes to military strategy; soldiers have no trenches to hide in, no way to sneak up on an opponent. To develop an entirely new language of war comes at a high price.
Classified Cargo – In terms of what the U.S. Space Force is doing now, well, it’s a bit under wraps. Next month, the United Launch Alliance will deploy the Delta 4-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, which will carry a classified surveillance satellite for the U.S. government. The only classification we have at this point is Major General Stephen Purdy calling this mission a “vitally important national security capability.”
Space Weather – California may be getting pummeled by record-setting rains, but it’s not the only place experiencing extraordinary weather. A solar storm – the strongest in nearly 6 years – blasted auroras as far south as Colorado and New Mexico this past week. The storm was triggered by a “stealth” CME, or coronal mass ejection, catching the National Space Weather Service and southwestern skywatchers off guard. While historically, auroras are most powerful around the equinoxes, rarely are they as intense and as far south as these were.
The JWST Download
Can confirm: that gamma ray burst from last October was the BOAT (brightest of all time).
Some gritty clouds on a distant planet are the source of the largest number of molecules ever identified at once on a planet outside of our solar system.
It’s like Jupiter, but hotter – The JWST found a gas giant that’s roasting around 2700 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Know thy star”: how the JWST is helping astronomers study the amount of radiation planets produce.
A Global Space
Russia – The nation’s choice to prioritize a military space program over a civilian one is taking its toll, especially after a string of Soyuz spacecraft coolant leaks. Now that the leaky Soyuz capsule has returned to Earth, engineers will begin investigating what went wrong. In addition to technical troubles, Russia also faces lost NASA contracts, the end of their ISS involvement, and the financial blow of Kazakhstan’s recent seizure of Roscosmos assets at the Baikonur spaceport earlier in March to settle a mounting debt. Russia’s space fate may lie in the yet to be completed Vostochny Cosmodrome, if only it can climb atop a mountain of scandal and construction issues.
ESA – As the industry evolves in this new technological era, with governments like that of the U.S. turning to commercial tech companies with aggressive development models, the European Space Agency is worried they’re taking a back seat. Only a decade ago, “Europe had 50% of the market,” recalls Cédric O, a member of the agency’s High Level Advisory Group (HLAG). “Today, we are almost out of the market.”
Canada – This week, Canada committed to staying on with the ISS until 2030, highlighting their participation in projects like the Lunar Gateway. This commitment follows that of Japan and the ESA last year. The nation will also be represented on the Artemis 2 mission, as one of the four astronauts – to be announced next week – will be Canadian.
Israel – Israel’s Defense Ministry successfully launched a surveillance satellite into orbit this past week. The satellite, named Ofek-13, cements the nation as a member in a fairly exclusive club – that is, a small group of countries that operate intelligence-gathering “reconnaissance satellites.”
China – Rumors of China’s internet mega constellation became a little more real this week, as the country’s Long March 5B rocket is now scheduled to launch the first satellites later this year. Also referred to as “Guowang,” translating to “national network,” the projected 13,000-satellite LEO broadband mega constellation could rival efforts like Starlink and OneWeb. While an exciting venture for the nation, the project may exacerbate already heightened tensions between China and NASA, the latter of which is growing concerned about the many unannounced, uncontrolled reentries of Chinese space hardware.
Australia — Two consortiums made up of local Australian space businesses recently received funding to design lunar rovers in partnership with NASA.
MOONSHOT
If we’re going to get to space, we’re going to need a lot of help. In our Moonshot section, we’ll share highlights from some of the commercial companies that are taking us there:
After waiting two weeks for answers, Virgin Orbit employees finally got one Thursday, and it’s grim. Unable to secure funding, the company will cease operations for the foreseeable future, laying off all but 100 employees.
Covered some weeks ago, a Japanese moon lander known as Hakuto-R may make history next month. If Hakuto-R successfully pulls off its lunar landing, it will be the first privately operated spacecraft to do so. The lander hyped its audience this week with a cheeky pic of the moon’s sunlit craters, captured as it slowly and steadily approaches the lunar surface.
AND SO MUCH MORE…that we decided to start sending MOONSHOT out every other Monday as its own newsletter — keep an eye out for that in a few days!
Space Reads!
Can’t get enough stellar content? Here are some pieces of space-adjacent news we’ve been reading:
In a modern equivalent of tying oneself to a tree, these Earth scientists figuratively strapped themselves to the ISS’s Global Ecosystems Dynamic Investigation (GEDI) instrument in order to save entire forests. By lobbying against its destruction, these scientists are responsible for the instrument’s continued efforts evaluating forest biodiversity and they are also responsible for the article’s opportunity to use the headline “Return of the Gedi.”
From groundbreaking insights about the “behavior of leukemia cells to the best ways of generating lab-grown steak,” dig in to see what zero gravity is doing for medicine.
Were you the data-obsessed kid making graphs on PowerPoint? If so, read on: the New York Times explains how satellite imaging experts used geospatial analytics to create a timeline and map of the storied Chinese balloon that rocked our world a month back.
When a setting sun marks the end of fasting during Ramadan, how does a Muslim astronaut observe the holiday when the ISS experiences 16 sunsets a day? Read about this and other religious adaptations astronauts have had to make in space.
Who do we owe for the chokehold Chat GPT has on us right now? From AI to 3D printing, uncover how space exploration is responsible for pushing technological advancement past new limits and at a rapid speed.
New to space tourism, this little donut journeyed 110,000 feet up into space for the sake of sweet, sweet content. Check out his angles on this North Carolinian food truck’s social media page.
Just as customs will deny you that tropical fruit you hoped to sneak onto the plane, planetary protection policies are meant to keep planets like Mars safe from contamination. But what do these policies mean for the future of human exploration of the red planet and how do we balance objectives?
And that’s a wrap on the space news this week! A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and Evan Yee for editing support! 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 someone who looks at you the way this girl looks at the Mars Curiosity rover. Until next time…
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
This edition of Continuum Newsletter was brought to you by Gold Sponsor, Multiverse Media, and Silver Sponsor, the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program.
