We've found 5,000 exoplanets and all I got was another NASA shirt
Toxic space propellant, a Russian conundrum, and more exoplanets than you can shake a stick at
Hello celestial citizens and Continuum readers, and welcome to the end of a week that had all of us here wondering if time is a social construct. In this week’s newsletter, we’ll learn that there might be more than one type of mercury in space and how a whistleblower and an environmental lawyer succeeded in making our future in space less toxic. And of course, we are bringing you all the latest headlines and compelling space reads so you don’t miss a quantum leap. Enjoy!
United Nations Says No to Ionized Mercury Propellant
by Joanna Thompson
Kevin Bell had never heard of mercury thrusters until one autumn day in 2018. Bell, an expert in environmental law, had just started a new job at the legal resource center Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEERS) when a call came in from a whistleblower with an unusual tip. A private space company intended to use a cheap, potentially toxic mercury-based propellant to power thrusters for internet satellite constellations, the source said. They intended to sell these thrusters to companies like SpaceX, OneWeb, and Kepler. Would PEERS be interested in looking into it?
The Ukraine War Complicates a Russian Space Conundrum
by Rahul Rao
When it launched later this year, Rosalind Franklin was supposed to be the next step in the world’s exploration of Mars. ESA would have provided the rover; Roscosmos, the Russian space agency would have provided the lander. The rover would have drilled under the Martian soil to find traces of life. Now, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rosalind Franklin has been mothballed as the European partners voted to suspend the mission. Roscosmos claims they’re now working on their own, independent Mars mission, but there’s no sign of what that might look like.
How Do Scientists Find Exoplanets?
by Jackie Appel
Last week, NASA announced that the astronomical community had reached a very exciting milestone: they confirmed the presence of over 5,000 exoplanets. A batch of 65 exoplanets tipped the official count of the NASA Exoplanet Archive over the line 30 years after the first exoplanets were spotted. “The field of exoplanets is growing exponentially,” said Andrew Boyle, a data analyst at NASA's Exoplanet Archive. “When we look back at a decade or two ago, we had no idea about all the different crazy and wild planetary systems we'd find out there.”
Top Headlines
This morning, Axiom-1 mission had a successful launch at 11:17 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission carries three paying customers and a retired astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) in what represents NASA’s first space tourism trip aboard the orbiting station. The crew will spend 20.5 hours in orbit before attempting to dock with the ISS tomorrow at 7:45 a.m. ET.
This week at the 37th annual Space Symposium, 23 top executives from the space industry signed the “Space Workforce 2030” Pledge in a commitment to advance diversity across the workforce. Signees include Michael Coglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, Larry James, Acting Director of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX. According to the pledge, by 2030 the companies agreed to accomplish a handful of “diversity equity and inclusion” initiatives, including to “significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups in [their] collective technical workforce” as well as working with universities “to increase the percentages of women and employees from underrepresented groups receiving aerospace engineering degrees to levels commensurate with overall engineering programs.”
Only a short 13.5 billion light years away, the farthest galaxy ever has been spotted. Named HD1, the galaxy was discovered by an international team of astronomers using an international team of telescopes. More than 1,200 hours of work was put in across the Subaru, VISTA, UK Infrared, and Spitzer Space telescopes. The research team will confirm the distance from Earth using the James Webb Space Telescope. In an effort to ascertain exactly what the galaxy is, the team proposed two ideas based on how extremely bright HD1 is in an ultraviolet light. The first: HD1 may be home to Population III stars, the universe’s first stars. The second: HD1 is a supermassive black hole about 100 million times the mass of our Sun, thus would be the earliest supermassive black hole known to humankind.
Netflix released “Return to Space”, a feature length documentary that chronicles the achievements made by Elon Musk and SpaceX. Directed by Academy Award winning duo Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin - the film features the highs and lows SpaceX encountered on the way to their mission to deliver astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS in May 2020. When speaking to Space.com about the process of making the film, the directing duo stated that they were interested in calling attention to the new era of humanity’s relationship with space.
On Thursday, Orbit Fab and Neutron Star Systems (NSS) announced a partnership for Sustainable Propulsion and Satellite Refueling. Both companies were members of the United States Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory’s Catalyst Accelerator program. This partnership is the beginning stage to increasing the range of refuellable propellants by combining the “NSS’s propellant-agnostic electric propulsion technology with Orbit Fab’s refueling interfaces and tankers”.
Planet announced its partnership with Amnesty International to tackle deforestation in Cambodia. The international non-governmental organization has been using Planet’s unique satellite capabilities to protect the 500,000 hectare Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. Planet’s satellites provide a unique data set with unprecedented accounts of global change. Amnesty International has been utilizing this data in a variety of ways, including tracking illegal activity within the sanctuary borders and detecting land near the sanctuary that has been cleared for road development or agriculture.
No internet for you SpaceX! In France at least. France’s highest administrative court ruled that French’s telecom provider ARCEP should have launched a public consultation before authorizing Starlink’s services this year, thus revoking their spectrum license and right to provide broadband services. Stéphen Kerckhove, managing director of Acting for the Environment, which is one of the organizations that submitted this appeal initially called for stronger regulations on mega constellations to protect views of the night sky and reduce risk of space debris.
The second countdown rehearsal for NASA’s SLS was scrubbed on April 4th. The decision was made to halt the wet dress rehearsal after the controllers were unable to open a vent valve on the mobile launcher required to start loading liquid hydrogen in the rocket’s core stage. It was later discovered that they were closed in such a way that they could not be opened remotely. NASA has not announced when the next rehearsal will be.
After publicly critiquing Twitter last month, Elon Musk has purchased 9.2% of their stock, making him the largest shareholder in the company. Tech analyst Dan Ives told CNN that he thinks Elon intends to force active change at Twitter, and even if he does not, his purchase may encourage other activists to buy stock as well. Twitter’s stock rose 22% after the announcement, and at close of trading on Friday, Musk’s stake was worth 2.9 billion. Monday morning it was 3.5 billion. Not a bad way to earn some passive income over the weekend.
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.
Read all about Amazon’s planned internet-from-space initiative and how it compares with SpaceX’s Starlink in a new article from Loren Grush at The Verge.
Since our readers know we love talking about space junk, check out this latest piece from Popular Science that walks through some pretty wild methods for debris cleanup…and yes there are harpoons involved.
And you thought going vegan was tough? Wait until you read about the diets of astronauts aboard the ISS.
Don’t sleep on this mind-blowing article from Wired about peptides that might be able to spontaneously form on cosmic dust - you can almost hear the swoons of the collective astrobiology community.
How do you measure the global carbon footprint of the entire astronomy community? Read this article to find out why an out-of-this-world profession is in need of some greener strategies to keep the home planet habitable.
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 that’s our newsletter for the week. We'll be back in two weeks time to bring you more of the best stories from across the universe. Don’t worry we’ll miss you too, but on the plus side, when we meet again we’ll be 14 days closer to Star Wars Day…but who’s counting?
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum