Science

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The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14

Science, Space, spacex, starship / /

Excitement guaranteed —

This third flight has a reasonable chance of success.

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SpaceX's Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

SpaceX

After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest rocket took flight.

Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on the social media site X, the company posted a link to watch “Starship’s third flight test” at 7: 30 am ET (11: 30 UTC) on March 14. Published on Tuesday morning, the social media post was ‘hidden,’ but somehow discovered late Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, this is a credible date that the company is working toward. Following the fueling test on Sunday night at the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, the hardware appears to be in good shape. Although SpaceX has yet to receive its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency recently announced that it has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight in November. So a mid-March launch date is plausible from a regulatory standpoint.

The first two Starship flights in April and November last year ultimately failed, but each of the experimental launches provided valuable data. On the second mission four months ago, the first-stage Super Heavy booster performed a nominal flight before it separated from the Starship upper stage. The Starship vehicle exploded a few minutes into its flight due to a leak during a liquid oxygen vent.

Based upon learnings from these first two flights, this next mission, with upgraded hardware and flight software, likely has a reasonable chance of success. Among the milestones SpaceX will seek to complete during this test flight are:

  • Nominal first-stage performance, followed by a controlled descent of the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico
  • Starship separation from the first stage using “hot staging,” meaning engine ignition while the first stage is still firing its engines
  • Starship reaching an orbital velocity and engine shutdown
  • Early-stage testing of in-space refueling technology inside the propellant tanks of Starship
  • Controlled splashdown of Starship near the Hawaiian islands after flying around two-thirds of the planet.

SpaceX is seeking to demonstrate the basic flight capabilities of Starship so that it can move into a more operational phase with the big rocket. The company wants to begin deploying larger Starlink satellites from the vehicle this year, which will enable direct-to-cell phone Internet connectivity.

Additionally, a higher cadence of missions will allow the company to begin developing the technology and procedures needed for the in-space storage and transfer of propellant for deep-space missions. This is a necessary step for SpaceX to fulfill its obligations to NASA for the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon later this decade.

In a recent update, the company said more Starships are ready for flight, so a higher cadence is possible if this month’s flight is a success. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration disclosed that SpaceX is seeking to launch Starship at least nine times this year.

The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14 Read More »

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SpaceX just showed us what every day could be like in spaceflight

Science, Space, Space X / /
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Between Sunday night and Monday night, SpaceX teams in Texas, Florida, and California supervised three Falcon 9 rocket launches and completed a full dress rehearsal ahead of the next flight of the company’s giant Starship launch vehicle.

This was a remarkable sequence of events, even for SpaceX, which has launched a mission at an average rate of once every three days since the start of the year. We’ve reported on this before, but it’s worth reinforcing that no launch provider, commercial or government, has ever operated at this cadence.

SpaceX has previously had rockets on all four of its active launch pads. But what SpaceX accomplished over a 24-hour period was noteworthy. Engineers inside at least four control centers were actively overseeing spacecraft and rocket operations simultaneously.

The sprawl of SpaceX

On Sunday night at the Starbase facility in South Texas, teams loaded more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) Starship rocket slated to lift off as soon as this month on the third full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s next-generation launcher.

This was likely the final major test before SpaceX launches the third Starship test flight. The countdown rehearsal of the fully stacked rocket ended as planned at T-minus 10 seconds, just before the booster’s Raptor engines were ignited; SpaceX then drained the vehicle of propellant. SpaceX previously test-fired the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage separately.

The schedule for the next Starship launch hinges on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is reviewing SpaceX’s actions to correct the malfunctions that occurred on the second Starship test flight in November. Last week, the FAA announced it closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight, which was largely successful in demonstrating significant progress on SpaceX’s privately funded rocket program. But the test flight ended with explosions of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, prompting an FAA investigation.

On the next Starship flight, SpaceX wants to perform some early-stage testing of the in-space refueling technology it will need for later Starship flights, such as missions to the Moon for NASA.

SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

At the same time that SpaceX’s team in Texas managed the Starship countdown rehearsal, another group of engineers and technicians on Florida’s Space Coast stepped through a Falcon 9 launch countdown Sunday night. Three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut strapped into their seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket, then waited for liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday).

The Falcon 9 launch of NASA’s Crew-8 mission Sunday night was the first of three Falcon 9 launches over the next 20 hours. Next in line was a launch at 5: 05 pm EST (2205 UTC) Monday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 53 small payloads on SpaceX’s 10th Transporter rideshare mission. The customer payloads on this Falcon 9 launch included MethaneSAT, an $88 million satellite funded primarily by philanthropic donations to monitor methane greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Then, less than two hours later, at 6: 56 pm EST (2356 UTC), a Falcon 9 rocket took off from SpaceX’s most active launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission delivered 23 more Starlink broadband satellites into orbit for SpaceX’s commercial Internet network. At 1 hour and 51 minutes, this was the shortest time separation to date between two SpaceX launches.

All three Falcon 9 launches ended with landings of the rockets’ first-stage boosters.

A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

Enlarge / A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

While controllers at Starbase, Cape Canaveral, and Vandenberg looked after these three Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX engineers at the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles tracked the performance and progress of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station, where it docked early Tuesday. Next week, another SpaceX capsule, Crew Dragon Endurance, will depart the station to bring a different four-person crew back to Earth.

SpaceX, which now has more than 13,000 employees, pulled off a similar rapid-fire launch cadence in mid-February with three Falcon 9 launches in approximately 23 hours, but this time included the additional complexity of operating a Dragon crew capsule en route to the ISS, plus the Starship countdown in Texas. While all this was going on, a handful of ground controllers also monitored the health of the Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the space station.

SpaceX just showed us what every day could be like in spaceflight Read More »

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Scientists get dung beetles to collect DNA samples for biodiversity studies

beetles, biodiversity, Biology, DNA, peru, Science / /

High tech/low tech solutions —

Researchers are sequencing the DNA of wildlife using dung beetle stomach contents.

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Image of forest-covered hillsides and a river winding through the jungle.

Enlarge / The Manu area of Peru contains a number of ecological zones.

Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve is the largest rainforest reserve in the world and one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Manu is a UNESCO-protected area the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined, covering an area where the Amazon River Basin meets the Andes Mountain Range. This combination forms a series of unique ecosystems, where species unknown to science are discovered every year. The remoteness of the region has helped preserve its biodiversity but adds to the challenges faced by the scientists who are drawn to study it.

Trapping wildlife for research in the dense jungle is impractical, especially considering the great distances researchers have to travel within Manu, either through the forest or on the waterways. It’s an expensive proposition that inevitably exposes the trapped animals to some amount of risk. Trapping rare and endangered animals is even more difficult and comes with significant risks to the animal.

Trapping beetles, however, does not pose the same challenges. They’re easy to catch, easy to transport, and, most importantly, carry the DNA of many animals in and on them. Any animal a biologist could hope to study leaves tracks and droppings in the forest, and the beetles make a living by cleaning that stuff up.

Beetles as DNA collectors

Beetles are plentiful in the rainforest, and the species that Alejandro Lopera-Toro’s team studies are not endangered. The study does mean that the beetles are killed, but overall, the effect on the ecosystem is minimal.

According to Peruvian biologist and team member Patricia Reyes, “The impact depends on the abundance and reproductive cycle of each species. Reducing the beetle population could have an effect on their predators, such as birds, reptiles, and other insects. The health of the forest depends on the beetles’ function to break down organic matter and disperse seeds. Despite not having found any effect on the ecosystem so far, we still limit how many individual beetles we collect and identify sensitive areas where collecting is prohibited. We promote sustainable methods of collection to mitigate possible impacts in the future.”

Getting beetles to do the work of collecting DNA for researchers took some adjustments. The traps normally used to study beetles cause the beetles to fall into a chemical solution, which kills and preserves them until they are collected. However, those traps contaminate the beetle’s stomach contents, making the DNA unusable. Lopera-Toro’s traps keep them alive, protecting the delicate strands of DNA that the beetles have worked so hard to collect. He and his team also go out into the forest to collect live beetles by hand, carefully recording the time and place each one was collected. Starting in July 2022, the team has been collecting dung beetles across Manu’s diverse ecosystems up and down the altitude gradient, from 500 to 3,500 meters above sea level.

In addition to obtaining DNA from the beetles, researchers also use them as test subjects for metabolic studies.

Enlarge / In addition to obtaining DNA from the beetles, researchers also use them as test subjects for metabolic studies.

Elena Chaboteaux

The Manu Biological Station team is using Nanopore technology to sequence the DNA found in the beetles’ stomachs, with the goal of finding out what animals are represented there. They specifically targeted dung beetles because their feeding habits depend on the feces left by larger animals. The main advantage to the Nanopore minION device is that it can separate long lengths of DNA on-site. “Long nanopore sequencing reads provide enhanced species identification, while real-time data analysis delivers immediate access to results, whether in the field or in the lab,” according to the Nanopore website.

Biologist Juliana Morales acknowledges that Nanopore still has a high rate of error, though as this new technology is refined, that issue is continually decreasing. For the purposes of the Manu Biological Station team, the margin of error is a price they’re willing to pay to have devices they can use in the rainforest. Since they’re not studying one specific species, but rather building a database of the species present in the region, they don’t need to get every nucleotide correct to be able to identify the species. They do, however, need a strand long enough to differentiate between a common woolly monkey and a yellow-tailed woolly monkey.

Though the researchers prefer to sequence DNA on-site with Nanopore minION devices, when they have more than a dozen samples to analyze, they send them to the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. It’s a logistical nightmare to send samples from the Peruvian jungle to Canada, but Lopera-Toro says it’s worth it. “The University of Guelph can process hundreds of DNA samples per day. I’m lucky if we can process 10 samples a day at the [Manu] lab.”

In the most recent batch of 76 samples, they analyzed the stomach contents of 27 species from 11 genera of beetles. From those 76 samples, they identified DNA of howler monkeys, spider monkeys, red brocket deer, night monkeys, peccaries, mouse opossum, Rufous-breasted wood quail, and two species of armadillos. Oddly, the beetles had also eaten about a dozen species of fruit, and one had consumed pollen from a tropical plant called syngonium.

The implications could be vast. “The dung beetle that ate the jaguar’s excrement will tell us not only the DNA of the jaguar but also what the jaguar is eating,” said Lopera-Toro. “If the jaguar kills a peccary and eats 80 percent of the peccary, beetles will eat some of the other 20 percent. If a beetle walks over a jaguar print or saliva, there could be traces of jaguar DNA on the beetle. We analyze the stomach contents and the outside of the beetle. We have an endless number of options, opportunities, and questions we can answer from studying these small insects. We can see the bigger picture of what is happening in the jungle.”

Scientists get dung beetles to collect DNA samples for biodiversity studies Read More »

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Daily Telescope: A new Webb image reveals a cosmos full of galaxies

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

Deep field —

See a galaxy as it was just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

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This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

Enlarge / This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, et. al.

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s March 5, and today’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope.

It’s a new deep-field image from the infrared space telescope, showcasing a portion of the “Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey” region of space that has previously been observed by other space telescopes, including Hubble and Chandra. Almost everything in this image that doesn’t have lines emanating from it is a galaxy.

Such deep field images are poetic in that they’re just showing a tiny fraction of a sky—the width of this image is significantly less than a single degree of the night sky—and yet they reveal a universe teeming with galaxies. We live in a cosmos that is almost incomprehensibly large.

If you click through to the Webb telescope site you will find an annotated image that highlights a galaxy in the far lower-right corner. It is galaxy GN-z11, seen at a time just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, et. al.

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Daily Telescope: A new Webb image reveals a cosmos full of galaxies Read More »

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NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission

Maxar, NASA, osam-1, satellite servicing, Science, Space / /
Artist's illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

NASA

NASA has canceled an over-budget, behind-schedule mission to demonstrate robotic satellite servicing technology in orbit, pulling the plug on a project that has cost $1.5 billion and probably would have cost nearly $1 billion more to get to the launch pad.

The On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission, known as OSAM-1, would have grappled an aging Landsat satellite in orbit and attempted to refuel it, while also demonstrating how a robotic arm could construct an antenna in space. The spacecraft for the OSAM-1 mission is partially built, but NASA announced Friday that officials decided to cancel the project “following an in-depth, independent project review.”

The space agency cited “continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges” for the decision to cancel OSAM-1.

Mission creep

The mission’s cost has ballooned since NASA officially kicked off the project in 2016. The mission’s original scope called for just the refueling demonstration, but in 2020, officials tacked on the in-orbit assembly objective. This involved adding a complex piece of equipment called the Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER), essentially a 16-foot-long (5-meter) robotic arm to assemble seven structural elements into a single Ka-band communications antenna.

The addition of SPIDER meant the mission would launch with three robotic arms, including two appendages needed to grab onto the Landsat 7 satellite in orbit for the refueling demonstration. With this change in scope, the name of the mission changed from Restore-L to OSAM-1.

A report by NASA’s inspector general last year outlined the mission’s delays and cost overruns. Since 2016, the space agency has requested $808 million from Congress for Restore-L and OSAM-1. Lawmakers responded by giving NASA nearly $1.5 billion to fund the development of the mission, nearly double what NASA said it wanted.

Restore-L, and then OSAM-1, has always enjoyed support from Congress. The mission was managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) was a key backer of NASA missions run out of Goddard, including the James Webb Space Telescope. She was the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee when Congress started funding Restore-L in late 2015.

At one time, NASA projected the Restore-L mission would cost between $626 million and $753 million and could be ready for launch in the second half of 2020. That didn’t happen, and the mission continued facing delays and cost increases. The most recent public schedule for OSAM-1 showed a launch date in 2026.

In 2020, after reshaping the Restore-L mission to become OSAM-1, NASA formally laid out a budget for the renamed mission. At the time, NASA said it would cost $1.78 billion to design, build, launch, and operate. An independent review board NASA established last year to examine the OSAM-1 mission estimated the total project could cost as much as $2.35 billion, according to Jimi Russell, a NASA spokesperson.

The realities of the satellite servicing market have also changed since 2016. There are several companies working on commercial satellite servicing technologies, and the satellite industry has shifted away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, as OSAM-1 would have demonstrated with the Landsat 7 Earth-imaging satellite.

Instead, companies are focusing more on extending satellite life in other ways. Northrop Grumman has developed the Mission Extension Vehicle, which can latch onto a satellite and provide maneuvering capability without cutting into the customer spacecraft to refuel it. Other companies are looking at satellites that are designed, from the start, with refueling ports. The US military has a desire to place fuel depots and tankers in orbit to regularly service its satellites, giving them the ability to continually maneuver and burn propellant without worrying about running out of fuel.

NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission Read More »

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This rare 11th-century Islamic astrolabe is one of the oldest yet discovered

astrolabes, astronomy, history of science, Science / /

An instrument from Verona —

“A powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, & Christians over 100s of years.”

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Close up of the Verona astrolabe showing Hebrew inscribed (top left) above Arabic inscriptions

Enlarge / Close-up of the 11th-century Verona astrolabe showing Hebrew (top left) and Arabic inscriptions.

Federica Gigante

Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante is an expert on Islamic astrolabes. So naturally she was intrigued when the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy, uploaded an image of just such an astrolabe to its website. The museum thought it might be a fake, but when Gigante visited to see the astrolabe firsthand, she realized it was not only an authentic 11th-century instrument—one of the oldest yet discovered—it had engravings in both Arabic and Hebrew.

“This isn’t just an incredibly rare object. It’s a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, and Christians over hundreds of years,” Gigante said. “The Verona astrolabe underwent many modifications, additions, and adaptations as it changed hands. At least three separate users felt the need to add translations and corrections to this object, two using Hebrew and one using a Western language.” She described her findings in a new paper published in the journal Nuncius.

As previously reported, astrolabes are actually very ancient instruments—possibly dating as far back as the second century BCE—for determining the time and position of the stars in the sky by measuring a celestial body’s altitude above the horizon. Before the emergence of the sextant, astrolabes were mostly used for astronomical and astrological studies, although they also proved useful for navigation on land, as well as for tracking the seasons, tide tables, and time of day. The latter was especially useful for religious functions, such as tracking daily Islamic prayer times, the direction of Mecca, or the feast of Ramadan, among others.

Navigating at sea on a pitching deck was a bit more problematic unless the waters were calm. The development of a mariner’s astrolabe—a simple ring marked in degrees for measuring celestial altitudes—helped solve that problem. It was eventually replaced by the invention of the sextant in the 18th century, which was much more precise for seafaring navigation. Mariners’ astrolabes are among the most prized artifacts recovered from shipwrecks; only 108 are currently cataloged worldwide. In 2019, researchers determined that a mariner’s astrolabe recovered from the wreck of one of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s ships is now officially the oldest known such artifact. The so-called Sodré astrolabe was recovered from the wreck of the Esmeralda (part of da Gama’s armada) off the coast of Oman in 2014, along with around 2,800 other artifacts.

An astrolabe is typically composed of a disk (mater) engraved with graduations to mark hours and/or arc degrees. The mater holds one more engraved flat plate (tympans) to represent azimuth and altitude at specific latitudes. Above these pieces is a rotating framework called the rete that essentially serves as a star map, with one rotation being equivalent to one day. An alidade attached to the back could be rotated to help the user take the altitude of a sighted star. Engravings on the backs of the astrolabes varied but often depicted different kinds of scales.

  • The Verona astrolabe, front and back views.

    Federica Gigante

  • Close-up of the Verona astrolabe showing inscribed Hebrew, Arabic, and Western numerals.

    Federica Gigante

  • Dedication and signature: “For Isḥāq […], the work of Yūnus.”

    Federica Gigante

  • Federica Gigante examining the Verona astrolabe.

    Federica Candelato

The Verona astrolabe is meant for astronomical use, and while it has a mater, a rete, and two plates (one of which is a later replacement), it is missing the alidade. It’s also undated, according to Gigante, but she was able to estimate a likely date based on the instrument’s design, construction, and calligraphy. She concluded it was Andalusian, dating back to the 11th century when the region was a Muslim-ruled area of Spain.

For instance, one side of the original plate bears an Arabic inscription “for the latitude of Cordoba, 38° 30′,” and another Arabic inscription on the other side reads “for the latitude of Toledo, 40°.” The second plate (added at some later date) was for North African latitudes, so at some point, the astrolabe might have found its way to Morocco or Egypt. There are engraved lines from Muslim prayers, indicating it was probably originally used for daily prayers.

There is also a signature on the back in Arabic script: “for Isḥāq […]/the work of Yūnus.” Gigante believes this was added by a later owner. Since the two names translate to Isaac and Jonah, respectively, in English, it’s possible that a later owner was an Arab-speaking member of a Sephardi Jewish community. In addition to the Arabic script, Gigante noticed later Hebrew inscriptions translating the Arabic names for certain astrological signs, in keeping with the earliest surviving treatise in Hebrew on astrolabes, written by Abraham Ibn Ezra in Verona in 1146.

“These Hebrew additions and translations suggest that at a certain point the object left Spain or North Africa and circulated amongst the Jewish diaspora community in Italy, where Arabic was not understood, and Hebrew was used instead,” said Gigante. “This object is Islamic, Jewish, and European, they can’t be separated.”

Nuncius, 2024. DOI: 10.1163/18253911-bja10095  (About DOIs).

This rare 11th-century Islamic astrolabe is one of the oldest yet discovered Read More »

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Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft

blue origin, Science, Space / /

A new era at Blue —

Company seeks: “Experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems?”

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Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The space company named Blue Origin is having a big year. New chief executive Dave Limp, who arrived in December, is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm owned by Jeff Bezos. In January, the company’s powerful BE-4 rocket engine performed very well on the debut launch of the Vulcan booster. And later this year, possibly as soon as August, Blue Origin’s own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, will take flight.

But wait, there’s more. The company has also been hard at work developing hardware that will fly on New Glenn, such as the Blue Ring transfer vehicle that will be used to ferry satellites into precise orbits. In addition, work continues on a private space station called Orbital Reef.

One of the key questions about that space station is how astronauts will get there. The only current means of US crew transportation to low-Earth orbit is via Blue Origin’s direct competitor, SpaceX, with its Dragon vehicle. This is likely unpalatable for Bezos.

Boeing is an official partner on Orbital Reef. It has a crewed spacecraft, Starliner, set to make its debut flight in April. But there are serious questions about Boeing’s long-term commitment to Starliner beyond its seven contracted missions with NASA, in addition to concerns that its price will be about 50 percent higher than Dragon if it ever flies private astronauts. Blue Origin has also had some discussions with India about using its new crew capsule.

All of these options have downsides, especially for a company that has a vision of “millions of people living and working in space.” It has long been understood that Blue Origin will eventually develop a crewed spacecraft vehicle. But when?

Now, apparently.

A bit of history

A dozen years ago, the company was performing preliminary studies of a “next-generation” spacecraft that would provide transportation to low-Earth orbit for up to seven astronauts. Blue Origin ultimately received about $25 million from NASA’s commercial crew program before dropping out—SpaceX and Boeing were the ultimate victors.

For a time, the crew project was on the back burner, but it has now become a major initiative within Blue Origin, with the company hiring staff to develop the vehicle.

The first public hint of this renewed interest came last June, when NASA announced that Blue Origin was one of seven companies to sign an unfunded Space Act Agreement to design advanced commercial space projects. Later, in a document explaining this selection process, NASA revealed that Blue Origin was working on a “commercial space transportation system.” This included a reusable spacecraft that would launch on the New Glenn rocket.

“The development plan for the reusable CTS (commercial space transportation system) has significant strengths for its low external dependence, approach to mature its technologies, and demonstrated technical competency,” NASA stated in its source selection document, signed by Phil McAlister, director of the agency’s commercial space division.

Staffing up for a crew vehicle

The best evidence that Blue Origin is serious about developing an orbital human spacecraft has come in recent job postings. For example, the company is seeking a leader for its “Space Vehicle Abort Thrusters Integrated Product Team” on LinkedIn. Among the preferred qualifications is “experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems.”

Most human spacecraft have “abort thrusters” as part of their design. Built into the crew vehicle, they are designed to automatically fire when there is a problem with the rocket. These powerful thrusters pull the crew vehicle away from the rocket—which is often in the process of exploding—so that the astronauts can parachute safely back to Earth. All of the crewed vehicles currently in operation, SpaceX’s Dragon, Russia’s Soyuz, and China’s Shenzhou, have such escape systems. There is no practical reason for abort thrusters on a non-human spacecraft.

After years of secrecy, Blue Origin is revealing more about its intentions of late. This is likely due to the long-awaited debut of the New Glenn rocket, which will announce Blue Origin’s presence as a bona fide launch company and significant competitor to SpaceX. It’s therefore probable that the company will talk more about its crewed spaceflight ambitions later this year.

Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft Read More »

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The world’s most-traveled crew transport spacecraft flies again

commercial crew, Commercial space, crew dragon, Crew-8, falcon 9, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, NASA, Science, Space / /
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s oldest Crew Dragon spacecraft launched Sunday night on its fifth mission to the International Space Station, and engineers are crunching data to see if the fleet of Dragons can safely fly as many as 15 times.

It has been five years since SpaceX launched the first Crew Dragon spacecraft on an unpiloted test flight to the space station and nearly four years since SpaceX’s first astronaut mission took off in May 2020. Since then, SpaceX has put its clan of Dragons to use ferrying astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.

Now, it’s already time to talk about extending the life of the Dragon spaceships. SpaceX and NASA, which shared the cost of developing the Crew Dragon, initially certified each capsule for five flights. Crew Dragon Endeavour, the first in the Dragon fleet to carry astronauts, is now flying for the fifth time.

This ship has spent 466 days in orbit, longer than any spacecraft designed to transport people to and from Earth. It will add roughly 180 days to its flight log with this mission.

Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday), following a three-day delay due to poor weather conditions across the Atlantic Ocean, where the capsule would ditch into the sea in the event of a rocket failure during the climb into orbit.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin put on their SpaceX pressure suits and strapped into their seats inside Crew Dragon Endeavour Sunday evening at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX loaded liquid propellants into the rocket, while ground teams spent the final hour of the countdown evaluating a small crack discovered on Dragon’s side hatch seal. Managers ultimately cleared the spacecraft for launch after considering whether the crack could pose a safety threat during reentry at the end of the mission.

“We are confident that we understand the issue and can still fly the whole mission safely,” a member of SpaceX’s mission control team told the crew inside Dragon.

This mission, known as Crew-8, launched on a brand-new Falcon 9 booster, which returned to landing a few minutes after liftoff at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9’s upper stage released the Dragon spacecraft into orbit about 12 minutes after liftoff. The four-person crew will dock at the space station around 3 am EST (0800 UTC) Tuesday.

Crew-8 will replace the four-person Crew-7 team that has been at the space station since last August. Crew-7 will return to Earth in about one week on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which is flying in space for the third time.

The Crew-8 mission came home for a reentry and splashdown off the coast of Florida in late August of this year, wrapping up Crew Dragon Endeavour’s fifth trip to space. This is the current life limit for a Crew Dragon spacecraft, but don’t count out Endeavour just yet.

Fleet management

“Right now, we’re certified for five flights on Dragon, and we’re looking at extending that life out,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “I think the goal would be for SpaceX to say 15 flights of Dragon. We may not get there in every single system.”

One by one, engineers at SpaceX and NASA are looking at Dragon’s structural skeleton, composite shells, rocket engines, valves, and other components to see how much life is left in them. Some parts of the spacecraft slowly fatigue from the stresses of each launch, reentry, and splashdown, along with the extreme temperature swings the capsule sees thousands of times in orbit. Each Draco thruster on the spacecraft is certified for a certain number of firings.

Some components are already approved for 15 flights, Stich said in a recent press conference. “Some, we’re still in the middle of working on,” he said. “Some of those components have to go through some re-qualification to make sure that they can make it out to 15 flights.”

Re-qualifying a component on a spacecraft typically involves putting hardware through extensive testing on the ground. Because SpaceX reuses hardware, engineers can remove a part from a flown Dragon spacecraft and put it through qualification testing. NASA will get the final say in certifying the Dragon spacecraft for additional flights because the agency is SpaceX’s primary customer for crew missions.

The Dragon fleet is flying more often than SpaceX or NASA originally anticipated. The main reason for this is that Boeing, NASA’s other commercial crew contractor, is running about four years behind SpaceX in getting to its first astronaut launch on the Starliner spacecraft.

When NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts in 2014, the agency envisioned alternating between Crew Dragon and Starliner flights every six months to rotate four-person crews at the International Space Station. With Boeing’s delays, SpaceX has picked up the slack.

The world’s most-traveled crew transport spacecraft flies again Read More »

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How melting Arctic ice leads to European drought and heatwaves

climate change, Greenland, ice melt, North Atlantic, Science, syndication / /

the big melt —

Fresh, cold water from Greenland ice melting upsets North Atlantic currents.

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The Wamme river is seen at a low level during the European heatwave on Aug 10, 2022 in Rochefort, Belgium.

Enlarge / The Wamme river is seen at a low level during the European heatwave on Aug 10, 2022 in Rochefort, Belgium.

Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

The Arctic Ocean is mostly enclosed by the coldest parts of the Northern Hemisphere’s continents, ringed in by Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, with only a small opening to the Pacific through the Bering Strait, and some narrow channels through the labyrinth of Canada’s Arctic archipelago.

But east of Greenland, there’s a stretch of open water about 1,300 miles across where the Arctic can pour its icy heart out to the North Atlantic. Those flows include increasing surges of cold and fresh water from melted ice, and a new study in the journal Weather and Climate Dynamics shows how those pulses can set off a chain reaction from the ocean to the atmosphere that ends up causing summer heatwaves and droughts in Europe.

The large new inflows of fresh water from melting ice are a relatively new ingredient to the North Atlantic weather cauldron, and based on measurements from the new study, a currently emerging “freshwater anomaly” will likely trigger a drought and heatwave this summer in Southern Europe, said the study’s lead author, Marilena Oltmanns, an oceanographer with the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre.

She said warmth over Greenland in the summer of 2023 melted a lot of ice, sending more freshwater toward the North Atlantic. Depending on the exact path of the influx, the findings suggest that, in addition to the immediate impacts this year, it will also trigger a heatwave and drought in Northern Europe in a more delayed reaction in the next five years, she said.

The coming extremes will probably be similar to the European heatwaves of 2018 and 2022, she added, when there were huge temperature spikes in the Scandinavian and Siberian Arctic, as well as unusual wildfires in far northern Sweden. That year, much of the Northern Hemisphere was scorched, with “22 percent of populated and agricultural areas simultaneously experiencing heat extremes between May and July,” according to a 2019 study in Nature.

In 2022, persistent heat waves across Europe from May to August killed more than 60,000 people, subsequent research showed. The United Kingdom reported its first-ever 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit) reading that summer, and the European Union’s second-worst wildfire season on record burned about 3,500 square miles of land.

Meanwhile, 2022 was also Europe’s driest year on record, with 63 percent of its rivers showing below-average discharge and low flows hampering important river shipping channels as well as power production.

The Combined Drought Indicator—used to identify areas affected by agricultural drought, and areas with the potential to be affected—estimated for the first 10 days of each month from April to September 2022.

Enlarge / The Combined Drought Indicator—used to identify areas affected by agricultural drought, and areas with the potential to be affected—estimated for the first 10 days of each month from April to September 2022.

European Commission, Joint Research Centre

Oltmanns said the findings will help farmers, industries, and communities to plan ahead for specific weather conditions by developing more resilient agricultural methods, predicting fuel demand and preparing for wildfires.

Changing effects of freshwater flows into the North Atlantic had previously been observed over decadal timescales, associated with cyclical, linked shifts of ocean currents and winds, but that was “a very low frequency signal,” she said. “We have disentangled the signals.”

Now the fluctuations are more frequent and more intense, “switching between different states very rapidly,” she said, adding that the study shows how the ocean changes driven by freshwater inflows have “direct and immediate consequences on the atmospheric circulation,” and thus on subsequent weather patterns in Europe.

How melting Arctic ice leads to European drought and heatwaves Read More »

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CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like

5-day isolation, CDC, COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccination, flu shots, health, infectious idease, influenza, isolation, respiratory virus, RSV, Science, vaccines / /

New phase —

The agency released a unified “practical” guidance for respiratory viruses.

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A view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta.

Enlarge / A view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta.

COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified “respiratory virus guide.”

In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.

“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV,” the agency wrote.

The most notable change in the new guidance is the previously reported decision to no longer recommend a minimum five-day isolation period for those infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the new isolation guidance is based on symptoms, which matches long-standing isolation guidance for other respiratory viruses, including influenza.

“The updated Respiratory Virus Guidance recommends people with respiratory virus symptoms that are not better explained by another cause stay home and away from others until at least 24 hours after both resolution of fever AND overall symptom are getting better,” the document states. “This recommendation addresses the period of greatest infectiousness and highest viral load for most people, which is typically in the first few days of illness and when symptoms, including fever, are worst.”

“Residual risk”

The CDC acknowledged that the eased isolation guidance will create “residual risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” and that most people are no longer infectious only after 8 to 10 days. As such, the agency urged people to follow additional interventions—including masking, testing, distancing, hygiene, and improving air quality—for five additional days after their isolation period.

“Today’s announcement reflects the progress we have made in protecting against severe illness from COVID-19,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement. “However, we still must use the commonsense solutions we know work to protect ourselves and others from serious illness from respiratory viruses—this includes vaccination, treatment, and staying home when we get sick.”

Overall, the agency argued that a shorter isolation period would be inconsequential. Other countries and states that have similarly abandoned fixed isolation times did not see jumps in COVID-19 emergency department visits or hospitalizations, the CDC pointed out. And most people who have COVID-19 don’t know they have it anyway, making COVID-19-specific guidance moot, the agency argued. In a recent CDC survey, less than half of people said they would test for SARS-CoV-2 if they had a cough or cold symptoms, and less than 10 percent said they would go to a pharmacy or health care provider to get tested. Meanwhile, “The overall sensitivity of COVID-19 antigen tests is relatively low and even lower in individuals with only mild symptoms,” the agency said.

The CDC also raised practical concerns for isolation, including a lack of paid sick leave for many, social isolation, and “societal costs.”

The points are likely to land poorly with critics.

“The CDC is again prioritizing short-term business interests over our health by caving to employer pressure on COVID guidelines. This is a pattern we’ve seen throughout the pandemic,” Lara Jirmanus, Clinical Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a press release last month after the news first broke of the CDC’s planned isolation update. Jirmanus is a member of the People’s CDC, a group that advocates for more aggressive COVID-19 policies, which put out the press release.

Another member of the group, Sam Friedman, a professor of population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, also blasted the CDC’s stance last month. The guidance will “make workplaces and public spaces even more unsafe for everyone, particularly for people who are high-risk for COVID complications,” he said.

COVID and flu

But, the CDC argues that the threat of COVID-19 is fading. Hospitalizations, deaths, prevalence of long COVID, and COVID-19 complications in children (MIS-C) are all down. COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe disease, death, and to some extent, long COVID—we just need more people to get them. Over 95 percent of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 in the 2023–2024 respiratory season had no record of receiving the seasonal booster dose, the agency noted. Only 22 percent of adults got the latest shot, including only 42 percent of people ages 65 and older. In contrast, 48 percent of adults got the latest flu shot, including 73 percent of people ages 65 and older.

But even with the crummy vaccination rates for COVID-19, a mix of past infection and shots have led to a substantial protection in the overall population. The CDC even went as far as arguing that COVID-19 deaths have fallen to a level that is similar to what’s seen with flu.

“Reported deaths involving COVID-19 are several-fold greater than those reported to involve influenza and RSV. However, influenza and likely RSV are often underreported as causes of death,” the CDC said. In the 2022–2023 respiratory virus season, there were nearly 90,000 reported COVID-19 deaths. For flu, there were 9,559 reported deaths, but the CDC estimates the true number to be between 18,000 and 97,000. In the current season, there have been 32,949 reported COVID-19 deaths to date and 5,854 reported flu deaths, but the agency estimates the real flu deaths are between 17,000 and 50,000.

“Total COVID-19 deaths, accounting for underreporting, are likely to be higher than, but of the same order of magnitude as, total influenza deaths,” the agency concluded.

In all, the CDC was ready to fold SARS-CoV-2 into the gang of common seasonal respiratory viruses, with most cases mild and undiagnosed. “Viruses cause most acute respiratory illnesses, but it is rarely possible to determine the type of virus without testing, and oftentimes testing does not change clinical management,” the agency wrote.

CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like Read More »

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Daily Telescope: Two nebulae in Orion for the price of one

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

A dark nebula —

What happens if you observe the same patch of sky every night all winter?

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The Flame and Horsehead nebulae in Orion.

Enlarge / The Flame and Horsehead nebulae in Orion.

Andrew Desrosiers

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s March 1, and today’s image showcases two nebulae within the Orion constellation.

On the left of the image you can see the Flame Nebula, named as such because it’s an emoticon often used in gaming chats—just kidding. Rather, it’s an emission nebula about 1,000 light-years from Earth. To the right of the image is the rather iconic Horsehead Nebula, which really does resemble the head of a horse. It’s a little less than 1,400 light-years from Earth. The darkness in the nebula is mostly due to thick dust blocking the light of the stars behind it.

Andrew Desrosiers sent in this image, which he took from his home in Ashby, Massachusetts. It’s the product of about 60 hours of observing the same location of the night sky.

“This is part of a project I started early this winter to keep my telescope just trained on this part of the sky all winter,” he told me. “So far I have captured 60 hours of exposure data.” He hopes to get to 100 before the end of the season.

Source: Andrew Desrosiers

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

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Rocket Report: Astra warns of “imminent” bankruptcy; Falcon Heavy launch delay

rocket report, Science, Space / /
Static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the Crew 8 mission in early March.

Enlarge / Static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the Crew 8 mission in early March.

SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 6.33 of the Rocket Report! If you check the “next three launches” list below you’ll see that all three are for Falcon 9 rockets. That’s not the first time this has happened this year, nor will it likely be the last. It’s starting to look like SpaceX might actually come close to its target of 150 launches this year—a remarkable cadence.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

India building a second spaceport. The Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, has received the go-ahead to construct a new spaceport in Tamil Nadu, with which it aims to help private players launch small rockets, Tech Crunch reports. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the spaceport, located on an island named Kulasekharapatnam off the southern state of Tamil Nadu. This will be the country’s second spaceport after the space agency’s existing Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

Easier path to the poles … The spaceport will be dedicated to launching smaller launch vehicles and will be ready in about two years. Spread over 2,350 acres, the Kulasekharapatnam spaceport will help save propellant for small rocket launches, as the port can launch rockets directly south over the Indian Ocean without requiring crossing landmasses. This is unlike the existing launch site at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, which adds more fuel requirement for launching into a polar orbit as rockets need to follow a curved path to the south to avoid Sri Lanka’s landmass. (submitted by Joey S-IVB)

Astra founders warn of “imminent bankruptcy.” The founders of satellite propulsion and launch vehicle company Astra have sharply cut their offer to take the company private, warning of “imminent bankruptcy” if the company doesn’t accept their new proposal, Space News reports. In a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday, Astra released a letter sent three days earlier to a special committee of the company’s board of directors from Chris Kemp and Adam London, the chief executive and chief technology officer, slashing by two-thirds their offer to buy outstanding shares of the publicly traded company.

Pray I don’t alter it further … In November, Kemp and London proposed to buy Astra shares at $1.50, approximately double their price at the time they announced the deal. In the new proposal, they are offering only $0.50 per share. Kemp and London cited several reasons for cutting the share price. They included continued cash burn by the company since they tendered the original offer and higher “non-operating expenses” as the company used multiple third-party advisers to assess options. Under the revised proposal, Kemp and London said they anticipated raising $45 million overall to take Astra private, of which $7.7 million would go to shareholders. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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RFA reveals plans for SaxaVord spaceport. An environmental report published by the UK Civil Aviation Authority has provided greater insight into Rocket Factory Augsburg’s proposed operations at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. The report details a plan for RFA to conduct up to 10 launches per year from SaxaVord, which would account for one-third of the spaceport’s total budget of 30 orbital launches per year.

More engines, please … Because of the local bird population, RFA will be unable to conduct launches or static fire tests between mid-May and the end of June. The company will also be limited to a maximum of two launches per month. The rocket’s design is also changing. Significantly, the 21-meter first stage will now be equipped with 13 Helix engines producing 1,300 kilonewtons of thrust instead of just nine engines, as previously stated by the company. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Astra warns of “imminent” bankruptcy; Falcon Heavy launch delay Read More »