Space

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New app always points to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy

AI, astronomy, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Galactic Center, Galactic Compass, machine learning, Matt Webb, Space, Tech / /

the final frontier —

iPhone compass app made with AI assistance locates the heart of the Milky Way.

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A photo of Galactic Compass running on an iPhone.

Enlarge / A photo of Galactic Compass running on an iPhone.

Matt Webb / Getty Images

On Thursday, designer Matt Webb unveiled a new iPhone app called Galactic Compass, which always points to the center of the Milky Way galaxy—no matter where Earth is positioned on our journey through the stars. The app is free and available now on the App Store.

While using Galactic Compass, you set your iPhone on a level surface, and a big green arrow on the screen points the way to the Galactic Center, which is the rotational core of the spiral galaxy all of us live in. In that center is a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, a celestial body from which no matter or light can escape. (So, in a way, the app is telling us what we should avoid.)

But truthfully, the location of the galactic core at any given time isn’t exactly useful, practical knowledge—at least for people who aren’t James Tiberius Kirk in Star Trek V. But it may inspire a sense of awe about our place in the cosmos.

Screenshots of Galactic Compass in action, captured by Ars Technica in a secret location.

Enlarge / Screenshots of Galactic Compass in action, captured by Ars Technica in a secret location.

Benj Edwards / Getty Images

“It is astoundingly grounding to always have a feeling of the direction of the center of the galaxy,” Webb told Ars Technica. “Your perspective flips. To begin with, it feels arbitrary. The middle of the Milky Way seems to fly all over the sky, as the Earth turns and moves in its orbit.”

Webb’s journey to creating Galactic Compass began a decade ago as an offshoot of his love for casual astronomy. “About 10 years ago, I taught myself how to point to the center of the galaxy,” Webb said. “I lived in an apartment where I had a great view of the stars, so I was using augmented reality apps to identify them, and I gradually learned my way around the sky.”

While Webb initially used an astronomy app to help locate the Galactic Center, he eventually taught himself how to always find it. He described visualizing himself on the surface of the Earth as it spins and tilts, understanding the ecliptic as a line across the sky and recognizing the center of the galaxy as an invisible point moving predictably through the constellation Sagittarius, which lies on the ecliptic line. By visualizing Earth’s orbit over the year and determining his orientation in space, he was able to point in the right direction, refining his ability through daily practice and comparison with an augmented reality app.

With a little help from AI

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to look similar to Andromeda (seen here) if you could see it from a distance. But since we're inside the galaxy, all we can see is the edge of the galactic plane.

Enlarge / Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to look similar to Andromeda (seen here) if you could see it from a distance. But since we’re inside the galaxy, all we can see is the edge of the galactic plane.

Getty Images

In 2021, Webb imagined turning his ability into an app that would help take everyone on the same journey, showing a compass that points toward the galactic center instead of Earth’s magnetic north. “But I can’t write apps,” he said. “I’m a decent enough engineer, and an amateur designer, but I’ve never figured out native apps.”

That’s where ChatGPT comes in, transforming Webb’s vision into reality. With the AI assistant as his coding partner, Webb progressed step by step, crafting a simple app interface and integrating complex calculations for locating the galactic center (which involves calculating the user’s azimuth and altitude).

Still, coding with ChatGPT has its limitations. “ChatGPT is super smart, but it’s not embodied like a human, so it falls down on doing the 3D calculations,” he says. “I had to learn a lot about quaternions, which are a technique for combining 3D rotations, and even then, it’s not perfect. The app needs to be held flat to work simply because my math breaks down when the phone is upright! I’ll fix this in future versions,” Webb said.

Webb is no stranger to ChatGPT-powered creations that are more fun than practical. Last month, he launched a Kickstarter for an AI-rhyming poetry clock called the Poem/1. With his design studio, Acts Not Facts, Webb says he uses “whimsy and play to discover the possibilities in new technology.”

Whimsical or not, Webb insists that Galactic Compass can help us ponder our place in the vast universe, and he’s proud that it recently peaked at #87 in the Travel chart for the US App Store. In this case, though, it’s spaceship Earth that is traveling the galaxy while every living human comes along for the ride.

“Once you can follow it, you start to see the galactic center as the true fixed point, and we’re the ones whizzing and spinning. There it remains, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, steady as a rock, eternal. We go about our days; it’s always there.”

New app always points to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy Read More »

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SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA

cape canaveral, Commercial space, launch, Science, slc-37, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance, US Space Force / /

First step —

SpaceX now plans at least four Starship launch pads, two in Texas and two in Florida.

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SpaceX's fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

One of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will become vacant later this year after the final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket. SpaceX is looking to make the sprawling facility a new home for the Starship launch vehicle.

The environmental review for SpaceX’s proposal to take over Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral is getting underway now, with three in-person public meetings and one virtual meeting scheduled for March to collect comments from local residents, according to a new website describing the plan.

Then federal agencies, led by the Department of the Air Force, will develop an environmental impact statement to evaluate how Starship launch and landing operations will affect the land, air, and water around SLC-37, which sits on Space Force property on the Atlantic coastline.

Environmental studies for rocket launch facilities typically take more than a year, so it will be a while before any major construction begins to convert SLC-37 for Starship launches. In this case, federal officials anticipate publishing a draft environmental impact statement by December, then a final report by October 2025.

More immediately, ULA still has one more Delta IV Heavy rocket to launch from SLC-37 in March with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. Once that launch is complete, ULA will wind down operations at SLC-37, and eventually turn over the facility back to the Space Force, which will look for a new tenant. For several months, industry sources have pointed to SpaceX as the leading contender to take over SLC-37 after ULA is finished with the launch pad.

But that’s not quite a done deal yet. Last year, a senior official at ULA told Ars on background that the company was also interested in maintaining a presence at SLC-37.

ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, which debuted last month and will replace the Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles, uses a different launch pad a few miles up the coast from SLC-37. ULA is upgrading and expanding its ground facilities at Cape Canaveral to ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence, and the ULA official told Ars the company may want to continue using a rocket processing hangar just south of the Delta IV launch pad for storage and horizontal processing of Vulcan rockets.

Details are scarce about everything SpaceX wants to do with SLC-37, but officials wrote on the environmental review website that SpaceX would “modify, reuse, or demolish the existing SLC-37 infrastructure to support Starship-Super Heavy launch and landing operations.”

This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The history of SLC-37 dates back to the 1960s, when NASA used the site for eight flights of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets to prepare for the Apollo program. The facility sat dormant for 30 years until Boeing moved in to ready SLC-37 for the Delta IV rocket, which has now flown 34 times from SLC-37. The launch pad currently includes a 330-foot-tall (100-meter) mobile gantry, a fixed erector, a fixed umbilical tower, and a flame trench for Delta IV missions.

Starship, the world’s largest rocket, would not need any of that that infrastructure, so if SpaceX takes over the pad, the facility will likely undergo extensive demolition and construction.

If SpaceX isn’t cleared to use SLC-37, the company could build a brand new launch pad designated Space Launch Complex 50. If this is the path SpaceX takes, SLC-50 would be built on undeveloped land north of SLC-37 and south of SpaceX’s primary launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40.

Goodbye to LC-49, hello to SLC-37

SpaceX’s interest in setting up shop at SLC-37 shows the company is getting serious about developing a second base for Starship on Florida’s Space Coast. In 2022, SpaceX constructed a launch tower and launch mount for Starship at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But the company made little progress there last year as teams focused on Starship test flights from South Texas.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, says Starship is the rocket that will make possible his dream of building a settlement on Mars. He has also touted Starship as a vehicle for point-to-point travel on Earth. Both stages of Starship are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, with the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage returning to Earth for propulsive landings. Starship launch pads will double as landing pads.

Before any of those dreams are realized, Starship needs to get into orbit. The first two full-scale Starship test flights last year didn’t make it that far, but SpaceX got close on the second launch in November. SpaceX hopes to achieve a near-orbital mission with the third Starship test launch, perhaps as soon as early March.

Eventually, Musk envisions Starship launching multiple times per day on a variety of missions, carrying people, satellites, cargo, or refueling tankers into orbit. In order to do this, SpaceX will need a lot of launch and landing pads. SpaceX has toyed with the idea of floating offshore launch and landing platforms, but those plans are on hold.

In the near-term, SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch tower at the company’s Starbase test site in Cameron County, Texas. There’s also the partially-built launch tower at LC-39A, and now SpaceX has set its sights on SLC-37.

SpaceX was previously looking at building another Starship launch pad from scratch on NASA property at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA environmental studies for this location, known as Launch Complex 49, kicked off in 2021. Patti Bielling, a NASA spokesperson, told Ars on Friday the agency is no longer working on Launch Complex 49.

“At this time, there are no activities involving LC-49 on Kennedy,” Bielling said. “Any previous activities regarding LC-49 were suspended, and no actions were taken.”

One of the first operational applications for Starship will be to serve as a human-rated lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface, but in order for Starship to reach the Moon, it has to be refueled in low-Earth orbit. This will require perhaps 10 or more refueling flights using a version of Starship called a tanker, all launching in a matter of weeks. Those tanker flights will launch on Super Heavy boosters from pads in Texas and Florida.

In parallel with continued Starship test flights and demonstrating in-space refueling technology, SpaceX needs to build more launch pads to make all this possible. Although SpaceX has backpedaled on several of its Starship launch pad ideas, the company’s interest in SLC-37 suggests it still has big plans for Starship in Florida.

SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA Read More »

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Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia

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Co-planar —

Starship is fully stacked in South Texas for the rocket’s third test flight.

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The upper stage for the first Ariane 6 flight vehicle is seen inside its factory in Bremen, Germany. The upper stage's hydrogen-fueled Vinci engine is visible in this image.

Enlarge / The upper stage for the first Ariane 6 flight vehicle is seen inside its factory in Bremen, Germany. The upper stage’s hydrogen-fueled Vinci engine is visible in this image.

Welcome to Edition 6.31 of the Rocket Report! Photographers at Cape Canaveral, Florida, noticed a change to the spaceport’s skyline this week. Blue Origin has erected a full-size simulator of its New Glenn rocket vertically on its launch pad for a series of fit checks and tests. Late last year, we reported Blue Origin was serious about getting the oft-delayed New Glenn rocket off the ground by the end of 2024. This is a good sign of progress toward that goal, but there’s a long, long way to go. It was fun to watch preparations for the inaugural flights of a few other heavy-lift rockets in the last couple of years (Starship, SLS, and Vulcan). This year, it’s New Glenn.

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.

Russia launches a classified satellite. On February 9, Russia launched its first orbital mission of the year with the liftoff of a Soyuz-2-1v rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the far north of the country. The two-stage rocket delivered a classified satellite into orbit for the Russian military, Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com reports. In keeping with the Russian military’s naming convention, the satellite is known simply as Kosmos 2575, and there’s little indication about what it will do in space, except for one key fact.

But wait, there’s more … It turns out the launch of Kosmos 2575 occurred at exactly the same time of day as another Soyuz-2-1v rocket launched on December 27 with a Russian military satellite named Kosmos 2574. The newer spacecraft launched into the same orbital plane as Kosmos 2574, a strong indication that the two satellites have a shared mission. In recent years, Russia has tested rendezvous, proximity operations, and, at least in one instance, a projectile that would have applications for an anti-satellite weapon. You can be sure the US military and a global community of hobbyist satellite trackers will watch closely to see if these two satellites approach one another. If they do, they could continue technology demonstrations for an anti-satellite system. It’s unclear if the recent revelations regarding US officials’ concerns about Russian anti-satellite capabilities are related to these recent launches.

European startup testing methane-fueled rocket engine. Space transportation startup The Exploration Company has continued testing its methane-fueled Huracán engine, which will power an in-space and lunar transportation vehicle under development, European Spaceflight reports. Most recently, the Huracán engine completed another round of thrust chamber testing using liquid methane fuel as a coolant and tested a new thermal barrier coating. The methane/liquid oxygen engine is undergoing testing at a facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany, ahead of use on The Exploration Company’s Nyx Moon spacecraft, a transfer vehicle designed for transportation to and from cislunar space and also capable of Moon landings. The Nyx Moon is an evolution of a transfer vehicle the European startup is developing to ferry satellites between different orbits around Earth.

Other uses for Huracán… The Exploration Company appears to be positioning itself not only as a builder and operator of orbital and lunar transfer vehicles but also as a propulsion supplier to other space companies. In 2022, The Exploration Company received funding for the Huracán engine from the French government. At the time, the company described the engine as serving the needs of “the upper stages of small launchers and those of orbital vehicles.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia Read More »

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After a decade and $1.2 billion, NASA reveals its booty from Bennu: 121 grams

bennu, Science, Space / /

To Bennu and back —

A long way, and a lot of money, for half a cup.

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A view of eight sample trays containing the final material from asteroid Bennu.

Enlarge / A view of eight sample trays containing the final material from asteroid Bennu.

NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

After years of speculation, NASA finally revealed on Thursday the totality of the asteroid sample returned from Bennu to Earth last fall: 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams).

To put that number into perspective, the total mass is only slightly more than one-half cup of sugar or a box of 100 paper clips. It’s about the same mass as a small avocado, and you can’t even smear it on toast.

So, in some sense, it’s a pretty small sample. Especially when you consider the lengths to which NASA and its partners went to retrieve it. The space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center worked with the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin to build the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft for $800 million. It launched in September 2016 on an Atlas V rocket, which cost an additional $183.5 million. And as it has traipsed across the inner Solar System and back, NASA has spent an additional $200 million on mission operations.

A tin of tuna

Putting that all together, NASA has invested $1.2 billion and the better part of a decade to retrieve a volume of asteroid dust that could fit—comfortably—within a small can of tuna.

But, as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And small though the sample may be, it is 20 times greater than the amount of asteroid material previously returned to Earth by a pair of Japanese sample return missions. A little will go a long way as scientists study the organics and other materials in this asteroid dust to divine clues to the origin of life and conditions that existed at the dawn of our Solar System. You don’t need handfuls of material to get a meaningful result from an electron microscope.

Moreover, the sample retrieval was double the minimum requirement for the mission, 60 grams. So, OSIRIS-REx can now definitively be labeled as an unqualified success.

Biding their time

The scientific community had to wait longer than expected to know how much material OSIRIS-REx brought back to Earth. As engineers and technicians at Johnson Space Center in Houston worked to open the sample container last October, they were stymied by two stubborn fasteners. Only after new tools were devised was the sample container finally opened to reveal the tiny treasure in January.

In the coming weeks, some Bennu material will be packaged and distributed for researchers to study. As part of the OSIRIS-REx mission, a cohort of more than 200 scientists around the world will explore the regolith’s properties, including researchers from many US institutions, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA, however, intends to reserve about 70 percent of the material for future study.

After a decade and $1.2 billion, NASA reveals its booty from Bennu: 121 grams Read More »

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SpaceX launches military satellites tuned to track hypersonic missiles

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Trackers —

These satellites will participate in joint missile tracking exercises later this year.

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SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday with six missile-tracking satellites for the US military.

Enlarge / SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday with six missile-tracking satellites for the US military.

Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four missile tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida’s Space Coast.

These satellites are part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and perhaps emerging missile threats from Iran or North Korea, which are developing their own hypersonic weapons.

Hypersonic missiles are smaller and more maneuverable than conventional ballistic missiles, which the US military’s legacy missile defense satellites can detect when they launch. Infrared sensors on the military’s older-generation missile tracking satellites are tuned to pick out bright thermal signatures from missile exhaust.

The new threat paradigm

Hypersonic missiles represent a new challenge for the Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). For one thing, ballistic missiles follow a predictable parabolic trajectory that takes them into space. Hypersonic missiles are smaller and comparatively dim, and they spend more time flying in Earth’s atmosphere. Their maneuverability makes them difficult to track.

A nearly 5-year-old military organization called the Space Development Agency (SDA) has launched 27 prototype satellites over the last year to prove the Pentagon’s concept for a constellation of hundreds of small, relatively low-cost spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. This new fleet of satellites, which the SDA calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), will eventually number hundreds of spacecraft to track missiles and relay data about their flight paths down to the ground. The tracking data will provide an early warning to those targeted by hypersonic missiles and help generate a firing solution for interceptors to shoot them down.

The SDA constellation combines conventional tactical radio links, laser inter-satellite communications, and wide-view infrared sensors. The agency, now part of the Space Force, plans to launch successive generations, or tranches, of small satellites, each introducing new technology. The SDA’s approach relies on commercially available spacecraft and sensor technology and will be more resilient to attack from an adversary than the military’s conventional space assets. Those legacy military satellites often cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars apiece, with architectures that rely on small numbers of large satellites that might appear like a sitting duck to an adversary determined to inflict damage.

Four of the small SDA satellites and two larger spacecraft for the Missile Defense Agency were aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket when it lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5: 30 pm EST (2230 UTC) Wednesday.

The rocket headed northeast from Cape Canaveral to place the six payloads into low-Earth orbit. Officials from the Space Force declared the launch a success later Wednesday evening.

The SDA’s four tracking satellites, built by L3Harris, are the last spacecraft the agency will launch in its prototype constellation, called Tranche 0. Beginning later this year, the SDA plans to kick off a rapid-fire launch campaign with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to quickly build out its operational Tranche 1 constellation, with launches set to occur at one-month intervals to deploy approximately 150 satellites. Then, there will be a Tranche 2 constellation with more advanced sensor technologies.

The primary payloads aboard Wednesday’s launch were for the MDA. These two Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, one supplied by L3Harris and the other by Northrop Grumman, will demonstrate medium field-of-view sensors. Those sensors can’t cover as much territory as the SDA satellites but will provide more sensitive and detailed missile tracking data.

This illustration shows how the HBTSS satellites can track hypersonic missiles as they glide and maneuver through the atmosphere, evading detection by conventional missile tracking spacecraft, such as the Space Force's DSP and SBIRS satellites.

This illustration shows how the HBTSS satellites can track hypersonic missiles as they glide and maneuver through the atmosphere, evading detection by conventional missile tracking spacecraft, such as the Space Force’s DSP and SBIRS satellites.

“Our advanced satellites on orbit will bring the integrated and resilient missile warning and defense capabilities the US requires against adversaries developing more advanced maneuverable missiles,” said Christopher Kubasik, chairman and CEO of L3Harris. “L3Harris delivered this advanced missile tracking capability on behalf of MDA and SDA on orbit in just over three years after work was authorized to proceed. We are proud to be a critical part of the new space sensing architecture.”

The HBTSS satellites, valued at more than $300 million, and the SDA’s tracking prototypes will participate in joint military exercises in the coming months, where the wide-view SDA satellites will provide “cueing data” to the MDA’s HBTSS spacecraft. The narrower field of view of the HBTSS satellites can provide more specific, target-quality data to a ground-based interceptor, according to a report last year published by the Congressional Research Service. Future tranches, or generations, of SDA satellites will incorporate the medium field-of-view sensing capability flying on the MDA’s HBTSS satellites.

With SDA taking over the responsibility for making this technology operational, that will leave the MDA, which has historically flown its own missile tracking satellites, focused on next-generation sensor development, an MDA spokesperson told Ars.

Military officials decided only last year to place the four SDA satellites on the same launch as the MDA’s HBTSS mission. With all six satellites flying in the same orbital plane, there will be opportunities to see the same targets with both types of spacecraft and sensors. These targets may include scheduled US military missile tests or foreign launches.

“The intent to be able to work with cooperative and noncooperative targets to be able to do our demonstrations,” a senior SDA official said during a background briefing.

SpaceX launches military satellites tuned to track hypersonic missiles Read More »

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SpaceX takes a proactive step toward responsible behavior in orbit

orbital debris, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / /

Clearing one’s orbit —

“We commend this commitment as a first step.”

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A group of Starlink satellites assembled and ready for a launch.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s V2 Mini Starlink satellites awaiting launch.

SpaceX

SpaceX announced this week that it will voluntarily bring down about 100 of its first-generation Starlink satellites, which provide broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit, as part of its commitment to “space sustainability.”

The satellites are presently operational and serving Internet customers. However, in a statement, the company said, “The Starlink team identified a common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future.”

This only represents a small fraction of the Starlink megaconstellation, which SpaceX has been launching on Falcon 9 rockets over the last half-decade. To date, SpaceX has put nearly 6,000 satellites into orbit a few hundred kilometers above the planet. This rapid growth in the company’s constellation has raised widespread concerns about the cluttering of low-Earth orbit and the potential for a profusion of debris.

Previously, SpaceX has initiated controlled de-orbits of 406 satellites. The vast majority of these have already entered Earth’s atmosphere and burnt up. However, 17 have become non-maneuverable. These are in decaying orbits and will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Until such time, they are being tracked to prevent collisions with other satellites.

In its announcement this week, SpaceX is saying it will bring down about 100 additional Starlink satellites.

Why is SpaceX doing this?

The company said it is being proactive in deciding to bring down satellites that are currently operational.

“While this proactive approach comes at the cost of losing satellites that are serving users effectively, we believe it is the right thing to do to keep space safe and sustainable—SpaceX encourages all satellite owners and operators to safely de-orbit satellites before they become non-maneuverable,” the statement said.

If nothing else, this is a clever public relations move to get out ahead of satellite de-orbits that the space-tracking community would have spotted eventually. SpaceX is controlling the narrative, and it seems to have worked. The release of this information has, based upon several people I have spoken with, engendered goodwill in the community of scientists and activists who worry about orbital debris, clutter, and the sustainability of activity in low-Earth orbit.

However, there appears to be more to this announcement than simple public relations. SpaceX operates nearly two-thirds of all the active satellites in low-Earth orbit, and it is taking responsibility for reducing the likelihood of uncontrolled satellites whizzing around the planet hundreds of kilometers above the surface.

In this sense, SpaceX has taken an important step toward the establishment of a norm: proactive de-orbiting of one’s satellites.

What are the implications of it?

One of the fiercest protectors of low-Earth orbit is Moriba Jah, a co-founder and chief scientist at Privateer, a company that helps monitor congestion in orbit and seeks to enable sustainable growth of the new space economy. Jah told Ars he welcomed this step by SpaceX.

“Ensuring the safety and accessibility of space for all stakeholders is essential and we commend this commitment as a first step,” he said. “Proactive measures to deorbit satellites and share position information represent significant steps toward mitigating the risks associated with space debris.”

However, he added, this is just an interim step toward what should be a long-term goal—the recycling of satellites in space.

“While it may seem economically prudent to deorbit satellites and let them burn up in the atmosphere, the long-term implications of such practices on space sustainability, and the atmosphere itself, cannot be overlooked,” he said. “The long-term path to a circular space economy is in the adoption of reusable and recyclable satellites.”

This approach would reduce the potential for orbital debris and foster a culture of responsible space operations.

There has been some government leadership in this direction. The United States, primarily but not exclusively through NASA, has been pushing for in-space repairing and reviving of satellites to extend their useful lifetimes, including refurbishment activities. Additionally, the European Space Agency has embraced a “Zero Debris Charter” to drive the development of technologies required for no more debris to be left in orbit by 2030.

In releasing this statement, and proactively deorbiting its own spacecraft, the world’s largest operator of satellites has indicated that it wants to play ball.

SpaceX takes a proactive step toward responsible behavior in orbit Read More »

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Rocket Report: US military still wants point-to-point; India’s big 2024 ambitions

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A Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA's PACE spacecraft this week.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA’s PACE spacecraft this week.

SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 6.30 of the Rocket Report! Looking ahead, there are some interesting launches coming up in the middle of this month. Here are some we have our eyes on: Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on a Falcon 9 and a re-flight of Japan’s big H3 rocket next week; then there’s an Electron launch of an intriguing Astroscale mission and NASA’s Crew-8 the following week. Good luck to all.

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.

Was Transporter created to ‘kill’ small launch? SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which regularly fly 100 or more small satellites into low-Earth orbit on Falcon 9 rideshare missions, have unquestionably harmed small satellite launch companies. While companies like Rocket Lab or Virgin Orbit could offer smallsat operators a precise orbit, there was no way to compete on price. “The Transporter program was created a few years ago with, in my opinion, the sole purpose of trying to kill new entrants like us,” said Sandy Tirtey, director of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, during a panel at the SmallSat Symposium on Wednesday.

Low-price guarantee … The panel was covered by Space News, and the rest of the article includes a lot of comments from small launch providers about how they provide value with dedicated services and so forth—pretty typical fare. However, the story does not really explore Tirtley’s statement. So, was Transporter created to kill small launch companies? As someone who has reported a lot on SpaceX over the years, I’ll offer my two cents. I don’t think the program was created with this intent; rather, it filled a market need (only Electron and India’s PSLV were meeting commercial smallsat demand in any volume at the time). It also gave Falcon 9 more commercial missions. However, I do believe it was ultimately priced with the intent of cutting small launch off at the knees.

FAA investigating Virgin Galactic’s dropped pin. Virgin Galactic reported an anomaly on its most recent flight, Galactic 06, which took place two weeks ago from a spaceport in New Mexico. The company said it discovered a dropped pin during a post-flight review of the mission, which carried two pilots and four passengers to an altitude of 55.1 miles (88.7 km). This alignment pin, according to Virgin Galactic, helps ensure the VSS Unity spaceship is aligned to its carrier aircraft when mating the vehicles, Ars reports.

Corrective actions to be required … Virgin Galactic said it reported the anomaly to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on January 31. On Tuesday, the FAA confirmed that there was no public property or injuries that resulted from the mishap. “The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic-led mishap investigation to ensure the company complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements,” the federal agency said in a statement. Before VSS Unity can return to flight, the FAA must approve Virgin Galactic’s final report, including corrective actions to prevent a similar problem in the future. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

HyImpulse ships suborbital rocket to launch site. German launch startup HyImpulse has confirmed that its SR75 rocket and all related support systems have been boxed up and have embarked on the long journey to Australia, European Spaceflight reports. SR75 is a single-stage suborbital launch vehicle that is designed to be capable of delivering up to 250 kilograms to a maximum altitude of around 200 kilometers.

Testing a pathfinder … The debut flight of SR75 had initially been slated to occur from SaxaVord in the United Kingdom. In fact, HyImpulse had received approval for the flight from the UK Civil Aviation Authority in mid-2023. However, with financial issues forcing work on the site to be temporarily slowed, HyImpulse was forced to look elsewhere. The launch will now take place from the South Launch Koonibba Test Range in Australia, possibly as soon as March. The test will certify several critical elements of the company’s larger orbital SL1 rocket. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: US military still wants point-to-point; India’s big 2024 ambitions Read More »

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A sleuthing enthusiast says he found the US military’s X-37B spaceplane

military space, Science, Space, spaceplane, US Space Force, X-37b / /

Found —

Officials didn’t disclose details about the X-37B’s orbit after its December launch.

–

File photo of an X-37B spaceplane.

Enlarge / File photo of an X-37B spaceplane.

Boeing

It turns out some of the informed speculation about the US military’s latest X-37B spaceplane mission was pretty much spot-on.

When the semi-classified winged spacecraft launched on December 28, it flew into orbit on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which is much larger than the Atlas V and Falcon 9 rockets used to launch the X-37B on its previous missions.

This immediately sparked speculation that the X-37B would reach higher altitudes than its past flights, which remained in low-Earth orbit at altitudes of a few hundred miles. A discovery from Tomi Simola, a satellite tracking hobbyist living near Helsinki, Finland, appears to confirm this suspicion.

On Friday, Simola reported on social media and on SeeSat-L, a long-running online forum of satellite tracking enthusiasts, that he detected an unidentified object using a sky-watching camera. The camera is designed to continuously observe a portion of the sky to detect moving objects in space. A special software program helps identify known and unknown objects.

“Exciting news!” Simola posted on social media. “Orbital Test Vehicle 7 (OTV-7), which was launched to classified orbit last December, was seen by my SatCam! Here are images from the last two nights!”

Exciting news!

Orbital Test Vehicle 7 (OTV-7), which was launched to classified orbit last December, was seen by my SatCam!

Here are images from the last two nights! pic.twitter.com/3twOVdovVc

— Tomppa 🇺🇦 (@tomppa77) February 9, 2024

Mike McCants, one of the more experienced satellite observers and co-administrator of the SeeSat-L forum, agreed with Simola’s conclusion that he found the X-37B spaceplane.

“Congrats to Tomi Simola for locating the secret X-37B spaceplane,” posted Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and widely respected expert in spaceflight activity.

Higher than ever

Amateur observations of the spaceplane indicate it is flying in a highly elliptical orbit ranging between 201 and 24,133 miles in altitude (323 and 38,838 kilometers). The orbit is inclined 59.1 degrees to the equator.

This is not far off the predictions from the hobbyist tracking community before the launch in December. At that time, enthusiasts used information about the Falcon Heavy’s launch trajectory and drop zones for the rocket’s core booster and upper stage to estimate the orbit it would reach with the X-37B spaceplane.

The Space Force has not released any information about the orbit of the X-37B. While it took hobbyists about six weeks to find the X-37B on this mission, it typically took less time for amateur trackers to locate it when it orbited at lower altitudes on its previous missions. Despite the secrecy, it’s difficult to imagine the US military’s adversaries in China and Russia didn’t already know where the spaceplane was flying.

Military officials usually don’t disclose details about the X-37B’s missions while they are in space, providing updates only before each launch and then after each landing.

This is the seventh flight of an X-3B spaceplane since the first one launched in 2010. In a statement before the launch in December, the Space Force said this flight of the X-37B is focused on “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives.” Flying in “new orbital regimes” is among the test objectives, military officials said.

The military has two Boeing-built X-37B spaceplanes, or Orbital Test Vehicles, in its inventory. They are reusable and designed to launch inside the payload fairing of a conventional rocket, spend multiple years in space with the use of solar power, and then return to Earth for a landing on a three-mile-long runway, either at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It resembles a miniature version of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiter, with wings, deployable landing gear, and black thermal protection tiles to shield its belly from the scorching heat of reentry. It measures 29 feet (about 9 meters) long, roughly a quarter of the length of NASA’s space shuttle, and it doesn’t carry astronauts.

The X-37B has a cargo bay inside the fuselage for payloads, with doors that open after launch and close before landing. There is also a service module mounted to the back end of the spaceplane to accommodate additional experiments, payloads, and small satellites that can deploy in orbit to perform their own missions.

All the Space Force has said about the payloads on the current X-37B flight is that its experiment package includes investigations into new “space domain awareness technologies.” NASA is flying an experiment on the X-37B to measure how plant seeds respond to sustained exposure to space radiation. The spaceplane’s orbit on this flight takes it through the Van Allen radiation belts.

The secrecy surrounding the X-37B has sparked much speculation about its purpose, some of which centers on ideas that the spaceplane is part of a classified weapons platform in orbit. More likely, analysts say, the X-37B is a testbed for new space technologies. The unusual elliptical orbit for this mission is similar to the orbit used for some of the Space Force’s satellites designed to detect and warn of ballistic missile launches.

McDowell said this could mean the X-37B is testing out an infrared sensor for future early warning satellites, but then he cautioned this would be “just a wild speculation.”

Speculation is about all we have to go on regarding the X-37B. But it seems we no longer need to speculate about where the X-37B is flying.

A sleuthing enthusiast says he found the US military’s X-37B spaceplane Read More »

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Building robots for “Zero Mass” space exploration

materials science, robotics, Science, Space, Space exploration / /
A robot performing construction on the surface of the moon against the black backdrop of space.

Sending 1 kilogram to Mars will set you back roughly $2.4 million, judging by the cost of the Perseverance mission. If you want to pack up supplies and gear for every conceivable contingency, you’re going to need a lot of those kilograms.

But what if you skipped almost all that weight and only took a do-it-all Swiss Army knife instead? That’s exactly what scientists at NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University are testing with robots, algorithms, and highly advanced building materials.

Zero mass exploration

“The concept of zero mass exploration is rooted in self-replicating machines, an engineering concept John von Neumann conceived in the 1940s”, says Kenneth C. Cheung, a NASA Ames researcher. He was involved in the new study published recently in Science Robotics covering self-reprogrammable metamaterials—materials that do not exist in nature and have the ability to change their configuration on their own. “It’s the idea that an engineering system can not only replicate, but sustain itself in the environment,” he adds.

Based on this concept, Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the 1980s proposed a self-replicating interstellar spacecraft called the Von Neumann probe that would visit a nearby star system, find resources to build a copy of itself, and send this copy to another star system. Rinse and repeat.

“The technology of reprogrammable metamaterials [has] advanced to the point where we can start thinking about things like that. It can’t make everything we need yet, but it can make a really big chunk of what we need,” says Christine E. Gregg, a NASA Ames researcher and the lead author of the study.

Building blocks for space

One of the key problems with Von Neumann probes was that taking elements found in the soil on alien worlds and processing them into actual engineering components was resource-intensive and required huge amounts of energy. The NASA Ames team solved that with using prefabricated “voxels”—standardized reconfigurable building blocks.

The system derives its operating principles from the way nature works on a very fundamental level. “Think how biology, one of the most scalable systems we have ever seen, builds stuff,” says Gregg. “It does that with building blocks. There are on the order of 20 amino acids which your body uses to make proteins to make 200 different types of cells and then combines trillions of those cells to make organs as complex as my hair and my eyes. We are using the same strategy,” she adds.

To demo this technology, they built a set of 256 of those blocks—extremely strong 3D structures made with a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer called StattechNN-40CF. Each block had fastening interfaces on every side that could be used to reversibly attach them to other blocks and form a strong truss structure.

A 3×3 truss structure made with these voxels had an average failure load of 900 Newtons, which means it could hold over 90 kilograms despite being incredibly light itself (its density is just 0.0103 grams per cubic centimeter). “We took these voxels out in backpacks and built a boat, a shelter, a bridge you could walk on. The backpacks weighed around 18 kilograms. Without technology like that, you wouldn’t even think about fitting a boat and a bridge in a backpack,” says Cheung. “But the big thing about this study is that we implemented this reconfigurable system autonomously with robots,” he adds.

Building robots for “Zero Mass” space exploration Read More »

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Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch

interstellar space, jpl, NASA, Space, Voyager, Voyager 1 / /
An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA's Voyager spacecraft design.

Enlarge / An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft design.

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission’s loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft.

The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1’s ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the spacecraft’s science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. So, there’s no insight into key parameters regarding the craft’s propulsion, power, or control systems.

“It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven’t given up,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.”

Dodd became the project manager for NASA’s Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers responsible for humanity’s exploration into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft ever, speeding away from the Sun at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second).

Voyager 2, which launched 16 days before Voyager 1 in 1977, isn’t quite as far away. It took a more leisurely route through the Solar System, flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, while Voyager 1 picked up speed during an encounter with Saturn to overtake its sister spacecraft.

For the last couple of decades, NASA has devoted Voyager’s instruments to studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They’re not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the Sun runs into the interstellar medium.

There are no other operational spacecraft currently exploring interstellar space. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew past Pluto in 2015, is on track to reach interstellar space in the 2040s.

State-of-the-art 50 years ago

The latest problem with Voyager 1 lies in the probe’s Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft working alongside a command and control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS is responsible for collecting science and engineering data from the spacecraft’s network of sensors and then combining the information into a single data package in binary code—a series of ones and zeros. A separate component called the Telemetry Modulation Unit actually sends the data package back to Earth through Voyager’s 12-foot (3.7-meter) dish antenna.

In November, the data packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were stuck, according to NASA. Dodd said engineers at JPL have spent the better part of three months trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. She said the engineering team is “99.9 percent sure” the problem originated in the FDS, which appears to be having trouble “frame syncing” data.

A scanned 1970s-era photo of the Flight Data Subsystem computer aboard NASA's Voyager spacecraft.

Enlarge / A scanned 1970s-era photo of the Flight Data Subsystem computer aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft.

So far, the ground team believes the most likely explanation for the problem is a bit of corrupted memory in the FDS. However, because of the computer hangup, engineers lack detailed data from Voyager 1 that might lead them to the root of the issue. “It’s likely somewhere in the FDS memory,” Dodd said. “A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can’t see where that FDS memory corruption is.”

When it was developed five decades ago, Voyager’s Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to make use of volatile memory. Each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers, but Voyager 1’s backup FDS failed in 1981, according to Dodd.

The only signal Voyager 1’s Earthbound engineers have received since November is a carrier tone, which basically tells the team the spacecraft is still alive. There’s no indication of any other major problems. Changes in the carrier signal’s modulation indicate Voyager 1 is receiving commands uplinked from Earth.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t cracked the nut yet, or solved the problem, or gotten any telemetry back,” Dodd said.

Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch Read More »

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Virgin Galactic and the FAA are investigating a dropped pin on last spaceflight

Science, Space, Virgin Galactic, vss unity / /

Rapid Unscheduled Dropped Pin —

“The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic-led mishap investigation.”

–

White Knight Two carries the first SpaceShipTwo during a glide test.

White Knight Two carries the first SpaceShipTwo during a glide test.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic reported an anomaly on its most recent flight, Galactic 06, which took place 12 days ago from a spaceport in New Mexico.

In a statement released Monday, the company said it discovered a dropped pin during a post-flight review of the mission, which carried two pilots and four passengers to an altitude of 55.1 miles (88.7 km).

This alignment pin, according to Virgin Galactic, helps ensure the VSS Unity spaceship is aligned to its carrier aircraft when mating the vehicles on the ground during pre-flight procedures. The company said the alignment pin and a shear pin fitting assembly performed as designed during the mated portion of the flight, and only the alignment pin detached after the spaceship was released from the mothership.

“During mated flight, as the vehicles climb towards release altitude, the alignment pin helps transfer drag and other forces from the spaceship to the shear pin fitting assembly and into the pylon and center wing of the mothership,” the statement said. “The shear pin fitting assembly remained both attached and intact on the mothership with no damage. While both parts play a role during mated flight, they do not support the spaceship’s weight, nor do they have an active function once the spaceship is released.”

At no time, the company said, did the detached pin pose a safety threat to the spacecraft or the carrier aircraft. Additionally, as the flight occurred in restricted air space, the dropped pin did not threaten people or property on the ground.

The FAA gets involved

Virgin Galactic said it reported the anomaly to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on January 31.

On Tuesday, the FAA confirmed that there was no public property or injuries that resulted from the mishap. “The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic-led mishap investigation to ensure the company complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements,” the federal agency said in a statement.

Before VSS Unity can return to flight, the FAA must approve Virgin Galactic’s final report, including corrective actions to prevent a similar problem in the future.

The problem comes as Virgin Galactic plans to wind down its flight campaign with the VSS Unity and intends to move to its next-generation version of the spacecraft. These so-called “Delta-class” spaceships remain in development and are likely a couple of years away from making commercial flights.

VSS Unity has completed 11 spaceflights to date, reaching an impressive monthly cadence last year. However, the company is planning only one more mission before retiring the vehicle. This decision came as something of a surprise because the company’s president told Ars last August that the Unity airframe was capable of 500 to 1,000 flights.

This Galactic 07 mission, whose passengers and flight crew have yet to be announced, was scheduled for the second quarter of 2024. In its statement this week, Virgin Galactic said it remained committed to flying that mission.

Virgin Galactic and the FAA are investigating a dropped pin on last spaceflight Read More »

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Daily Telescope: A Wolf-Rayet star puts on a howling light show

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

Hungry like the wolf —

I’d like to see it go boom.

–

The Crescent Nebula.

Enlarge / The Crescent Nebula.

1Zach1

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 February 2, and today’s image concerns an emission nebula about 5,000 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation.

Discovered more than 230 years ago by William Herschel, astronomers believe the Crescent Nebula is formed by the combination of an energetic stellar wind from a Wolf-Rayet star at its core, colliding with slower-moving material ejected earlier in the star’s lifetime. Ultimately, this should all go supernova, which will be quite spectacular.

Will you or I be alive to see it? Probably not.

But in the meantime, we can enjoy the nebula for what it is. This photo was captured by Ars reader 1Zach1 with an Astro-Tech AT80ED Refractor telescope. It was the product of 11 hours of integration, or 228 exposures each lasting three minutes. It was taken in rural southwestern Washington.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Source: 1Zach1

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Daily Telescope: A Wolf-Rayet star puts on a howling light show Read More »