Space Quote: NASA Budget Hearing and Artemis

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Mila Okta Safitri from Pixabay

“But for all the Artemis II mission accomplished, how we arrived at it was far from perfect, and the decisions of previous administrations that led to these deficiencies deserves careful reflection. Almost the entirety of [the Space Launch System is repurposed decades-old Space Shuttle hardware. I understand why, the Shuttle program was ending, and it was important to look after the industrial base. I will also say that was at a time when we did not have a geopolitical competitor challenging America in the high ground of space, but perpetuating the past does not help us realize a better future. Even after over $100 billion of taxpayer funding to date, and this most recent and successful Artemis II mission, we would not have launched again until late 2028 with the aim of putting astronauts on the Moon under the previous plan. A plan with no hope of achieving this national imperative. You do not fly rockets like this every three plus years and expect success. Further, you do not make each vehicle a work of art by materially changing the configuration. You also do not build a base in orbit above the Moon, when the scientists, the engineers, the astronauts, and certainly the space-loving community want to be on the surface of the Moon, which is hard enough to achieve.”

-Statement by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at his hearing before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, earlier this week. He was justifying his revamping of the Artemis schedule and elimination of the Lunar Gateway. He also defended the White House’s cuts to his budget, though not everyone in the room was convinced. Ranking Member Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was not happy with the planned cuts to the Science Mission Directorate, stating:

I think everyone in this room knows that without space science, there is no space exploration. Without space science, there is no new planetary discovery. Without space science, there is no NASA

Pic of the Week: Spiral Galaxy NGC 3137

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 3137, located 53 million light-years away. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker and the PHANGS-HST Team

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows spiral galaxy NGC 3137 in all its glory. We are getting a nice inclined view of the galaxy, allowing us to see multiple arms of stars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) describes what we are seeing in this way:

A spiral galaxy seen close up and tilted at an angle, so that its disc fills the view from corner to corner. Its disc is yellow near to the centre and pale blue farther out, showing cooler and hotter stars, respectively. Thin brown clouds of dust, glowing pink spots of star formation, and sparkling blue patches filled with star clusters swirl through the galaxy. Behind it, small orange dots are very distant galaxies.

Television: Star City

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Apple TV

We are only one month away from the premiere of Apple TV’s Star City.

Premiering on May 29th, the series is a spin-off from For All Mankind, which is an alternative history showing the race to the Moon and then Mars among the Americans, Soviet, and North Koreans. Star City will focus on the Soviet program, just as For All Mankind focused primarily on the American program.

Apple TV describes the new series in this way:

A bold new chapter inspired by the critically acclaimed space-race drama, “For All Mankind,” “Star City” is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward.

While For All Mankind was mostly a bombastic show with plenty of American daredevil fun, the Star City promises to be a much darker view of another space program that we only saw in quick glimpses during the first series. Keeping the show interesting and not too bleak may be a challenge.

Will we ever see another spin-off covering the North Korean version of the space race? It is doubtful, yet it would be both fascinating and bleak as well.

I imagine Star City can be a stand-alone series for those who missed For All Mankind, but I think half the fun in watching the new series will be watching where the two stories interweave and discovering what was really happening on the Soviet side.

If history has multiple perspectives, even alternative history, then I look forward to understanding more of the story through more voices.

Credit: Apple TV

A Day in Astronomy: Launch of the Galex Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the GALEX space telescope orbiting Earth. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

On this day in 2003, NASA air-launched the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) via a Pegasus launch vehicle. It was an active orbiting space telescope for the next nine years, observing the universe in ultraviolet wavelengths to learn more about star formation in the universe.

Some of the highlights of the GALEX mission include:

  • Discovering a gargantuan, comet-like tail behind a speeding star called Mira;
  • Catching a black hole “red-handed” as it munched on a star;
  • Finding giant rings of new stars around old, dead galaxies;
  • Independently confirming the nature of dark energy; and
  • Discovering a missing link in galaxy evolution — the teenage galaxies transitioning from young to old.