After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.
As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness. Direct on them two days of warmer light to hale them golden toward their term, and harry the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.
Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter; who lives alone will live indefinitely so, waking up to read a little, draft long letters, and, along the city’s avenues, fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.
Image (Credit): Earlier photo of the RT-70 radio telescope. (PickPic)
The Urania newspaper Euromaiden Press recently noted the success of its navy in taking out Russian assets, including:
the Utios-T radar system;
the RT-70 radio telescope;
the GLONASS satellite navigation system in its dome;
the coastal radar station MR-10M1 “Mys” M1; and
the 96L6-AP radar of the S-400 missile system.
One of those items is not like the others, that being the Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope.
This Soviet-era radio telescope was one of the largest in the world, assisted with the study of Mars and Venus, and was used for messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, also known as METI.
Now it is rubble due to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia (the destroyed radio telescope is located in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory).
We saw World War II introduce the power of rocket technology that sent us around the solar system, and now we are watching another war show how all that we have built can quickly crumble.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of SpaceX’s Starship HLS on the Moon. (SpaceX)
“The HLS schedule is significantly challenged and, in our estimation, could be years late for a 2027 Artemis 3 moon landing.”
-Statement by Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) member Paul Sean Hill, as quoted by Space News. NASA contracted with SpaceX to develop the Human Landing System (HLS) for the astronauts landing on the Moon as part of Artemis III and later missions. While Blue Origin has also been tapped by NASA to assist with later missions, SpaceX was expected to provide the initial HLS. Maybe NASA should have picked two companies to provide the initial HLS, with the second in place still assisting with later landings. The ASAP’s 2024 Annual Report highlighted the many risks related to Artemis III, including several related to the HLS (shown below). Everyone knew this was going to be difficult, and no one wants to be asked to answer “Who Lost the Moon?” Also, it is good we still have a few advisory panels left after the recent purge.
Image (Credit): Figure 1, “First-time milestones for the Artemis III mission,” contained in the ASAP’s 2024 Annual Report. (ASAP)
Blue Origin has been selected by NASA to bring the rover to the Moon as part of a $190 million task order under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 robotic lander, which is scheduled to land on the Moon later this year, will include the VIPER was part of its future cargo in 2027.
As NASA has noted on its VIPER mission page, the rover was part of the Artemis program:
NASA’s Artemis lunar rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, was designed to explore the relatively nearby but extreme environment of the Moon in search of ice and other potential resources. This mobile robot was slated to land at the South Pole of the Moon on a 100-day mission, in order to teach us about the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and help determine how we can harvest the Moon’s resources for future human space exploration.
While the VIPER mission was cancelled last summer, NASA continued to look for a partner to bring it to the Moon. Fortunately, Blue Origin was already going that way.
This is good news for scientists everywhere. It made no sense to turn a half billion dollar piece of equipment into a museum piece. We need more boots and tires on the lunar surface, and VIPER is fortunately part of those plans again.
This week’s image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows a stellar eruption called Sharpless 2-284 (or Sh2-284), which is located about 15,000 light-years away. The image provides a beautiful and delicate combination of colors.
We didn’t really know there was a massive star with this kind of super-jet out there before the observation. Such a spectacular outflow of molecular hydrogen from a massive star is rare in other regions of our galaxy. Massive stars, like the one found inside this cluster, have very important influences on the evolution of galaxies. Our discovery is shedding light on the formation mechanism of massive stars in low-metallicity environments, so we can use this massive star as a laboratory to study what was going on in earlier cosmic history.
Our Awesome Universe 