Space Stories: German Rockets, A Planet-Eating Sun, and Lunar Water Resources

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Isar Aerospace’s launch complex at Andøya Space in Norway. (Isar Aerospace)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—CNBC: “SpaceX Rival Launches Rocket in Historic First, Says Industry is ‘Desperate’ For More”

German rocket maker Isar Aerospace successfully reached orbit for the first time over the weekend, marking a milestone for Europe’s commercial space industry as the company looks to ramp up launches to meet what it says is booming demand. The Munich-based company’s Spectrum rocket reached orbit on Saturday and successfully deployed its payloads in low Earth orbit, an achievement that came on only its second test flight. Chief Commercial Officer Stella Guillen told CNBC on Monday that the company was now focused on scaling production, saying the space industry was “desperate” for additional launch capacity and that Isar had a pipeline worth more than 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion).

—Royal Astronomical Society: “‘Fingerprints’ Inside the Sun Could Reveal If It Once Swallowed a Planet“

It is thought the Sun may have engulfed a super-Earth-sized planet early in its history. Now a new study has gone a step further by suggesting that such an event may have left behind detectable clues inside our star which could still be visible today. This idea of a measurable signature or ‘fingerprints’ in the present-day solar interior was explored by research published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Professor Mutlu Yildiz, of Ege University in Turkey, said: “Our new study suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth may have fallen into the young Sun and left a lasting chemical imprint deep inside it.

—Physics World: “Moon’s Water Reserves Insufficient to Sustain a Lunar City, Astronomers Find“

Some countries and even wealthy individuals are setting their sights on the Moon with ambitious plans to create a lunar colony. That would require a lot of resources launched from Earth, but how much water and power would be required to keep a lunar city going?…Even assuming one billion tonnes of water on the Moon, if nothing was recycled then a city of a million would last only a few years while a population of 100 000 would run for 20 years before running dry. Even when recycling the water with an efficiency of 98% – as performed on the International Space Station – a city of a million would only have enough water for around a century.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Space Stories: A New Lunar Spacesuit, a Map of the Cosmos, and Modeling Planetary Systems

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by PixelLabs from Pixabay.

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Ars Technica: “Wary of Artemis IV Timeline, NASA is Changing Lunar Spacesuit Design”

NASA has decided to use a simpler spacesuit for its initial missions to the lunar surface, Ars has learned. The agency announced the decision during an internal meeting this week as it seeks to accelerate its program to land humans at the south pole of the Moon as early as 2028. At the direction of Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons, NASA will work with Axiom Space to develop a “Sortie Suit” variant of the planned spacesuit for the lunar surface. Sources said the Sortie Suit will be used for the initial landing missions flown on landers developed both by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Among the goals of the initiative are to lower the mass of the spacesuit, reduce its complexity, and simplify interfaces between the spacesuits and lunar landers.

—Wired: “Astronomers Have Completed the Largest Map of Space. Yes, You Can Play With It.“

The driving force behind our universe’s accelerated expansion remains one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy. While this force, which scientists refer to as dark energy, pervades our universe, we know almost nothing about it. Located on a remote mountain in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has spent the past five years mapping the cosmos with the goal of unraveling this mystery. The result is the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. And now—with the release of the latest version of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, a free online tool for exploring the vast imaging data—you too can poke around the universe.

—Phys.org: “New Solar System Models Show Earth is No Fluke“

Over the past three decades, computer models of planetary system formation have gone from fairly crude representations to sophisticated simulations using thousands of different starting points. A paper presented at the Origins 2026 conference in Paris details innovative simulations of how our solar system might have formed without making assumptions about the planetary architecture with which we are so familiar. In his paper, Nader Haghighipour, a planetary scientist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, argued that his models, unlike previous models, incorporate many completely random starting points and, in turn, let physics drive the models’ ultimate evolution. As a result, these new models are much more complete and allow physics to dictate their outcomes.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Space Quote: Blue Origin to be Key Link With Red Planet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the MTO orbiting Mars. (Blue Origin)

“[Mars Telecommunications Orbiter] is the backbone of America’s Mars exploration program for the next decade and beyond and will provide the reliable communications capacity that will keep future robotic and human missions connected to each other and to Earth…This awarded contract is a testament to the Blue Origin team that has been building Blue Ring with exactly this kind of mission in mind. We’re ready, and so is the hardware.”

–Statement by Tory Bruno, president, Blue National Security at Blue Origin, discussing the role of the planned MTO mission for NASA. The MTO is a firm-fixed-price contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million. Part of the Moon to Mars Artemis program, the MTO is expected to be delivered to NASA no later than December 31, 2028.

Space Stories: Dragon Delays, Odd Black Holes, and Surprising Martian Warmth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): SpaceX Dragon capsule. (SpaceX)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Space.com: “SpaceX, NASA Delay Next Astronaut Launch to ISS Due To Leak on Dragon Spacecraft”

SpaceX’s next astronaut mission to the International Space Station won’t launch on Sept. 12 after all. That flight, known as Crew-13, has been delayed due to an oxidizer leak in the propulsion system of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA announced on Saturday (Aug. 29). Joint NASA and SpaceX teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework prior to launch,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Saturday. “A new target date will be announced once available.”

—Earth.com: “Giant Black Holes Appeared Too soon After the Big Bang, and Astronomers May Know Why“

Nearly every large galaxy keeps a giant black hole at its center. Some of those giants already weighed a billion Suns when the universe was less than 700 million years old. Astronomers have struggled for decades to explain how anything grew that heavy that fast. A new study built on James Webb Space Telescope observations suggests one possible answer. The researchers describe a young black hole wrapped in gas so dense that the whole object shines like a single enormous star. Astronomers call objects like it black hole stars. The light from this one has been traveling for 13 billion years, since a moment just 660 million years after the Big Bang, and no earlier example has been found.

—Caltech: “Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars’s South Pole“

Based on gravitational measurements that give clues to the Red Planet’s interior structure, Mars’s interior southern hemisphere is around 200 to 400 degrees Celsius warmer than the northern half of the planet and partially molten. The surprising finding adds additional context to Martian history and the periods of time in which it may have hosted conditions favorable for life. The research was led by Caltech alumnus Alexander Berne (PhD ’26), who is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Arizona. The findings are reported in a paper appearing in the journal Nature on August 27.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

In Case You Missed It/Podcast: The Second Monster in Aliens

Posted on by onespaceman2000

A few months back, NPR’s Planet Money podcast had a terrific episode titled, “The Real Horror of ‘Alien’ and How It Explains Why We’re Not Paid Enough.”

In the episode, we learn more about Weyland-Yutani, the company in the 1979 film Alien that employed the crew on the space tug Nostromo. You may remember that this crew eventually became little more than a meal and incubator for more monsters.

Maybe there was another monster on the ship as well. Maybe it was even a bigger monster, because it had already inflected the entire Earth economy. Something called monopsony, which is basically when all of the workers become the quasi-slaves of a few corporations. Unread contracts and absent labor unions became the basis for much abuse on and off the spaceships.

It’s a fun episode that allows you to see the film from the perspective of an economist as well as an everyday worker.

You can also hear from Fede Álvarez, who directed and co-wrote a subsequent film Alien: Romulus. It will probably be no surprise that Weyland-Yutani doesn’t become a better place to work.

Science fiction is often a mirror on society, even if we don’t see our reflection right away. Think about all of those drug commercials on television where everyone is dancing, yet the announcer keeps telling you about the horrible side-effects and possibility of death. Sometimes you just need to close your eyes and listen. The mirror can work even without your eyes.