Space Stories: ESA & China Are Smiling, Blue Origin Beats SpaceX to the Moon, and JWST Analyzes Exoplanet Atmosphere

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Here are some recent space-related stories.

—European Space Agency: “Smile Lifts Off on Quest to Reveal Earth’s Invisible Shield Against the Solar Wind“

The Smile spacecraft lifted off on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 04:52 BST / 05:52 CEST (00:52 local time) on 19 May 2026. The launch marks the beginning of an ambitious mission to better understand solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and the science of space weather…Smile is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It will reveal how Earth responds to the streams of particles and bursts of radiation from the Sun, using an X-ray camera to make the world’s first X-ray observations of Earth’s magnetic shield, and an ultraviolet camera to watch the resulting northern lights non-stop for 45 hours at a time.

—The Guardian: “Nasa Selects Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin for First of Three Uncrewed Lunar Missions“

Nasa announced on Tuesday ambitious plans for three uncrewed lunar missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and said it had chosen the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to conduct the first...[NASA’s Administrator] said the three missions planned for 2026 would be followed by “more than a dozen” more in the coming years to test systems and equipment. He said the highly successful Artemis II mission last month that sent four astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972 had been both a catalyst and incentive to advance the moon base plan.

—Astrobiology: “Astronomers Observe Exoplanet Atmospheres With New Cloud-detecting Method“

Every morning, clouds roll in, and by evening, they have cleared off. This sounds like a weather forecast for a coastal city here on Earth — but it’s for WASP-94A b, a well-studied gas giant orbiting a star located nearly 700 light-years away. A new study published in the journal Science documents the first detection of repeating cloud cycles on a hot Jupiter exoplanet. The first author of the study is Sagnick Mukherjee, a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. Mukherjee is part of a research team that analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope targeting WASP-94 A b, a gas giant in the constellation Microscopium. The team discovered that the planet’s morning side is blanketed in clouds of magnesium silicate, the same mineral found in common rocks, while its evening side is under clear skies.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Space Stories: Martian Contract Questions, French Spacesuit Travels to ISS, and China Readies Next Space Station Mission

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): View of Mars from the NASA Mars Global Surveyor MOC wide angle cameras. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories.

—Ars Technica: “One Mars Spacecraft, Two Senators, and a Cloud of Questions“

NASA released a much-anticipated contract solicitation for a Mars-orbiting spacecraft late last week, kicking off what is sure to be a hotly contested and potentially controversial procurement. At issue is $700 million, already appropriated by Congress, to build a spacecraft, launch it to Mars, and once there to serve as a vehicle to relay communications between the red planet and Earth. But the stakes may be even bigger than this, including the possible resurrection of the recently canceled Mars Sample Return mission. As part of the new solicitation, NASA says it will conduct the acquisition “as a full and open competition.” But will it? That’s the question that several people involved with this procurement process are asking. And it could turn messy, quickly.

—European Spaceflight: “French Spacesuit Prototype Delivered to the International Space Station“

A European intravehicular activity (IVA) spacesuit prototype developed under a CNES-initiated programme was transported to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The spacesuit will be tested aboard the station by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot. The EuroSuit project was initiated by CNES in December 2023 as part of the agency’s Spaceship FR programme, which aims to foster the development of core technologies required for future crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit.

—China Global Television Network: “China to Launch Shenzhou-23 Crewed Mission to Space Station in Coming Days“

The combination of the Shenzhou-23 crewed spacecraft and the Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket was transferred to the launchpad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Saturday, according to the China Manned Space Agency. All facilities and equipment at the launch site are in good condition. Various pre-launch functional inspections and joint tests will be carried out as scheduled in the coming days. The launch is planned to take place in the coming days.

Update: Here is a podcast version of this story if you sometimes prefer to digest the news in this way. It is created by AI. To note, it’s not replacing anything or anyone. It’s simply offering an option if listening while driving is preferable to you. I do not use AI in the written articles. I will also start posting the latest podcasts in the sidebar.

Pic of the Week: Spiral Arm of Galaxy M51

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): View of an arm of the Messier 51 galaxy from both JWST and the Hubble Space Telescop. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team)

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Hubble Space Telescope, which together scanned about 9,000 star clusters in the four galaxies. What you are looking at above comes from the spiral arm of one of the galaxies – Messier 51 (M51).

Here is a description from the European Space Agency (ESA) regarding what you are seeing in the image:

A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.

Pic of the Week: Spiral Galaxy NGC 3137

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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.

Pic of the Week: Hubble and the Crab Nebula

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Image (Credit): A 2024 image of the Crab Nebula captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, STScI, William Blair (JHU); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It is an image of the Crab Nebula taken 25 years after the Hubble’s first image of the nebula. If you want to learn more about this history, a paper titled The Crab Nebula Revisited Using HST/WFC3 can be found in The Astrophysical Journal.

Here is a little more from NASA on earlier sightings of the nebula:

This new Hubble observation continues a legacy that stretches back nearly 1,000 years, when astronomers in 1054 recorded the supernova as an impressively bright new star that, for weeks, was visible even during the day. The Crab Nebula is the aftermath of SN 1054, located 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus…

The supernova remnant was discovered in the mid-18th century, and in the 1950s Edwin Hubble was among several astronomers who noted the close correlation between Chinese astronomical records of a supernova and the position of the Crab Nebula. The discovery that the heart of the Crab contained a pulsar — a rapidly rotating neutron star — that was powering the nebula’s expansion finally aligned modern observations and ancient records.