Image (Credit): Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s boot print on the surface of the Moon. (US National Archives)
On this day in 1969, the statement “The Eagle has landed” changed the history of mankind as humans arrived on the surface of the Moon.
Spoken by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the “Eagle” referred to the Lunar Module Eagle as it touched down on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility. Four hours later, and almost 110 hours after being launched from Earth, Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, stating “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The crew on Apollo 11 consisted of Neil Armstrong (Commander), Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. (Lunar Module Pilot), and Michael Collins (Command Module Pilot).
You can watch a video of the Apollo 11 landing here and read about the mission itself here.
“You’re losing the managerial and core technical expertise of the agency…What’s the strategy and what do we hope to achieve here?”
-Comment by Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, regarding recent news that 2,145 senior-ranking NASA employees will be departing NASA as part of the ongoing downsizing of the agency. It is not clear whether these cuts align with the White House’s earlier statements that it wanted to put humans on the Moon and Mars. The saying used to be measure twice, cut once. With this White House it is cut twice and toss out the measuring tape.
A second “new star” has unexpectedly appeared in the night sky, less than two weeks after a near-identical point of light first burst into view without warning. The first nova, dubbed V462 Lupi, was initially spotted June 12 shining in the Lupus constellation, after its progenitor star suddenly became more than 3 million times brighter than normal. Then, on June 25, multiple astronomers detected another nova, dubbed V572 Velorum, within the Vela constellation, according to EarthSky.org. Astronomers normally expect to see a classical nova once a year at most, and more than one of these explosions shining simultaneously is almost unheard of.
Legacy aerospace giants scored a win Tuesday when the U.S. Senate passed President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that earmarks billions more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program. The $10 billion addition to the Artemis architecture, which includes funding for additional Space Launch System rockets and an orbiting station around the moon called Gateway, is a rebuke to critics who wished to see alternative technologies used instead. Among those critics are SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who Musk proposed as the next NASA administrator.
NASA has extended recovery efforts for its stricken Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft to mid-July, but is warning that if the probe remains silent, the mission could end. Contact with the small satellite was lost the day after its launch on February 26. Controllers were initially able to receive engineering data from the vehicle, but the telemetry indicated power system issues, and the spacecraft eventually fell silent.
Image (Credit): The Mission Possible vehicle during construction. (The Exploration Company)
A new European space company came close to success with its space capsule early this week until it had problems with reentry. The Exploration Company, discussing its Mission Possible vehicle, had this to say:
The capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, reentered and reestablished communication after black out…We are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon. We apologize to all our clients who entrusted us with their payloads.
The Mission Possible capsule was expected to complete the following tasks:
Phase 1: Separation from the Launcher
Phase 2: Stabilizing the Capsule and Putting its Heatshield Forward
Phase 3: Atmospheric Re-entry
Phase 4: Parachute Deployment and Descent
Phase 5: Splashdown and Recovery
The problem appears to be related to the parachute deployment in Phase 4.
Launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the European company was preparing the way for its planned Nyx capsule. With the Nyx capsule, the company hopes to carve out a place for itself in the space cargo business – first in low-Earth orbit and later between the Earth and the Moon.
In an earlier press release, the company outlined its European roots:
Germany, Munich:Core of spacecraft avionics, power systems, and flight software. Also, a leader in additive manufacturing. France, Bordeaux: Specializing in propulsion systems, reentry phase, thermal engineering, system engineering, and mission safety, also hosts the main control center. Italy, Turin: Home to the babckup control center, docking and other complex mechanisms, life support system and high-thrust engine turbomachinery. Luxembourg, opening in 2025: Dedicated to cryogenic refuelling, a critical development for deep-space missions.
This bold European company’s partial success should pave the way for more attempts and contribute to a greater European presence in the space industry.
A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in Australia has found that a mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected last year originated not from a distant source, but from one circling the planet—a long-dead satellite. The team has posted a paper outlining their findings on the arXiv preprint server…The findings could lead to the development of new tools for studying signals coming from space, whether near or far, and possibly new ways to monitor the movement of dead satellites.
A team of astronomers say they’ve gleaned the mysterious traits of our galaxy’s black hole by probing it with an AI model. But a pretty big name on the field is throwing a little bit of cold water on their work. Just a little bit.Reinhard Genzel, a Nobel laureate and an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute, expressed some skepticism regarding the team’s use of AI, and the quality of the data they fed into the model.“I’m very sympathetic and interested in what they’re doing,” Genzel told Live Science. “But artificial intelligence is not a miracle cure.”
A space instrument, built by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), has for the first time detected negative hydrogen ions on the surface of the Moon – a type of particle never seen there before. The discovery was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment.
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