The Goldilocks Zone Turned Awfully Cold for Earth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of a “Snowball Earth.” (NASA)

We point of telescopes at distant solar systems searching for exoplanets in the “Goldilocks Zone,” it being defined as the habitable zone around a star where water can remain in liquid form. But that was not always the case for planet Earth, even if we are the model for this zone.

A recent New York Times article, “How Earth Might Have Turned Into a Snowball,” discusses how the Earth became a frozen ball about 717 million years ago. And it remained in this deep freeze for approximately 56 million years.

While the article goes on to discuss the reasons for this freeze, I am more interested in the idea of what this may mean for our own plans to someday travel to a distant star.

If a civilization on another planet was viewing our solar system from afar 750 million years ago, they too may have mistaken our Earth as a perfectly place planet to support life on its surface. However, they would have needed to wait another 23 million years for our planet to revert back to having a liquid surface.

It appears timing is everything, and the inner workings of a planet can be just as important as its placement in the solar system. I expect our telescopes will be able to tease our more information about each exoplanet in the future, though it also makes sense to send robotic probes before ever attempting to send a human that far.

In the meantime, we have a few moons here in our own solar system with frozen oceans. We can start to learn more about the potential for life in such places and our ability to survive in such climates. NASA’s Europa Clipper, set to launch later this year, is part of that learning process.

Pic of the Week: Launch of the PACE Mission

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Engines of the SpaceX rocket carrying the PACE spacecraft into orbit. (SpaceX)

This week’s image is from SpaceX, which launched NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission into orbit earlier today (the Falcon 9 rocket engines are shown above). 

The spacecraft is designed to monitor the Earth from orbit. NASA explains the mission is this way:

Information collected throughout PACE’s mission will benefit society in the areas of ocean health, harmful algal bloom monitoring, ecological forecasting, and air quality. PACE also will contribute new global measurements of ocean color, cloud properties, and aerosols, which will be essential to understanding the global carbon cycle and ocean ecosystem responses to a changing climate.

The PACE’s mission is designed to last at least three years, though the spacecraft is loaded with enough propellant to expand that timeline more than three times as long.

Bad News for NASA’s JPL and the Mars Sample Return

Posted on by onespaceman2000
 

NASA has started to crack under budget uncertainty.

The Washington Post has reported that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is laying off 530 employees and another 40 contractors. Overall, this is an eight percent drop in JPL staffing, most of it related to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) efforts that have been facing cost overruns and questions from Congress.

JPL management explained the reduction in a memo to employees:

I am writing to share as much detail and clarity on our actions as I can, including reviewing the factors that have led to this decision, and our next steps. First, how we got here. Without an approved federal budget including final allocation for MSR FY24 funding levels, NASA previously directed JPL to plan for an MSR budget of $300M. This is consistent with the low end of congressional markups of NASA’s budget and a 63% decrease over the FY23 level. In response to this direction, and in an effort to protect our workforce, we implemented a hiring freeze, reduced MSR contracts, and implemented cuts to burden budgets across the Lab. Earlier this month, we further reduced spending by releasing some of our valued on-site contractors.

This may be a short layoff should NASA get more funding from Congress, but even then it is possible that some of the great talent associated with the program will head off into the sunset to find more secure employment.

Will we ever get a sample back from Mars? Can we get the information we need via other means for now until the budget situation improves (as well as more partner funding)? Will the Chinese or another party find the means to do something we cannot?

NASA has a lot of balls in the air and may lack the necessary funding to keep them all afloat, as was highlighted in an earlier post.

It appears one of the balls has dropped.

Space Stories: Preparing for a Commercial Space Station, Ukraine Protests New ISS Crew, and Metal 3D Printing in Space

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Starlab commercial space station in orbit. (Starlab Space)

Here are some recent stories of interest related to space stations.

—SpaceNews: “Starlab Commercial Space Station to Launch on Starship“

Starlab Space, the joint venture developing the Starlab commercial space station, has selected SpaceX’s Starship to launch the station on a single flight. Starlab Space, a joint venture of Voyager Space and Airbus Space and Defence, announced Jan. 31 it reached an agreement with SpaceX to launch the Starlab station on Starship. The companies did not disclose terms of the agreement or a projected launch date, although a spokesperson for Starlab Space said the company was confident that Starlab would be launched before the decommissioning of the International Space Station, currently scheduled for 2030.

—Kyiv Post: “Ex-Russian Military Officer Joins NASA for ISS Mission; Ukrainian Outrage Follows“

Alexander Grebenkin, a former Russian military officer and current Roscosmos cosmonaut, is set to travel to the International Space Station as part of the NASA team, as announced on the NASA website, where Ukrainians have commented their outrage. NASA, in collaboration with SpaceX, plans to launch Crew-8 to the International Space Station no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 22.

—Aviation Week Network: “European Space Agency Launches ‘First’ Metal 3D Printer To ISS“

The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched what it says is the “first metal 3D printer” to be hosted on the International Space Station (ISS). While plastic 3D printers have been used aboard the ISS since 2014, a machine that prints stainless steel would be new and could allow astronauts greater self-sufficiency, including the ability to make complex metallic structures in orbit, as well as at future Moon and Mars bases, ESA said Jan. 30.

Cosmonaut Surpasses Earlier Days in Space Record

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Roscosmos cosmonaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko (Andrey Shelepin NASA)

Just yesterday, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko surpassed an earlier record for the amount of time a human has spent in space. He has now been in orbit more than 878 days, this being his fifth rotation on the International Space Station. The earlier record was set in 2015 by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.

American astronauts have a ways to go before approaching this record. To date, the record for cumulative days in space is held by a NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson at 675 days.

*Peggy Whitson extended her record cumulative time in space by nine days as an Axiom Space astronaut during Axiom Mission-2 from May 21 through May 30, 2023.
Credit: NASA