Space Mission: ESA’s Euclid Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s drawing of the Euclid space telescope. (ESA/ATG-medialab)

To follow up on the previous post, Russia also lost out on launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid spacecraft. Russia was supposed to launch it on a Soyuz-ST/Fregat rocket this December, but the country’s invasion of Ukraine led to a change in plans. SpaceX will now be launching the spacecraft next year.

Euclid was designed to study dark energy and dark matter, and make a 3D-map of the Universe. The project includes scientists from 14 countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, the UK, and the US.

Euclid hopes to answer the following questions:

  • How did the Universe originate? What were the conditions just after the Big Bang, and how did these give rise to the large-scale structures we see today?
  • Why is the Universe expanding at an accelerating rate today?
  • Is dark energy – a term often used to signify the mysterious force behind this cosmic acceleration – real? If so, is it a constant energy density intrinsic to and spread throughout space, or a new force of nature that slowly evolves as the Universe expands?
  • What is the nature of dark matter, and how do neutrinos possibly contribute? Are there other as-yet-undetected massive particles in the Universe?

Once launched, Euclid will operate in the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), which is where the James Webb Space Telescope is located as well as ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Gaia, launched in December 2013, is currently mapping the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. It seems L2 is the place to be.

NASA is contributing infrared flight detectors for one of Euclid’s two science instruments. You can read more about the NASA contribution here.

The National Air and Space Museum is Open for Business

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The “Destination Moon” exibition at the refurbished National Air and Space Museum. (Smithsonian Museum)

If you have been awaiting the refurbishing of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, then you will be happy to know that the museum reopened on October 14th. Only now you cannot simply stroll into the museum. Instead, you need to obtain a free timed-entry pass. Unfortunately, this seems to be the current system used by numerous museums to control traffic as well as capture all of your personal information so they can swamp you with junk mail and offers. Anyway…

Here are the a few of the new exhibits the museum is highlighting (go here for the full list):

  1. “Walking On Other Worlds”: Experience what it’s like in distant parts of our solar system in the “Walking on Other Worlds” interactive experience in the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery. This immersive media exhibit presents visitors with a seven-minute “tour” of seven different worlds: Venus, Earth’s Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn’s moon Titan, asteroid Ryugu, and comet 67P.
  2. Science Fiction Artifacts: New to display is a full-sized T-70 X-wing Starfighter “flown” by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). The screen-used vehicle is on long-term loan from Lucasfilm and is displayed hanging outside the planetarium. Star Trek is also represented in the new exhibitions. 
  3. ISS Cupola: In the One World Connected gallery, put yourself in the shoes of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) with the ISS Cupola interactive. Every 90 minutes, astronauts on board the ISS can see the Sun rise from the station’s Cupola, a European Space Agency-built observatory module. 

Given that NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is shooting for the Moon again, the timing is perfect. Of course, in December 2022 it will have been 50 years since the last human walk on the Moon’s surface, so we have a lot to celebrate as well as a lot of time to make up. Let’s hope a future update to the National Air and Space Museum includes models of spacecraft used to get humans to Mars.

And remember, you can also visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside the Washington Beltway that contains large planes, jets, and spacecraft that cannot fit in the DC museum, including the Space Shuttle Discovery. Last time I went there I could walk right in without using a timed-entry pass.

Image (Credit): Space Shuttle Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. (Smithsonian Museum)

In Case You Missed It/Podcast: Retelling the Story of the Mission to the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image: Chesley Bonestell art printed in “The Conquest of the Moon” (1953). Mr. Bonestell’s art is mentioned in the Moonrise podcast.

If you are looking for a good story that you to listen to during your next car trip, you cannot do better than the Washington Post’s Moonrise podcast. It has a bit of everything, including science fiction stories, Nazi war machines, Russian persecution, American post-WWII politics, and a bit of astronomy as well.

Here is how the program sells itself:

Want to uncover the real origin story behind the United States’ decision to go to the moon? In the 50 years since the moon landing, as presidential documents have been declassified and secret programs revealed, a wild story has begun to emerge. “Moonrise,” a Washington Post audio miniseries hosted by Lillian Cunningham, digs into the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, the transformation of American society and politics ⁠— and even the birth of science fiction ⁠— to unearth what really drove us to the moon. Come along with us on a fascinating journey from Earth to the moon.

You can learn how President Kennedy tried to get the Soviet Union to join the Apollo program – twice. You can also hear about the Apollo 11 mission competing with a Soviet spacecraft trying to land on the Moon at the same time. And have you heard about the civil rights protests at the Apollo 11 launch site?

The podcast is a well crafted story trying to weave together many threads in a mostly successful way. It is still astonishing that the early Space Race was really lead by a former Nazi representing the United States and a former political prisoner representing the Soviets. Today the Apollo story is mostly a warm blur from the past, but I believe it is worth your time to listen to the full story. It is the foundation of our space exploration efforts, for better or worse.

Artemis I: If at First You Don’t Succeed…

Posted on by onespaceman2000

NASA is ready to try the uncrewed Artemis I mission again next month. The planned date is November 14, with November 16 and 19 as back up dates.

Should you need it, here is a quick summary of the Artemis I mission again:

Artemis I will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. During this flight, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and travel thousands of miles beyond the Moon, farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown, over the course of about a three-week mission. 

I am tired of crossing my fingers, so let’s just hope these launch dates work.

Image (Credit): Artemis I mission map. (NASA)

Pic of the Week: Stellar Tantrum

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Hubble image of an outburst from an infant star. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini)

This week’s image is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While it may look like an enormous interstellar stingray, it actually shows gas streaming from a newly-formed star. Here is the story from the European Space Agency (ESA):

An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum – produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation – consists of an incandescent jet of gas travelling at supersonic speeds. As the jet collides with material surrounding the still-forming star, the shock heats this material and causes it to glow. The result is the colorfully wispy structures, which astronomers refer to as Herbig–Haro objects, billowing across the lower right of this image.

Herbig–Haro objects are seen to evolve and change significantly over just a few years. This particular object, called HH34, was previously captured by Hubble between 1994 and 2007, and again in glorious detail in 2015. HH34 resides approximately 1,250 light-years from Earth in the Orion Nebula, a large region of star formation visible to the unaided eye. The Orion Nebula is one of the closest sites of widespread star formation to Earth, and as such has been pored over by astronomers in search of insights into how stars and planetary systems are born.