Image (Credit): Lightening striking the Artemis I launch pad on August 27, 2022. (NASA)
Even after thunderstorms threatened the Artemis I launchpad over the weekend, everything is still a go for tomorrow’s scheduled launch at 8:33 am EDT of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket.
This NASA video shows you the entire plan for the Artemis I unmanned mission around the Moon. A few mission facts from the NASA site are also provided below.
Mission Facts:
Launch date: Aug. 29, 2022
Mission duration: 42 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes
Total distance traveled: 1.3 million miles
Re-entry speed: 24,500 mph (Mach 32)
Splashdown: Oct. 10, 2022
Now all we can do it await the new day.
Update: Given some engine problems Monday morning, it appears we will need to wait a little longer for this launch. The next window is September 2nd if NASA is ready. We have waited this long, so a few more days will not matter too much. I think the dummies on board are pretty patient.
With the Artemis I mission ready to go on Monday, it is worth taking a moment to remember the Kennedy Space Center’s (KSC) 60th anniversary. As shown in the NASA graphic below, the KSC has been very busy over the years and has much more to do. This NASA site has more information and memories. This video also highlights some key moments in space history as well as some dreams about the future.
Image (Credit): Pluto as captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
On this day in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved a new definition of “planet” that excluded Pluto. The vote at the IAU approved the following definition of a planet:
is in orbit around the Sun,
has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and
has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Pluto fails this last test. In fact, many other objects, including at least one that may be larger (Eris), lie in the same orbit as Pluto around the Sun. However, Pluto does meet the definition of a “dwarf” planet:
is in orbit around the Sun,
has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape,
has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and
is not a satellite.
Hence, Pluto meets this definition whereas Europa, which is larger than Pluto, does not because it fails the last two tests – it has not cleared the neighborhood and it is a satellite.
The IAU vote was not popular. As one editorial argued, the third criteria about clearing the neighborhood makes little sense:
That last criterion states that a planet must be the gravitationally dominant object in the area of space in which it orbits. This rule makes sense for somewhere like, say, Earth, which is far more massive that the Moon and anything else along its orbital path. But out in the Kuiper Belt, where neighbouring bodies are far, far more distant than in the inner Solar System, Earth would not necessarily be able to clear its neighbourhood.
He continues:
This argument predates the flyby of Pluto in July 2015 of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, but the images returned by that spacecraft really help make the case: Pluto is an enigmatic world with towering ice mountains, vast glaciers of nitrogen ice, a tenuous atmosphere, a thick, outer icy carapace and a probably liquid water ocean below, all atop a huge rocky interior. By any geological measure – including the fact that there are surface processes acting on Pluto today – Pluto is a planet.
This will get more interesting once we throw in the exoplanets. Stay tuned.
Image (Credit): Some of the known dwarf planets. (Socratic.org)
VFTS 243 is a binary system, which means it is composed of two objects that orbit a common center of mass. The first object is a very hot, blue star with 25 times the mass of the Sun, and the second is a black hole nine times more massive than the Sun. VFTS 243 is located in the Tarantula Nebula within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 163,000 light-years from Earth.
Faced within increasing costs, the European Space Agency is looking for ways to revise the design of a large X-ray space telescope, an effort that could have implications for NASA’s own astrophysics programs…That effort will involve potential changes to its instrument configuration as well as creation of a science “redefinition” team to reconsider science objectives. The goal will be to develop a revised concept, called a minimum disrupted mission, that will cost ESA no more than 1.3 billion euros but still perform science expected of a flagship-class mission.
A NASA-funded sounding rocket mission will observe the remnants of an exploded star, uncovering new details about the eruption event while testing X-ray detector technologies for future missions. The High-Resolution Microcalorimeter X-ray Imaging, or Micro-X, experiment will launch Aug. 21 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The mission’s target of study is some 11,000 light-years away from Earth, off the edge of the W-shaped constellation known as Cassiopeia. There, a massive bubble of radiant material known as Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, marks the site of a brilliant stellar death.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of Europa orbiting Jupiter. (NASA)
Earlier this year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory started assembling the Europa Clipper spacecraft so it is ready for its launch in 2024 (you can find the latest update here). Once it arrives at Jupiter, the spacecraft will have at least 50 flybys to study the Jovian moon and learn more about its inside, outside, and atmosphere.
Extraterrestrial life might exist under all sorts of conditions that humans would struggle to imagine. But we know of one set of conditions in which life flourishes in a multitude of shapes and sizes: the conditions found on Earth. Because we know Earth has the right conditions for life, humans can then sharply narrow down the search for extraterrestrial life by searching only in places that have the conditions that Earth life requires: a source of energy, the presence of certain chemical compounds, and temperatures that allow liquid water to exist. Jupiter’s icy moon Europa seems to be just such a place.
And water exists in abundance, as the NASA graphic shows below.
The Europa Clipper will not make it to Jupiter until 2030, so we have a long wait ahead of us. It also gives us plenty of time to guess about what we will find.
You can follow the status of the Europa Clipper here.
Image (Credit): Illustration comparing water on the Earth and Europa. (NASA)
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