Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the GALEX space telescope orbiting Earth. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
On this day in 2003, NASA air-launched the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) via a Pegasus launch vehicle. It was an active orbiting space telescope for the next nine years, observing the universe in ultraviolet wavelengths to learn more about star formation in the universe.
A new audit report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) expressed some concerns about whether the contractor, Axiom Space, will have spacesuits ready in time for the planned lunar landing.
NASA faces challenges in ensuring next-generation spacesuits are available to meet the Agency’s current schedules for the Artemis lunar landing mission in 2028 and prior to the ISS’s decommissioning in 2030. NASA’s original schedules to demonstrate the lunar and microgravity spacesuits in 2025 and 2026, respectively, were overly optimistic and ultimately proved unachievable, as evidenced by delays of at least a year and a half for both spacesuits. Based on our analysis, if Axiom experiences design and testing delays in line with the historical average for recent space programs, the Artemis and ISS demonstrations may not occur until 2031.
That is a damning conclusion at a time NASA is struggling with other Artemis timetables. All of the pieces need to come together soon, including the necessary equipment for the lunar surface. It also does not help that NASA is completely reliant on one contractor for these spacesuits. Even the lunar lander has two competing contractors.
NASA Administrator Isaacman has one more item now keeping him awake at night.
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.
Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, blamed a bad engine Monday for a failed weekend launch that left a satellite in the wrong orbit, dooming it. Launches of the huge New Glenn rocket are grounded until Blue Origin and the Federal Aviation Administration complete their investigation.The rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday. The recycled first-stage booster performed well, landing on an ocean barge several minutes into the flight. But the upper stage was unable to put the satellite into a high enough orbit to begin operations.
The Space Force is launching a new acquisition task force to study how the Defense Department should move into cislunar space as it looks to support a planned NASA moon base, according to Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, senior advisor to Air Force Secretary Troy Mink for space acquisition. “We’re going to stand up a Cislunar Coordination Office on the Space Force acquisition side,” he told the annual Space Symposium here on April 15, who said the new office will bring together program managers and engineers to “build road maps” for “acquiring the necessary technology and a schedule for action.”
A US move to freeze the Lunar Gateway orbiting space station could render Japan’s new technologies redundant – but its space agency is expected to be diplomatic in its response. The Lunar Gateway project was initially planned as an installation that would orbit the moon as part of the United States’ Artemis programme, which recently made headlines for a record-breaking journey that went deeper into space than anyone had ever flown before…On March 24, however, Nasa announced it was freezing the project to focus on the construction of a base on the lunar surface, with future crewed missions to Mars in mind…The agency is now expected to focus all its attention on the third element of its collaboration with Nasa, the pressurised lunar rover that is being developed with Toyota to allow astronauts to drive on the moon.
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