The European Space Agency is Staying Busy with Sunshine

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A radiance map of the sun’s south pole as recorded by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. (ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI Team, J. Hirzberger (MPS))

While NASA is going crazy over budget cuts, the European Space Agency (ESA) is focused on new images from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft showing the sun’s south pole from a distance of about 40 million miles (shown above).

Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led cooperative mission with NASA designed to answer a number of questions:

  • What drives the Sun’s 11-year cycle of rising and subsiding magnetic activity?
  • What heats up the upper layer of its atmosphere, the corona, to millions of degrees Celsius?
  • How does solar wind form, and what accelerates it to speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second?
  • How does it all affect our planet?

Professor Carole Mundell, ESA’s Director of Science, stated:

Today we reveal humankind’s first-ever views of the Sun’s pole…The Sun is our nearest star, giver of life and potential disruptor of modern space and ground power systems, so it is imperative that we understand how it works and learn to predict its behaviour. These new unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science.

We all need a diversion from the ongoing budget news, so it is good to read about ongoing science and a successful mission.

Space Quote: Japanese Lunar Lander Fails a Second Time

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Resilience lunar lander approaching the moon. (ispace)

“Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause.”

-Statement by Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of Japan’s private space company ispace, in a press release following the failure of the company’s second lunar lander mission to the Moon. The company noted that the lander experienced a “hard landing” when it failed to sufficiently decrease its speed on approach. The mission started back in January when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried both this mission as well as Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which had a successful landing on the lunar surface. The ispace lander was named Resilience – something it will need more of to stay in the space race.

Space Stories: Dozens of Space Missions Cancelled, NASA Climate Cuts Impact Industry, and Budget Cuts Hurt Huntsville

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Credit: Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay.

Here are some recent stories about the planned budget cuts at NASA.

—USA Today: “Dozens of NASA space missions could be axed under Trump’s budget: Here’s a look at 6“

A total of 41 science projects would get the ax under the proposal, which would be NASA’s biggest single-year cut in the agency’s history, according to the Planetary Society. Many of the science missions President Donald Trump looks to cancel are still in development, while others are extended operations with uncrewed vehicles already deployed to orbit. Here’s a look at six different types of space missions, from Mars exploration to future moon landings, that could be under threat if Trump’s budget were to go into effect.

—Politico: “The Domino Effect of Trump’s NASA Climate Cuts“

President Donald Trump wants to decimate NASA’s climate research capacity. That could ultimately disrupt multiple sectors of the economy, writes Scott Waldman. In the White House budget documents released last week, Trump proposed slashing a quarter of NASA’s funding, specifically targeting the agency’s research on climate change. But many of NASA’s instruments that track human-caused climate change provide other critical data. The agriculture industry, for example, relies on satellites and instruments that not only track climate change but also keep tabs on shifts in climatic zones that affect plant growth. Trump wants to eliminate funding that keeps those tools operational.

—Advance Local: “Trump’s Budget Puts Huntsville-made Spacecraft on the Chopping Block“

NASA is being directed to phase out multibillion-dollar programs, managed from its flagship center in Huntsville, that are designed to ferry people to and from the moon…Eliminating SLS and Orion will, “[pave] the way for more cost-effective, next-generation commercial systems that will support subsequent NASA lunar missions,” according to budget documents. Both are key programs for Marshall Space Flight Center, one of the largest of NASA’s 10 field centers, which employs nearly 7,000 federal workers and contractors in Huntsville and manages a multibillion-dollar budget related to human spaceflight.

Space Stories: SPHEREx Starts Mapping, Studying an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere, and Explosive Diamonds

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Image (Credit): The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) observatory. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Engadget: “NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Has Begun its Mission to Map the Entire Sky in 3D“

A space observatory designed to map the entire sky over a period of two years to further our understanding of the early universe has started snapping images. SPHEREx, which launched in early March, got started with its observations this past week after over a month of setup procedures and system checks, according to NASA. The space telescope will complete about 14.5 orbits of Earth per day, capturing roughly 3,600 images daily and observing the sky in an unprecedented 102 wavelengths of infrared light. Its observations will eventually be combined to create four “all-sky” maps.

—Sci.News: “Webb Determines Atmospheric Makeup of Sub-Neptune TOI-421b“

Sub-Neptunes are high-occurrence exoplanets that have no solar system analog. Much smaller than gas giants and typically cooler than hot-Jupiter exoplanets, these worlds were extremely challenging to observe before the launch of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Many of sub-Neptunes appear to be very highly obscured by clouds and hazes, which have made it impossible to determine their atmospheric makeup. Now, astronomers using Webb have captured the transmission spectrum of the sub-Neptune TOI-421b and uncovered the chemical fingerprints of its atmosphere.

—Study Finds: “A Star 30,000 Light-Years Away May Have Forged The Gold In Your Jewelry“

The gold in your wedding ring may have come from a star’s explosive death. For decades, scientists have hunted for the factories that produce the universe’s heaviest elements, and now they’ve found an unexpected one: magnetar giant flares, cosmic explosions that release more energy in a millisecond than our Sun does in 100,000 years. Researchers have confirmed that these titanic blasts create the elements that make up our jewelry, electronics, and even our bodies.

Trump Administration Proposes 25 Percent Cut to NASA’s Budget

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It should come as no surprise at this point that NASA will fall victim to massive budget cuts like so many other civilian agencies. While it will not disappear like the US Agency for International Development, it will be severely wounded as the result of a proposed 25 percent cut to its budget.

The White House’s proposed 2026 budget is setting aside $7 billion for the Moon missions and $1 billion for Mars missions, but it seems just about everything else is up for grabs. For instance, we would see the show shutdown of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft so they could become fully commercial. In addition, the orbiting lunar Gateway will be cut completely.

Specifically, the budget summary states:

The Budget phases out the grossly expensive and delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after three flights. SLS alone costs $4 billion per launch and is 140 percent over budget. The Budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions. The Budget also proposes to terminate the Gateway, a small lunar space station in development with international partners, which would have been used to support future SLS and Orion missions.

Moreover, the Mars funding would not cover the sample return mission. Hence, SpaceX might get a boost to head towards Mars while we are stranding samples that help us to understand why we might want to go to Mars. We will also see the end of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, pruning back the accomplishments we have made since the Hubble Space Telescope to make the universe more available to scientists and the public.

If we ignore the future of the Artemis mission for a moment, a NASA press release boasted about all the events over the past 100 days to prepare for the Artemis mission. This is a hopeful sign that the Moon mission is still vital and viable at the moment, even with the defunding efforts underway. However, given some of the recent failures of the private sector efforts to reach the Moon, and the continual delays in SpaceX’s Starship, the future for Moon missions after the SLS does not look too promising at the moment.

The future also looks somewhat bleak when you look at proposed cuts to NASA’s funding for space science, space technology, and STEM programs. The endless faith in the private sector forgets the benefits of a government supporting and nudging these efforts.

As Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy for The Planetary Society, clearly stated:

These cuts would cause irreparable losses, throwing away billions of dollars invested by the U.S. taxpayers in productive space hardware and infrastructure. Space science is a critical national investment that engages our cutting edge economic, scientific, and educational abilities across the country.