The UK and ESA

You may be wondering if the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU) dooms its involvement with the European Space Agency (ESA).  According to Space News, the answer is no.

First, the ESA is not an EU organization. And second, other non-EU countries are already members, including Norway and Switzerland. 

So whatever you think of the recent British vote, it should not hamper the country's space efforts. 

Starship USS Enterprise at the Smithsonian

Star Trek fans wil be happy to know the original USS Enterprise from the 1960s series has been refurbished and has its own display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC (rather than sitting in the gift shop). 

The 11-foot, 200-pound, spacecraft has arrived just in time as movies and now a TV series keep the crew in our thoughts.

And here are a few interesting pieces of trivia from a recent NPR article: (1) the spacecraft is green not gray to improve the camera shots against a blue screen and (2) only one side of the spacecraft was competed since that was sufficient for filming. I know, it's like learning the Millenium Falcon is really pink. 

Time for a road trip. 

A Grander Canyon on Charon

Images from NASA's New Horizons mission indicate Pluto's moon Charon has a 430 mile long canyon named Argo Chasma (the section shown above measures 185 miles). This canyon is also estimated to be about 5.5 miles deep.

Earth's Grand Canyon is only 280 miles long and about 1 mile deep by comparison, representing a much shorter and shallower scar on a much larger world. However, the Valles Marineris is 2,500 miles long and 4.3 miles deep, so Mars still represents a much longer scar. And the longest canyons in the solar system are found in Earth's rift valleys. But none of this takes away from Charon's significant scar given its small size. 

Heinlein Prize Awarded to Bezos

The Heinlein Prize, given for progress in commercial space, was awarded to Jeff Bezos on June 21st. Mr. Bezos is the third winner of the prize, following Dr. Peter Diamandis and Elon Musk. The prize is awarded every five years.

The prize announcement stated:

Under Bezos’ leadership, Blue Origin developed a number of technology firsts that are driving U.S. space competitiveness. The reusable BE-3, a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine, is now being used in Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft. New Shepard is the first rocket ever to fly above the Karman line into space and then land vertically upon the Earth. Furthermore, it has done so multiple times with the same rocket hardware – not even removing the engine between flights. In late 2014, Blue Origin reached a commercial agreement with a private launch company to develop the BE-4 engine which could be used to power the next generation of U.S. launch vehicles.

In response to receiving the award, Mr. Bezos stated:

Robert Heinlein inspired millions with his visionary—and incredibly entertaining—stories...Heinlein foresaw a thriving future with humans throughout the solar system. We won’t stop working to make that vision come true.

Let's hope that many others are following in the awardees' steps to push us into space.

Chinese Space Station Open for Business

"The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) have agreed to work together to develop the space capabilities of United Nations Member States via opportunities on-board China’s future space station...Under the agreements, UNOOSA and CMSA will work together to enable United Nations Member States, particularly developing countries, to conduct space experiments on-board China’s space station, as well as to provide flight opportunities for astronauts and payload engineers."

--Press statement by UNOOSA posted June 16, 2016. This will become more relevant as the United States and its partners start to wind down the International Space Station and end the program by 2024.

Fire Prevention in Space

This week NASA has set fire to a Cygnus space capsule after it departed from the International Space Station as part of its SAFFIRE mission (or Spacecraft Fire Experiment). The space agency hopes to learn more about fire safety in space.

Yes, 4,000 pounds of dirty laundry are burning in space. Okay, it's not the whole craft since more experiments will be conducted with the same spacecraft.

Speaking of the mission, David Urban, SAFFIRE’s principal investigator, stared:

In spacecraft, we’ve never had the opportunity to burn anything larger than approximately an index card…We really don’t know what the fate of a fire is. So our building of future spacecraft is based on one-G understanding and extrapolation of very small, short-duration experiments.

Better now as an experiment than later as an event.

Boarding the BEAM

Bigelow has posted a number of photos of its Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), including an astronaut's entry of the module on the International Space Station last week. Take a look.

Picture Quote:  "NASA astronaut Jeff Williams successfully entered the BEAM, the first human rated expandable structure in space."

New Worlds and Irrational Thought

"...given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets, the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational."

-- Statement by astrophysics professor Adam Frank in a New York Times article titled "Yes, There Have Been Aliens." He discussed the findings of a paper titled "A New Empirical Constraint on the Prevalence of Technological Species in the Universe," which uses the Drake equation to re-estimate the likelihood of intelligent alien life given what we have learned to date about exoplanets, concluding "...even if you grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have appeared over the course of cosmic history."

Juno Approaches Jupiter

I remember a lot more excitement about New Horizions approaching Pluto, yet the Juno mission to Jupiter is also an impressive feat.

On July 4th we will have another reason to look up into the sky and celebrate as Juno goes into orbit around Jupiter after a trip that lastest five years. Juno will orbit the planet for about 20 months. 

The goal of the mission is to

...understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter, look for solid planetary core, map magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in deep atmosphere, [and] observe auroras.

That's quite a list of duties and a good reason to stay connected to the mission. So remember to celebrate on the 4th.

Ukrainian Rockets in the US

Ukraine is proposing its rocket industry help replace the current Russian-built RD-180 rockets being used by the US space industry (much to the chagrin of Senator John McCain).

According to a TASS news story, Lyubomyr Sabadosh, head of Ukraine's State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU), recently stated:

We have proposes using our capabilities for implementing a joint design solution for the production of a liquid propellant engine, which is currently purchased in the Russian Federation. Our partners have an understanding that it's quite a complicated task, but we can cope with it, and the discussion will take place at the level of professional experts."

While the US has plans to build its own rocket engine, a deal with Ukraine gives us more breathing room while also helping a partner in the region looking for some help. One can only hope US officials give this proposal serious consideration. 

Patience Pays Off: Student Discovers Planets

Michelle Kunimoto, a student at the University of British Columbia, recently discovered four new exoplanets about 3,200 light years away - one close to Mercury in size, two somewhat larger that the Earth, and a fourth closer in size to Neptune.  Ms. Kunimoto is a recent graduate from UBC where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy.

How did she do it?  A part of her research as a student, Ms. Kunimoto was studying data from the Kepler Space Telescope, which contained observations of about 150,000 stars. She noticed something odd with one of the stars but it has been missed because of the exoplanets long orbit - 637 days. While Kepler has found other exoplanets with longer orbits, it appears more planets such as these could be in the data for discovery.

In fact, it was this time last year that a high school student in England was credited with finding a Jupiter-sized exoplanet 1,000 light years away. He was looking at data collected by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project at Keele University in England, which uses an approach similar to the Kepler Space Telescope.

So the data is out there. Now we simply need more industrious (and patient) students to sort through it. 

Image: UBC student Michelle Kunimoto (right) and astronomy professor Jaymie Matthews (left). Martin Dee/UBC

Great Image: Cat's Eye

An endless variety of a images populate our night sky, such as the death of a star as shown here in the Cat's Eye Nebula. Just the idea of a halo 5 light years across is amazing, large enough to include both our Sun and Alpha Centauri. By the way, a variation on this image was cited in one of my earlier posts. 

Here is the explanation from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day: 

The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552. 

Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Smith