Astro Wonders

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2022-06-23 06:46:24 Virgin Galactic's spaceplane has reached the edge of space for the first time.

The peculiarity of the spaceplane is that it is lifted into the sky by a carrier aircraft and separated at an altitude of 14 km. Such a spaceship was created mainly for tourists. The cost of a two-hour flight, during which passengers will be able to experience weightlessness and see the Earth from a height of 100 km, is about $ 250 thousand.

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2022-06-22 15:55:13 South Korea's homegrown Nuri rocket puts satellites in orbit for 1st time

The nation's new Nuri rocket lifted off from Naro Space Center on Tuesday (June 21) at 3 a.m. EDT (0700 GMT), eventually deploying six payloads into Earth orbit, Reuters reported(opens in new tab).

One of those payloads was a 358-pound (162.5 kilograms) test satellite that successfully made contact with a base station in Antarctica after reaching orbit, according to Reuters. The others were a 1.3-ton dummy satellite and four tiny cubesats developed by university researchers.

Tuesday's liftoff was the second orbital mission for the three-stage, 155-foot-tall (47.2 meters) Nuri. The first, in October 2021, failed to place a dummy payload into orbit as planned after the rocket's third stage shut down prematurely.

So Tuesday's success was a very big deal for South Korea, which wants to launch its own constellation of navigation satellites and send probes to the moon, among other space goals.
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2022-06-22 15:49:36 World's largest liquid mirror telescope ready to observe

Located at the Devasthal Observatory in India's Himalayas, at an elevation of 8,038 feet (2,450 meters), the four-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) is the first liquid telescope to be built specifically for astronomy.

Most telescopes use glass mirrors, but as the ILMT's name suggests, its mirror is made from a thin layer of liquid mercury that floats on 10 microns of compressed air and rotates every eight seconds. "By way of comparison, a human hair is approximately 70 microns thick," Paul Hickson, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia who helped develop the telescope, said in a statement. "The air bearings are so sensitive that even smoke particles can damage them."

The rotation causes the liquid mercury to form a parabolic shape like a contact lens, which shape is what allows the telescope to focus light from deep space. In fact, glass telescope mirrors are also parabolic, but shaping a solid material requires far more effort, thus liquid mirror telescopes are far more cost-effective than conventional ones.

The tradeoff is that the ILTM is fixed in a single position, so it only observes one strip of the night sky as the Earth rotates below it. But since the telescope will be hyper-focused on just one area, it's well-suited for spotting transient objects like supernovas and asteroids.

"The collected data will be ideally suited to perform a deep photometric and astrometric variability survey over a period of typically five years," Jean Surdej, project director and an astrophysicist at the University of Lie‌ge, Belgium, and the University of Poznan, Poland, said in the statement.

Expected to begin science observations later this year, the ILTM will operate from October through June annually, closing during India's rainy season. The project is an international collaboration between institutions in India, Belgium, Poland, Uzbekistan and Canada.
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2022-06-22 15:49:30 World's largest liquid mirror telescope ready to observe

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2022-06-22 05:40:09 When the core of Mars began to cool down, the planet's magnetic field weakened, and then disappeared altogether.

This was the reason why the atmosphere was "blown away" by the solar wind and practically disappeared into outer space, taking water with it.

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2022-06-21 17:08:55 Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly

Jupiter's innards are full of the remains of baby planets that the gas giant gobbled up as it expanded to become the behemoth we see today, scientists have found. The findings come from the first clear view of the chemistry beneath the planet's cloudy outer atmosphere.

Despite being the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has divulged very little about its inner workings. Telescopes have captured thousands of images of the swirling vortex clouds in the gas giant's upper atmosphere, but these Van Gogh-esque storms also act as a barrier blocking our view of what's below.

Jupiter was one of the first planets to form, in the first few million years when the solar system was taking shape around 4.5 billion years ago, lead researcher Yamila Miguel, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in The Netherlands, told. However, we know almost nothing for certain about how it formed, she added.

In the new study, researchers were finally able to peer past Jupiter's obscuring cloud cover using gravitational data collected by NASA's Juno space probe. This data enabled the team to map out the rocky material at the core of the giant planet, which revealed a surprisingly high abundance of heavy elements. The chemical make-up suggests Jupiter devoured baby planets, or planetesimals, to fuel its expansive growth.
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2022-06-21 17:08:52 Scientists find remains of cannibalized baby planets in Jupiter's cloud-covered belly

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2022-06-21 16:27:35



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2022-06-21 16:19:21 Astroscale to launch space-junk-removing test mission in 2024

Fresh off an attempt last month at catching a simulated piece of debris in orbit Astroscale says it's ready to launch a 'space junk servicer' test in late 2024.

The Tokyo-based company is partnering with broadband satellite provider OneWeb to launch the ELSA-M mission (End-of-Life Service by Astroscale-M) with ambitious plans to deliver a space debris removal service to satellite operators thereafter," the company said.

"This spacecraft will demonstrate our innovative rendezvous capture and de-orbit capabilities with a full-size constellation client," John Auburn, Astroscale's managing director said.

We plan to launch our commercial service for satellite operators such as OneWeb and others soon after the in-orbit demonstration with a vision to make debris removal part of routine operations by 2030, Auburn added.

The aim is to allow this servicer to capture and deorbit multiple satellites in low Earth orbit during its mission.
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