Hello, readers, and welcome back to This Week in Space: our Friday digest of the most important space news in the sector. Among other delights, this week we'll examine a full-color global mosaic of Mars, and another gigantic deep-field image from the James Webb space telescope, capturing hundreds of the galaxies that lit up the infant universe with first light.
Pentagon, Starlink Ink Service-Funding Deal on Behalf of Ukraine
The Pentagon confirmed this week that it's now buying Starlink service and terminals for Ukraine, some months after Elon Musk called on the US government to fund the effort. It's not clear when this deal went down, exactly. The Pentagon said last December that it had made arrangements to continue providing Ukraine with satellite terminals and associated services, but it didn't say with whom. Now we know.
"We continue to work with a range of global partners to ensure Ukraine has the satellite and communication capabilities they need. Satellite communications constitute a vital layer in Ukraine's overall communications network and the department contracts with Starlink for services of this type," the Pentagon said in a statement.
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Previously, SpaceX had objected to its network being used for direct attacks on Russia. While the company acknowledged the use of its service for comms, it did not intend for Starlink to directly enable drone strikes or other offensive actions. Back in February, Musk tweeted that although SpaceX was the "communication backbone" of Ukraine, "we [Starlink] will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3."
Psyched for Psyche: NASA Mission to Launch in October
Almost a year ago, NASA announced that its Psyche mission was on indefinite hold. Although the probe's physical hardware had been delivered, problems with software development and validation hit the brakes on the whole affair. However, this week, NASA lifted its stay and declared the mission is on track for launch in October. If all goes well, the asteroid's eponymous spacecraft will arrive in August 2029 and begin scientific observations.
16 Psyche sports much higher concentrations of iron than a typical main-belt asteroid. It was once thought to be the exposed or remnant core of an ancient protoplanet, but recent observations have made this theory less likely. More recent data suggests Psyche may have been a differentiated body like Ceres or possibly Vesta, even experiencing ferrovolcanism (volcanoes that erupt with molten iron lava) at some point in its distant past.
Dawn's visit to Vesta and Ceres greatly expanded our understanding of their surface features and composition. Hopefully, the Psyche mission will be a similarly rich source of data for years to come.
Russian Luna 25 Moon Lander Launch Delayed
Russian state news outlet TASS reported this week that, sanctions and launch windows being what they are, the launch of Russia's Luna 25 moon lander will be delayed by at least a month. The spacecraft was due to launch on July 13, but it is still undergoing final ground tests. Right now, Roscosmos expects the mission to launch in August.
Boeing Sued for Allegedly Stealing Design for Critical SLS Hardware
Space is hard. It's even harder if you do a bad job stealing IP from a much smaller company. That's what Wilson Aerospace alleges Boeing did back in 2014. According to the company's lawsuit, filed in Seattle District Court, part of the reason Boeing has had such a miserably hard time delivering SLS hardware on time and on budget is that it did a bad job of thievery in the first place.
Wilson manufactures a tool called the Fluid Fitting Torque Device-3. This device is designed for the installation of high-torque equipment in very tight spaces, where more standardized hardware can't fit. In the lawsuit, Wilson claims that Boeing entered into negotiations back in 2014 to potentially acquire its specialized torque device, but that Boeing insisted on an in-person demonstration first. Wilson went ahead with the demonstration but now alleges that not all the employees Boeing brought to the live demo were actually Boeing employees.
"Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors," the lawsuit says. "This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the 'Bogus Boeing Employees' into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee." Boeing supposedly then collaborated with these competitors to design a (bad) copy of Wilson's equipment. Wilson Aerospace claims that some of the well-known valve and fuel leak problems that have plagued the SLS were directly caused by this theft of its own IP.
The SLS project has recently come under renewed fire for its absurd cost-plus contracts, with a recent internal review demanding tersely recommending that NASA move to fixed-rate contracts for the remainder of the SLS project. Should Wilson prevail in this lawsuit, it would be one more example of how corporate greed and Congressionally mandated graft have driven SLS development from the beginning.
ULA Fires Up Vulcan Centaur in Crucial Flight Readiness Test
Wednesday evening, United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully test-fired its next-gen Vulcan Centaur rocket for the first time ever. In position on its pad at Canaveral's SLC-41, the 202-foot-tall rocket fired its twin Blue Origin BE-4 first-stage engines for nearly seven seconds.
"We are more than 98% complete with the Vulcan qualification program, with the remaining items associated with the final Centaur V testing," ULA wrote in an update after the test fire.
"The team is reviewing the data from the systems involved in today's test and, in parallel, [continuing] with the Centaur V test stand anomaly investigation. Pending the data review and the investigation results, we will develop a plan for launch."
The 'anomaly investigation' concerns an incident this spring. After a hydrogen leak, a different Centaur rocket exploded on a test stand at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. ULA spokespeople have previously said that the mission could launch as soon as this summer, but the company has made it clear that optimistic schedules will have to take a backseat to safety.
"Testing is an integral part of our launch vehicle development program," ULA said in a statement, "and we will fly when we believe it is safe to launch."
Europa Clipper Carries 'Message in a Bottle' to Jupiter
NASA recently announced that space fans and Jupiter enthusiasts have an opportunity to send their names to Jupiter as part of NASA's "Message in a Bottle" campaign.
Participants' names will be etched onto a microchip that will fly to Jupiter with the Europa Clipper mission. And if you like, you can also get a keepsake image from NASA, featuring a glamour shot of Jupiter rising over Europa—and in the foreground, a rolled-up message in a bottle, with your name on it. (Psst...this might be a fun way to get kids engaged in learning about space.)
The Clipper's sensitive electronics are enclosed in a "vault" of aluminum and zinc, sealed with a tantalum plate. That plate's inward-facing surface is engraved with an original poem entitled "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," in the handwriting of its author: US Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
Limón debuted the poem in a reading at the Library of Congress.
Study Shows 'Widespread Changes' in Astronauts' Brains After Spaceflight
When an astronaut goes to space, they must contend with hazards we simply don't face on Earth. Studies show that spending time in microgravity inflicts subtle and widespread changes upon the human body. Our bodies expect gravity—on every level from bones to blood, we're built to anticipate everything flowing downhill. In orbit, though, the pull of gravity is much reduced. This means that some body fluids drift upwards, instead of staying where they belong. Unfortunately, that includes the watery cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that surrounds and circulates through the brain.
The crew aboard the ISS spend a fair amount of their time conducting experiments and exams, monitoring the changes in their bodies and vital signs. Before and after flights, astronauts undergo meticulous physical exams and scans. Now, planetside researchers poring over that exhaustive dataset have published a report profiling some important changes to the brains of dozens of veteran astronauts.
MRI data from the study shows widespread and consistent changes in the distribution of the returning astronauts' gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid, post-flight. The problem, in a nutshell, is that CSF is mostly water, which doesn't compress. As CSF floats upward into the skull, it has to go somewhere—and it floods into the brain's ventricles (anatomical channels through which CSF circulates), forcing them to expand to accommodate the increased volume. This crowds the skull, and the soft, lipid-rich brain is forced upward toward the crown of the head like oil floating on water. It's not brain damage, exactly, but it's not great.
These changes were most pronounced in the brains of veteran astronauts—but the length of their missions isn't the only important factor. Instead, the researchers say, it also matters how many times a person goes up and down the gravity well. After spaceflight, it can take an astronaut's ventricles years to recover their normal elastic response.
Gigantic Webb Deep-Field Image Shows Infant Universe 'Crackled' With Star Formation
A new deep-sky image from the James Webb Space Telescope looks back in time to just 600 million years after the Big Bang, showing the early universe positively sparkling with the birth of new stars and galaxies. Hundreds of ancient celestial bodies great and small fill the frame. It's a microcosm of what the universe looked like during its earliest days.
For half a billion years after the Big Bang, our known universe languished as a "gaseous fog," opaque and oppressive. No light could get through the fog—until the Epoch of Reionization, also known as cosmic dawn. During this period, primordial hydrogen began to collapse into stars, dwarf galaxies, quasars, and supermassive black holes. Their intense radiation blazed through the universe with wave after wave of ultraviolet light, an energetic shock so terrible it blasted electrons right off that primordial hydrogen, ionizing the cold fog and turning it transparent. Finally, the sky cleared, and visible light began to pierce the gloom.
Reionization took hundreds of millions of years, and yet it's just a blip on the great timeline of the cosmos. "If you took the whole universe and shrunk it down to a two-hour movie, you are seeing the first five minutes of the movie," said Kevin Hainline, lead author of a study of the image. Hainline announced the report Monday at the 242nd meeting of the National Astronomical Society. "These are the galaxies that are starting the process of making the elements and the complexity that we see in the world around us today," he said.
ESO, SOFIA Team Up to Reveal Tarantula Nebula's Magnetic Field Lines
Most of the energy in the Tarantula Nebula (scientifically known as 30 Doradus) comes from the gigantic star cluster at its core. That star cluster, R136, is responsible for creating the nebula's gigantic, concentric, expanding shells of matter. But near the nebula’s core, within about 25 parsecs of R136, things start getting weird. According to NASA, the gas pressure here is "lower than it should be" so close to R136’s intense stellar radiation. Furthermore, there's not enough mass for the system to be stable.
How, then, does it manage to hold itself together? A team of astronomers turned to SOFIA (NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) to study the magnetic fields in the Tarantula Nebula. Then, they joined forces with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. Magnetic fields, according to the astronomers, are the nebula's "secret ingredient."
In most of the nebula, the magnetic fields are strong enough to resist the turbulence of R136's stellar wind, regulating the motion of gases and holding the cloud’s structure intact. They’re also powerful enough to prevent the cloud from collapsing into stars under the force of its own gravity. But the field's complex geometry does have weak spots, which allow gas to escape, blowing a kind of bubble. As more and more gas builds up, it can collapse and form newborn stars, despite the strong influence of the nebula's magnetic fields.
ESA Celebrates Mars Express 20-Year Anniversary With Astonishing Full-Color Global Mosaic of Mars
The Mars Express imaging mission was supposed to last just a couple of years, but its runaway success kept winning it mission extensions from the ESA. Now, after 25 years in the Martian sky, the Mars Express mission has put together such a tremendous body of research that scientists have now assembled those thousands of images into a breathtaking, true-color mosaic of the entire surface of Mars.
Mars gets its nickname, the Red Planet, from the abundance of iron oxide on its surface. But the planet has much more going on than just a bunch of rust. Darker gray patches are basaltic sand, originally from volcanic lava, just like the basalt plains that make up the floor of Earth's oceans. Lighter patches show clay and sulfate minerals. The large scar across the planet's face is Valles Marineris.
By the way—did you get to check in on the "Mars Livestream" from last week? If you didn't, here are the highlights:
Skywatchers Corner
The stars of the Summer Triangle—Vega, Deneb, and Altair—rise in the east each evening as twilight gives way to the night. Every night, the Triangle rises a little bit earlier—so it's a great target for a little stargazing in the evening before everyone has to be in bed.
We won't have another major meteor shower until the Perseids, which start ramping up in the back half of July. Even so, most nights you can still catch a few meteors an hour. And with the waning moon passing its third quarter, if you can find clear skies, this is a great time to watch for shooting stars.
Here are the moon phases for June:
Next Wednesday morning, Jupiter and the Moon appear in conjunction in the eastern sky. Look to the east, about an hour before sunrise. Turn your gaze toward the south, and you'll see Saturn, high in the sky.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday!
