SPACE reports, “At long last, particles of water–ice have been discovered in the frozen Kuiper Belt of another star. The discovery, made by the James Webb Space Telescope, is a major step forward in filling in gaps in our understanding of how exoplanets develop.”
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Tag: Astronautical
Virgin Galactic on Track for Production of New Spaceplanes
Space News reports, “Virgin Galactic says production of its new suborbital spaceplanes remains on track to allow commercial flights to begin in the middle of next year as it contemplates restarting ticket sales. The company spent much of a May 15 earnings call talking about the technical progress it has made in the assembly of its first Delta-class vehicles, or SpaceShips, in areas such as structures, propulsion and avionics.”
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SpaceX Tests Raptor Engines That Will Power Next Starship Rocket
Ars Technica reports, “SpaceX fired six Raptor engines on the company’s next Starship rocket Monday, clearing a major hurdle on the path to launch later this month on a high-stakes test flight to get the private rocket program back on track. Starship ignited its Raptor engines Monday morning on a test stand near SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas.”
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DIU Expands Vendor Pool for ‘Hybrid Space Architecture’ Program
Breaking Defense reports, “The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has added 13 more companies to its pool of contractors developing an ambitious multi-agency effort to create a multi-orbit, public-private satellite communications (SATCOM) network largely impervious to jamming — with the goal of launching a pilot in 2026. The move, announced Monday by DIU, brings the total number of companies, ranging from software startups to big defense primes, participating in the ‘Hybrid Space Architecture’ program to 25.”
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Soviet Venus Lander Kosmos 482 Crashes Into Sea After 53 Years in Orbit
SPACE reports, “A failed Soviet Venus lander’s long space odyssey has come to an end. The Kosmos 482 probe crashed to Earth today (May 10) after circling our planet for more than five decades. Reentry occurred at 2:24 a.m. ET (0624 GMT or 9:24 a.m. Moscow time) over the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia, according to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. Kosmos 482 appears to have fallen harmlessly into the sea.”
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Sierra Space Marks Third Testing Milestone on Resilient GPS (R-GPS) Technology for USSF
Inside GNSS reports, “Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company and defense tech prime announced today another successful demonstration of the company’s Resilient GPS (R-GPS) technology for the U.S. Space Force (USSF). In this third milestone, Sierra Space demonstrated an early integration of the R-GPS satellite technology through FlatSat flight software and hardware subsystem testing, in addition to successful communication with ground software.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Water Vapor in Distant Planet’s Atmosphere
SPACE reports, “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has found water vapor swirling in the air of a distant, boiling-hot alien planet, a new study reports. That exotic world is TOI-421 b, a boiling-hot “sub-Neptune” orbiting a star about 244 light-years from Earth whose atmosphere JWST recently probed in detail.”
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NASA Safety Panel Concerned Over Growing Risks to ISS Operations
Space News reports, “Members of a NASA safety panel said they were “deeply concerned” about the safety of the aging International Space Station, citing long-running issues and funding shortfalls. During a public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) April 17, members expressed concerns about growing risks as the station nears its projected end in 2030.”
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Webb Telescope Spots Possible Signature of Life on Distant Planet
The Washington Post reports, “A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world, according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.”
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NASA Demonstrates Its Electric Moon Dust Shield Works on Lunar Surface
SPACE reports, “New shielding technology from NASA that protects against damaging lunar dust just passed a trial run on the moon’s surface, marking an important milestone in the agency’s lunar aspirations. The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) flew aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, the first privately funded lunar lander to make a fully successful touchdown on the moon.”
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