America's Next X-Plane Is Ready for Its Paint Job...

Lockheed Martin

NASA’s X-59 Goes from Green to Red, White and Blue (News Release)

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft continues to make progress, most recently moving to the paint barn at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, California.

The X-59’s paint scheme will include a mainly white body, a NASA “sonic blue” underside and red accents on the wings. The paint doesn’t just add cosmetic value.

It also serves a purpose – the paint helps to protect the aircraft from moisture and corrosion and includes key safety markings to assist with ground and flight operations.

The aircraft made the move to the paint barn on November 14, 2023. Once it is painted, the team will take final measurements of its weight and exact shape to improve computer modeling.

“We are incredibly excited to reach this step in the mission. When the X-59 emerges from the paint barn with fresh paint and livery, I expect the moment to take my breath away because I’ll see our vision coming to life,” said Cathy Bahm, the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project manager. “The year ahead will be a big one for the X-59, and it will be thrilling for the outside of the aircraft to finally match the spectacular mission ahead.”

The X-59 is an experimental aircraft designed to fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the sound of the typical sonic boom to a sonic thump. The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s QueSST mission.

Through QueSST, NASA will fly the X-59 over several to-be-selected U.S. communities and gather data about people’s perceptions about the sound it makes.

NASA will provide that data to regulators which could potentially adjust current rules that prohibit commercial supersonic flight over land.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Lockheed Martin

America's Next Saturn-bound Robotic Explorer Won't Launch for Another 4-Plus Years...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben

NASA’s Dragonfly to Proceed with Final Mission Design Work (News Release)

NASA’s Dragonfly mission has been authorized to proceed with work on final mission design and fabrication – known as Phase C – during fiscal year (FY) 2024. The agency is postponing formal confirmation of the mission (including its total cost and schedule) until mid-2024, following the release of the FY 2025 President’s Budget Request.

Earlier this year, Dragonfly – a mission to send a rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s moon Titan – passed all the success criteria of its Preliminary Design Review. The Dragonfly team conducted a re-plan of the mission based on expected funding available in FY 2024 and estimate a revised launch readiness date of July 2028.

The Agency will officially assess the mission’s launch readiness date in mid-2024 at the Agency Program Management Council.

“The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.”

Dragonfly takes a novel approach to planetary exploration, for the first time employing a rotorcraft-lander to travel between and sample diverse sites on Titan. Dragonfly’s goal is to characterize the habitability of the moon’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan.

Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado; Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company; NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California; NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California; Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), the French space agency, in Paris, France; DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Cologne, Germany; and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Tokyo, Japan.

Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate.

Source: NASA.Gov

On This Day in 2018: The InSight Lander Safely Touches Down on Mars...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

It was five years ago today that InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport)—NASA's successor to the Phoenix spacecraft that safely landed on Mars back in 2008—triumphantly touched down on the Red Planet.

InSight's goal for its mission, which began with a launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base over six months earlier (on May 5), was to study the Martian interior using two primary instruments: a seismometer (the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS) and a heat probe (the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP₃). HP₃, sadly, didn't accomplish its mission due to it being unable to penetrate the surprisingly-sticky soil at InSight's landing site.

SEIS, on the other hand, detected up to 1,300-plus marsquakes during its prolific, 4-year-long mission!

As shown below, it was an honor to have a virtual presence on InSight...along with other successful robotic Mars explorers like Phoenix as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. I've also submitted my name to fly on the Mars Sample Return mission, though it remains to be seen when this one will launch!

Happy Sunday.


NASA / JPL - Caltech

Europe's Newest Rocket Has Achieved a Major Milestone Before Its First Flight Next Year...

ESA – M. Pedoussaut

Hot Fire: Ariane 6 Ready to Rumble (News Release)

ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket passed a major full-scale rehearsal today in preparation for its first flight, when teams on the ground went through a complete launch countdown followed by a seven-minute full firing of the core stage’s engine, as it would fire on a launch into space.

For this rehearsal, the boosters were not ignited so Ariane 6 stayed firmly on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, as planned.

The engine-fire trial reenacts how the Ariane 6 core stage will fire during a normal flight into space. Once complete the main engine would shut down and the core stage would separate from the upper stage, which would then take over propulsion and complete its mission.

The trial, conducted with a test model on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, was the longest ‘full-stack' run yet for Ariane 6’s lower liquid propulsion module with a Vulcain 2.1 engine.

“The teams from ArianeGroup, CNES and ESA have now run through every step of the rocket's flight without it leaving Earth,” says ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher.

“This milestone rehearsal comes after years of designing, planning, preparing, building and hard work from some of the finest space engineers in Europe. We are back on track towards resecuring Europe’s autonomous access to space. Well done to all involved!”

The Vulcain 2.1 engine burnt through almost 150 tonnes of propellant in the Ariane 6 core stage tanks – liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the latter supercooled to temperatures below -250°C. Vulcain 2.1 is an evolution of the Vulcain 2 engine which made Ariane 5 Europe's most successful launch system to date.

The upgrade has a simplified and cheaper design, and new technology in the engine nozzle and ignition system has been moved from the engine to the launch pad structure, to make the stage perform better and cost less.

It took just over two hours and required teams of people and delicate operations to load the rocket’s central core with fuel. The filling operations were performed during a long countdown that included other qualification tests, similar to the previous rehearsals this year.

For fidelity and to guarantee launcher stability, the upper stage tanks were also fueled – even though the upper stage engine only kicks in once in orbit after separation from the main stage and so was not fired during this ground test.

The launch pad – operated by France’s space agency CNES – used its water deluge system to temper the heat from the engine.

ESA’s Director of Space Transportation, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, added his vote of confidence in the teams across Europe working to bring Ariane 6 to service: "A huge thanks to all of our dedicated colleagues who are committed and working tirelessly to see this rocket fly.”

The test followed a shorter burn in September (known as CTLO1) when Ariane 6's tanks were filled and its Vulcain 2.1 engine briefly ignited and switched off, and the filling and draining test executed in October (known as CTLO2.1) to check the launch system functions such as draining fuel in the presence of multiple simulated failures.

A last hot-fire test of the upper stage is being prepared and planned for December 2023 at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, Lampoldshausen test centre.

Source: European Space Agency

A Media Briefing Will Be Held About PEREGRINE MISSION ONE Next Week...

NASA / Isaac Watson

NASA to Talk Science Highlights of First Artemis Robotic Moon Landing (News Release - November 20)

NASA will host a What’s on Board media teleconference at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 29, to discuss the science payloads flying aboard the first commercial robotic flight to the lunar surface as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative under the Artemis program.

Carrying NASA and commercial payloads to the Moon, Astrobotic Technologies will launch its Peregrine lander on ULA’s (United Launch Alliance) Vulcan rocket. Liftoff of the ULA Vulcan rocket is targeted no earlier than Sunday, December 24, from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Peregrine lunar lander will touch down on the Moon in early 2024.

Audio of the call will stream on the agency’s website at:

https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Briefing participants include:

-- Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
-- Ryan Watkins, program scientist, Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office, NASA Headquarters
-- Chris Culbert, project manager, CLPS, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
-- John Thornton, CEO, Astrobotic, Pittsburgh

To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than two hours before the briefing to: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

NASA awarded a task order for the delivery of scientific payloads to Astrobotic in May 2019. Among the items on its lander, the Peregrine Mission One will carry NASA payloads investigating the lunar exosphere, thermal properties of the lunar regolith, hydrogen abundances in the soil at the landing site, and magnetic fields, as well as radiation environment monitoring.

Through Artemis, NASA is working with multiple CLPS vendors to establish a regular cadence of payload deliveries to the Moon to perform experiments, test technologies and demonstrate capabilities to help NASA explore the lunar surface. This pool of companies may bid on task orders to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon.

Task orders include payload integration and operations, launching from Earth, and landing on the surface of the Moon. The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity CLPS contracts have a cumulative maximum value of $2.6 billion through 2028.

With CLPS, as well as with human exploration near the lunar South Pole, NASA will establish a long-term cadence of Moon missions in preparation for sending the first astronauts to Mars.

Source: NASA.Gov

Peregrine's Ride to the Moon Is Close to Being Fully Stacked for Launch...

United Launch Alliance

Vulcan Cert-1: Centaur V Preparations Underway (News Release)

The Centaur V upper stage for the inaugural United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket arrived from the factory at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch site on November 13 and was integrated atop the booster on November 19.

This first flight article of the next-generation Centaur will power the Certification-1 (Cert-1) launch, which is targeted for liftoff on December 24 at 1:49 a.m. EST (0649 UTC), when orbital mechanics are acceptable to deliver the commercial Astrobotic Peregrine lunar lander on its voyage to the Moon.

“We have worked diligently to develop this evolutionary rocket and certify the first vehicle for flight,” said Mark Peller, ULA vice president of Vulcan Development. “This next-generation launch vehicle incorporates new technology at all levels, powered by American ingenuity to meet our nation’s need for expanding space missions.”

The Cert-1 Centaur V will execute three firings of its dual RL10 engines to achieve three distinctly different orbits: a low-Earth orbit, a highly-elliptical orbit for lunar transfer and an interplanetary solar orbit into deep space.

The R/S RocketShip delivered the Centaur V from the ULA factory in Decatur, Alabama to the Florida launch site. After offloading and horizontal preps, the pressure-stabilized, stainless-steel stage was brought to the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) and hoisted atop the Vulcan booster stage.

The assembled rocket will undergo combined testing of sub-systems and components over the next few weeks before rolling to Space Launch Complex-41 to undergo a Wet Dress Rehearsal to practice the countdown to launch.

Cert-1 is the first of two flight tests required for ULA's certification process with the U.S. Space Force. ULA has worked in close partnership with the Space Systems Command throughout the design, development, testing and production of our new rocket for assured access to space.

The Space Force selected Vulcan as the No. 1 offeror and "best value" choice in the Phase 2 National Security Space Launch competition.

Source: United Launch Alliance

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United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance

America's Newest Asteroid Explorer Has Shot Its Laser at Earth for the First Time...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Comm Demo Sends, Receives First Data (News Release)

DSOC, an experiment that could transform how spacecraft communicate, has achieved ‘first light,’ sending data via laser to and from far beyond the Moon for the first time.

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment has beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from nearly 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away – about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth – to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. This is the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications.

Riding aboard the recently-launched Psyche spacecraft, DSOC is configured to send high-bandwidth test data to Earth during its two-year technology demonstration as Psyche travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages both DSOC and Psyche.

The tech demo achieved “first light” in the early hours of November 14 after its flight laser transceiver – a cutting-edge instrument aboard Psyche capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals – locked onto a powerful uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California. The uplink beacon helped the transceiver aim its downlink laser back to Palomar (which is 100 miles, or 130 kilometers, south of Table Mountain) while automated systems on the transceiver and ground stations fine-tuned its pointing.

“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,” said Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Test data was also sent simultaneously via the uplink and downlink lasers, a procedure known as “closing the link” that is a primary objective for the experiment. While the technology demonstration isn’t transmitting Psyche mission data, it works closely with the Psyche mission-support team to ensure that DSOC operations don’t interfere with those of the spacecraft.

“Tuesday morning’s test was the first to fully incorporate the ground assets and flight transceiver, requiring the DSOC and Psyche operations teams to work in tandem,” said Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL. “It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive and decode some data.”

Before this achievement, the project needed to check the boxes on several other milestones, from removing the protective cover for the flight laser transceiver to powering up the instrument. Meanwhile, the Psyche spacecraft is carrying out its own checkouts, including powering up its propulsion systems and testing instruments that will be used to study the asteroid Psyche when it arrives there in 2028.

First Light and First Bits

With successful first light, the DSOC team will now work on refining the systems that control the pointing of the downlink laser aboard the transceiver. Once achieved, the project can begin its demonstration of maintaining high-bandwidth data transmission from the transceiver to Palomar at various distances from Earth.

This data takes the form of bits (the smallest units of data a computer can process) encoded in the laser’s photons – quantum particles of light. After a special superconducting high-efficiency detector array detects the photons, new signal-processing techniques are used to extract the data from the single photons that arrive at the Hale Telescope.

The DSOC experiment aims to demonstrate data transmission rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today. Both radio and near-infrared laser communications utilize electromagnetic waves to transmit data, but near-infrared light packs the data into significantly tighter waves, enabling ground stations to receive more data.

This will help future human and robotic exploration missions and support higher-resolution science instruments.

“Optical communication is a boon for scientists and researchers who always want more from their space missions, and will enable human exploration of deep space,” said Dr. Jason Mitchell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division within NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. “More data means more discoveries.”

While optical communication has been demonstrated in low-Earth orbit and out to the Moon, DSOC is the first test in deep space. Like using a laser pointer to track a moving dime from a mile away, aiming a laser beam over millions of miles requires extremely precise “pointing.”

The demonstration also needs to compensate for the time it takes for light to travel from the spacecraft to Earth over vast distances: At Psyche’s farthest distance from our planet, DSOC’s near-infrared photons will take about 20 minutes to travel back (they took about 50 seconds to travel from Psyche to Earth during the November 14 test). In that time, both spacecraft and planet will have moved, so the uplink and downlink lasers need to adjust for the change in location.

“Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC’s flight transceiver aboard Psyche,” said Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC at JPL. “And we were also able to send some data, meaning we were able to exchange ‘bits of light’ from and to deep space.”

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Photos of the Day: Astrobotic's Peregrine Has Received a Meatball for Its Mission...

NASA / Isaac Watson

NASA Logo Installed on Lander for First Robotic Artemis Moon Flight (News Release)

Teams have installed the NASA meatball logo onboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis program ahead of its upcoming launch on December 24 from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Peregrine will carry NASA payloads to a mare – an ancient hardened lava flow – outside of the Gruithuisen Domes, a geologic enigma along the mare/highlands boundary on the northeast border of Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, the largest dark spot on the Moon. The payloads will investigate the lunar exosphere, thermal properties of the lunar regolith, hydrogen abundances in the soil at the landing site, magnetic fields and conduct radiation environment monitoring.

After arriving on October 30 at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, teams with Astrobotic and ULA (United Launch Alliance) are finishing final preparations before they integrate Peregrine with ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

While NASA is the primary customer purchasing lunar delivery services, CLPS vendors also work with other customers to send non-NASA payloads to the Moon. CLPS providers are responsible for managing their activities to ensure that they are compliant with NASA schedule requirements.

Astrobotic will keep the agency informed of the launch date, lunar landing date and duration of lunar surface operations, as well as provide updates on the temperature that the payloads will experience during transit to the Moon and at the lunar South Pole.

A successful landing will help prove the CLPS model for commercial payload deliveries to the lunar surface. As a CLPS customer, NASA is investing in lower-cost methods of regular Moon deliveries and aims to be one of many customers onboard CLPS flights.

The robotic deliveries will help deliver agency science and technology demonstrations to the Moon for the benefit of all.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Isaac Watson


NASA / Isaac Watson


NASA / Isaac Watson

Here's a video of Peregrine receiving the Meatball at Astrotech...

📸: NASA/Frank Michaux#Astrobotic #CountdownToVulcan #ToTheMoon pic.twitter.com/PhhoC5aUVN

— Rich Par (@AstroPnoy) November 16, 2023

The Deadline to Fly Your Name to Jupiter is Next Month!

NASA

Time Is Running Out to Add Your Name to NASA’s Europa Clipper (News Release)

Six weeks remain for you to add your name to a microchip that will ride aboard the spacecraft as it explores Jupiter’s moon Europa.

It’s not every day that members of the public have the chance to send their names into deep space beyond Mars, all the way to Jupiter and its moon Europa. But with NASA’s Europa Clipper, you have that opportunity: Names will ride aboard the spacecraft as it journeys 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) to this icy moon, where an ocean hides beneath a frozen outer shell.

The deadline to join the mission’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign is only six weeks away. The campaign closes at 11:59 p.m. EST, on December 31, 2023.

So far, about 700,000 names have been submitted. Once all of the names have been gathered, technicians in the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will use an electron beam to stencil them onto a dime-size silicon microchip.

Each line of text is smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair (75 nanometers).

The chip will be attached to a metal plate engraved with the original poem In Praise of Mystery, written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to celebrate the mission. Riding on the exterior of the spacecraft, the poem and names will be like a message in a bottle as they make about 50 close flybys of the ocean world.

The mission will log a half-billion miles (800 million kilometers) during these orbits as the spacecraft’s payload of science instruments gathers data on Europa’s subsurface ocean, icy crust and atmosphere to determine if the moon could support life.

Once assembly of Europa Clipper has been completed at JPL, the orbiter will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for its October 2024 launch.

“Message in a Bottle” draws from NASA’s long tradition of shipping inspirational messages on spacecraft that have explored our solar system and beyond. The program aims to spark the imaginations of people around the world as the Voyager spacecraft did in 1977 by sending a time capsule of sounds and images reflecting the diversity of life on Earth.

To sign, read the poem, and hear Limón recite it in an animated video, go to:

https://go.nasa.gov/MessageInABottle

The site also enables participants to create and download a customizable souvenir – an illustration of your name on a message in a bottle against a rendering of Europa and Jupiter – to commemorate the experience. Participants are encouraged to share their enthusiasm on social media using the hashtag #SendYourName.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Photos of the Day: Rise of the Raider!

Matt Hartman

Just thought I'd share these awesome images—taken by freelance photojournalist Matt Hartman—of the B-21 Raider taking its very first flight from the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California, today!

Had I known that this historic milestone was occurring this morning, I would've driven all the way to the Mojave Desert to capture photos of it as well! Okay, maybe I wouldn't have.

But still— It's so cool to see that the Air Force's newest stealth bomber continues to move along in its steps toward initial operational capability...which will be after 2025. I look forward to official aerial photos of the B-21 that was hopefully taken from aboard the F-16 chase plane following it to Edwards Air Force Base this morning (see the video at the very bottom of this entry).

What a way to enter the weekend. Although this isn't till tomorrow, Happy Veterans Day to my fellow Yanks!

And Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps! Is it next-level trolling by the USAF that it conducted the B-21's maiden flight on your special day?


Matt Hartman


Matt Hartman


Matt Hartman

#b21 #b21raider #usaf #usa #palmdale #ca #onassignment @reuters pic.twitter.com/2VO5tZAdBW

— David Swanson (@SwansonPhotog) November 10, 2023

#B21 #B21Raider #B21FirstFlight
A memorable day! pic.twitter.com/oeL7cuJtbK

— Robert 🌻 (@Genjo_N_Mojave) November 10, 2023

So, the first B-21 is named Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. Let’s guess the next one (must be Greek mythology creature - probably - like Chimera, Medusa, Hydra, Minotaur, Scylla, etc) pic.twitter.com/s1Rfop1e3s

— The Aviationist (@TheAviationist) November 10, 2023

B-21 RAIDER FIRST FLIGHT 11-10-23 #RAIDER33 #B21Raider pic.twitter.com/3tEKudqDiw

— Matt Hartman (@ShorealoneFilms) November 10, 2023

A Time Capsule Aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine Lander is Ready to Head to the Moon...

Arch Mission Foundation / Nova Spivack

Arch Mission Foundation Prepares Lunar Library II for December 2023 Launch (Press Release)

The second Lunar Library™ will put additional civilizational archives on the Moon with Astrobotic's first lunar mission.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Arch Mission Foundation announced today that its second installment of the historic Lunar Library will launch to the Moon's surface later this year aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine Lander. The launch is currently scheduled for December 24, 2023 from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41).

The Lunar Library is capable of lasting for up to billions of years on the Moon, and this is the second installment, expanding upon the first Lunar Library launched aboard Israel's Beresheet Lander in 2019. The Lunar Library is an instance of The Billion Year Archive initiative, which aims to build a solar-system-wide library system that can preserve, connect and share humanity's knowledge for billions of years.

The second Lunar Library archives over 60 million pages, including foundational components like the Wikipedia, collections from Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive and the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project and PanLex datasets, which provide a linguistic key to 5000 languages with 1.5 billion cross-language translations. Additionally, the new Lunar Library will include archives of music and film.

The library also features the "Aldrin Archive" in partnership with the Aldrin Family Foundation, which includes images from the Apollo 11 mission as well as space-themed STEAM projects from K-12 Students.

Additional content partners for the Lunar Library II include the SETI Institute's The Earthling Project, CATALOG, Memory of Mankind, LifeShip, the Great Pause Project, the Molecular Information Systems Lab at the University of Washington, and more.

"We're thrilled to be launching the Lunar Library for our second attempt to land it on the Moon, this time with our partners at Astrobotic," said Arch Mission Foundation Co-founder & Chairman Nova Spivack. "After we land the Lunar Library on the Moon, we can guarantee, for the first time in human history, that humanity's heritage will be safely preserved, no matter what happens on Earth."

Astrobotic will carry the Lunar Library II to the Moon on its Peregrine Lunar Lander and store it on the lunar surface. Astrobotic's inaugural lunar mission will also include a manifest of payloads from NASA, companies, universities, nonprofits and individuals.

The Lunar Library is being deployed to deliver extremely long-duration archives containing curated collections of public and private libraries and other time-capsules to the Moon. The Library will continue to be regularly updated with additional installments to various destinations around the surface of the Moon, across a series of lunar landings by a variety of commercial entities, nonprofit organizations and governments.

"We have a moral obligation as a species to provide a backup of human civilization so that our knowledge, wisdom and culture will exist far beyond us," says Matthew Hoerl, Arch Mission Co-founder and Executive Director. "The Arch Mission is dedicated to preserving humanity's heritage for future generations and civilizations to discover. The Billion Year Archive is an ambitious project, but we now have the technology and capabilities to achieve this long-term preservation of our unique human record no matter what our future may hold."

A duplicate disc of the Lunar Library II will be donated to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, where the public will be able to see it displayed alongside other vital artifacts related to the human future in space.

The Lunar Library II consists of top layers consisting of tens of thousands of pages of text and images stored as analog NanoFiche images on thin sheets of nickel. Each page is etched by laser using patented technology provided to the Arch Mission Foundation by Stamper Technology.

In addition to the analog etchings, the library also includes 60 million pages of digital data etched into nickel as well.

"Durability is the foundation of the Arch Libraries, and the licensed NanoFiche technology provides a material base for the archives that can last for billions of years, even under the harshest environmental conditions," said Bruce Ha, the Arch Mission Foundation's Chief Scientist. "Nickel is impervious to radiation as well as the changing temperatures on the Moon, and can last for billions of years in space. The analog content of the Library can easily be read via a 100x magnification optical microscope, without needing a computer, so that it is accessible with even the most rudimentary tools."

In addition to the nickel NanoFiche technology, the Lunar Library II also utilizes other storage technologies, including data stored in molecular form using new DNA storage technology.

"In 2018, we identified Astrobotic as a key partner for the Arch Mission and one that was most likely to succeed in delivering a commercial lander to the lunar surface," says Robert Jacobson, Arch Mission Operations Lead and author of the book Space Is Open for Business. "The commercial space industry is still nascent, similar to the early days of the internet. Astrobotic is providing critical infrastructure so groups like ours can leverage with new applications. We commend the team at Astrobotic for their important work to send the first lunar lander from the United States since the Apollo missions."

The Lunar Library II follows the Arch Mission's initial Lunar Library launch in 2019, and the first Solar Library, launched aboard SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy flight earlier in 2018. In 2021, the Arch Mission Foundation's first terrestrial Earth Archive, the Lava Library, was placed in the lava tubes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano by the Valoria I mission crew of HI-SEAS during a Mars simulation mission.

Source: PRWeb.com

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Arch Mission Foundation / Nova Spivack

Hey @archmission, have you thought about reaching out to @NASA and @JHUAPL about placing a library on the #DragonflyMission to Saturn's moon Titan? https://t.co/ai3fe9iCGb

— Rich Par (@AstroPnoy) November 9, 2023

DEEP SKY: My Quick Movie Review...

So I watched the new IMAX documentary Deep Sky at the California Science Center earlier today, and I must say that it was really good!

The film is pretty up-to-date in regards to the photos and exoplanetary data collected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope since its first official images were unveiled to the public in July of 2022.

If you liked the 2010 IMAX film Hubble like I did, then you'll enjoy this one...even though Deep Sky wasn't shown in 3D like the Toni Myers documentary was when I saw it on the big screen for the first time 13 years ago.

In terms of the narration, Michelle Williams did a great job doing the voice-over in Deep Sky like Leonardo DiCaprio did for Hubble.

And just like Hubble, I intend to buy Deep Sky on DVD once it's available for purchase. Yes, DVD!

Happy Hump Day.

Europe's Newest Space Telescope Unveils Its First Official Glimpses of the Universe...

ESA

Euclid's First Images: The Dazzling Edge of Darkness (News Release)

Today, ESA’s Euclid space mission reveals its first full-colour images of the cosmos. Never before has a telescope been able to create such razor-sharp astronomical images across such a large patch of the sky, and looking so far into the distant Universe.

These five images illustrate Euclid's full potential; they show that the telescope is ready to create the most extensive 3D map of the Universe yet, to uncover some of its hidden secrets.

Euclid, our dark Universe detective, has a difficult task: to investigate how dark matter and dark energy have made our Universe look like it does today. 95% of our cosmos appears to be made of these mysterious ‘dark’ entities.

But we don’t understand what they are because their presence only causes very subtle changes in the appearance and motions of the things we can see.

To reveal the ‘dark’ influence on the visible Universe, over the next six years Euclid will observe the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. By doing this, it will create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made.

What makes Euclid’s view of the cosmos special is its ability to create a remarkably sharp visible and infrared image across a huge part of the sky in just one sitting.

The images released today showcase this special capacity: from bright stars to faint galaxies, the observations show the entirety of these celestial objects, while remaining extremely sharp, even when zooming in on distant galaxies.

“Dark matter pulls galaxies together and causes them to spin more rapidly than visible matter alone can account for; dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Euclid will for the first-time allow cosmologists to study these competing dark mysteries together,” explains ESA Director of Science, Professor Carole Mundell. “Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.”

“We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously-unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby Universe. Now we are ready to observe billions of galaxies, and study their evolution over cosmic time,” says René Laureijs, ESA’s Euclid Project Scientist.

“Our high standards for this telescope paid off: that there is so much detail in these images, is all thanks to a special optical design, perfect manufacturing and assembly of telescope and instruments, and extremely accurate pointing and temperature control,” adds Giuseppe Racca, ESA’s Euclid Project Manager.

“I wish to congratulate and thank everyone involved with making this ambitious mission a reality, which is a reflection of European excellence and international collaboration. The first images captured by Euclid are awe-inspiring and remind us of why it is essential that we go to space to learn more about the mysteries of the Universe,” says ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.

Source: European Space Agency

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Progress Continues to be Made on Prepping Peregrine's Ride to Space for Next Month...

United Launch Alliance

United Launch Alliance’s New Vulcan Rocket Begins Final Road to First Launch (Press Release)

ULA schedules inaugural launch for December 24, 2023

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. – The United Launch Alliance's (ULA) new innovative Vulcan rocket is beginning final processing milestones in advance of its inaugural launch. The first certification mission (Cert-1) is planned to launch on Sunday, December 24, from Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The Vulcan rocket will provide higher performance and greater affordability for ULA customers across national security, civil and commercial markets.

“This launch begins a new era for ULA and for the country,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. “This rocket is transforming the future of launch. Vulcan satisfies all challenging orbital requirements essential for U.S. national defense and provides one scalable system for all missions while continuing to provide unmatched reliability and orbital precision.”

The Cert-1 mission includes two payloads, the first Peregrine Lunar Lander, Peregrine Mission One (PM1) for Astrobotic as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to deliver science and technology to the lunar service. The second payload is Celestis’ Memorial Spaceflights deep space Voyager mission, the Enterprise Flight.

“We have worked diligently to develop this evolutionary rocket and certify the first vehicle for flight,” said Mark Peller, vice president of Vulcan Development. “This next-generation launch vehicle incorporates new technology at all levels, powered by American ingenuity to meet our nation’s need for expanding space missions.”

The Cert-1 mission serves as the first of two certification flights required for the U.S. Space Force’s certification process. The second certification mission is planned for early 2024.

The Cert-1 Centaur V is en route to the ULA facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard ULA’s R/S RocketShip. Additional future processing milestones include a wet dress rehearsal (WDR), spacecraft integration and then final processing in preparation for launch.

Launch vehicle processing updates will be available at www.ulalaunch.com.

Source: United Launch Alliance

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Nice and cozy. All set for a cruise down to Florida. #CountdowntoVulcan. #CERT1 pic.twitter.com/rhiY44WUyU

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) November 5, 2023

The CERT1 Centaur V is on her way to the Cape https://t.co/I94FpWXjTn

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) November 5, 2023

A Prolific Space Telescope Makes More Celestial Discoveries 5 Years After It Retired...

NASA / Daniel Rutter

Scorching, Seven-Planet System Revealed by New Kepler Exoplanet List (News Release - November 2)

A system of seven sweltering planets has been revealed by continued study of data from NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope: Each one is bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any planet in our solar system. Also unlike any of our immediate neighbors, all seven planets in this system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

It is one of only a few planetary systems known to contain more than six verified planets or planet candidates. The Kepler-385 system is among the highlights of a new Kepler catalog that contains almost 4,400 planet candidates, including more than 700 multi-planet systems.

“We’ve assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date,” said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and lead author on the paper presenting the new catalog. “NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, and this new catalog will enable astronomers to learn more about their characteristics.”

At the center of the Kepler-385 system is a Sun-like star about 10% larger and 5% hotter than the Sun. The two inner planets, both slightly larger than Earth, are probably rocky and may have thin atmospheres.

The other five planets are larger – each with a radius about twice the size of Earth’s – and expected to be enshrouded in thick atmospheres.

The ability to describe the properties of the Kepler-385 system in such detail is testament to the quality of this latest catalog of exoplanets. While the Kepler mission’s final catalogs focused on producing lists optimized to measure how common planets are around other stars, this study focuses on producing a comprehensive list that provides accurate information about each of the systems, making discoveries like Kepler-385 possible.

The new catalog uses improved measurements of stellar properties and calculates more accurately the path of each transiting planet across its host star. This combination illustrates that when a star hosts several transiting planets, they typically have more circular orbits than when a star hosts only one or two.

Kepler’s primary observations ceased in 2013 and were followed by the telescope’s extended mission, called K2, which continued until 2018. The data Kepler collected continues to reveal new discoveries about our galaxy.

After the mission already showed us there are more planets than stars, this new study paints a more detailed picture of what each of those planets and their home systems look like, giving us a better view of the many worlds beyond our solar system.

The research article, “Updated Catalog of Kepler Planet Candidates: Focus on Accuracy and Orbital Periods” is forthcoming in The Journal of Planetary Science.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Daniel Rutter

Excitement Builds for Peregrine's Flight to the Moon Next Month...

United Launch Alliance

NASA Invites Media to First Astrobotic, ULA Robotic Artemis Moon Launch (News Release)

Media accreditation is open for the first United States commercial robotic flight to the Moon’s surface as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis program.

Carrying NASA and commercial payloads, Astrobotic will launch its Peregrine lander on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket no earlier than Sunday, December 24, from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This is the inaugural launch of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One will land on the Moon in early 2024. The NASA payloads aboard the lunar lander aim to help the agency develop capabilities needed to explore the Moon under Artemis ahead of sending astronauts to the lunar surface.

Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Attendance for this launch is open to U.S. citizens and international media.

U.S. media must apply by Friday, December 8, and international media must apply by Thursday, November 9. Media interested in participating in person must apply at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

Credentialed media will receive a confirmation email upon approval. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

For questions about accreditation or to request special logistical support such as space for satellite trucks, tents or electrical connections, please email by Wednesday, December 13, to: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other questions, please contact NASA Kennedy’s newsroom at: 321-867-2468.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Annotated photo courtesy of Belgium2theMoon - X.com

Hmm... Looks like some rockets are going on to the Rocket Ship in Decatur. And they are being placed in the back of the hold, leaving room up front for something. I wonder what's going on?... #CountdowntoVulcan #Cert1 #VulcanRocket pic.twitter.com/IRA9tsbZ1I

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) November 3, 2023

A Small Main Belt Asteroid Has Turned Out to be Two...

NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab

NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Discovers 2nd Asteroid During Dinkinesh Flyby (News Release)

On November 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft flew by not just its first asteroid, but its first two. The first images returned by Lucy reveal that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair.

“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” said Hal Levison, referring to the meaning of Dinkinesh in the Amharic language, “marvelous.” Levison is principal investigator for Lucy from the Boulder, Colorado, branch of the San-Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute.

“When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”

In the weeks prior to the spacecraft’s encounter with Dinkinesh, the Lucy team had wondered if Dinkinesh might be a binary system, given how Lucy’s instruments were seeing the asteroid’s brightness changing with time. The first images from the encounter removed all doubt.

Dinkinesh is a close binary. From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger body is approximately 0.5 miles (790 meters) at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles (220 meters) in size.

This encounter primarily served as an in-flight test of the spacecraft, specifically focusing on testing the system that allows Lucy to autonomously track an asteroid as it flies past at 10,000 mph, referred to as the terminal tracking system.

“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” said Tom Kennedy, guidance and navigation engineer at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado. “It’s one thing to simulate, test and practice. It’s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”

While this encounter was carried out as an engineering test, the team’s scientists are excitedly poring over the data to glean insights into the nature of small asteroids.

“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”

It will take up to a week for the team to downlink the remainder of the encounter data from the spacecraft. The team will use this data to evaluate the spacecraft’s behavior during the encounter and to prepare for the next close-up look at an asteroid, the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in 2025.

Lucy will then be well-prepared to encounter the mission’s main targets, the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, starting in 2027.

Source: NASA.Gov

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The #LucyMission flyby was a test run of the spacecraft’s terminal tracking system and instruments, which Lucy passed with flying colors. The team will use the data from the encounter to prepare for Lucy's next asteroid flyby in 2025. https://t.co/rLTXQV1WPG pic.twitter.com/QvIsO77ZaK

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) November 2, 2023