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June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Matt Williams

Blue Origin Auction Ends With a Closing Bid of $28 million

On July 20^th,, Blue Origin will conduct the first crewed launch of their New Shepard rocket, the reusable launch vehicle that will send small payloads and customers to space. In addition to Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark, the company announced that one of the seats was being left open for auction. On Saturday, June 12^th, the company announced that the auction had closed with a winning bid of $28 million USD.

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021 by Matt Williams

Relativity Space Gets a Huge Investment to Take on SpaceX With Reusable Rockets

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that competition is a great way to foster progress and innovation. If these truisms are to be believed, then the NewSpace industry is destined to benefit from the presence of Relativity Space, a commercial space company based in Los Angeles. At the same time, SpaceX founder Elon Musk should be flattered that Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone (founders of Relativity Space) are following his example.

Roughly six years ago, Ellis and Noone founded Relativity for the purpose of using new technologies to disrupt the aerospace industry. Earlier this week (Tuesday, June 8th), the company announced that it had raised an additional $650 million in private capital. This money will go towards the development of rockets that are entirely 3D-printed and fully reusable, as well as the creation of a new class of heavy launch vehicles known as the “Terran-R.”

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 by Matt Williams

Sending a Spacecraft to Another Star Will Require a Million Lasers Working Together

An artist's illustration of a light-sail powered by a radio beam (red) generated on the surface of a planet. The leakage from such beams as they sweep across the sky would appear as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), similar to the new population of sources that was discovered recently at cosmological distances. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

In 2016, Russian-American billionaire Yuri Milner founded Breakthrough Initiatives, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating some of the most enduring mysteries of the Universe. Chief among their scientific efforts is Breakthrough Starshot, a proof-of-concept prototype that combines a lightsail, a nanocraft, and directed energy (aka. laser) propulsion to create a spacecraft capable of reaching the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) in our lifetimes.

Naturally, this presents all sorts of technical and engineering challenges, not the least of which is the amount of power needed to accelerate the spacecraft to relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). Luckily, scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) recently came up with a design for a directed-energy array made up of millions of individual lasers positioned across the Earth’s surface.

June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Jeff Bezos Will be Flying to Space Aboard New Shepard Next Month

In recent years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has watched his commercial space company, Blue Origin, lose ground to the competition. While SpaceX has progressed by leaps and bounds towards realizing regular launches to the Moon and Mars (with the fully-reusable Starship), Blue Origin has been stuck in development hell with its launch vehicles. For this reason, Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO of Amazon to focus on his fledgling space company.

So far, this decision has borne fruit, with the successful suborbital flight test of the New Shepard rocket that took place this past April. Stepping things up a notch, Bezos recently announced that when the first crewed flight of the New Shepard happens later this summer, he will be among the passengers. Scheduled to take place on July 20^th, this mission will see Bezos and his younger brother Mark become the first billionaire space tycoon to launch to space.

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by Matt Williams

Time to Update Your Desktop Wallpaper With This Perfect Spiral Galaxy: NGC 691

This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, imaged in fantastic detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This galaxy is the eponymous member of the NGC 691 galaxy group, a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that lie about 120 million light-years from Earth. Objects such as NGC 691 are observed by Hubble using a range of filters. Each filter only allows certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble’s WFC3. The images collected using different filters are then coloured by specialised visual artists who can make informed choices about which colour best corresponds to which filter. By combining the coloured images from individual filters, a full-colour image of the astronomical object can be recreated. In this way, we can get remarkably good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects. Links Video of the Eponymous NGC 691

In 1990, the field of astronomy was forever changed with the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. While it was not the first space observatory, its unprecedented resolution and versatility allowed for the deepest and most detailed images of the Universe ever taken. The latest image to be released by the mission features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, which was captured in amazing detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

June 6, 2021June 14, 2021 by Matt Williams

New Technique to Search for Life, Whether or not it’s Similar to Earth Life

Artist’s impression of a sunset seen from the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

In 1960, the first survey dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was mounted at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. This was Project Ozma, which was the brainchild of famed astronomer and SETI pioneer Frank Drake (for whom the Drake Equation is named). Since then, the collective efforts to find evidence of life beyond Earth have coalesced to create a new field of study known as astrobiology.

The search for extraterrestrial life has been the subject of renewed interest thanks to the thousands of exoplanets that have been discovered in recent years. Unfortunately, our efforts are still heavily constrained by our limited frame of reference. However, a new tool developed by a team of researchers from the University of Glasgow and Arizona State University (ASU) could point the way towards life in all of its forms!

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 by Matt Williams

New Mosaic Shows the Galactic Core From Opposite Sides of the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D. Wang; Radio: NRF/SARAO/MeerKAT)

The core of the Milky Way Galaxy (aka. Galactic Center), the region around which the rest of the galaxy revolves, is a strange and mysterious place. It is here that the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) that powers the compact radio source known as Sagittarius A* is located. It is also the most compact region in the galaxy, with an estimated 10 million stars within 3.26 light-years of the Galactic Center.

Using data from Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope, NASA and the National Research Foundation (NSF) of South Africa created a mosaic of the center of the Milky Way. Combining images taken in the x-ray and radio wavelengths, the resulting panoramic image manages to capture the filaments of super-heated gas and magnetic fields that (when visualized) shows the complex web of energy at the center of our galaxy.

June 3, 2021June 3, 2021 by Matt Williams

Ingenuity’s 6th Flight Didn’t Go So Smoothly

When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero crater on February 18th, 2021, it brought with it an interesting little companion that’s been causing quite a stir of late! We are talking, of course, about the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, an experimental flight system designed to demonstrate if aerial systems can work on Mars. Since its inaugural flight on April 19th, the helicopter has been pushing the boundaries of flight on Mars, going farther and faster each time.

In fact, the helicopter managed to establish multiple records in the course of its first five flights, reaching a maximum distance of 266 m (873 ft) in 117 seconds. Unfortunately, things did not go so well for Ingenuity during its sixth and latest flight. Due to a navigation timing error, the helicopter strayed from its flight path, but managed to land safely just a few meters from where it was supposed to.

June 3, 2021June 4, 2021 by David Dickinson

Solar Horns at Sunrise: Our Guide to the June 10th Annular Solar Eclipse

The only annular eclipse of 2021 will produce a fine spectacle across most of North America and Europe.

Got those solar glasses handy from 2017? If skies are clear on the morning of Thursday June 10^th, you may once again find good use for them, as an annular ‘ring-of-fire’ eclipse crosses northeastern Canada into the Arctic.

June 2, 2021June 2, 2021 by Matt Williams

Lunar Rovers! Transform and Roll Out!

Credit: JAXA/TOMY/Sony/Doshisha University

A number of missions are destined for the Moon before this decade is over. In addition to the Artemis Program, the European Space Agency (ESA), the China National Space Agency (CNSA), Roscosmos, and other space agencies have some ambitious plans of their own. These include sending robotic missions to characterize the local environment, scout out resources, and pave the way for permanent human outposts.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) also some very interesting lunar missions in mind. In addition to partnering with NASA on the Artemis Program and helping to create the Lunar Gateway, JAXA has the radical idea to send a transforming rover to the Moon. The data this rover collects will be used to inform the design of a pressurized rover that will allow for a sustained human presence on the Moon.