Space news – live: North Korea touts spy satellites and space programs compare rocket size
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After North Korea tested two ballistic missiles on 26 February and 5 March, the first such tests for the authoritarian regime since 2017, US officials worried the North Koreans could resume nuclear tests with an eye for developing long-range nuclear missiles.
But North Korean state media recently countered that accusation to say no, the missile tests are not the prelude to launching nuclear warheads. Rather, the launches were part of a five-year plan to launch spy satellites to monitor US forces in Asia, which if true may not leave US officials much more comfortable than before.
Former US astronaut Scott Kelly, meanwhile, took to twitter to mock the Russian space program over the size of its rockets, tweeting an image showing a Russian Soyuz rocket and the much larger Nasa Space Launch System, or SLS, which the US space agency hopes to push out to the launch pad for a major test on 17 March.
Capt Kelly has been very active on social media, tweeting information about the war in Ukraine at the Russian people, in Russia, and engaging with the bellicose head of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin. The two had a back and forth on Twitter where Mr Rogozin told Capt Kelly to shut up, Captain Kelly asked if Mr Rogozin was special enough to keeping tweet despite a Russian ban on the social media side, leading Mr Rogozin to block Capt Kelly.
The phallic measuring aspect of Capt Kelly’s tweet may or may not be intentional — he did not respond to requests for comment on his social media activities — but such interpretations are common in the world of rocketry, with Amazon Billionaire and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos meeting mockery over the explicit proportions of his own rocket in 2021.
You can follow all the latest space news and analysis in our live coverage below.
China open to foreign astronauts, commercial activity on its space station
China is open to both foreign astronauts and commercial activity on its Tiangong space station, according to the Chinese human spaceflight program’s chief designer, Zhou Jianping.
Mr Zhou told English language Chinese state TV that China will actively promote foreign astronauts flying on the space station, and commercial activities, once the station is completed.
“We've been actively promoting the trend. When our space station is completed and running, we will actively encourage the private sector to engage in China's manned space program in various ways,” he said. “We hope there will be competitive, cost-efficient commercial space players to participate in areas including space application and space resource development.”
With the first module launched in 2021, China hopes to add two more modules and complete the Tiangong in 2022.
Bahrain signs on to Nasa Moon agreement as Russian and China go it alone
On 2 March, the Middle Eastern state of Bahrain became the 16th country to sign on to the Artemis accords, Nasa’s set of operating principles guiding the US space agency’s bid to return humans to the Moon by 2025. Bahrain joins the UK, Israel, Japan, Canada, Australia and other countries in signing a bilateral agreement to follow these principles when cooperating with Nasa in the next generation of lunar exploration.
But the Artemis accords are not the only game in town.
Although Nasa argues the accords uphold the values of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, particularly in terms of requiring peaceful uses of outer space and pledging to come to the rescue of ailing astronauts of other countries, Russian and China disagree. Together, the two nations have set up their own guidelines for exploring the Moon, the International Lunar Research Station Guide for Partnership.
Like the Artemis accords, the ILRS guide outlines aspirations for building lunar scientific outposts, but just, in the words of Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, less “US-centric.”
“They see their program not as international, but similar to NATO,” Mr Rogozin told a Russian publication in 2020. “There is America, everyone else must help and pay. To be honest, we are not interested in participating in such a project.”
Even if Mr Rogozin and Russian changed their minds, however, they are likely stuck with only China as a partner in space. As a combative Mr Rogozin has sniped at western space agencies from social media over sanctioned against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s western partners and customers have pulled back from working with Russia on all but the International Space Station.
The ILRS is worded as an open framework inviting in any other nations that might wish to join China and Russia as Bahrain and other nations have joined the US in the Artemis accords. But with much of the world with the exception of China turning its back on Russia over the war in Ukraine, it’s not clear if any new members for the Russian and Chinese vision of a moonshot will be forthcoming.
Ukraine gets more Starlink satellite dishes
SpaceX began Wednesday by successfully launching another 48 Starlink satellites into orbit, the company, but by afternoon the company had made another satellite internet delivery — more Starlink satellite dishes for users in Ukraine.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted his thanks to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for a truckload of the Starlink terminals.
Mr Musk first offered Ukraine Starlink terminals and free access to his company’s satellite internet network after Mr Fedorov asked for Mr Musk’s help on Twitter, noting Russia was trying to cut Ukraine off from the internet. The two have maintained a dialog on the social media site, with Mr Musk offering advice on how to keep the satellite terminals functioning despite power outages and smoke from bombings.
Mr Musk responded to Mr Fedorov’s thanks Wednesday afternoon saying, “You’re welcome. We have also sent power adapters for car cigarette lighters, solar/battery packs and generators for places where electricity is not available.”
Ukraine gets more Starlink satellite dishes
SpaceX began Wednesday by successfully launching another 48 Starlink satellites into orbit, the company, but by afternoon the company had made another satellite internet delivery — more Starlink satellite dishes for users in Ukraine.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted his thanks to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for a truckload of the Starlink terminals.
Mr Musk first offered Ukraine Starlink terminals and free access to his company’s satellite internet network after Mr Fedorov asked for Mr Musk’s help on Twitter, noting Russia was trying to cut Ukraine off from the internet. The two have maintained a dialog on the social media site, with Mr Musk offering advice on how to keep the satellite terminals functioning despite power outages and smoke from bombings.
Mr Musk responded to Mr Fedorov’s thanks Wednesday afternoon saying, “You’re welcome. We have also sent power adapters for car cigarette lighters, solar/battery packs and generators for places where electricity is not available.”
Scientists put a date to blast that formed crater beneath Greenland’s ice
When scientists first discovered a 31-kilometer-wide meteorite crater a kilometer beneath Greenland’s ice sheet in 2015, they hypothesized that it might have formed as recently as 13,000 years ago, a time when humans walked the Earth.
But in a new study published Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers using lasers to data sand washed from the crater by glacial rivers put the impact that formed the Hiawatha crater much further back in history — around 58 million years ago. That’s just 8 million years after the Chicxulub meteorite impact that formed a 200-kilometer-wide crater in present-day Mexico.
Although the Hiawatha impact was much smaller than the dinosaur killing Chicxulub, the energy released was greater than that of an atomic bomb, and may have cooled Earth’s climate for a time, although more research is necessary to say with certainty how Hiawatha affected the climate.
SpaceX launches 48 Starlink satellites
SpaceX completed its 10th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday morning, placing 48 of the company’s Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
The launch brings the number of operational Starlink satellites to more than 1,500, a count SpaceX hopes to eventually grow to more than 40,000 in a bid to provide global broadband internet coverage. At a press conference in February, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company could launch, on average, one Falcon 9 rocket per week in 2022.
The new batch of 48 satellites will help SpaceX get back on track after a solar storm pulled 40 newly launched Starlink satellites out of orbit to their doom in Earth’s atmosphere.
Nasa’s Psyche get its solar wings
Nasa’s Psyche spacecraft just got its wings — a pair of massive solar panels that will power the science mission on its long sojourn in the asteroid belt.
Nasa’s Jet Propulsion laboratory published photos of the recently attached solar panels Monday. Each of the photovoltaic panels spans 11.3 meters and 7.3 meters wide when fullly extended, for a total of 75 square meters converting sunlight to electricity.
Psyche will need those panels once it launches in August. The spacecraft’s target is 16 Psyche, a very dense, M-type asteroid around 370 million kilometers away in the asteroid belt.
Psyche the spacecraft will enter orbit around 16 Psyche the asteroid in 2026 and help scientists study what is believed to be the exposed core of an infant planet that never fully developed, providing an opportunity to better understand planetary formation, and even the Earth beneath our feet.
New near Earth asteroid hanging around
On 22 February, German astronomer Erwin Schwab discovered a new near-Earth asteroid, a 10-meter diameter space rock named 2022 DX.
As detailed in the March newsletter of the European Space Agency’s Near Earth Object Coordination Center, 2022 DX poses no threat to Earth, but it has scientists interested nonetheless. That’s because 2022 DX is an extremely slow cruising asteroid.
“2022 DX is moving sloowwly (for an asteroid) at ~ 1km/s compared to Earth,” The ESA operations Twitter account tweeted Tuesday. “This means it'll remain in our vicinity for many months!”
According to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Small Body Database Lookup tool, 2022 DX’s closest approach will take place on 19 March, but it won’t get closer than about 3.2 million kilometers from Earth. That’s closer than the asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21), which passed more than 4 million kilometers from Earth on 4 March.
But while 138971 (2001 CB21) was the size of a sky scraper, 2022 DX is more like a small house, and wouldn’t reach the ground even if it were to intercept Earth.
International Women’s Day
Tuesday, 8 March is International Women’s Day, and both the European Space Agency and Nasa have used social media to celebrate women space scientists, leaders and pioneers.
Nasa’s Ames Research Center, for instance, tweeted about Dr. Patricia Cowings, who in the late 1970s the first American woman to receive astronaut scientist training, even though she never flew in space. A psychophysiologist, Dr Cowings joined Nasa in 1971 and developed a form of biofeedback to help astronauts combat space sickness. She is still active at Nasa Ames today.
ESA, meanwhile, tweeted a link to a list of profiles of women within the space agency using the #BreakTheBias and #ESAWomen hashtags. Women such as Meadhbh Griffin, a young graduate trainee working in flight software systems, and Xiaochen Zhang , a planetary scientist studying how to use extraterrestrial resources while exploring other planets.
Nasa shares photos of big Moon rocket
Nasa’s Ground Exploration System, the group responsible for all preparation, testing and launch operations for the US space agencies new Moon rocket, shared photos of the big launch vehicle on Twitter Tuesday.
The rocket, known as the Space Launch System, or SLS, and the Orion spacecraft at its top, are currently housed in the Vehicle Assembly building at Cape Canveral, Florida. But Nasa plans to move the entire, 98-meter tall and 7.7 million kilogram vehicle out to the launch pad on a giant treaded crawler on the evening of 17 March, an 11 hour trip.
Once there, SLS and Orion will spend about a month on the launchpad undergoing testing, including a “wet dress rehearsal” for launch, which involves loading the rocket with liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer, a simulated countdown and then pumping the cryogenic fuel back out of the rocket. It will then move back to the assembly building for final adjustments before an orbital test flight sometime in spring or early summer.
The SLS and Orion are the key components of Nasa’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon in 2025. The forthcoming orbital test flight mission, dubbed Artemis I, will see an uncrewed Orion spacecraft fly out to and beyond the Moon before returning to Earth.
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