After decades of tinkering, Peter Beck and Rocket Lab are poised to bring low-cost launches to the world.

Source: At 18, He Strapped a Rocket Engine to His Bike. Now He’s Taking on SpaceX

As opposed to running a company on insane working hours and crazy project changes, this guy is launching rockets at $5m per pop, doing 500lbs. He has a launch site that allows for a huge amount of launches into many different areas. His engines are simple and actually work. It’s a great story of a space startup that looks like it actually will work.

A black hole with three billion times the mass of the Sun has been found hurtling out of its parent galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour! What could give it that kind of incredible boost? Turns out, it’s something even more incredible: the two supermassive black holes that merged to form it in the first place.
[…]
In astronomy, you deal with a lot of ridiculously violent cosmic phenomena. Stars explode, asteroids collide, whole galaxies smash together. When you look at the math and physics, when you actually grasp the levels of power involved, it’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It’s chaos wielded on a mind-crushing scale.

And then there’s the “two supermassive black holes colliding and merging and then launching the resulting even larger billion-solar-mass black hole out of a galaxy at nearly 8 million kilometers per hour due to gravitational waves” scale of immensity.

Source: A 3 billion solar mass black hole rockets out of a galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour. Yes, seriously.

Pluto fans are attempting to reignite a contentious astronomy debate: What is a planet?
[…]
Is Pluto a planet?

It’s not a question scientists ask in polite company.

“It’s like religion and politics,” said Kirby Runyon, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “People get worked up over it. I’ve gotten worked up over it.”
[…]
The issue can bring conversations to a screeching halt, or turn them into shouting matches. “Sometimes,” Runyon said, “it’s just easier not to bring it up.”

But Runyon will ignore his own advice this week when he attends the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. In a giant exhibit hall crowded with his colleagues, he’s attempting to reignite the debate about Pluto’s status with an audacious new definition for planet — one that includes not just Pluto, but several of its neighbors, objects in the asteroid belt, and a number of moons. By his count, 102 new planets could be added to our solar system under the new criteria.
[…]
When the IAU voted in 2006, scientists came to the conclusion that gravitational dominance is what distinguishes the eight planets from the solar system’s other spheres. From giant Jupiter to tiny Mercury, each is massive enough to make them the bullies of their orbits, absorbing, ejecting or otherwise controlling the motion of every other object that gets too close. According to the definition, planets must also orbit the sun.

Pluto, which shares its zone of the solar system with a host of other objects, was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” — a body that resembles a planet but fails to “clear its neighborhood,” in the IAU’s parlance.
[…]
But to Runyon, that distinction is less important than what dozens of solar system worlds have in common: geology.

“I’m interested in an object’s intrinsic properties,” he said. “What it is on its surface and in its interior? Whether an object is in orbit around another planet or the sun doesn’t really matter for me.”

Runyon calls his a “geophysical” definition. A planet, he says, is anything massive enough that gravity pulls it into a sphere (a characteristic called “hydrostatic equilibrium”), but not so massive that it starts to undergo nuclear fusion and become a star.
[…]
If you talk to enough scientists on either side of this debate, you’ll notice that their arguments start to echo each other. They use the same terms to criticize the definitions they don’t like: “not useful,” “too emotional,” “confusing.” Both groups want the same thing: for the public to understand and embrace the science of the solar system. But each is convinced that only their definition can achieve that goal. And each accuses the other of confusing people by prolonging the debate.

Source: A new definition would add 102 planets to our solar system — including Pluto

Give us Pluto back!

Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. They were detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Three of them lie in the habitable zone and could harbour water, increasing the possibility that the system could play host to life. It has both the largest number of Earth-sized planets yet found and the largest number of worlds that could support liquid water.

Source: Temperate earth-sized worlds found in extraordinarily rich planetary system (Update)

The presence of a large underdensity, the dipole repeller, is predicted based on a study of the velocity field of our Local Group of galaxies. The combined effects of this super-void and the Shapley concentration control the local cosmic flow.
[…]
Our Local Group of galaxies is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with a velocity 1 of V CMB = 631 ± 20 km s−1 and participates in a bulk flow that extends out to distances of ~20,000 km s−1 or more

Source: The dipole repeller

Figure 1: A face-on view of a slice 6,000 km s−1 thick, normal to the direction of the pointing vector rˆ=(0.604,0.720,−0.342).

Three different elements of the flow are presented: mapping of the velocity field is shown by means of streamlines (seeded randomly in the slice); red and grey surfaces present the knots and filaments of the V-web, respectively; and equi-gravitational potential (ϕ) surfaces are shown in green and yellow. The potential surfaces enclose the dipole repeller (in yellow) and the Shapley attractor (in green) that dominate the flow. The yellow arrow originates at our position and indicates the direction of the CMB dipole (galactic longitude l = 276°, galactic latitude b = 30°). The distance scale is given in units of km s−1.

Figure 2: A 3D view of the velocity field.

It is shown here by means of the flow streamlines (in black–blue, left panel) and of the anti-flow (in yellow–red, right panel). Anti-flow is defined here by the negative (namely, the reverse) of the velocity field. The same streamlines are seeded on a regular grid and are coloured according to the magnitude of the velocity. The flow streamlines diverge from the repeller and converge on the attractor. For the anti-flow, the divergence and convergence switch roles: they diverge from the attractor and converge on the repeller. The knots and filaments of the V-web are shown for reference. Cartesian supergalactic coordinates (SGX, SGY, SGZ) are assumed here. (For a 3D view, look at the accompanying Supplementary Video, at time 00:56–01:28.)

The onboard atomic clocks that drive the satellite-navigation signals on Europe’s Galileo network have been failing at an alarming rate.

Across the 18 satellites now in orbit, nine clocks have stopped operating.

Three are traditional rubidium devices; six are the more precise hydrogen maser instruments that were designed to give Galileo superior performance to the American GPS network.

Galileo was declared up and running in December.

However, it is still short of the number of satellites considered to represent a fully functioning constellation, and a decision must now be made about whether to suspend the launch of further spacecraft while the issue is investigated.

Source: Galileo satellites experiencing multiple clock failures – BBC News

Our Pegasus rocket successfully launched NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) from our L-1011 Stargazer aircraft this morning at 8:37 a.m. EST, and completed payload deployment at 8:52 a.m. To learn more about the CYGNSS mission, visit NASA’s blog here.
About the Mission

The three-stage Pegasus XL will be used to deploy eight small satellites for NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission into a Low-Earth orbit. Pegasus is carried aloft by Orbital ATK’s Stargazer L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will be released and free-fall for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor. With its unique delta-shaped wing, Pegasus will deliver these satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.

CYGNSS, developed by the University of Michigan, will probe the inner core of hurricanes to learn about their rapid intensification. CYGNSS is designed to remedy the inability of current remote sensors to see through the heavy rain in the inner core of a hurricane or to observe changes in the storm over short periods of time.

[…]

On April 5, 1990, Orbital ATK began a new era in commercial space flight when our Pegasus rocket was launched from beneath a NASA B-52 aircraft in a mission that originated from Dryden Flight Research Center in California. In the decades since its maiden flight, Pegasus has become the world’s standard for affordable and reliable small launch vehicles. It has conducted 42 missions, launching 86 satellites.

Source: Pegasus XL CYGNSS

This is getting loads of new coverage for being an air launch, but as you can see above, Oribtal ATK have been doing this since 1990 for NASA. Nothing new to see here!

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying star. The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the moon. This stellar “cannon fire” has continued once every 8.5 years for at least the past 400 years, astronomers estimate.

Source: Hubble detects giant ‘cannonballs’ shooting from star

In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station.

China’s Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the surface. In a press conference last week, China announced that the space station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017.

Source: China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth

Rosetta’s dust-analysing COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) instrument has made the first unambiguous detection of solid organic matter in the dust particles ejected by Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in the form of complex carbon-bearing molecules.

While organics had already been detected in situ on the comet’s surface by instruments on-board Philae and from orbit by Rosetta’s ROSINA , those were both in the form of gases resulting from the sublimation of ices. By contrast, COSIMA has made its detections in solid dust.

Their presence was only ever hinted at in previous comet missions, which flew by their targets at high speed and, as a result, disrupted the particles, making characterisation challenging. But Rosetta is orbiting Comet 67P/C-G and can catch dust particles moving at low speed.

“Our analysis reveals carbon in a far more complex form than expected,” remarked Hervé Cottin, one of the authors of the paper reporting the result that is published in Nature today. “It is so complex, we can’t give it a proper formula or a name!”

Source: Rosetta catches dusty organics

Adam Frank from the University of Rochester and Woodruff Sullivan from the University of Washington based their new equation on the Drake equation, used for calculating the probability of extraterrestrial civilisation, written by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961.

Source: Are we alone in the universe? Not likely, according to math

A group of researchers are studying how all the galaxies in the universe are connected, network-style.

Source: Interconnectedness of the galaxies

You can explore the network models here

The volumes will be based on the Bigelow Aerospace B330 expandable module with the initial launch to orbit in 2020 on ULA’s Atlas V 552 configuration launch vehicle. The B330 will have 330 cubic meters (12,000 cu ft) of internal space. The craft will support zero-gravity research including scientific missions and manufacturing processes. Beyond its industrial and scientific purposes, however, it has potential as a destination for space tourism and a craft for missions destined for the Moon and Mars.

Source: Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance Join Forces to Foster a New Era of Sustainable Commercialization in Low Earth Orbit

Last year, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence got a major boost when Russian billionaire Yuri Milner unveiled a $100 million effort to scan the skies for radio and light signals emitted by aliens. Not content to simply sit tight and wait for ET to hail us, Milner now plans to build interstellar spacecraft. Yes, you heard that correctly.

Source: Stephen Hawking and a Russian Billionaire Want to Build an Interstellar Starship

The most recent finding from New Horizons show that ice bergs have broken off from the hills surrounding the Sputnik Planum, a glacier of nitrogen ice, and are floating slowly across its surface, eventually to cluster together in places like the Challenger Colles, informally named after the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which was lost just over 30 years ago. The feature is an especially high concentration of icebergs, measuring 37 by 22 miles. The icebergs float on the nitrogen ice plain because water ice is less dense than nitrogen ice.

Source: NASA announces that Pluto has icebergs floating on glaciers of nitrogen ice

On 26 January at 12:49 a.m. MST, the 2nd Space Operations Squadron at the 50th Space Wing, Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., verified users were experiencing GPS timing issues. Furtheri nvestigation revealed an issue in the Global Positioning System ground software which only affected the time on legacy L-band signals. This change occurred when the oldest vehicle, SVN 23, was removed from the constellation. While the core navigation systems were working normally, the coordinated universal time timing signal was off by 13 microseconds which exceeded the design specifications. The issue was
resolved at 6:10 a.m. MST, however global users may have experienced GPS timing issues for several hours.

Source: [time-nuts] Fwd: CGSIC: FW: Official Press Release – GPS Ground System Anomaly

Timing issues of 13 microseconds can make huge huge differences in accuracy. Very scary, especially considering the BAe / Russian / European systems are not fully implemented as a backup for most people.

Source: File:Observable universe logarithmic illustration.png – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If the black hole is spinning, it can generate strong jets that blast across thousands of light-years and shape entire galaxies. These black hole engines are thought to be powered by magnetic fields. For the first time, astronomers have detected magnetic fields just outside the event horizon of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

The team found that magnetic fields in some regions near the black hole are disorderly, with jumbled loops and whorls resembling intertwined spaghetti. In contrast, other regions showed a much more organized pattern, possibly in the region where jets would be generated.

They also found that the magnetic fields fluctuated on short time scales of only 15 minutes or so.

“Once again, the galactic center is proving to be a more dynamic place than we might have guessed,” says Johnson. “Those magnetic fields are dancing all over the place.”

Source: Event Horizon Telescope reveals magnetic fields at Milky Way’s central black hole

Commercial spaceflight start-up Blue Origin has achieved a historic first by vertically landing and recovering the launcher stage of the New Shepard suborbital system after delivering a payload to space.

Source: Historic touchdown for Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle

Satellites are being weaponised, with the anti-satellite missles, manoevering satellites that can hit other objects and satellites that hack into feeds, giving false information to the receiver. Countriies have been holding on to a balance for ages, but in the last 10 or so years, countries have been gradually upping their game.

Source: Satellite wars – FT.com

NASA took a significant step Friday toward expanding research opportunities aboard the International Space Station with its first mission order from Hawthorne, California based-company SpaceX to launch astronauts from U.S. soil.

Source: NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station | NASA

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the Universe. Some of these galaxies formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang and are fainter than any other galaxy yet uncovered by Hubble. The team has determined, for the first time with some confidence, that these small galaxies were vital to creating the Universe that we see today.

Source: Hubble spies Big Bang frontiers | ESA/Hubble

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone — the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet — of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.

“On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.”

Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky.

Source: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

Except Escape Dynamics didn’t fire its engine by setting alight fuel in a controlled explosion, like a traditional rocket. Instead, their engine fired using power beamed at it from a microwave antenna across the room.

]…] It aims to use a giant set of batteries to draw power from the regular electric grid (or on site solar panels, wind turbines, or other available power generation). Once they’re charged and a spaceship is ready to go, power will be sent to a set of modular, phased array microwave antennae spanning a square kilometer. Those antennae will then fire a microwave beam at a heat exchanger on the spaceship. That heat exchanger will heat up the hydrogen in the fuel tank, which is what powers the rocket on the ship into orbit.

Source: This Company Aims To Launch Rockets With Beams Of Power – Forbes

Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL.

The website updates daily with orbit data from Space-Track.org and uses the excellent satellite.js Javascript library to calculate satellite positions.

Source: Stuff in Space