On November 18, 2023, SpaceX performed the second integrated near-orbital flight of its Starship rocket. The rocket successfully lifted off under the power of all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster and made it through stage separation. The booster then had multiple engine failures and exploded after beginning its boostback burn, while the Starship second stage continued to fly for over 8 minutes, reaching an altitude of 148 km (92 mi) before being destroyed by the flight termination system. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement confirming that an anomaly had occurred and that there are no reports of public property damage or injuries. SpaceX described the test as a success.
After the first test flight in April 2023 ended in the destruction of the Starship vehicle, significant work was done on the launch mount to repair the damage it sustained during the test and to prevent future issues.
Following Starship’s first flight failure, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required SpaceX to conduct an investigation on the mishap, grounding Starship pending the outcome of their investigation. The FAA closed the investigation on September 8, 2023. The FWS concluded its environmental review on November 14, and the FAA gave its approval for launch shortly after.
SpaceX CRS-29, also known as SpX-29, is a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched on 10 November 2023. The mission is contracted by NASA and is scheduled to be flown by SpaceX using Cargo Dragon C211. This will the seventh flight for SpaceX under NASA’s CRS Phase 2.
SpaceX plans to reuse the Cargo Dragons up to five times. The Cargo Dragon will launch without SuperDraco abort engines, without seats, cockpit controls and the life support system required to sustain astronauts in space. Dragon 2 improves on Dragon 1 in several ways, including lessened refurbishment time, leading to shorter periods between flights.
The new Cargo Dragon capsules under the NASA CRS Phase 2 contract will land east of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.
NASA contracted for the CRS-29 mission from SpaceX and therefore determines the primary payload, date of launch, and orbital parameters for the Cargo Dragon.
SpaceX CRS-29 carries over 2,950 kg (6,500 lb) of cargo, where 2,381 kg (5,249 lb) are pressurized cargo with packaging and 569 kg (1,254 lb) are unpressurized cargo.
science investigations: ~1,012 kg (2,231 lb), vehicle hardware: ~491 kg (1,082 lb), crew supplies: ~681 kg (1,501 lb), spacewalk equipment: ~48 kg (106 lb), computer resources: ~46 kg (101 lb)
The Antarctic ozone hole is an area of the Antarctic stratosphere in which the recent ozone levels have dropped to as low as 33 percent of their pre-1975 values. The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December, as strong westerly winds start to circulate around the continent and create an atmospheric container. Within this polar vortex, over 50 percent of the lower stratospheric ozone is destroyed during the Antarctic spring.
As explained above, the primary cause of ozone depletion is the presence of chlorine-containing source gases (primarily CFCs and related halocarbons). In the presence of UV light, these gases dissociate, releasing chlorine atoms, which then go on to catalyze ozone destruction. The Cl-catalyzed ozone depletion can take place in the gas phase, but it is dramatically enhanced in the presence of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs).
These polar stratospheric clouds form during winter, in the extreme cold. Polar winters are dark, consisting of three months without solar radiation (sunlight). The lack of sunlight contributes to a decrease in temperature and the polar vortex traps and chills the air. Temperatures hover around or below â80 °C. These low temperatures form cloud particles. There are three types of PSC cloudsânitric acid trihydrate clouds, slowly cooling water-ice clouds, and rapid cooling water-ice (nacreous) cloudsâprovide surfaces for chemical reactions whose products will, in the spring lead to ozone destruction.
The photochemical processes involved are complex but well understood. The key observation is that, ordinarily, most of the chlorine in the stratosphere resides in “reservoir” compounds, primarily chlorine nitrate (ClONO2) as well as stable end products such as HCl. The formation of end products essentially removes Cl from the ozone depletion process. The former sequester Cl, which can be later made available via absorption of light at shorter wavelengths than 400 nm. During the Antarctic winter and spring, however, reactions on the surface of the polar stratospheric cloud particles convert these “reservoir” compounds into reactive free radicals (Cl and ClO). Denitrification is the process by which the clouds remove NO2 from the stratosphere by converting it to nitric acid in PSC particles, which then are lost by sedimentation. This prevents newly formed ClO from being converted back into ClONO2.
The role of sunlight in ozone depletion is the reason why the Antarctic ozone depletion is greatest during spring. During winter, even though PSCs are at their most abundant, there is no light over the pole to drive chemical reactions. During the spring, however, sunlight returns and provides energy to drive photochemical reactions and melt the polar stratospheric clouds, releasing considerable ClO, which drives the hole mechanism. Further warming temperatures near the end of spring break up the vortex around mid-December. As warm, ozone and NO2-rich air flows in from lower latitudes, the PSCs are destroyed, the enhanced ozone depletion process shuts down, and the ozone hole closes.
Most of the ozone that is destroyed is in the lower stratosphere, in contrast to the much smaller ozone depletion through homogeneous gas-phase reactions, which occurs primarily in the upper stratosphere.
Video credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Bishopâs University /Jason Rowe
This sonification turns the orbits of a new seven-planet system, discovered by NASAâs retired Kepler space telescope, into sound. It begins at the center of the system with the innermost orbit and builds toward the outermost, introducing each orbit with a new sound that plays once per rotation around the central Sun-like star. It then focuses on two specific orbits in resonance, which creates a beating sound with the inner rotating twice in the same period as the outer rotates three times. Next, only the three outer-most planets are singled out as an orbital resonance chain before blending all seven together again. This is the first planetary system in which each planet bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any in our solar system.
Video credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Bishopâs University /Jason Rowe
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a satellite altimeter jointly developed and operated by NASA and CNES, the French space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA). The objectives of the mission are to make the first global survey of the Earth’s surface water, to observe the fine details of the ocean surface topography, and to measure how terrestrial surface water bodies change over time.
While past satellite missions like the Jason series altimeters (TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3) have provided variation in river and lake water surface elevations at select locations, SWOT will provide the first truly global observations of changing water levels, stream slopes, and inundation extents in rivers, lakes, and floodplains. In the world’s oceans, SWOT will observe ocean circulation at unprecedented scales of 15â25 km (9.3â15.5 mi), approximately an order of magnitude finer than current satellites. Because it uses wide-swath altimetry technology, SWOT will almost completely observe the world’s oceans and freshwater bodies with repeated high-resolution elevation measurements, allowing observations of variations.
The Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbed currently houses two large indoor âsandboxesâ filled with tons of simulated lunar dust. With both testbeds, most areas on the Moon can be simulated with a high degree of accuracy.
The facilityâs first sandbox measures approximately 13 feet by 13 feet by 1.5 feet (4 meters by 4 meters by 0.5 meter) and is filled with eight tons of Johnson Space Center One simulant (JSC-1A) â making it the worldâs largest collection of the material. The JSC-1A simulant mimics the Moonâs mare basins and is dark grey in color.
The facility was recently upgraded to include a second, larger testbed, filled with more than 20 tons of Lunar Highlands Simulant-1 (LHS-1), which is light grey to simulate the lunar highlands. It measures 62 feet by 13 feet by 1 foot (19 meters by 4 meters by 0.3 meter), and can be reconfigured to be a smaller, but deeper, testbed.
Sometimes researchers painstakingly shape the dust with hand tools to recreate, as accurately as possible, features astronauts and rovers are likely to encounter. These include tiny pits and small craters measuring as small as a couple feet to a few yards across. It may also mean placing small rocks and other debris to resemble actual places observed by Moon-orbiting spacecraft.
One feature that makes the Testbed truly unique, is a set of bright, high-power lights that simulate the Sunâs glaring rays as they are cast across the lunar landscape. Researchers can accurately recreate lighting conditions that are relevant to locations on the Moonâs poles and across a range of lunar times â past, present, or future.
Established in 2009 by NASAâs Centennial Challenges Program as the Lunar Regolith Testbed in the NASA Research Park at Ames, the facility was created through a partnership between the then-called NASA Lunar Science Institute (now the agencyâs Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute) and the California Space Authority. Since then, itâs been used year-round by researchers seeking a high-fidelity environment to test hardware designs intended for the lunar surface, including projects within the agencyâs Advanced Exploration Systems and Game Changing Development technology programs.
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