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Space and Astronomy News Roundup + Launch of SPHEREx Space Telescope tonight [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-08
Here are a few stories related to space and astronomy to take our minds off for a few moments from the sabotage and destruction of our government and institutions being caused by trump and his tech-bro handlers.
As you aware, a slew of space missions, 4 of them to the moon, were launched on Jan 15 and Feb 26. Here is a synopsis of their status —
Blue Ghost lunar lander
The Blue Ghost lunar lander by Firefly Aerospace Blue successfully landed on the moon Sunday morning. After the “11 minutes of terror” as the lander braked from 6,120 km/h to zero, it made a soft landing in the area near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature in the eastern part of Mare Crisium, around 18.56°N, 61.81°E.
The lander is named after the firefly Phausis reticulata, aka as the Blue Ghost.
The lander has 14 days to deploy and operate 10 NASA science payloads before the lunar night brings brutally cold temperatures and destroys most of the electronics. Most of the science payloads have been deployed and are functional.
Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena Lunar Lander
The Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission launched on Feb 26 for a landing near the lunar south pole.
It carried an ambitious set of science payloads including –
An ice-drill and mass spectrometer to detect ice and gases, from NASA.
The Lunar Outpost MAPP rover.
A Hopper named Grace to explore nearby craters.
A miniaturized rover.
A 4G/LTE wireless network from Nokia
Unfortunately, after landing, it ended up on its side instead of its feet. Its batteries ran out and the mission is now ended. The IM-1 mission 2 years ago ended with a similar landing failure.
Post-landing selfie showing Athena’s legs sideways pointing towards a distant earth instead of down
www.intuitivemachines.com/...
AstroForge Odin
Odin was a small spacecraft by AstroForge, the "space mining" company. Its mission was to fly by asteroid 2022 OB5 about 300 days after launch to demonstrate the company’s low-cost spacecraft technology, estimated at $6.5 million, and to study the asteroid.
It ran into trouble as the spacecraft acquired an uncorrectable tumble. After a few contacts with the spacecraft the first day, no further contact has been made and the mission has ended.
There were many ground system and comms problems, but one known problem was that someone forgot to uncomment a line of code to turn on the transmitter in space. Consequently, a command had to be sent to the spacecraft to turn on its its downlink transmitter, which worked once or twice but failed after that.
Debriefing at www.astroforge.com/...
Starship Test Flight 8
RUD. Duck. RIP.
Perhaps, there is a design flaw, that has not been identified.
Light show over the Caribbean
European Ariane 6 first commercial launch
The European Ariane 6 rocket had a successful first commercial launch from Kourou, French Guiana. It deployed the CSO-3 satellite, a high-resolution optical imaging satellite for the French military, into a Sun Synchronous orbit at 800 km altitude.
Nice!
SPHEREx
The NASA SPHEREx space telescope will launch today March 8 at 10:10 p.m. EST (03:10 UTC Mar 9) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in CA aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) is a near-infrared space observatory that will perform an all-sky survey and measure the spectra of ~450 million galaxies at near-infrared wavelengths 0.75 to 5.0 µm over the next 2 years.
Its goals -
Create a 3D map of 100s of millions of galaxies in 102 infrared wavelengths and study inflation, the rapid expansion of the universe after the big bang.
Measure the collective glow of galaxies near and far, including ones not observed before.
Search the Milky Way galaxy for water, CO2 and other essential ingredients for life.
Telescope design -
Launch webcast starts at 9:15 p.m. EST.
Epilogue
Space is hard; it is harder when you are not NASA.
Wishing the remaining missions the best of luck.
Now back to fighting trump and musk and saving civilization.
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