Lifeboat Foundation

A Milky Way magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 may have just massively contributed to solving the mystery of powerful deep-space radio signals that have vexed astronomers for years.

On 28 April 2020, the dead star — sitting just 30,000 light-years away — was recorded by radio observatories around the world, seemingly flaring with a single, millisecond-long burst of incredibly bright radio waves that would have been detectable from another galaxy.

In addition, global and space X-ray observatories recorded a very bright X-ray counterpart.

An MIT research proposal outlines a new method for rendezvousing with interstellar objects (ISOs) like ‘Oumuamua using a solar slingshot technique. By using solar sails to position deep-space probes on the edge of the solar system, the idea is to use the gravitational pull of the Sun to accelerate the spacecraft and set it on an intercept course with an interstellar visitor.

When ‘Oumuamua passed by in 2017, it was a truly historic event. For the first time, an object from interstellar space was detected entering the solar system. Traveling on a hyperbolic trajectory, it flew through the inner system before returning to the outer darkness, never to return. As it did so, observatories around the world focused on the object, giving scientists their first close-up glimpse at something that didn’t originate in our system.

However, a glimpse was all they had time for. Ideally, a long, leisurely look would have been preferable, but there wasn’t any time to even plan a mission to send a spacecraft to visit ‘Oumuamua – much less launch one. Worse, such a mission would have faced major technical challenges. Not the least of which being the requirement of a massive rocket to reach the needed velocity to overtake the object.

A new paper by physicist Edward Witten proposes hunting Planet 9 using a fleet of laser-launched probes like Breakthrough Starshots’.

New spacecraft experience setbacks all the time. SpaceX Starship prototype violently disassembled several times. Boeing launched the CST-100 but ended up in the wrong orbit. China isn’t a stranger to setbacks either.

China tested a prototype spacecraft on May 5th, 2020 in efforts to prove the technology was ready. It’s good it was a test and not an actual mission since the spacecraft did not perform as expected. The news agency Xinhua reported the spacecraft launched from Hainan China, operated abnormally during its return.

Heat Shields Need to work or expect a terrible day.

Spacecraft experience tremendous heat during the last minutes of their mission. The heat shield protects the spacecraft from that heat. NASA looked at lots of materials and tested many before using for heat shields.

NASA’s Space Shuttle used a thermal soak heat shield approach. The Shuttle tiles act as an insulating material. The design absorbs and radiates the heat away from the spacecraft structure. A second common approach is an ablative heat shield like those used for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Orion spacecraft. These ablative heat shields commonly have a layer of plastic resin which experiences intense heating while entering the atmosphere. The heat shield wears away, carrying the heat away through convection.

Continue reading “New game-changing Inflatable Space Tech NASA to test in 2022... China just tested it.” »

The U.S. Department of Defense wants to test a directed energy weapon in space, one that it hopes will someday destroy ballistic missiles moments after launch. The weapon, a so-called neutral particle beam, would be boosted into space and tested from orbit in 2023.

Neutral particle beams don’t get as much attention as lasers but are attractive in their own right. The weapons work by accelerating particles without an electric charge—particularly neutrons—to speeds close to the speed of light and directing them against a target. The neutrons knock protons out of the nuclei of other particles they encounter, generating heat on the target object.

Researchers from Utrecht used high-resolution images from orbiters circling the planet and found evidence of a river that continuously shifted. This created created sandbanks like the Rhine.

New research suggests Planet Nine is a mirage and nothing more than ‘collective gravity.’ The team say it is a sprawling disk of icy debris that formed when the solar system was born.

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NASA captured the brilliant flash of an exploding star for the first time.

The Hubble telescope is celebrating a milestone birthday this month, but, rather than celebrate alone, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are making this celebration all about you.

On April 24, 1990, NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit, where it has recorded some of the most stunning images of the planets and stars around us, inspiring us all to dream a little bigger.

“Hubble’s seemingly never-ending, breathtaking celestial snapshots provide a visual shorthand for its exemplary scientific achievements,” NASA and the ESA explained in a blog post about the telescope’s birthday. “Unlike any other telescope before it, Hubble has made astronomy relevant, engaging, and accessible for people of all ages. The mission has yielded to date 1.4 million observations and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to write more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, making it one of the most prolific space observatories in history. Its rich data archive alone will fuel future astronomy research for generations to come.”