Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - Houston, we are go for launch!

[kato]

I thought Mars gets about 40-50% of the light we get here?

43% through distance.

[Wrangler]

Something unique.  Rocket Lab, the small rocket launch company released video of it's booster separation from inside the first stage with sound.  It certainly eye popping view of the stage 2 shooting off i've not seen before from large Falcon 9s.

The stage 1 rocket was actually recovered, as part plan to ultimately use helicopters to hook the booster as it descending by parachute. 

[elf25s]

https://www.rt.com/usa/508371-arecibo-observatory-telescope-collapse/
it just gave up?

[Sabelkatten]

Seems there was a small earthquake to help it along as well. It was literally hanging be a thread, after all... :(

[rebs]

https://www.space.com/amp/china-chang-e-5-lands-on-moon-to-collect-lunar-samples

China lands on the Moon again.  This time it's Chang'e 5, taking new samples of the lunar soil, including digging over a meter down.  After it gathers 2kg of lunar soil over a few days time, it will return to the Earth with its cargo for study. 

[ANS Kamas P81]

Good luck, Chang'e 5!

[kato]

1) Hayabusa-2 is now less than 1 million km from Earth. Capsule separation will be on Saturday at around 2-3 pm JST.



2) Chang'e-5 finished its drilling operations yesterday evening 10 pm CST. Takeoff of the ascent stage is planned for 11:10 pm CST today (in about 6.5 hours), autonomous docking with the orbiter on Sunday at 07:40 am CST.

[kato]

First liftoff from the Moon since 1976 successfully achieved.



Right side = CG, left side = actual view of ascent from the lander

Also, first liftoff ever from the "dark side" of the moon.

[rebs]

Beautiful!  Glad to see somebody is doing something with the Moon. 

[kato]

Gaia Early Data Release 3 has been published today.

It's about 1.3 TB in size (data only, compressed) and contains exact data points on about 1.8 billion stars within the Milkyway galaxy observed by Gaia (plus 160 million extragalactic objects). 6-parameter astrometic solutions are worked out for about 882 million stars, 5-parameter solutions for a further 585 million.

Gaia is an ESA satellite orbiting around the Sun-Earth-L2 Lagrange point that is equipped with the largest digital camera ever built, with over 100 CCDs forming a resolution of 1 billion pixel. Gaia performs up to 1000 observations of entire fields of up to 50 million stars, extrapolating their position, color, proper motion and some other stuff, and refining its solution for each source with every new sweep. An automatic routine onboard prefilters the generated data for "interesting observations" (e.g. new datapoints) only in order to keep the downlink manageable at around 50-100 GB/day.

Gaia EDR3 apparently includes a new cataloguing of stars within the solar system's neighborhood, i.e. of about 330,000 stars within 100 Parsec/326 light years - which are estimated to be 92% of all stellar objects in this range.

Exhaustive playlist of youtube videos with Q&A sessions on Gaia EDR3:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpT9NE9UY0o7itJFpO9nK3luflRHjnvui

[elf25s]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H--NYPgNb4

[worktroll]

Preemptive ducking unnecessary ... Hayabusa 2 capsule has landed, and choppers vectoring in on capsule.

Let's all watch Andromeda Strain (the '71 movie, of course) again!

[kato]

Chang'e-5 will be next in about ten days in Mongolia.

[rebs]

Ahhhhhh, progress!  How sweet it is.

[kato]

For something really cool:

ISS has taken a video of the flyby of Hayabusa-2 itself and streamed its encounter live to Earth:

https://youtu.be/JVDp5ansfCo?t=805
(Hayabusa 2, the spinning object, is plainly visible at 13:27-13:40)

P.S.: To clarify, this is from the automatic tracking cameras of ISS, which were set up for the purpose. JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi also watched the flyby from ISS, but says it wasn't bright enough to take a picture with his handheld camera.

[ANS Kamas P81]

To be seen as more than just a dot, that's an impressively close flyby.

[kato]

To be seen as more than just a dot, that's an impressively close flyby.

Distance to ISS depends on exact orbital mechanics of course, but Hayabusa-2 actually dipped below ISS with a planned 290 km altitude at closest point to Earth.

[Wrangler]

Time Lapse video of Cargo-2 approaching & docking with ISS.

Here

[Wrangler]

Recently SpaceX launched its prototype Starship SN8 on its initial test flight to see if the vehicle can glide properly and return.

It was a spectacular launch. It looks like they have still some maturing issues with basically the top nose cone tank which is called a header tank which didn't have enough pressure to basically fuel the engines for the landing. Which caused the Rocket to have hard landing since engines puttered out as it tried stick the landing. I got nervous as the Rocket went skyward since it seem the schedule(?) Shutdown of two of the engines were look like it was violent. The engines are gimbled using hydrolics control thrust of Raptor engines. Either case it tested out most of what they wanted test. The landing issue was expected.  They already have a replacement with more mature engines. Hopefully they will figure out the header tank issue. 

Here a link to the Spacenews article.

[Wrangler]

Some views of the SN8's final moments. It looks like it was successful. Next time they're going need work on better way keep engines fueled from the header tank.

[rebs]

Good coverage, Wrangler.  I hope they work out the header issues, too. 

[rebs]

https://amp.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3114034/japan-scientists-left-speechless-samples-asteroid-300-million

The samples brought back by Hayabusa are amazing!  Read more about it the link above.

[kato]

Since the article doesn't mentioned it:

JAXA also sampled gas from the return capsule and the sample container. This gas in both cases is identical and of a different composition to the atmosphere of Earth. JAXA treats this as the "first gas sample from deep space".

To clarify that a bit though, this is not some sort of gas collected at Ryugu. It is outgassing from the solid sample as it was being heated, primarily during the reentry. Since identical gas could be sampled twice in Australia and Japan the solid sample seems to be outgassing at ambient temperature levels.

We do not have such a gas sample from Itokawa, presumed to be due to lower heating of the sample or leakage; however we do have a comparable gas sample from samples returned by Apollo missions from the moon. Spectroscopic analysis of such samples - i.e. the isotopes it contains - gives hints regarding exposure of the source material to various kinds of solar and cosmic radiation at its original location. Typically later on part of the solid sample itself will be heated to produce such gasses for spectroscopic analysis, although that's of course something different.

[kato]

And separately:

The Chang'e-5 return capsule is being recovered right now in Mongolia.

[rebs]

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/amazons-answer-to-spacex-starlink-delivers-400mbps-in-prototype-phase/?amp=1

I hope this has earthly applications sooner rather than later. 

Bless space research in all of its forms.

[rebs]

https://cnn.it/3ajzM7u

NASA aims to build a permanent Moon base by 2030.  As we know, bringing building materials from Earth is expensive and time consuming. 

The possible answer is 3d printing, using moon regolith as a building material to produce a concrete-like substance.  Hopefully this works out. 

[kato]

The possible answer is 3d printing, using moon regolith as a building material to produce a concrete-like substance.

Europe and China have been working on this for a while, and are way beyond the "oh let's use 3D printing" and in the stage of finding applications.

For ESA:
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Preparing_for_the_Future/Discovery_and_Preparation/3D_printing_our_way_to_the_Moon

That ESA study from last year was done by OHB, the only private company who has sent an actual payload around the moon so far.

[Luciora]

Got a picture of the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction over the Bay Area.

[rebs]

Beautiful!   I was telling Blaine "Buck" Pardoe on FB the planets are aligning and everything for the IlClan.   And here it is...

[Wrangler]

Wow! That's neat. Its too forest were i live. So i can't get good view of the night sky. Especially with all the light pollution.  Holy crap that was seeable over major city speaks volumes how bright the two planets were.