Yep! Reckless beyond belief...

Here's the take on the Russian military space vandalism as described by some well respected YouTubers:


KOSMOS 1408 CRISIS! Will ISS be destroyed? Russia has created a disaster in LEO
wrote:

The Angry Astronaut

I've never been this ANGRY. And I, for one, do no believe that this was a mistake...

More impactful details and commentary are from:

International Space Station Emergency!
wrote:

blancolirio

[Flying five miles high and for a first for this world-wide impacting event, now reporting out to 550 miles high!...]

Russian Anti-Satellite Weapon Causes Emergency On Space Station
wrote:

Scott Manley

Yesterday the Russian military tested a new Anti-Satellite missile on an old, dead Soviet satellite. The test was a success and now there are thousands of pieces of debris crossing the orbit of the Space Station...

... meaning the debris will remain in orbit longer and have a long term cost...

Stern stuff.

What Russian 'desperation' is this?... With what consequences?...


Stay safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Off-world colony simulation reveals changes in human communication over time with Earth

“The crews in such missions tend to reduce their communication with mission control during isolation, sharing their needs and problems less and less,” said Dr Dmitry Shved, of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Moscow Aviation Institute, as well as an author of the study.

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Satellites today, spacecraft later?

New Electric Propulsion Engine For Spacecraft Test-Fired in Orbit For First Time.

The team used iodine to fuel a 20 kg (44 pound) CubeSat satellite with an engine named the NPT30-I2, which was launched on 6 November 2020. Maneuvers were carried out successfully, and iodine was shown to achieve higher ionization efficiency than xenon too.

Besides the benefits we've already talked about, iodine-based systems could also be built in significantly smaller and simpler forms than current satellites: unlike xenon and other propellants, iodine can be stored on board in its solid form before it's converted into a gas, so there's no need for bulky, high-pressure gas tanks.

"The successful demonstration of the NPT30-I2 means we can proceed to the next step in the development of iodine propulsion," says Rafalskyi.

Cheers.

... Stern stuff.

What Russian 'desperation' is this?... With what consequences?...

Further detail from Marcus House:

SpaceX Starship FAA News, Russia Anti-Sat Weapon Test, Electron Booster Recovery


So... That summary suggests a kinetic (non-explosive) hit onto the big old 2-ton satellite whilst on the downward trajectory of the sub-orbital impactor.

Ok... So the impactor debris should deorbit quite quickly. However, the chart shows a very scary spread of debris that is going to fly around for years to come...


Is this a game of Russia (and China) demonstrating that as underdogs, they can still spoil the space party for everyone for evermore?

All a game of irresponsible reckless vandalism?...



Stay safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

And here's some very good in depth detail and discussion:


NSF Live: Russian ASAT Test w/ Jonathan McDowell
wrote:

NASASpaceflight.com ... special guest and space tracking expert Jonathan McDowell...

... And, wow!...

So... We are already suffering the Kessler Syndrome. More orbital debris is being generated than is decaying to burn up in our atmosphere. The only difference from the Hollywood "Gravity" scare film showing 'near total destruction in just a few orbits' is that the orbital debris buildup is building up now and across the next few years...

What can most usefully be done to avoid a very expensive denial of space?...


All above our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

And for another consequence...

This is scary:


ESA's Solar Orbiter will swing past Earth this week – sure hope nobody created a big cloud of space junk up there... Oh...
wrote:

ESA's Solar Orbiter is to undertake a flyby of Earth, requiring a careful assessment of debris as it dips close to the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of its main science mission.

The flyby is due to take place on the 26 and 27 of November.

The amount of debris on orbit was helpfully increased last week by Russia's anti-satellite missile demonstration, much to the consternation of NASA and other space agencies.

With the Solar Orbiter due to pass above North Africa and the Canary Islands at its closest approach on 27 November, it has to make it through two regions of potential space debris; geostationary orbit and low earth orbit.

"At 12km/s we'd be a really effective ASAT weapon," Daniel Lakey, Solar Orbiter spacecraft operations engineer at ESA tells The Reg, in reference to the speed at which the spacecraft will be barrelling along...

... "If we had hatches we would be battening them down around now."

And if the worst should happen? "I don't think humanity has created any structure that would withstand a debris strike at the speeds we're going."

"I prefer not to think about it too much."

That is one very fast very close flyby in a now very much newly more real game of cosmic billiards...


Here's hoping they thread a clean needle...

Fly safe?
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I'm not sure what I'd class this as, but we've got a bit of time to think about it.

This hot 'stream' of star gas will collide with our galaxy sooner than we thought.

The Milky Way is playing a violent game of tug-of-war with its two toughest neighbors — the rowdy sibling dwarf galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. It's hardly a fair contest. With a combined heft of about 17 billion solar masses (nearly 100 times scrawnier than the Milky Way), the two dwarf galaxies are slowly being torn apart by the gravity of our galaxy, and by each other.

More than 3 billion years of this cosmic pushing and pulling have left an enormous battle scar stretched across the Southern sky — a long, gassy arc known as the Magellanic Stream, trailing behind the Magellanic Clouds like a gout of stellar blood. One day, this stream will collide with our galaxy, flooding the Milky Way with star-forming gas and permanently changing the landscape of the night sky.

That day may be sooner than we thought.....

Cheers.

Research astronomers are surprised by rogue planet numbers with new find.

Astronomers find record-breaking haul of starless 'rogue' planets.

Astronomers have discovered dozens of new "rogue" planets, roughly doubling the known number of these mysterious free-roaming worlds.

A team of researchers found a collection of at least 70 exoplanets without parent stars — the largest single group of rogue planets ever found — in a patch of space about 420 light-years from Earth, a new study reports....

Cheers.

R2-D2 is that you making noise?
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft ‘Hears’ Jupiter’s Moon

“This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades,” said Bolton. “If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in Ganymede's magnetosphere.”

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NASA Mars lander goes into safe mode during large dust storm.

An amazing selection of pics in the link.

Cheers.

Star formation near the Sun is driven by expansion of the Local Bubble
Linked is only an abstract of full research paper rest available by subscription content.

For decades we have known that the Sun lies within the Local Bubble, a cavity of low-density, high-temperature plasma surrounded by a shell of cold, neutral gas and dust...

... Here we report an analysis of the three-dimensional positions, shapes and motions of dense gas and young stars within 200?pc of the Sun, using new spatial and dynamical constraints...

---

Here is a link from LiveScience.com with lots more readable content about previous mentioned article...
Earth is at the center of a 1,000-light-year-wide 'Swiss cheese' bubble carved out by supernovas

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If you want less CGI and more real effects in movies, you may get your wish: Inflatable film studio to orbit Earth

Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), a UK-based media company, has commissioned Axiom Space in Texas to build an inflatable space station module for orbital media production.

On Thursday, the media firm, which claims to be working on "the first ever Hollywood motion picture filmed in outer space," reportedly involving Tom Cruise, said it has hired Axiom Space to create SEE-1.

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In an eye opening move.

Aussie device that gives eyes to the blind fast-tracked in US.

A world-first bionic eye that restores partial vision to the blind has been given “breakthrough” designation by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The designation will help speed up review and assessment of the device - the Australian creators of which claim is already yielding amazing results.

Chief executive of the company behind the eye, Bionic Vision Technologies (BVT), Dr Ash Attia described the FDA categorisation as a “key milestone”.

“The life-changing bionic eye can now be brought more quickly to the people who need it the most,” Dr Attia said.

The technology aims to give functional vision to millions of people who have lost their sight due to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) - a genetic condition that degrades the retina.

It works through tiny cameras embedded in a pair of glasses which send electrical signals to an implant behind the eye.

By delivering visual information to the blind person they can gain functional vision, with some wearers reporting being able to recognise loved ones sitting in a cafe...

Cheers.

Mars Curiosity rover's wheels look all beat up, but NASA isn't fretting.

Just like I inspect the bottom of my hiking boots from time to time, NASA's Curiosity rover schedules in regular check-ups of its wheel treads. Mars hasn't been kind to the rover's aluminum wheels, which have taken a serious beating from rocks since it started exploring Gale Crater in 2012.

Curiosity snapped some fresh looks at its kicks in late January, and the views led to some concerned social media discussions (and some humorous ones) about the state of the wheels and what it means for the rover's ability to rove. Good news: Curiosity is doing OK.

The wheel image that attracted the most attention is quite a looker. It shows multiple holes and broken grousers (raised treads), cracks and bent metal. If your car tire looked like that, you'd be breaking out the jack and the spare. But the wheel issues have been known for a long time and the Curiosity team already implemented mitigation measures to extend their life.

NASA JPL spokesperson Andrew Good told me Curiosity had been performing wheel imagery every 500 meters (1,640 feet), but that distance was recently extended to every 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), an indication that efforts to protect the wheels are working well. "The current predicted odometry remaining is expected to be sufficient to support Curiosity throughout the remainder of the mission," Good said in an email.

Then there's a slew of pics taken by Curiosity.

Cheers.

It gets to live a little bit longer.

The International Space Station will plunge into the sea in 2031, NASA announces.

The International Space Station will plunge into the sea in January 2031, NASA has announced.

The orbiting laboratory, which launched in 1998, will splash-land 1,678 miles (2,700 kilometers) from land at Point Nemo, the final Pacific Ocean resting place for many dead satellites and space stations such as Russia's Mir, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The new expiration date for the ISS is due to a Biden Administration commitment to extend support for the space station's operations through 2030, NASA announced in late December. This week, the space agency announced a new transition plan for low-Earth orbit science. In the lead-up to the decommissioning of the ISS, NASA has signed agreements with three private companies to launch commercial space stations for use by both private companies and government astronauts. These new commercial space stations will be launched by Blue Origin, Nanoracks LLC and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, NASA said. They're expected to be operational by the late 2020s, before the ISS falls into the sea.

"The private sector is technically and financially capable of developing and operating commercial low-Earth orbit destinations, with NASA's assistance. We look forward to sharing our lessons learned and operations experience with the private sector to help them develop safe, reliable and cost-effective destinations in space," Phil McAlister, director of commercial space at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement.

In the meantime, the ISS will remain busy with experiments undertaken both on behalf of NASA researchers and private contractors....

Cheers.

Video Seems To Show Some Kind Of Bizarre UFOs Off The Coast Of North Carolina
>>> Link to Video in question <<<

Can You help identify this UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT – Please help me identify a plane that has the capabilities of this aircraft. I’ve caught these trails before in several other Timelpases but I have yet to figure out what kind of plane possibly has these capabilities. Each photo is a 10 second exposure with a second in between. You can see what normal planes look like compared to whatever are causing these trails in the video. My guess is this is part of the bombing range in Eastern NC, but whatever they are they have some incredible maneuverability. Footage was captured on 9-27-2021 between 8 and 10pm out at the Ocean Pursuit Shipwreck. Camera was facing due west.

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It's an alien copper in hot pursuit of an alien crook. :-D

Cheers.

Nah, it's a Trump drone chasing Anti-trumpeters.

Astronomers find mysterious Trans-Neptunian object in our solar system.

Vatican astronomers have discovered a mysterious new object beyond Neptune that could help in the search for our solar system's supposed ninth planet.

The trans-Neptunian body, called 2021 XD7, takes 286 years to travel around the sun and is almost certainly smaller than the dwarf planet Pluto.

It was spotted by Richard Boyle using the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on December 3 last year.

Much like Pluto, which in 1930 became the first of more than 800 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) to be discovered, 2021 XD7 has a strange orbit that is considerably more tilted than the movements of Earth, Mars and other planets.

The closest it gets to the sun is still 30 times further than our own world.

Astronomers hope the exploration of TNOs could help them find the elusive so-called Planet Nine.

They believe that the orbits of a number of bodies in the distant reaches of the solar system have been disrupted by the pull of an as yet unidentified planet.

First proposed by a group at CalTech in the US, this alien world was theorised to explain the distorted paths seen in distant icy bodies.

In order to fit in with the data experts have, the supposed planet would need to be roughly four times the size of Earth and ten times the mass.

Researchers say a body of this size and mass would explain the clustered paths of a number of icy minor planets beyond Neptune.

Its huge orbit would mean it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make a single pass around the sun....

Cheers.