The Astronomy Thread

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Gravel

Gravel

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Apparently a SpaceX rocket launched back in 2015 is expected to hit the moon.

I'm amazed at how improbable that is.

Unfortunately it'll be on the far side so we won't see the crater.
 
Brad2770

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Musk starting a war with the moon Nazi’s. As if things couldn’t get any worse.
 
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meStevo

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SpaceX lost 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites launched 5 days ago due to a geomagnetic storm increasing atmospheric drag by as much as 50%.

www.spacex.com

SpaceX

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.
www.spacex.com www.spacex.com

On Thursday, February 3 at 1:13 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched 49 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Falcon 9’s second stage deployed the satellites into their intended orbit, with a perigee of approximately 210 kilometers above Earth, and each satellite achieved controlled flight.
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SpaceX deploys its satellites into these lower obits so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag. While the low deployment altitude requires more capable satellites at a considerable cost to us, it’s the right thing to do to maintain a sustainable space environment.
​
Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches. The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively “take cover from the storm”—and continued to work closely with the Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron and LeoLabs to provide updates on the satellites based on ground radars.
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Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground. This unique situation demonstrates the great lengths the Starlink team has gone to ensure the system is on the leading edge of on-orbit debris mitigation.​
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Bummer. I think this is the first issue they've had after like 2000 satellites though so that's still a pretty good track record.
 
meStevo

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Yeah, you can only mitigate so much w/ space weather, wouldn't be surprised if the data / experience this provided will be more valuable in the long run to future launches and operations than these lost sats.
 
phisey

phisey

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Starship stacked with mechazilla:



The NASA Spaceflight stream has a timelapse at the end.

 
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Blazin

Blazin

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FLPRejoXMAkodbO.jpg
 
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meStevo

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Dr. Becky talks about the telescope now and in the future that will drive astronomy forward for this coming generation.



Here are the projects she covers:

Extremely Large Telescope (ELT + TMT, GMT) (2022)​

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Euclid Space Telescope (launches 2/2023)​

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Square Kilometre Array (SKA) (2027)​

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Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) (complete in 2020)​

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It's produced images like this, showing details as small as 30km wide:

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Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO) (2023)​


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The LSST camera's focal plane has a surface area large enough to capture a portion of the sky about the size of 40 full moons. Its resolution is so high that you could spot a golf ball from 15 miles away. Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
 
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phisey

phisey

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Musk is probably gonna have to build them an observatory on the far side of the moon with all the butthurt he's due to stir up with starlink.
 
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meStevo

meStevo

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Big Phoenix said:
Dont forget the Hawaiians and "muh sacred mountain!".

Ah yes, naming things after people with zero connection to what the thing is.
Click to expand...
Eh, represent a state in the senate for 4-5 decades and I'm sure you get a lot of stuff named after you, especially for a relatively small population.

But yeah, TMT is mentioned with the ELT segment.

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www.yahoo.com

Construction of Thirty Meter Telescope delayed at least 2 years

Oct. 11—The developers of the planned Thirty Meter Telescope are now saying that construction of the $2.4 billion cutting-edge observatory isn't likely to start for at least a couple of years. "TMT needs time to heal our relationship with the community and to recover from the delays caused by...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

A lot of interesting instruments underway. Personally I wish we were lobbing Cassini-class satellites into the deep solar system every other year. Wish we were drowning in images and data.

Crank that shit out, with modular science packages on the same general chassis to be determined closer to launch based on other findings instead of 'lets go back to Pluto, launching in 7 years!' Dozens of them up there at once, orbital weather stations, able to monitor conditions as CMEs pass, able to turn and observe similar targets simultaneously to observe different events, etc.

It's not cheap, but I wish there was some drive to make an agile and versatile program like that.
 
phisey

phisey

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Starship driving costs down would disrupt that calculus quite a bit. How much would they be able to get up there with starships with the money spent on JWST?

Beyond just costs, the payload volume and launch tempo with starship really open up the sort of missions into things we can't even begin to imagine.
 
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phisey

phisey

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Also the Starship presentation started at 8PM CST:



New SpaceX animation for the current starship configuration:

 
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Tuco

Tuco

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phisey said:
Starship driving costs down would disrupt that calculus quite a bit. How much would they be able to get up there with starships with the money spent on JWST?

Beyond just costs, the payload volume and launch tempo with starship really open up the sort of missions into things we can't even begin to imagine.
Click to expand...
Yeah, feels like in five years we'll be able to just launch a mega telescope into lagrange that has a hundredth of the cost of jwst and ten times the capability.
 
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phisey

phisey

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I think space observatories are just the first and most obvious use case for super cheap access to space, but there are legit applications we haven't come up with.

One thing that came up was nuclear waste disposal. Stanford has the budget for domestic nuclear waste disposal at around $58 billion. With $6 billion dedicated to mitigating the costs of waste going all the way back to the Manhattan Project:

earth.stanford.edu

The steep costs of nuclear waste in the U.S.

earth.stanford.edu earth.stanford.edu

Say the current allocated budget for managing the 80,000 tons of nuclear waste is about $58 billion, that's around $725k per ton. You'd need about 20 tons worth of shielding and risk mitigation in case the rocket blows up, and let's cut out another 30 tons to get the delta-v for a sun-intersecting flight, that's about 100 tons of nuclear waste per flight. That's $72.5 million per shipment of nuclear waste sent to the sun. Minus the $10 million costs per flight that's about $62 million dollars in profit per flight for so long as there's a gram of those 80,000 tons of nuclear waste in the US alone.

Sun-intersecting orbits might actually require more delta-v than just sending it out to interstellar space so it might be even more profitable.
 
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