SpaceX is bringing back propulsive landings with its Dragon capsule, but only in emergencies.
The jets of material that spew from black holes catalyze stellar eruptions, surprising astronomers and raising questions about the jets' role in the universe.
cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/1964912
> Black hole jets, which spew near-light-speed particle beams, can trigger nearby white dwarf stars to explode by igniting hydrogen layers on their surfaces. "We don't know what's going on, but it's just a very exciting finding," said Alec Lessing, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and lead author of a new study describing the phenomenon, in an ESA release. Gizmodo reports: > > In the recent work -- set to publish in The Astrophysical Journal and is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv -- the team studied 135 novae in the galaxy M87, which hosts a supermassive black hole of the same name at its core. M87 is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and was the first black hole to be directly imaged, in work done in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. The team found twice as many novae erupting near M87's 3,000 light-year-long plasma jet than elsewhere in the galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope also directly imaged M87's jet, which you can see below in luminous blue detail. Though it looks fairly calm in the image, the distance deceives you: this is a long tendril of superheated, near-light speed particles, somehow triggering stars to erupt. > > Though previous researchers had suggested there was more activity in the jet's vicinity, new observations with Hubble's wider-view cameras revealed more of the novae brightening -- indicating they were blowing hydrogen up off their surface layers. "There's something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently," Lessing said in the release. "But it's not clear that it's a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster." The new Hubble images of M87 are also the deepest yet taken, thanks to the newer cameras on Hubble. Though the team wrote in the paper that there's between a 0.1% to 1% chance that their observations can be chalked up to randomness, most signs point to the jet somehow catalyzing the stellar eruptions.
SpaceX and NASA have launched Crew-9 for its six-month mission aboard the International Space Station…
By the end of August, Tesla had exported a total of 966,945 vehicles from China, according to data compiled by CnEVPost.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43497738
*soon:
though the law has no hard timeline attached, so it may be a while before we see this happen.
Still encouraging that people are considering this, though.
Gov. Newsom signed a bill into law which will allow the CEC to require grid-saving bidirectional charging on EVs when it deems appropriate.
Mahle Chairman Arnd Franz says that building out a hydrogen infrastructure won't be possible without "blue" hydrogen made from fossil fuels.
I'm not convinced that hydrogen (green or otherwise) makes sense for powering transportation. I think it's best use case is in replacing fossil fuels in high-temperature industrial processes.
Starbase activities (2024-09-28):
- Pad A: S30 still stacked on B12, not launching. (Gisler, cnunez, clwphoto1)
- S30 missing a couple tiles. Possibly intentional like last time? (Gisler)
- S32 moves from the Rocket Garden. (Gisler)
- Work on the passage between Starfactory and offices continues. (Gisler, BocasBrain)
- Build site wide shot. (Gisler)
Maritime:
- Hos Ridgewind heads back out into the Gulf. (Cornwell)
I thought "dark energy" was the label for the cause of the universe's accelerating expansion.
I love his expression in the third panel:
It's just a blank stare of "wait, what?"
am I a problem for society?
I've had sex with a 14yo before
Uh, I think that would heavily depend on how old you were at the time.
I also have pictures of naked minors
I feel that would depend on whether you are related to the minors in question, and whether the pictures are sexual in nature.
Nosecone deploy in progress.
The Zero-G indicator is a toy stuffed falcon, which also flew with Nick Hague aboard Soyuz MS-12.
SECO, nominal orbital insertion.
Dragon launch escape system has been disarmed.
Stage 1 engine chill has started.
Stage 1 fuel load is complete.
Strongback retract has started.
Tanks are venting for the start of propellant load.
Edit: Propellant load has started.
Crew have closed their visors and are arming the launch escape system.
Edit: Launch escape system is armed, weather is 70% go.
Welcome to the SpaceX Crew-9 Launch Discussion & Updates Thread!
Time to pick up Butch and Suni!
| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-09-28, 17:17:21 | | --- | --- | | Scheduled for (local) | 2024-09-28, 13:17:21 (ET) | |Docking scheduled for (UTC)| | | Mission | Crew-9 | | Launch site | LC-40, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. | | Booster | B1085-2 | | Landing | LZ-1 | | Dragon | C212-4 (Freedom) | | Commander | Nick Hague 🇺🇸| | Mission Specialist | Aleksandr Gorbunov 🇷🇺| | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and docking to the ISS |
Note: This mission is launching with two empty seats for returning Barry E. Wilmore 🇺🇸 and Sunita Williams 🇺🇸 from the ISS.
Webcasts
| Stream | Link | | --- | --- | | NASA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKXtysRx0b4 | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvMUVxflvxI | Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eKnPK5RswM | NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLZpj_rtzEo | Everyday Astronaut | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X67-Y-jJx40 | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnQO8rN4nq8 | SpaceX | | The Space Devs |
Stats
Sourced from NextSpaceflight, c/SpaceX, and r/SpaceX:
☑️ 1st crewed Dragon launch from SLC-40
☑️ 45th launch from SLC-40 this year
☑️ 11 day turnaround for this pad
☑️ 46th landing on LZ-1
☑️ 24th consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (if successful)
☑️ 354th Falcon Family Booster landing
☑️ 93rd Falcon 9 mission this year, 379th Falcon 9 mission overall
☑️ 94th SpaceX mission of 2024, 394th mission overall (excluding Starship flights)
☑️ 96th SpaceX launch this year, 408th SpaceX launch overall (including Starship flights)
Mission info
> SpaceX Crew-9 is the ninth operational crewed rotation mission of a Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. The original intended crew comprised Commander Zena Cardman, Pilot Nick Hague, Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov. > > NASA has since decided to launch Crew-9 with only 2 crew members to allow the 2 Starliner CFT crew to return on Crew-9. The mission's commander will be Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov will be a mission specialist.
As Firefly Aerospace prepares for its upcoming Alpha rocket launches, work continues apace on its…
The penultimate flight of Japan's workhorse H-IIA rocket deploys a spy satellite.
Blue Origin tested the upper stage of its first New Glenn but on a schedule that appears to vindicate a NASA decision not to use it for a launch in October.
The International Space Station (ISS) has spent the last three months with a larger crew…
Japan launches IGS Radar 8 reconnaissance satellite with penultimate H-2A rocket Japan launched the classified IGS-Radar 8 satellite early Thursday with the second-to-last H-2A rocket.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Sept. 26 to open up more spectrum to Starlink and other non-geostationary satellite operators to improve broadband speeds in the United States.
