Space In General

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Edit:

 

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SN8 was just moved to the launch pad.

 

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Cool shot from today's NSF update video from Boca Chica. Highly recommend subscribing to their channel for daily update videos.

 

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After a couple days delay due to wind, SN8 was hoisted onto the test stand this morning.

And there is a ULA launch tonight at 11:54pm EST (Edit: Scrubbed)



SpaceX has 2 launches coming up on Thursday and Friday. (Starlink and GPS-III) Will post links when available.

 

[CodeRedR51]

SpaceX launch in ~10 minutes.

Edit: Scrub. That is the 4th launch scrub this week from 4 different rockets. WTF.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Mk1 Starship left, SN8 Starship right. One year apart. So much progress in just one year. SN8 will undergo cryo testing tonight and/or tomorrow night. We are potentially weeks away from seeing it fly to 50,000ft.

 

[Touring Mars]

Sir Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on black holes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54420240

I've always been an admirer of Reinhard Genzel's work in particular, as he and his research group were the first to track the orbits of individual stars around SgrA*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

https://www.mpe.mpg.de/6590570/Stellar-Orbits

https://www.nature.com/articles/383415a0

 

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Another 60 Starlink satellites went up this morning. Bullseye landing for the booster.

 

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SN8 has passed cryo testing. Should be prepared for static fire shortly, with 3 Raptor engines.

Also:

 

[UKMikey]

 

[CodeRedR51]

Sorry for the lack of updates, was on vacation. SN8 has been fitted with it's 3 Raptor engines, ahead of the static fire which should take place very soon.

 

[CodeRedR51]

SN8 static fire possible overnight Sunday into Monday.

 

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SN8 possible test fire tonight. 24/7 stream below should cover it:



Starlink launch 13 was successful this morning.

 

[CodeRedR51]

SN8 possible static fire within the hour. Better quality live stream:

Edit: No static fire just yet. Successful preburner test.

 

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SN8 static fire

 

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SN8 nose cone made its way to the launch site this afternoon.

 

[Danoff]

Fantastic video on gravitational lensing and how we're using it to measure the universe.

 

[Dotini]

From today's edition of spaceweather.com:

STRANGE RED AURORAS: Spoiler alert: We do not know the answer to this question. Where did all the red auroras come from? For much of mid-October, Earth's magnetic field has been very quiet. Extremely quiet. There should have been almost no auroras at all, yet around the Arctic Circle, photographers recorded scenes like this:



Rayann Elzein of Utsjoki, Finland, took the picture on Oct. 17th. "I saw red almost every night for a whole week with similar displays on Oct. 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th," says Elzein. "On each occasion, geomagnetic activity was very low (with K-indices no greater than 0 or 1)."

Red auroras are rare. They form near the top of Earth's atmosphere when particles from space strike oxygen atoms 150 km to 500 km high--much higher than normal green auroras. As Les Cowley explains, at that high altitude, very slow atomic transitions which produce red photons are easily interrupted. Even experienced observers rarely see them.

Elzein has been chasing auroras in Finland for 10 years. He prides himself on going out in all conditions--even when geomagnetic activity is low. "I can't recall ever seeing so much red on top of the green layer before," he says.

In Tromsø, Norway, aurora tour guide Markus Varik had a similar experience. "Activity was extremely low on Oct. 17th when these pink and red colors appeared. After years of guiding, I have never seen anything like it."



"The auroras appeared milky-white to the naked eye, but on the camera they were vivid pink," says Varik.

The common denominator seems to be ... quiet. "The red was most apparent during the lowest geomagnetic activity--that is, when Bz was positive and the solar wind speed was slow (at or below 300 km/s)," notes Elzein. "The solar wind was also dense, with proton densities above 15 p/cm3."

It's a mystery. Aurora experts with bright (red) ideas may submit their explanations here.



Edit:

"It's a mystery. Aurora experts with bright (red) ideas may submit their explanations here."

I've seen some explanations. Some say it's from the US wildfires, and other say it's from Sahara desert sand particles. I've also seen the explanation that it's Helium 3, which, if so, could portend a large earthquake or volcano soon, possibly within two weeks.

From Fidani, 2010.

Screen capture from video taken over 400 km from the Sichuan 2008 quake.

 

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itshappening.gif

 

[Dotini]

Van Allen belts have astonishing promise as sources of energy, fuel and antimatter.

 

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Another successful Starlink launch this morning. Camera on the drone ship was a bit loose...

 

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[TenEightyOne]

There is water on the moon, say NASA. Roughly 1 litre per 3 cubic metres of rock. BBC.

 

[CodeRedR51]

SN8 has been welded up and disconnected from the crane. Road closures scheduled for the 28th/29th for testing. At least one more static fire, maybe two before the 15km flight.

 

[Dotini]

From today's edition of spaceweather.com.
Note: Article mentions "Earth's ring current system". IMHO this is a subset of the Van Allen Belts.

A RED ARC OVER SWEDEN: You've heard of auroras--green and purple lights that dance in the sky during geomagnetic storms. But have you ever heard of an SAR? Stable Auroral Red arcs (SARs) were discovered in 1956 at the beginning of the Space Age and have been recorded by cameras on satellites hundreds of times since. Most aurora watchers have never seen one, though, because they are usually invisible to the human eye. Last Friday in Sweden, photographer Göran Strand saw one:



"It was a spectacular night with some really nice Northern Lights, but this arc turned out to be the gem for the night," says Strand. "It was relatively faint to the naked eye; my camera easily detected the red color."

SARs are related to auroras, but they are not the same. Regular auroras appear when high-energy particles rain down along polar magnetic field lines, hitting the atmosphere (100-200 km high) and causing it to glow like the picture tube of an old color TV. SARs form differently. They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere (~400 km high) from Earth's ring current system. The heat, in this case, may have been delivered by a high-speed solar wind stream that hit Earth's magnetic field shortly before Strand's photo.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Starship SN8, Moon, Mars.

Static fire on the 1st per Elon.

 

[Dotini]

This is kind of interesting:

SpaceX will not recognise international law on Mars, according to the Terms of Service of its Starlink internet project.

Elon Musk’s space company will instead reportedly adhere to a set of “self-governing principles" that will be defined at the time of Martian settlement.

Musk revealed plans to create a self-sustaining city on Mars last week, though no timeframe is yet to be put in place for its development.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...-musk-spacex-mars-laws-starlink-b1396023.html

 

[CodeRedR51]

"the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities"

Technically they're not wrong.