Space In General



Edit: there will be an official SpaceX livestream for the event.

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A gigantic sunspot is turning to face Earth. As yet there is no warning of X-class flares.
from Spaceweather.com:

SOLAR FLARE ACTIVITY: Giant sunspot AR2781 is crackling with solar flares. The strongest so far, a C7-class explosion at 0022 UT on Nov. 5th, lit up the sunspot's magnetic canopy for nearly an hour. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the extreme ultraviolet (UV) flash:



X-rays and UV radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a brief low-frequency radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean and Australia: blackout map. Mariners and ham radio operators in the region might have noticed signals fading, especially at frequencies below 10 MHz.

AR2781 has nearly doubled in size since yesterday. With a primary dark core more than 3 times wider than Earth, the sunspot is an easy target for amateur telescopes. Shahrin Ahmad sends this picture from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:



"Here is this morning's view of THAT sunspot AR2781," says Ahmad. "Even though it is not yet directly facing Earth, we can feel the size is gigantic!"
 
The Falcon 9 booster and Crew Dragon for the Crew-1 mission on Saturday has gone vertical on the pad.



And Starship SN8 did a single engine static fire this evening. It was a little more spectacular than expected. Might be a hole in the concrete pad under the launch platform...

 
The Crew 1 launch has been pushed a single day to this Sunday the 15th at 7:27pm EST for improved booster landing weather off shore. This particular booster will be re-used for Crew 2 so they can't afford to lose it.

 
Another successful blast into space, and landing of the booster. They make it look so easy.

But they need a different voice over. John is annoying.
 
Booster 1061.1 just came back to port with a bit of a lean going on. Damn near slid off the deck. It landed dead center, so rough seas likely tossed it about before the octograbber could secure it.

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That booster leg is gonna need some work... They said they need that booster pretty quickly, i thought. Would have sucked if it had slid off into the sea.
 
wfooshee
That booster leg is gonna need some work... They said they need that booster pretty quickly, i thought. Would have sucked if it had slid off into the sea.
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Supposed to be used for the next Crew flight, but that's like 6 months away I think. They can typically inspect and repair in 4-6 weeks though I'd expect them to be a little more thorough with this one. The legs have crush cores and that's probably what happened here. Easy fix.

Edit:

 
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Two Falcon 9 launches today. One in a few minutes from California with a landing back on dry ground:



And another tonight from Florida, which will be the first time a booster will have launched 7 times. I'll post the link to that one when it's available.

Edit: Saturday night launch (Starlink 15) was delayed to Sunday, 9:56pm EST.
 
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...from today's edition of spaceweather.com:

LITTLE GREEN CANNONBALLS OF LIGHT: Just when you thought STEVE couldn't get any weirder. A new paper published in the journal AGU Advancesreveals that the luminous purple ribbon we call "STEVE" is often accompanied by green cannonballs of light that streak through the atmosphere at 1000 mph.

"Citizen scientists have been photographing these green streaks for years," says Joshua Semeter of Boston University, lead author of the study. "Now we're beginning to understand what they are."


Above: The mysterious green streaks of light below STEVE. [Full Caption]

STEVE is a recent discovery. It looks like an aurora, but it is not. The purple glow is caused by hot (3000 °C) rivers of gas flowing through Earth's magnetosphere faster than 13,000 mph. This distinguishes it from auroras, which are ignited by energetic particles raining down from space. Canadian aurora watchers first called attention to the phenomenon about 10 years ago, whimsically naming it STEVE; researchers have been studying it ever since.

There's a dawning realization that STEVE is more than just a purple ribbon. Photographers often catch it flowing over a sequence of vertical pillars known as the "picket fence." They're not auroras either. And, now, Semeter's team has identified yet another curiosity in their paper, entitled "The Mysterious Green Streaks Below STEVE."

"Beneath the picket fence, photographers often catch little horizontal streaks of green light," explains Semeter. "This is what we studied in our paper."


Above: Using amateur images, Semeter's team triangulated the height of "STEVE's cannonballs." [Full Caption]

Semeter's team gathered pictures of the streaks taken by citizen scientists in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. In some cases, the same streaks were photographed by widely-separated photographers, allowing a triangulation of their position. Analyzing dozens of high-quality images, the researchers came to these conclusions:

1. The streaks are not streaks. They are actually point-like balls of gas moving horizontally through the sky. In photos, the 'green cannonballs' are smeared into streaks by the exposure time of the cameras.

2. The cannonballs are typically 350 meters wide, and located about 105 km above Earth's surface.

3. The color of the cannonballs is pure green--much more so than ordinary green auroras, reinforcing the conclusion that they are different phenomena.


Above: The pure green of STEVE's cannonballs (upper left) is compared to the blue-green and other mixed colors of auroras. Credit: Joshua Semeter, Boston Univ.

So, what are the cannonballs? Semeter believes they are a sign of turbulence. "During strong geomagnetic storms, the plasma river that gives rise to STEVE flows at extreme supersonic velocities. Turbulent eddies and whirls dump some of their energy into the green cannonballs."

This idea may explain their pure color. Auroras tend to be a mixture of hues caused by energetic particles raining down through the upper atmosphere. The 'rain' strikes atoms, ions, and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen over a wide range of altitudes. A hodge-podge of color naturally results from this chaotic process. STEVE's cannonballs, on the other hand, are monochromatic. Local turbulence excites only oxygen atoms in a relatively small volume of space, producing a pure green at 557.7 nm; there is no mixture.

"It all seems to fit together, but we still have a lot to learn," says Semeter. "Advancing this physics will benefit greatly from the continued involvement of citizen scientists."

If you're an aurora photographer looking to contribute, be sure to read Semeter et al's original research at https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com


Edit:
Question: Would you believe these Green Cannonballs can approach the surface of Earth, level out, then ascend back into the sky?
 
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Sunspot now turning towards Earth has capability of dangerous flares and CME's.

Giant sunspot AR2786.




Schumann resonance has been very active the past 2.5 days or so with some very strong spikes, thought to be capable of causing headaches or other disturbances in humans.
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Dennisch
A worldwide black out would fit nicely in 2020.
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IMHO, even another Carrington Event could not result in a worldwide blackout. Perhaps it could be continental in scale.

However, a micro-nova could do the job. Astronomers have observed cyclical recurrent micro-novae on a distant star, and some controversial evidence exists for micro-novae of our own Sol.
 
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It's the big week. Starship SN8 is scheduled to take it's first 15km flight on Monday, although the weather doesn't look great with high winds forecast. Tuesday looks better, but I think we may see a few delays before it flies. They may be looking at later in the week. Either way, SpaceX will have live coverage and I will post the stream link when they do.

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Meanwhile, at NASA:





The SLS is a vital component of the Artemis missions, which launch from next year with the uncrewed Artemis-1, crewed lunar orbit Artemis-2, and then the crewed lunar landing Artemis-3 in 2024 - the first crewed lunar landing since 1972.
 

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