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Tag: spacecraft

  • The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer

    The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer

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    But what, then, were those programs? Herein lies the most intriguing—and potentially ground-breaking—question that the Pentagon study leaves us wondering: What exactly are the secret compartmentalized programs that the whistleblowers and government witnesses misidentified as being related to UAP technology? What, exactly, are the Pentagon, intelligence community, or defense contractors working on that, from a concentric circle or two away inside the shadowy world of SAPs, looks and sounds like reverse-engineering out-of-this-world technology or even studying so-called “non-human biologics”?

    There are at least four clear possibilities.

    Secret Tech From Foreign Nations

    First, what exotic technological possibilities have been recovered from unknown terrestrial sources? For example, if the government is working on reverse-engineering technologies, those technologies are likely from advanced adversary nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran, and perhaps even quasi-allies like Israel that may be more limited in their technology-sharing with the US. What have other countries mastered that we haven’t?

    A Question of ‘Peculiar Characteristics’

    Second, what technologies has the US mastered that the public doesn’t know about? One of the common threads of UFO sightings across decades have been secret military aircraft and spacecraft in development or not yet publicly acknowledged. For example, the CIA estimated that the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s accounted for as much as half of reported UFO sightings. And the AARO report spends a half-dozen pages documenting how confusion over subsequent generations of secret US government aircraft appear to have also contributed to the great intergalactic game of telephone of UFO programs inside the government, including modern Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones. AARO investigated one claim where a witness reported hearing a former US military service member had touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but when they tracked down the service member, he said that the conversation was likely a garbled version of the time he touched an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter at a secret facility.

    There are surely other secret craft still in testing and development now, including the B-21 stealth bomber, which had its first test flight in November and is now in testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, as well as others we don’t know about. The government can still surprise us with unknown craft—like the until-then-unknown modified stealthy helicopter left behind on the Pakistan raid to kill Osama bin Laden. And some of these still-classified efforts are likely causing UFO confusion too: AARO untangled one witness’s claim of spotting a UAP with “peculiar characteristics” at a specific time and place and were able to determine, “at the time the interviewee said he observed the event, the DOD was conducting tests of a platform protected by a SAP. The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics, which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.” So what was that craft—and what were its “peculiar characteristics?”

    Relatedly, the US military has a classified spaceship, the X-37B, that has regularly orbited around the Earth since its first mission in 2010—it just blasted off on its seventh and most recent mission in December—and its previous, sixth, mission lasted a record-breaking 908 days in orbit. The Pentagon has said remarkably little about what it does up there for years at a time. What secret space-related or aviation-related programs is the government running that outsiders confuse as alien spacecraft?

    A Material Matter

    The third likely area of tech development that might appear to outsiders to be UFO-related is more speculative basic research and development: What propulsion systems or material-science breakthroughs are defense contractors at work on right now that could transform our collective future? Again, AARO found such confusion taking place: After one witness reported hearing that “aliens” had observed one secret government test, AARO traced the allegation back to find “the conversation likely referenced a test and evaluation unit that had a nickname with ‘alien’ connotations at the specific installation mentioned. The nature of the test described by the interviewee closely matched the description of a specific materials test conveyed to AARO investigators.” So what materials were being tested there?

    There are some puzzling materials-science breadcrumbs wrapped throughout the AARO report. It found one instance where “a private sector organization claimed to have in its possession material from an extraterrestrial craft recovered from a crash at an unknown location from the 1940s or 1950s. The organization claimed that the material had the potential to act as a THz frequency waveguide, and therefore, could exhibit ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘mass reduction’ properties under the appropriate conditions.” Ultimately, though, the new report concluded, “AARO and a leading science laboratory concluded that the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF [US Air Force] origin, based on its materials characterization.”

    A Knowledge Limit

    Fourth and lastly is the category of the truly weird: Scientists at the forefront of physics point out that we should be humble about how little of the universe we truly understand; as Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb explains, effectively all that we’ve learned about relativity and quantum physics has unfolded in the span of a single human lifespan, and astounding new discoveries continue to amaze scientists. Just last summer, scientists announced they’d detected for the first time gravitational waves criss-crossing the universe that rippled through space-time, and astrophysicists continue to suspect that the universe is far weirder than we think. (Italian astrophysicist Carlo Rovelli last year posited the existence of “white holes” that would be related to black holes, which, he pointed out, were still a mystery just 25 years ago when he was starting his career.)

    Answers here could be almost unfathomably weird—think parallel dimensions or the ability to travel at a fraction of the speed of light. And one of the most intriguing questions left by the UAP “game of telephone” is whether there are truly astounding advances in physics that government scientists, defense contractors, or research laboratories or centers could be feeling around that could also appear from the outside to be UFO-related.

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    Garrett M. Graff

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  • Japan’s moon lander survives a second weekslong lunar night, beating predictions

    Japan’s moon lander survives a second weekslong lunar night, beating predictions

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    FILE – This image provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/Takara Tomy/Sony Group Corporation/Doshisha University shows an image taken by a Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) of a robotic moon rover called Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, on the moon. A Japanese moon explorer, after making a historic “pinpoint” lunar landing last month, has also captured data from 10 lunar rocks, a far greater than expected work that could help find the clue to the origin of the moon, its project manager said Wednesday, Feb. 14 , 2024. (JAXA/Takara Tomy/Sony Group Corporation/Doshisha University via AP, File)

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  • Lander ‘alive and well’ after company scores first US moon landing since Apollo era

    Lander ‘alive and well’ after company scores first US moon landing since Apollo era

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The moon’s newest arrival was said to be “alive and well” a day after making the first U.S. landing in half a century, but flight controllers were still trying to get a better handle on its bearings.

    Intuitive Machines reported Friday that it’s communicating with its lander, Odysseus, and sending commands to acquire science data. But it noted: “We continue to learn more about the vehicle’s specific information” regarding location, overall health and positioning.

    The Houston company was shooting for the south polar region, near the Malapert A crater, closer to the pole than anyone else so NASA could scout out the area before astronauts show up later this decade.

    With Thursday’s touchdown, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to pull off a moon landing, a feat previously achieved by only five countries. The mission was sponsored in large part by NASA, whose experiments were on board. NASA paid $118 million for the delivery under a program meant to jump-start the lunar economy.

    One of the NASA experiments was pressed into service when the lander’s navigation system failed in the final few hours before touchdown. The lander took an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch to NASA’s laser system.

    “Odie is a scrapper,” mission director Tim Crain said late Thursday via X, formerly Twitter.

    Another experiment didn’t go so well. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam — a set of six cameras — was supposed to eject 30 seconds before touchdown so it could capture pictures from afar of Odysseus’ touchdown. EagleCam landed, instead, still attached to the lander.

    The original plan had to be modified during the last orbit due to “unexpected events,” a university spokeswoman explained.

    Intuitive Machines was the second company to aim for the moon under NASA’s commercial lunar services program. Last month, Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology gave it a shot, but a fuel leak on the lander cut the mission short and the craft ended up crashing back to Earth.

    Until Thursday, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out NASA’s famed moon-landing program in December 1972. NASA’s new effort to return astronauts to the moon is named Artemis after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The first Artemis crew landing is planned for 2026 at the earliest.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Private lunar lander is closing in on the first US touchdown on the moon in a half-century

    Private lunar lander is closing in on the first US touchdown on the moon in a half-century

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lunar lander circled the moon while aiming for a touchdown Thursday that would put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.

    Intuitive Machines was striving to become the first private business to successfully pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. A rival company’s lander missed the moon last month.

    The newest lander, named Odysseus, reached the moon Wednesday, six days after rocketing from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander maneuvered into a low lunar orbit in preparation for a late afternoon touchdown.

    Flight controllers monitored the action unfolding some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away from a command center at company headquarters in Houston.

    The six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet (4.3 meters) — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.

    Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.

    The U.S. bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after NASA’s Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the surface . A Pittsburgh company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a shot last month, but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.

    Intuitive Machines’ target was 186 miles (300 kilometers) shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.

    The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.

    Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Japan’s new flagship H3 rocket reaches orbit in a key test after failed debut last year

    Japan’s new flagship H3 rocket reaches orbit in a key test after failed debut last year

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    TOKYO — Japan’s flagship H3 rocket reached orbit and released two small observation satellites in a key second test following a failed debut launch last year, buoying hope for the country in the global space race.

    The H3 rocket blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on time Saturday morning, two days after its originally scheduled liftoff was delayed by bad weather.

    The rocket successfully reached orbit at an altitude of about 670 kilometers (about 420 miles) and released two satellites, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said.

    “We feel so relieved to be able to announce the good results,” JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa told a news conference.

    The H3’s main missions are to secure independent access to space and be competitive as international demand for satellite launches grows. “We made a big first step today toward achieving that goal,” Yamakawa said.

    The launch is a boost for Japan’s space program following a recent streak of successes, including a historic precision touchdown on the moon of an unmanned spacecraft last month.

    The liftoff was closely watched as a test for Japan’s space development after H3, in its debut flight last March, failed to ignite the second-stage engine. JAXA and its main contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have been developing H3 as a successor to its current mainstay, H-2A, which is set to retire after two more flights.

    As the rocket soared and released its first payload successfully, project members at the JAXA command center cheered and hugged each other in livestreaming footage. NHK television showed some staff at a press center crying with relief and joy.

    JAXA H3 project manager Masashi Okada called the result “perfect,” saying H3 cleared all missions set for Saturday’s flight. “After a long wait, the newborn H3 finally had its first cry.”

    “I now feel a heavy load taken off my shoulders. But now is the real start for H3, and we will work to steadily improve it,” Okada said.

    The H3 No. 2 rocket was decorated with thousands of stickers carrying messages sent from well-wishers around the country.

    Two microsatellites — observation satellite CE-SAT-IE, developed by Canon Electronics, and TIRSAT, which was co-developed by a number of companies and universities — were piggybacked on the H3 Saturday. Their makers said they were willing to take the chance as they see a growing market in the satellite business.

    The 57-meter (187-feet) -long H3 is designed to carry larger payloads than H-2A at much lower costs of about 50 billion yen ($330 million), to be globally competitive.

    Masayuki Eguchi, head of defense and space segment at Mitsubishi Heavy, said his company hopes to achieve better price competitiveness after about a dozen more launches.

    “I’m delighted to see this incredible accomplishment in the space sector right after the success of the SLIM moon landing,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on X, formerly Twitter. “I expect the Japanese mainstay rocket will steadily make achievement.”

    Last month, a H-2A rocket successfully placed a spy satellite into its planned orbit, and days later JAXA’s unmanned spacecraft SLIM made the world’s first “pinpoint” moon landing then captured lunar data.

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  • NASA finally figures out how to open a $1-billion canister

    NASA finally figures out how to open a $1-billion canister

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    Late last year, a spacecraft containing samples of a 4.6-billion-year-old asteroid landed safely in the desert after a 1.2-billion mile journey. There was only one little problem: NASA couldn’t get the canister containing its prized rocks open.

    After months of tinkering, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston finally dislodged two stuck fasteners that had kept the pieces of the asteroid Bennu out of researchers’ hands.

    “It’s open! It’s open!” NASA’s Planetary Science Division posted Friday on X, along with a photograph of the slate-colored bounty of dust and small rocks inside the canister.

    Scientists had to switch course on the canister opening effort in mid-October after it became clear that none of the items in NASA’s box of approved tools could force open the last two of 35 fasteners sealing the canister.

    To prevent the sample from being contaminated by Earthly air, it has been stored in a clean room in the Houston facility where hazmat-suited curators delicately dismantled the canister. The team custom-designed new tools to pry open the final latches.

    The agency will now finish extracting the approximately 9-ounce sample, which will be weighed and chemically analyzed. Much of the payload from OSIRIS-REx (an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) will then be frozen and carefully preserved so that future generations of scientists will be able to study it with advanced technologies.

    “We are overjoyed with the success,” NASA’s chief OSIRIS-REx sample curator, Nicole Lunning, said in a statement.

    It took more than seven years and roughly $1 billion to bring back a sample from Bennu, a space rock formed during the earliest days of the solar system. The asteroid samples found on Earth have essentially been cooked by their searing journey through the atmosphere, which limits what scientists can learn from them.

    With OSIRIS-REx, “the objective is to bring back an ancient piece of the early solar system that is pristine,” NASA astrobiologist Jason Dworkin told The Times in September. “You can use these leftovers of the formation of the solar system to construct what happened in that formation.”

    The spacecraft that collected the sample in 2020 and released it toward Earth in September is now heading on to its next mission. The craft, now named OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer, or OSIRIS-APEX, is on its way to a peanut-shaped asteroid named Apophis.

    For a short (but alarming) time, astronomers thought Apophis might be on track to smash disastrously into Earth. Now that that worrying possibility has been ruled out, scientists are eagerly looking ahead to 2029, when the asteroid will pass closer to Earth than any object of its size ever has.

    “It’s something that almost never happens, and yet we get to witness it in our lifetime,” JPL navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia said last year. “We usually send spacecraft out there to visit asteroids and find out about them. In this case, it’s nature doing the flyby for us.”

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    Corinne Purtill

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  • Private US lander destroyed during reentry after failed mission to moon, company says

    Private US lander destroyed during reentry after failed mission to moon, company says

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A U.S. company’s failed moonshot ended with a fiery plunge over the South Pacific, officials confirmed Friday.

    Astrobotic Technology said contact and then tracking was lost as its lunar lander reentered Earth’s atmosphere Thursday, 10 days after launching from Florida. It received confirmation Friday from U.S. Space Command that the spacecraft broke apart during its final moments, CEO John Thornton said.

    A fuel leak shortly after liftoff had nixed any chance of a moon touchdown.

    “What a wild adventure we were just on,” Thornton said. “Certainly not the outcome we were hoping for and certainly challenging right up front.”

    After consulting with NASA and other government experts, Astrobotic took steps to destroy its crippled lander in order to protect other spacecraft. Flight controllers at the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters briefly fired the engines, getting the lander in the right location for reentry despite little fuel.

    Thornton said an investigation board will be convened to determine what went wrong. Engineers suspect a stuck valve in the propellant system caused a tank to rupture.

    “We were coming from the highest high of the perfect launch and came down to a lowest low” when the tank burst a few hours after liftoff, he told reporters.

    The 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) lander, named after the Peregrine falcon, made it all the way out to the moon’s orbit, more than 240,000 miles (390,000 kilometers) away, before doing a U-turn and hurtling back toward Earth.

    It was the first U.S. lunar lander in more than a half-century. The next one is set to blast off next month, built and operated by Houston’s Intuitive Machines. NASA paid millions of dollars to the two companies to fly its experiments to the moon, part of an effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of astronauts’ arrival.

    Right before Friday’s U.S. news conference, a lunar lander from Japan touched down on the moon, but it was unable to generate crucial solar power. The U.S., Russia, China and India have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon and only the U.S. has landed astronauts.

    Astrobotic’s lander carried a variety of experiments — including five from NASA — as well as ashes and DNA from 70 space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry. Flight controllers were able to turn on some experiments and collect data,

    The company is already is working on an even bigger lunar lander that will carry NASA’s Viper rover to the moon in a year.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Private US lander destroyed during reentry after failed mission to moon, company says

    Private US lander destroyed during reentry after failed mission to moon, company says

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A U.S. company’s failed moonshot ended with a fiery plunge over the South Pacific, officials confirmed Friday.

    Astrobotic Technology said contact and then tracking was lost as its lunar lander reentered Earth’s atmosphere Thursday, 10 days after launching from Florida. It received confirmation Friday from U.S. Space Command that the spacecraft broke apart during its final moments, CEO John Thornton said.

    A fuel leak shortly after liftoff had nixed any chance of a moon touchdown.

    “What a wild adventure we were just on,” Thornton said. “Certainly not the outcome we were hoping for and certainly challenging right up front.”

    After consulting with NASA and other government experts, Astrobotic took steps to destroy its crippled lander in order to protect other spacecraft. Flight controllers at the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters briefly fired the engines, getting the lander in the right location for reentry despite little fuel.

    Thornton said an investigation board will be convened to determine what went wrong. Engineers suspect a stuck valve in the propellant system caused a tank to rupture.

    “We were coming from the highest high of the perfect launch and came down to a lowest low” when the tank burst a few hours after liftoff, he told reporters.

    The 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) lander, named after the Peregrine falcon, made it all the way out to the moon’s orbit, more than 240,000 miles (390,000 kilometers) away, before doing a U-turn and hurtling back toward Earth.

    It was the first U.S. lunar lander in more than a half-century. The next one is set to blast off next month, built and operated by Houston’s Intuitive Machines. NASA paid millions of dollars to the two companies to fly its experiments to the moon, part of an effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of astronauts’ arrival.

    Right before Friday’s U.S. news conference, a lunar lander from Japan touched down on the moon, but it was unable to generate crucial solar power. The U.S., Russia, China and India have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon and only the U.S. has landed astronauts.

    Astrobotic’s lander carried a variety of experiments — including five from NASA — as well as ashes and DNA from 70 space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry. Flight controllers were able to turn on some experiments and collect data,

    The company is already is working on an even bigger lunar lander that will carry NASA’s Viper rover to the moon in a year.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Japan hopes to join an elite club by landing on the moon: A closer look

    Japan hopes to join an elite club by landing on the moon: A closer look

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    TOKYO — Japan landed a spacecraft on the moon Saturday, an attempt at the world’s first “pinpoint lunar landing.” The milestone puts Japan in a club previously occupied by only the United States, the Soviet Union, India and China.

    A raft of countries and companies are also plotting moon missions. Success means international scientific and diplomatic accolades and potential domestic political gains. Failure means a very expensive, and public, embarrassment.

    Here’s a look at high-profile recent and upcoming attempts, and what they might mean.

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    NASA plans to send astronauts to fly around the moon next year, and to land there in 2026.

    Just this week, however, a U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, said its lunar lander will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere after a failed moonshot.

    The lander, named Peregrine, developed a fuel leak that forced Astrobotic to abandon its attempt to make the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years. The company suspects a stuck valve caused a tank to rupture.

    NASA is working to commercialize lunar deliveries by private businesses while the U.S. government tries to get astronauts back to the moon.

    For now, the United States’ ability to spend large sums and marshal supply chains give it an advantage over China and other moon rivals. Private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made crewed space missions a priority.

    Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, plans to launch its own lunar lander next month.

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    Last year, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, where scientists believe that perpetually darkened craters may hold frozen water that could aid future missions.

    In 2019, a software glitch caused an Indian lander to crash on its lunar descent. So the $75 million success in August brought widespread jubilation, with people cheering in the streets and declaring India’s rise as a scientific superpower.

    Indian scientists said that the next step is a manned lunar mission.

    The success is seen as key to boosting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity before a crucial general election this year.

    India has been pushing for a space program since the 1960s and aims to visit the International Space Station next year in collaboration with the United States.

    New Delhi also sees victory in space as important in its rivalry with nuclear-armed neighbor China. Relations between India and China have plunged since deadly border clashes in 2020.

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    China landed on the moon in 2013, and last year launched a three-person crew for its orbiting space station. It hopes to put astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.

    In 2020, a Chinese capsule returned to Earth from the moon with the first fresh lunar rock samples in more than 40 years. China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the USSR and the United States to put a person into space.

    China’s space ambitions are linked to its rivalry with the United States as the world’s two largest economies compete for diplomatic, political and military influence in Asia and beyond.

    China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, in part because of U.S. objections over the Chinese space program’s intimate ties to the military.

    China and the United States are also considering plans for permanent crewed bases on the moon. That has raised questions about competition and cooperation on the lunar surface.

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    Also last year, Russia’s Luna-25 failed in its attempt to land in the same area of the moon that India reached.

    It came 47 years after the Soviets landed on the moon, and Russian scientists blamed that long break, and the accompanying loss of space expertise, for the recent failure.

    The Soviets launched the first satellite in space in 1957 and put the first human in space in 1961, but Russia’s program has struggled since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union amid widespread corruption and Western sanctions that have hurt scientific development.

    Russia is planning for another moon mission in 2027.

    Russia’s failures and the growing role of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX have cost Russia its once-sizable niche in the lucrative global space launch market.

    Just as India’s success was seen as evidence of its rise to great power status, Russia’s failure has been portrayed by some as casting doubt on its global influence and strength.

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    Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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  • Japan became the fifth country to reach the moon after its spacecraft landed on the lunar surface

    Japan became the fifth country to reach the moon after its spacecraft landed on the lunar surface

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    TOKYO — Japan became the fifth country in history to reach the moon when its spacecraft landed on the lunar surface early Saturday, officials said. But an issue with the power supply means that the mission could be in jeopardy.

    Officials also said they needed more time to analyze whether the spacecraft, which wasn’t carrying astronauts, made a pinpoint landing — one of the priorities of the mission.

    Hitoshi Kuninaka, head of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said they believe that rovers were launched and data were being transmitted back to Earth from the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM.

    But he said that SLIM’s solar battery wasn’t generating power and the battery life of the spacecraft would only last a few more hours. He said that the priority now was for the craft to gather as much moon data as possible on the remaining battery.

    Japan follows the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India in reaching the moon.

    Kuninaka said he believes that Japan‘s space program at least achieved “minimum” success.

    SLIM landed on the moon at about 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time on Saturday (1520 GMT Friday).

    There was a tense wait for news after the Japan space agency’s mission control initially said that SLIM was on the lunar surface, but that it was still “checking its status.” No further details were given until a news conference nearly two hours later.

    For the mission to be considered fully successful, space officials need to confirm whether SLIM made a pinpoint landing. Kuninaka said while more time is needed, he personally thinks it was most likely achieved, based on his observation of data showing the spacecraft’s movement until the landing.

    SLIM, which was aiming to hit a very small target, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle. It was using “pinpoint landing” technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing.

    While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet).

    The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.

    As the spacecraft descended, JAXA’s mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface. But there was no mention of whether the landing was successful. Mission control kept repeating that it was “checking its status” and that more information would be given at the news conference.

    SLIM, nicknamed “the Moon Sniper,” started its descent at midnight Saturday, and within 15 minutes it was down to about 10 kilometers (six miles) above the lunar surface, according to the space agency, which is known as JAXA.

    At an altitude of five kilometers (three miles), the lander was in a vertical descent mode, then at 50 meters (165 feet) above the surface, SLIM was supposed to make a parallel movement to find a safe landing spot, JAXA said.

    The mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land,” JAXA has said. The spacecraft is supposed to seek clues about the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera.

    The SLIM, equipped with a pad to cushion impact, was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.

    The closely watched mission came only 10 days after a moon mission by a U.S. private company failed when the spacecraft developed a fuel leak hours after the launch.

    SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on Dec. 25.

    Japan hopes to regain confidence for its space technology after a number of failures. A spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during a lunar landing attempt in April, and a new flagship rocket failed its debut launch in March.

    JAXA has a track record with difficult landings. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft, launched in 2014, touched down twice on the 900-meter-long (3,000-foot-long) asteroid Ryugu, collecting samples that were returned to Earth.

    Experts say a success of SLIM’s pinpoint landing, especially on the moon, would raise Japan’s profile in the global space technology race.

    Takeshi Tsuchiya, aeronautics professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said it was important to confirm the accuracy of landing on a targeted area for the future of moon explorations.

    “It is necessary to show the world that Japan has the appropriate technology in order to be able to properly assert Japan’s position in lunar development,” he said. The moon is important from the perspective of explorations of resources, and it can also be used as a base to go to other planets, like Mars, he said.

    SLIM is carrying two small autonomous probes — lunar excursion vehicles LEV-1 and LEV-2, which will be released just before landing.

    LEV-1, equipped with an antenna and a camera, is tasked with recording SLIM’s landing. LEV-2, is a ball-shaped rover equipped with two cameras, developed by JAXA together with Sony, toymaker Tomy and Doshisha University.

    JAXA will broadcast a livestream of the landing, while space fans will gather to watch the historic moment on a big screen at the agency’s Sagamihara campus southwest of Tokyo.

    ___

    Ayaka McGill contributed to this report.

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  • First US lunar lander in more than 50 years rockets toward moon with commercial deliveries

    First US lunar lander in more than 50 years rockets toward moon with commercial deliveries

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed toward the moon Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.

    Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.

    “So, so, so excited. We are on our way to the moon!” Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton said.

    The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.

    “First to launch. First to land is TBD,” to be determined, Thornton noted.

    NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers. Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

    The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972. Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA’s pinnacle.

    The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years. First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of the year.

    Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The 202-foot (61-meter) rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, provided the Vulcan’s two main engines.

    ULA declared success once the lander was free of the rocket’s upper stage, nearly an hour into the flight. “Yee-haw!” shouted chief executive Tory Bruno. “I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much.”

    The Soviet Union and the U.S. racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. But last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the moon. An Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.

    Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. The Nova-C lander’s more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.

    The hourlong descent to the lunar surface — by far the biggest challenge — will be “exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once,” Thornton said.

    Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-size cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

    The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains. saying it would be a “profound desecration” of a celestial body revered by Native Americans. Thornton said the December objections came too late but promised to try to find “a good path forward” with the Navajo for future missions.

    One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the moon and should not be able to veto a mission. More remains are on the rocket’s upper stage, which was boosted into a perpetual orbit around the sun reaching as far out as Mars.

    Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram (2.2 pounds), not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. But for this first flight, that’s not the point, according to Thornton.

    “A lot of people’s dreams and hopes are riding on this,” he said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • First US lunar lander in over 50 years rockets toward moon with commercial deliveries

    First US lunar lander in over 50 years rockets toward moon with commercial deliveries

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed toward the moon Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.

    Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.

    “So, so, so excited. We are on our way to the moon!” Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton said.

    The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.

    “First to launch. First to land is TBD,” to be determined, Thornton noted.

    NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers. Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.

    The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972. Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, closing out an era that has remained NASA’s pinnacle.

    The space agency’s new Artemis program — named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — looks to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years. First will be a lunar fly-around with four astronauts, possibly before the end of the year.

    Highlighting Monday’s moonshot was the long-delayed initial test flight of the Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The 202-foot (61-meter) rocket is essentially an upgraded version of ULA’s hugely successful workhorse Atlas V, which is being phased out along with the company’s Delta IV. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, provided the Vulcan’s two main engines.

    ULA declared success once the lander was free of the rocket’s upper stage, nearly an hour into the flight. “Yee-haw!” shouted chief executive Tory Bruno. “I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much.”

    The Soviet Union and the U.S. racked up a string of successful moon landings in the 1960s and 70s, before putting touchdowns on pause. China joined the elite club in 2013 and India in 2023. But last year also saw landers from Russia and a private Japanese company slam into the moon. An Israeli nonprofit crashed in 2019.

    Next month, SpaceX will provide the lift for a lander from Intuitive Machines. The Nova-C lander’s more direct one-week route could see both spacecraft attempting to land within days or even hours of one another.

    The hourlong descent to the lunar surface — by far the biggest challenge — will be “exciting, nail-biting, terrifying all at once,” Thornton said.

    Besides flying experiments for NASA, Astrobotic drummed up its own freight business, packing the 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) Peregrine lander with everything from a chip of rock from Mount Everest and toy-size cars from Mexico that will catapult to the lunar surface and cruise around, to the ashes and DNA of deceased space enthusiasts, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

    The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the human remains. saying it would be a “profound desecration” of a celestial body revered by Native Americans. Thornton said the December objections came too late but promised to try to find “a good path forward” with the Navajo for future missions.

    One of the spaceflight memorial companies that bought room on the lander, Celestis, said in a statement that no single culture or religion owns the moon and should not be able to veto a mission. More remains are on the rocket’s upper stage, which was boosted into a perpetual orbit around the sun reaching as far out as Mars.

    Cargo fares for Peregrine ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1.2 million per kilogram (2.2 pounds), not nearly enough for Astrobotic to break even. But for this first flight, that’s not the point, according to Thornton.

    “A lot of people’s dreams and hopes are riding on this,” he said.

    ___

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  • US military space plane blasts off on another secretive mission expected to last years

    US military space plane blasts off on another secretive mission expected to last years

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    The U.S. military’s X-37B space plane blasted off Thursday on another secretive mission that’s expected to last at least a couple of years.

    Like previous missions, the reusable plane resembling a mini space shuttle carried classified experiments. There’s no one on board.

    The space plane took off aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at night, more than two weeks late because of technical issues.

    It marked the seventh flight of an X-37B, which has logged more than 10 years in orbit since its debut in 2010.

    The last flight, the longest one yet, lasted 2 1/2 years before ending on a runway at Kennedy a year ago.

    Space Force officials would not say how long this orbital test vehicle would remain aloft or what’s on board other than a NASA experiment to gauge the effects of radiation on materials.

    Built by Boeing, the X-37B resembles NASA’s retired space shuttles. But they’re just one-fourth the size at 29 feet (9 meters) long. No astronauts are needed; the X-37B has an autonomous landing system.

    They take off vertically like rockets but land horizontally like planes, and are designed to orbit between 150 miles and 500 miles (240 kilometers and 800 kilometers) high. There are two X-37Bs based in a former shuttle hangar at Kennedy.

    ___

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  • SpaceX launched its giant new rocket but explosions end the second test flight

    SpaceX launched its giant new rocket but explosions end the second test flight

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    SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship but lost both the booster and the spacecraft in a pair of explosions minutes into Saturday’s test flight.

    The rocketship reached space following liftoff from South Texas before communication suddenly was lost. SpaceX officials said it appears the ship’s self-destruct system blew it up over the Gulf of Mexico.

    Minutes earlier, the separated booster had exploded over the gulf. By then, though, its job was done.

    Saturday’s demo lasted eight or so minutes, about twice as long as the first test in April, which also ended in an explosion. The latest flight came to an end as the ship’s six engines were almost done firing to put it on an around-the-world path.

    At nearly 400 feet (121 meters), Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, with the goal of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.

    “The real topping on the cake today, that successful liftoff,” said SpaceX commentator John Insprucker, noting that all 33 booster engines fired as designed, unlike last time. The booster also separated seamlessly from the spaceship, which reached an altitude of 92 miles (148 kilometers).

    Added commentator Kate Tice: “We got so much data, and that will all help us to improve for our next flight.”

    SpaceX founder Elon Musk watched from behind launch controllers at the southern tip of Texas near the Mexico border, near Boca Chica Beach. At company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, employees cheered as Starship soared at daybreak. The room grew quiet once it was clear that the spaceship had been destroyed.

    SpaceX had been aiming for an altitude of 150 miles (240 kilometers), just high enough to send the bullet-shaped spacecraft around the globe before ditching into the Pacific near Hawaii about 1 1/2 hours after liftoff, short of a full orbit.

    Following April’s flight demo, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the rocket as well as the launch pad. The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the rocket for flight on Wednesday, after confirming that all safety and environmental concerns had been met.

    After Saturday’s launch, the FAA said no injuries or public damage had been reported and that an investigation was underway to determine what went wrong. SpaceX cannot launch another Starship until the review is complete and corrections made, the FAA added.

    NASA is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2025 or shortly thereafter. The space agency awarded SpaceX a $3 billion contract to make it happen, by transferring astronauts from its Orion capsule to Starship in lunar orbit before heading down to the surface.

    “Today’s test is an opportunity to learn — then fly again,” noted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson via X, formerly known as Twitter.

    Starship is 34 feet (10 meters) taller than NASA’s Saturn V rocket which carried men to the moon more than a half-century ago, and 75 feet (23 meters) taller than NASA’s Space Launch System rocket that flew around the moon and back, without a crew, last year. And it’s got approximately double the liftoff thrust.

    Like before, nothing of value was aboard Starship for the trial run.

    Once Starship is proven, Musk plans to use the fully reusable mega rockets to launch satellites into orbit around Earth and equipment and people to the moon, and eventually, to Mars.

    ___

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  • SpaceX launches giant new rocket but loses spacecraft eight minutes into flight

    SpaceX launches giant new rocket but loses spacecraft eight minutes into flight

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    SpaceX launches giant new rocket but loses spacecraft eight minutes into flight

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  • SpaceX’s giant new rocket launches on second test flight from Texas

    SpaceX’s giant new rocket launches on second test flight from Texas

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    SpaceX’s giant new rocket has blasted off on a second test flight from South Texas

    ByMARCIA DUNN AP aerospace writer

    November 18, 2023, 6:45 AM

    This image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a closeup view of SpaceX Starship stacked atop of the Super Heavy booster at the launch site, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Boca Chica, Texas. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP)

    The Associated Press

    SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off from South Texas on a test flight Saturday, seven months after the first try ended in an explosion.

    The 397-foot (121-meter) Starship rocket thundered into the sky and arced out over the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was to separate the spaceship from its booster and send it into space.

    SpaceX aimed for an altitude of 150 miles (240 kilometers), just high enough to send the bullet-shaped spacecraft around the globe before ditching into the Pacific near Hawaii about 1 1/2 hours after liftoff, short of a full orbit.

    Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Its first flight in April lasted four minutes, with the wreckage crashing into the gulf. Since then, Elon Musk’s company has made dozens of improvements to the booster and its 33 engines as well as the launch pad.

    ___

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  • SpaceX will try again to launch its mega rocket into orbit

    SpaceX will try again to launch its mega rocket into orbit

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    The first launch ended in an explosion minutes after lifting off in April.

    ByMARCIA DUNN AP aerospace writer

    November 15, 2023, 5:28 PM

    In this image from video provided by SpaceX, the company’s Starship launches from Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20, 2023. SpaceX is aiming for another test flight of its mega rocket on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, now that’s it’s gotten the final OK from the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA issued its license Wednesday, Nov. 15, noting that SpaceX has met all safety, environmental and other requirements. (SpaceX via AP)

    The Associated Press

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX is aiming for another test flight of its mega rocket on Friday after getting final approval from federal regulators.

    The first launch of Starship ended in an explosion minutes after lifting off from South Texas in April.

    The Federal Aviation Administration issued its license Wednesday, noting that SpaceX has met safety, environmental and other requirements to launch again. Elon Musk’s rocket company said it was targeting Friday morning.

    After the self-destruct system blew up the rocket over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the nearly 400-foot (121-meter) rocket and to the launch pad, which ended up with a large crater beneath it.

    SpaceX has a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the spacecraft.

    A month ago, the FAA completed its safety review of the upcoming Starship launch. It needed more time to wrap up its environmental review. No one was injured in the first attempt, but the pad was heavily damaged as the rocket’s 33 main engines ignited at liftoff.

    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later reported that concrete chunks, steel sheets and other objects were hurled thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) from the pad. It also said a plume of pulverized concrete sent material several miles (up to 10 kilometers) away.

    Wildlife and environmental groups sued the FAA over what they considered to be the FAA’s failure to fully consider the environmental impacts of the Starship program near Boca Chica Beach.

    Plans call for the test flight to last 1 /1/2 hours and fall short of a full orbit of Earth. The spacecraft would go eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before ditching near Hawaii. Nothing of value will be on board.

    ___

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  • NASA spacecraft discovers tiny moon around asteroid during close flyby

    NASA spacecraft discovers tiny moon around asteroid during close flyby

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    The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists _ a mini moon

    ByMARCIA DUNN AP aerospace writer

    November 3, 2023, 11:09 AM

    This photo provided by NASA shows a photo taken by the Lucy spacecraft during Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, 300 million miles from Earth. It turns out Dinkinesh, which is only a half-mile across, has a dinky sidekick … just one-tenth of a mile across. This little companion was a surprise to everyone. (NASA via AP)

    The Associated Press

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists.

    It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon.

    The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 270 miles out (435 kilometers).

    In data and images beamed back to Earth, the spacecraft confirmed that Dinkinesh is barely a half-mile (790 meters) across. Its closely circling moon is a mere one-tenth-of-a-mile (220 meters) in size.

    NASA sent Lucy past Dinkinesh as a rehearsal for the bigger, more mysterious asteroids out near Jupiter. Launched in 2021, the spacecraft will reach the first of these so-called Trojan asteroids in 2027 and explore them for at least six years. The original target list of seven asteroids now stands at 11.

    Dinkinesh means “you are marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia. It’s also the Amharic name for Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, for which the spacecraft is named.

    “Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison, the lead scientist, said in a statement.

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  • NASA sends spacecraft on a six-year journey to explore a rare asteroid made of metal

    NASA sends spacecraft on a six-year journey to explore a rare asteroid made of metal

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  • NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

    NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

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    NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

    In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

    “We have touchdown!” Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — around 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) — correctly basing it on the deceleration rate.

    Forty minutes later, the recovery team confirmed the capsule was intact and had not been breached.

    “It’s like ‘Wow!’” said NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who was in Utah training for her own space capsule mission. “This is just amazing. It can go from the movies, but this is reality.”

    Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but won’t know for sure until the container is opened. Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much and rocks jammed the container’s lid during collection three years ago.

    Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples, gathered about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions.

    The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon. Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed.

    Osiris-Rex, the mothership, rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed rubble from the small roundish space rock in 2020. By the time it returned, the spacecraft had logged 4 billion miles (6.2 billion kilometers).

    Flight controllers for spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin stood and applauded at touchdown from their base in Colorado, ecstatic to have the precious samples on Earth. NASA camera views showed the charred capsule upside down on the sand with its parachute disconnected and strewn nearby, as the recovery team moved in.

    NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the samples will provide “an extraordinary glimpse into the beginnings of our solar system.”

    With these samples, “we are edging closer to understanding its early chemical composition, the formation of water, and the molecules life is based on,” astronomer Daniel Brown of Nottingham Trent University in England said.

    One Osiris-Rex team member was stuck in England, rehearsing for a concert tour. “My heart’s there with you as this precious sample is recovered,” Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May, who’s also an astrophysicist, said in a prerecorded message. “Happy Sample Return Day.”

    NASA’s recovery effort in Utah included helicopters as well as a temporary clean room set up at the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range. The samples will be flown Monday morning to a new lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The building already houses the hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts more than a half-century ago.

    The mission’s lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, will accompany the samples to Texas. The opening of the container in Houston in the next day or two will be “the real moment of truth,” given the uncertainty over the amount inside, he said ahead of the landing.

    Engineers estimate the canister holds 250 grams (8.82 ounces) of material from Bennu, plus or minus 100 grams (plus or minus 3.53 ounces). Even at the low end, it will easily surpass the minimum requirement of the mission, Lauretta said.

    It will take a few weeks to get a precise measurement, said NASA’s lead curator Nicole Lunning.

    NASA plans a public show-and-tell in October.

    Currently orbiting the sun 50 million miles (81 million kilometers) from Earth, Bennu is about one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across, roughly the size of the Empire State Building but shaped like a spinning top. It’s believed to be the broken fragment of a much larger asteroid.

    During a two-year survey, Osiris-Rex found Bennu to be a chunky rubble pile full of boulders and craters. The surface was so loose that the spacecraft’s vacuum arm sank a foot or two (0.5 meters) into the asteroid, sucking up more material than anticipated and jamming the lid.

    These close-up observations may come in handy late in the next century. Bennu is expected to come dangerously close to Earth in 2182 — possibly close enough to hit. The data gleaned by Osiris-Rex will help with any asteroid-deflection effort, according to Lauretta.

    Osiris-Rex is already chasing after the asteroid Apophis, and will reach it in 2029.

    This was NASA’s third sample return from a deep-space robotic mission. The Genesis spacecraft dropped off bits of solar wind in 2004, but the samples were compromised when the parachute failed and the capsule slammed into the ground. The Stardust spacecraft successfully delivered comet dust in 2006.

    NASA’s plans to return samples from Mars are on hold after an independent review board criticized the cost and complexity. The Martian rover Perseverance has spent the past two years collecting core samples for eventual transport to Earth.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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