Blue Origin's Next Steps, Ispace's Moon Mission, and Asteroids Under the Microscope: S04E39

Hey, space enthusiasts, you're tuned into another exciting episode of Astronomy Daily, where we bring you the most fascinating stories from the frontiers of space exploration. Today's lineup is packed with incredible developments from across the space industry. We'll be diving into Blue Origins latest plans for their massive new Glen rocket, and some significant changes within the company. We'll also check in on Icepace's resilience Lunar Lander as it makes its way toward a historic moon landing attempt. In other news, we'll explore how the James Webb Space Telescope might help us better understand a potentially hazardous asteroid that's caught the attention of astronomers worldwide. Plus, we'll get you up to speed on SpaceX's latest starship preparations. And to wrap things up, I've got some absolutely remarkable stories about spacecraft that have literally come back from the dead. Trust me, These tales of space resurrection will blow your mind. So strap in and get ready for your daily dose of space news and discovery. Let's dive into our first story of the day, some major developments from Blue Origin. The company has announced plans for their second new Glen launch targeting late spring this year. Note that's late spring in the Northern Hemisphere, so for Southern Hemisphere listeners that will be late fall or autumn. This comes after their first launch in January, which, while achieving many mission objectives, encountered some issues during the booster recovery attempt. Dave Limp, Blue Origins CEO, recently shed some light on what went wrong during that first flight. It appears they experienced a propulsion related problem that prevented the massive booster from making its planned landing. According to Limp, while most engine conditions were nominal, they had trouble getting everything properly flowing from the tanks to the engines during the critical re entry burn. The good news is that Blue Origin believes they've identified the root cause and the fixes needed aren't particularly complex. This is crucial because the ability to reuse these massive boosters is central to Blue Origins busysiness model. The company already has a second booster in production, and they're confident this investigation won't significantly impact their launch timeline. While they haven't announced what payload will fly on this second mission, Limp mentioned they're considering several options. They're treating their first three flights as development missions, so while they're open to flying commercial payloads, they're prepared to use mass simulators if necessary. However, this news comes alongside a significant restructuring at Blue Origin. The company announced this week that they're reducing their workforce by about ten percent, affecting more than one thousand employees across various departments, including management, engineering, R and D, and project management. Limp explained that the company had grown and hired very rapidly in recent years, which led to increased bureaucracy and less focus than needed. The restructuring aims to streamline operations and improve manufacturing efficiency as they scale up their launch case cadence. Despite these cuts, Blue Origin isn't hitting the brakes on growth entirely. They're still planning to hire hundreds of new employees this year, but with a more targeted focus on manufacturing and operations. The company is particularly keen on ramping up production of their new Glen rockets and advancing work on their Blue Moon lunar lander, which they hope will reach the lunar surface later this year. Next up, the Japanese space exploration company I Space is making exciting progress with their second lunar mission. Their Resilience Lander, which launched on January fifteenth aboard a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket, is now preparing for a crucial lunar flyby that marks a significant milestone in its journey to the Moon. Unlike the more direct routes taken by some lunar missions, Resilience is taking what we might call the scenic route, an energy efficient, circuitous path that will ultimately save valuable fuel. Last week, the spacecraft successfully completed a critical maneuver that set up this upcoming lunar fly positioning it perfectly for this fuel saving gravity assist What's particularly fascinating about this flyby is that while it will create the mission's largest change in velocity, the spacecraft won't actually feel any acceleration. It's all thanks to the elegant physics of gravitational forces. The close pass by the Moon will naturally alter Resilience's trajectory, setting it up for the second phase of its journey using what's called a low energy transfer. As of this week, Resilience was already positioned beyond the Moon's orbit, about two hundred eighty six thousand miles from Earth. If all goes According to plan, the spacecraft will attempt to land in mare Frigoris, the Sea of Cold in the Moon's northern hemisphere, around late May or early June. The lander isn't traveling alone on this ambitious journey. It's carrying several payloads, including the tenacious microrover, which will conduct mobile exploration of the lunar surface. This mission represent and it's an important step forward for private lunar exploration, especially following I Space's previous landing attempt. Interestingly, Resilience shared its launch with another lunar bound spacecraft, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander, which has already successfully completed its translunar injection burn and is on track for its own lunar encounter Next up, I felt we needed a small update to this next story. As you may have noticed, the popular press seems to be getting themselves into quite a state. What's the popular saying, We're all going to die? Not quite, but this a developing story that's certainly capturing the attention of astronomers worldwide. And now the James Webb Space Telescope is being called upon to help determine the potential impact risk of asteroid twenty twenty four yr four. This space rock currently has a two point one percent chance of colliding with Earth on December twenty second, twenty thirty two, a probability that's actually increased slightly from the initial one point two per estimate in late January. So far, more than fifty observatories have contributed over three hundred and fifty observations of this asteroid, but pinning down its exact trajectory has proved challenging. The object is currently more than sixty five million kilometers away and rapidly fading from view, making it increasingly difficult to track with ground based telescopes. The full Moon is currently interfering with observations, and as the asteroid continues to dim to magnitude twenty four, only the largest telescopes on Earth can still detect it. This is where WEB comes in. The space telescope is scheduled to make crucial observations in March and May, long after the asteroid becomes too faint for other instruments to track. A team led by Andy Rivkin at Johns Hopkins University has secured four hours of web's observing time. Their observations will serve two crucial purposes, first to better estimate the asteroid's size and then to help refine its orbital parameters. This data could prove decide in determining whether Earth is actually in danger. Efforts to find previous observations of the asteroid from twenty sixteen, when it last passed close to Earth have so far come up empty. Despite thorough searches through archival data from various observatories, no confirmatory images have been found. While these negative observations can sometimes be useful, they must be treated with extreme caution when calculating orbital predictions. This situation has led to twenty twenty four YR four receiving a ter Reino Scale rating of three, the second highest ranking ever assigned to a potential impact threat. Only asteroid Opophos previously reached a higher rating of four back in two thousand and four, though it was quickly determined to pose no danger unlike a pofas. The uncertainty around twenty twenty four YR four's trajectory means we may not have a definitive answer about its impact risk until its next close approach in twenty twenty eight, Unless Web's observations can help resolve the misty sooner. Next, let's take a look at what Starship has been up to this week. As SpaceX gears up for its eighth Starship test flight, the company has been conducting crucial preflight tests at their Starbase facility in Texas. Just last weekend, they completed a full duration static fire test of the super Heavy booster, successfully igniting all thirty three Raptor engines on the massive two hundred thirty three foot rocket stage. Following the booster test, SpaceX turn their attention to Starship itself, conducting engine tests on Tuesday evening at a separate test stand near the launch facilities. This test was more extensive than the boosters, putting the engines through various thrust levels to simulate the different conditions the propulsion system will experience during actual flight. The company has also introduced some new hardware modifications for this upcoming launch, though specific details haven't been disclosed. Once these tests are complete, the Starship vehicle will be transported to join its super Heavy parkartner at the launch pad, where the two will be stacked together. When fully assembled, this engineering marvel stands an impressive four hundred and three feet tall with the Starship portion alone, exceeding the height of the Statue of Liberty. This launch follows January's Ift seven mission, which saw mixed results. While that flight achieved some successes, including a successful catch of the super heavy booster by the launch tower's chopstick arms, contact with the Starship Portion was lost about eight point five minutes into the flight. The vehicle was later observed breaking up over the Caribbean. Space X is targeting a launch date at the end of February, though this timeline depends on several factors, including receiving the necessary launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. This will mark their second Starship launch of twenty twenty five, as the company works toward their ambitious goal of completing twenty five launches this year. These test flights are drawing increasing attention as NASA's time twenty twenty seven Artemis three mission approaches, a mission that will rely on Starship to land astronauts on the lunar surface. I love this next story in the fascinating world of space exploration. Not every mission that goes dark stays that way. Sometimes, against all odds, spacecraft we thought were lost forever managed to phone home again. Let me share some remarkable stories of these space based resurrection events. Take the case of Serbi, a small satellite launched in twenty twenty three to study Earth's radiation belts. After completing its initial four month missions so successfully that NASA extended it, Serbey suddenly went dark in April twenty twenty four. The team was devastated, especially when massive solar storms hit Earth in May, exactly the kind of event Serbi was designed to study. But then something extraordinary happened. On May twenty third, out of nowhere, Serbi's signal returned, though it only stayed alive for two and a half days before falling silent again. It wasn't finished yet. The plucky little spacecraft came back once more on June tenth, this time for good, at least until it's planned re entry in October. Even more remarkable is the story of NASA's Image, spacecraft launched in two thousand to study Earth's magnetosphere. Image operated flawlessly for five years before suddenly going silent in December two thousand and five. For over a decade, everyone assumed it was dead. Then in January twenty eighteen, an amateur radio astronomer accidentally picked up its signal while searching for something else entirely. When NASA re established contact, they discovered something fascinating. The spacecraft had been stuck in a bizarre loop, rebooting itself every seventy two hours for thirteen years straight, unable to properly power its communication system. It was like a patient in a coma, alive but unable to reach out to the world. These revivals aren't always accidental. Sometimes spacecraft are deliberately put into hibernation, like the European Space Agency's Jotto mission after visiting Halley's comment in nineteen eighty six. It was powered down to conserve energy, only to be awakened four years later for another comet encounter. Even NASA's Wise Telescope got a second life. After completing its initial mission and being shut down. It was reactivated as new WIS to hunt for potentially hazardous asteroids. These stories remind us that in space exploration, sometimes patients and persistence can bring seemingly lost missions back from the brink, providing unexpected opportunities for new discoveries. And that wraps up today's episode of Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna and I've enjoyed bringing you these fascinating stories from the world of space exploration and astronomy. From blue origins, latest developments to miraculous spacecraft revivals, It's been another exciting day in space news. If you want to stay up to date with all the latest developments in space and astronomy, visit our website at Astronomy Daily dot io. There you can sign up for our free daily newsletter and access our constantly updates newsfeed. You'll also find all our past episodes available for listening anytime. We're also active across social media. You can find us as astro Daily Pod on Facebook, x YouTube, YouTube, music, Tumblr, and TikTok. Follow us there for bonus content and real time updates on breaking space news. This has been Astronomy Daily. Thank you for listening, and keep looking up. There's always something amazing happening in the Cosmos. Suday star is Starz story