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Space News Update — October 31, 2014 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane crashes on test flight

Story 2:

Orbital Sciences hopes to quickly find cause of rocket failure

Story 3:

Hubble Sees 'Ghost Light' From Dead Galaxies

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane crashes on test flight

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane crashed during a powered test flight over California’s Mojave Desert on Friday, leaving one pilot dead and another seriously injured, according to news reports.

“Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today,” the company said in a statement. “During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle. The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern in the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time. We will work closely with relevant authorities to

determine the cause of this accident and provide updates as soon as we are able to do so.”

The Associated Press reported one fatality and one major injury from the accident, citing California Highway Patrol.

The anomaly apparently occurred after the space plane fired its rocket motor following a high-altitude drop from Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo mothership.

Eyewitness reports say the rocket plane exploded in flight, and footage from television news helicopters in the area showed the desert floor littered with fragments of SpaceShipTwo.

Observers also reported spotting a parachute in the air.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the accident occurred shortly after SpaceShipTwo separated from its carrier aircraft. The FAA said it is investigating the crash and confirmed there were two pilots aboard.

The suborbital spacecraft was making its first powered flight since January and was testing a redesigned rocket motor.

Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, was aiming to complete qualification of the rocket-powered plane in time to begin space tourist flights to the edge of space next year.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to reach the internationally-recognized boundary of space at an altitude of 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles. More than 700 individuals have signed up to pay approximately $250,000 to ride the rocket plane when it is operational.

Slung beneath the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane, the spacecraft took off at 9:19 a.m. PDT (12:19 p.m. EDT; 1619 GMT) from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The takeoff was delayed more than three hours to wait for bad weather to clear the area.

The test flight was the 55th flight of the SpaceShipTwo vehicle, and the craft’s 35th free flight. It was the fourth time SpaceShipTwo had fired up its hybrid rocket motor in flight, and the first powered mission since Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, the spacecraft’s builder, switched from a rubber-based propellant to a plastic-based fuel mix.

We’ll bring you more details as we get them.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. Orbital Sciences hopes to quickly find cause of rocket failure

A day after an explosion that destroyed an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket carrying a space station cargo ship, company officials said Wednesday they hope to zero in on the likely cause of the mishap within a week or so, based on a detailed review of telemetry, analysis of video and inspection of recovered debris.

The 130-foot-tall Antares rocket, powered by extensively modified Soviet-era first-stage engines, blasted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., at 6:22 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Tuesday, kicking off a flight to deliver more than 5,000 pounds of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.

But just 15 seconds after liftoff, the rocket suffered a catastrophic first-stage failure, falling back to Earth and exploding in a huge fireball. The Cygnus cargo ship atop the rocket, loaded with station supplies, also was destroyed.

David Thompson, chairman and chief executive of Orbital Sciences, said an inspection of the launch pad and nearby facilities Wednesday revealed less damage than expected.

“Fortunately, no one was injured as a result of the accident,” he told financial analysts in a conference call. “And based on the preliminary inspections that were conducted this morning at Wallops Island, it appears that the launch pad complex itself was spared from any major damage. In addition, the Antares Vehicle Assembly Building and related Cygnus spacecraft processing facilities at other locations within the Wallops area were not affected by the failure in any way.”

He said it was too soon to determine what might have triggered the mishap, although a preliminary look at telemetry suggested possible explanations. He did not elaborate.

One natural suspect is the rocket’s main propulsion system, powered by two Soviet-era engines originally built for a Russian moon rocket that later was abandoned after a series of in-flight failures. Engines left over from that program were mothballed, and Aerojet Rocketdyne bought about 40 of the high-performance powerplants

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in the 1990s. The renamed AJ26 engines were refurbished, equipped with modern avionics and exhaustively tested to ensure they were safe to fly.

But an AJ26 engine being test fired last May suffered a catastrophic malfunction. Orbital carried out a major investigation to find out what went wrong and while details were never provided, company officials said the likely cause had been identified and that new test procedures and inspections were implemented to prevent a repeat of the failure.

The engines worked flawlessly during an Antares launch in July and they may have worked as planned during the ill-fated launching Tuesday. But whatever went wrong appeared to start at the base of the rocket, raising questions about the propulsion system. Thompson warned against drawing premature conclusions.

“We still have a lot of work to do in the days ahead to analyze all of the telemetry and video data, to review the recollections and notes of the participants in the operation and to collect all other available information about the flight,” he said. “This investigation may, or may not, lead us to the conclusion that the failure was caused by a problem with the Antares first stage main propulsion system.

“As most of you know, the AJ26 rocket engines used in that system have presented us with some serious technical and supply challenges in the past. So notwithstanding the previous successful flights of Antares before yesterday, Orbital has been reviewing alternatives since the middle of last year and recently selected a different main propulsion system for a future use by Antares.”

Thompson said the company may decide “to accelerate this change if the AJ26 turns out to be implicated in the failure. But this has not yet been decided.”

As for how long it might take to figure out what went wrong, he said barring problems or major surprises “it will not likely take very long, I think a period measured in days, not weeks, for the investigation team to define the handful of most likely causes of the accident. It may take a little longer than that to zero in on the final root cause.”

Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to build and launch eight space station resupply missions to deliver some 20 tons of cargo and supplies. SpaceX holds a similar contract valued at $1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions using that company’s Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon cargo ships.

NASA officials said the loss of the Cygnus supply ship atop the Antares rocket will not have any near-term impact on station operations. A Russian Progress supply ship was successfully launched from Kazakhstan early Wednesday and SpaceX is on track to launch two more U.S. resupply missions in December and February.

But the next flight of an Antares rocket, which had been targeted for April, could face a delay.

“From our experience in the past, which is not altogether transferrable to this situation, I would anticipate that there will be some delay in the next scheduled Antares launch,” Thompson said. “I think a reasonable, best-case estimate would bound that at three months, but it could certainly be considerably longer than that depending on what we find in the review. I would hope it would not be more than a year.”

Asked if engineers had seen any clues about the cause of the failure in video or telemetry, Thompson said “the short answer is it’s still a little too early to tell.” But he said there were hints in the telemetry.

“There are certain specific elements of data that have been preliminarily analyzed to date that point in a particular direction,” he said, “but my experience also suggests that sometimes first impressions are not correct ones, and it’s very important not to focus too early on what may at first appear to be the cause of an accident like this.

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“It’s important to do a very comprehensive review and consider things that may at first not appear to be likely causes of a failure just to be sure you don’t fixate early on on what initially appears to observers to be the likely cause and end up missing the real root cause. I think we will be substantially smarter on this over the course of the coming days, not weeks. I may be surprised, it may turn out to take longer, but my best guess right now, assuming we proceed in a very diligent and open minded way, we’ll be zeroing in within a week or so on where the problem is likely to be found.”

In opening remarks, Thompson took time to remind analysts and others listening in that launching rockets is a challenging enterprise and “although they are increasingly infrequent in our business, rocket and satellite failures do still occur.”

“Building and launching vehicles into space are among the most challenging and demanding things that government organizations and private companies do,” he said. “Despite the diligent efforts of some of the aerospace industry’s best and brightest people, sometimes things do go wrong.

“Second and more generally, Orbital has experienced adversity in the past, some of which was more difficult that this. And the company has always emerged stronger as a result. I am determined that we will do so again this time.”

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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3. Hubble Sees 'Ghost Light' From Dead Galaxies

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away, inside an immense collection of nearly 500 galaxies nicknamed “Pandora’s Cluster,” also known as Abell 2744.

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The scattered stars are no longer bound to any one galaxy, and drift freely between galaxies in the cluster. By observing the light from the orphaned stars, Hubble astronomers have assembled forensic evidence that suggests as many as six galaxies were torn to pieces inside the cluster over a stretch of 6 billion years.

Computer modeling of the gravitational dynamics among galaxies in a cluster suggests that galaxies as big as our Milky Way Galaxy are the likely candidates as the source of the stars. The doomed galaxies would have been pulled apart like taffy if they plunged through the center of a galaxy cluster where gravitational tidal forces are strongest. Astronomers have long hypothesized that the light from scattered stars should be detectable after such galaxies are disassembled. However, the predicted “intracluster” glow of stars is very faint and was therefore a challenge to identify.

“The Hubble data revealing the ghost light are important steps forward in understanding the evolution of galaxy clusters,” said Ignacio Trujillo of The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain. “It is also amazingly beautiful in that we found the telltale glow by utilizing Hubble’s unique capabilities.”

The team estimates that the combined light of about 200 billion outcast stars contributes approximately 10 percent of the cluster’s brightness.

“The results are in good agreement with what has been predicted to happen inside massive galaxy clusters,” said Mireia Montes of the IAC, lead author of the paper published in the Oct. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Because these extremely faint stars are brightest at near-infrared wavelengths of light, the team emphasized that this type of observation could only be accomplished with Hubble’s infrared sensitivity to extraordinarily dim light.

Hubble measurements determined that the phantom stars are rich in heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. This means the scattered stars must be second or third-generation stars enriched with the elements forged in the hearts of the universe’s first-generation stars. Spiral galaxies – like the ones believed to be torn apart -- can sustain ongoing star formation that creates chemically-enriched stars.

Weighing more than 4 trillion solar masses, Abell 2744 is a target in the Frontier Fields program. This ambitious three-year effort teams Hubble and NASA’s other Great Observatories to look at select massive galaxy clusters to help astronomers probe the remote universe. Galaxy clusters are so massive that their gravity deflects light passing through them, magnifying, brightening, and distorting light in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Astronomers exploit this property of space to use the clusters as a zoom lens to magnify the images of far-more-distant galaxies that otherwise would be too faint to be seen.

Montes’ team used the Hubble data to probe the environment of the foreground cluster itself. There are five other Frontier Fields clusters in the program, and the team plans to look for the eerie “ghost light” in these clusters, too.

For images and more information about Hubble, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://hubblesite.org/news/2014/43

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Friday, October 31 For Halloween, the first-quarter Moon shines in the south after dark. It's between Altair, very high to its upper right, and Fomalhaut, far down to its lower left.

Saturday, November 1 As the stars come out, Deneb is nearly straight overhead as seen from mid-northern latitudes. Brighter Vega is west of the zenith. Altair is farther from the zenith toward the south. Sunday, November 2 Algol should be at its minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 10:07 p.m. EST (7:07 p.m. PST). Its fading and rebrightening take several additional hours before and after. Here's a comparison-star chart giving the magnitudes of three stars near Algol; use them to judge its changing brightness. For all times of Algol's minima this month, good worldwide, see the November Sky & Telescope, page 51, or use our Algol predictor. Monday, November 3 As autumn proceeds, the Great Square of Pegasus looms ever higher at nightfall. It now reaches its level position very high toward the south as early as 8 or 9 p.m. this week — with the Moon shining under its left side tonight (for North America). Tuesday, November 4 As the stars come out, look high above the waxing gibbous Moon for the Great Square of Pegasus. It's standing on one corner.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Fri Oct 31, 6:22 PM < 1 min 12° 12 above SSW 10 above SSW

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

7 a.m., Monday, November 3 - ISS Expedition 41 Interviews with WJZ-TV, Baltimore and CBS Radio Network with NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman (all channels) Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website.

Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Oct 31 - [Oct 25] Chang'e 5 T1 Return To Earth (China Moon Orbiter)

Oct 31 - Comet 183P/Korlevic-Juric At Opposition (3.832 AU)

Oct 31 - Comet C/2012 K1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (0.953 AU)

Oct 31 - Asteroid 188534 Mauna Kea Closest Approach To Earth (1.603 AU)

Oct 31 - Plutino 144897 (2004 UX10) At Opposition (38.145 AU)

Nov 01 - Mercury At Its Greatest Western Elongation (19 Degrees)

Nov 01 - [Oct 28] Asteroid 2014 UA58 Near-Earth Flyby (0.034 AU)

Nov 01 - [Oct 27] Asteroid 2014 UA57 Near-Earth Flyby (0.043 AU)

Nov 01 - Asteroid 2014 TL17 Near-Earth Flyby (0.050 AU)

Nov 01 - [Oct 29] Asteroid 2014 UD115 Near-Earth Flyby (0.053 AU)

Nov 01 - [Oct 26] Asteroid 2014 US34 Near-Earth Flyby (0.055 AU)

Nov 01 - Asteroid 878 Mildred Closest Approach To Earth (0.932 AU)

Nov 01 - Asteroid 12002 Sues Closest Approach To Earth (1.975 AU)

Nov 01 - Asteroid 1241 Dysona Closest Approach To Earth (2.447 AU)

Nov 01 - 20th Anniversary (1994), Wind Launch

Nov 02 - Daylight Saving - Set Clock Back 1 Hour (United States)

Nov 02 - Comet 135P/Shoemaker-Levy Perihelion (2.680 AU)

Nov 02 - Comet 98P/Takamizawa At Opposition (2.921 AU)

Nov 02 - Comet 183P/Korlevic-Juric Closest Approach To Earth (3.832 AU)

Nov 02 - Comet PANSTARRS (C/2014 S1) Perihelion (8.350 AU)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 29769 (1999 CE28) Occults HIP 113593 (6.3 Magnitude Star)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 6735 Madhatter Closest Approach To Earth (1.023 AU)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 85185 Lederman Closest Approach To Earth (1.287 AU)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 4147 Lennon Closest Approach To Earth (1.565 AU)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 289586 Shackleton Closest Approach To Earth (1.600 AU)

Nov 02 - Asteroid 7934 Sinatra Closest Approach To Earth (1.621 AU)

Nov 02 - Kuiper Belt Object 55637 (2002 UX25) At Opposition (40.034 AU)

Nov 03 - Taurids Meteor Shower Peak

Nov 03 - Comet C/2014 Q3 (Borisov) Closest Approach To Earth (1.148 AU)

Nov 03 - Asteroid 3753 Cruithne Closest Approach To Earth (0.480 AU)

Nov 03 - Asteroid 5382 McKay Closest Approach To Earth (1.838 AU)

Nov 03 - Asteroid 1042 Amazone Closest Approach To Earth (2.056 AU)

Nov 03 - Kuiper Belt Object 84522 (2002 TC302) At Opposition (44.348 AU)

Nov 03 - 20th Anniversary (1994), STS-66 Launch (Space Shuttle Atlantis, ATLAS-3)

Nov 04 - Moon Occults Uranus

Nov 04 - Comet P/2011 CR42 (Catalina) At Opposition (3.465 AU)

Nov 04 - [Oct 28] Asteroid 2014 UZ57 Near-Earth Flyby (0.088 AU)

Nov 04 - Asteroid 3362 Khufu Closest Approach To Earth (1.089 AU)

Nov 04 - Asteroid 2620 Santana Closest Approach To Earth (1.673 AU)

Nov 04 - Asteroid 4523 MIT Closest Approach To Earth (1.886 AU)

Nov 04 - Asteroid 416 Vaticana Closest Approach To Earth (2.281 AU)

Nov 04 - Asteroid 40227 Tahiti Closest Approach To Earth (2.587 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

New study finds oceans arrived early to Earth

Earth is known as the Blue Planet because of its oceans, which cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface and are home to the world's greatest diversity of life. While water is essential for life on the planet, the answers to two key questions have eluded us: where did Earth's water come from and when?

While some hypothesize that water came late to Earth, well after the planet had formed, findings from a new study led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) significantly move back the clock for the first evidence of water on Earth and in the inner solar system.

"The answer to one of the basic questions is that our oceans were always here. We didn't get them from a late process, as was previously thought," said Adam Sarafian, the lead author of the paper published Oct. 31, 2014, in the journal Science and a MIT/WHOI Joint Program student in the Geology and Geophysics Department.

One school of thought was that planets originally formed dry, due to the high-energy, high-impact process of planet formation, and that the water came later from sources such as comets or "wet" asteroids, which are largely composed of ices and gases.

"With giant asteroids and meteors colliding, there's a lot of destruction," said Horst Marschall, a geologist at WHOI and coauthor of the paper. "Some people have argued that any water molecules that were present as the planets were forming would have evaporated or been blown off into space, and that surface water as it exists on our planet today, must have come much, much later—hundreds of millions of years later."

The study's authors turned to another potential source of Earth's water— carbonaceous chondrites. The most primitive known meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites, were formed in the same swirl of dust, grit, ice and gasses that gave rise to the sun some 4.6 billion years ago, well before the planets were formed.

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"These primitive meteorites resemble the bulk solar system composition," said WHOI geologist and coauthor Sune Nielsen. "They have quite a lot of water in them, and have been thought of before as candidates for the origin of Earth's water."

In order to determine the source of water in planetary bodies, scientists measure the ratio between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and hydrogen. Different regions of the solar system are characterized by highly variable ratios of these isotopes. The study's authors knew the ratio for carbonaceous chondrites and reasoned that if they could compare that to an object that was known to crystallize while Earth was actively accreting then they could gauge when water appeared on Earth.

To test this hypothesis, the research team, which also includes Francis McCubbin from the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico and Brian Monteleone of WHOI, utilized meteorite samples provided by NASA from the asteroid 4-Vesta. The asteroid 4-Vesta, which formed in the same region of the solar system as Earth, has a surface of basaltic rock—frozen lava. These basaltic meteorites from 4-Vesta are known as eucrites and carry a unique signature of one of the oldest hydrogen reservoirs in the solar system. Their age—approximately 14 million years after the solar system formed—makes them ideal for determining the source of water in the inner solar system at a time when Earth was in its main building phase. The researchers analyzed five different samples at the Northeast National Ion Microprobe Facility—a state-of-the-art national facility housed at WHOI that utilizes secondary ion mass spectrometers. This is the first time hydrogen isotopes have been measured in eucrite meteorites.

The measurements show that 4-Vesta contains the same hydrogen isotopic composition as carbonaceous chondrites, which is also that of Earth. That, combined with nitrogen isotope data, points to carbonaceous chondrites as the most likely common source of water.

"The study shows that Earth's water most likely accreted at the same time as the rock. The planet formed as a wet planet with water on the surface," Marschall said.

While the findings don't preclude a late addition of water on Earth, it shows that it wasn't necessary since the right amount and composition of water was present at a very early stage.

"An implication of that is that life on our planet could have started to begin very early," added Nielsen. "Knowing that water came early to the inner solar system also means that the other inner planets could have been wet early and evolved life before they became the harsh environments they are today."

Source: Eureka Alert Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado Image Credit & Copyright: Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy Blog, Slate)

Explanation: Sometimes your eclipse viewing goes bad in an interesting way. While watching and photographing last Thursday's partial solar eclipse, a popular astronomy blogger suffered through long periods of clouds blocking the Sun. Unexpectedly, however, a nearby cloud began to show a rare effect: iridescence. Frequently part of a more familiar solar corona effect,iridescence is the diffraction of sunlight around a thin screen of nearly uniformly-sized water droplets. Different colors of the sunlight become deflected by slightly different angles and so come to the observer from slightly different directions. This display, featured here, was quite bright and exhibited an unusually broad range of colors. On the right, the contrails of an airplane are also visible.

Source: APOD Return to Contents