SpaceJournal

Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences has discovered a new asteroid approaching Earth.As specified, the diameter of the object called 2022 VG2 is approximately 13 to 31 meters. It was possible to identify it thanks to the Russian telescope ORI-40, which is located in the Mongolian observatory Hureltogot. So far, the exact mass and shape of the space body could not be determined.Recognize the asteroid was obtained at a speed of about 50 arc seconds per minute, which makes it the object recorded at the fastest speed: the previous ones were moving at a speed of 4-5 arc seconds per minute. After the publication of the data obtained at the service NEOCP 2022 VG2 was confirmed by dozens of observatories from Russia, the U.S. and European countries.The asteroid was classified as approaching the Earth of the Apollo family, i.e. crossing the orbit of our planet.

China has completed the assembly of the national orbital station TiangongThe assembly of China's first multi-module national space station Tiangong has been completed in Earth orbit. The China Manned Spaceflight Program Office announced.It is noted that the Tiangong station, consisting of Tianhe, Wentian and Mengtian modules connected in a T-shaped structure, is currently located in Earth orbit."The relocation of the Mengtian laboratory module was successfully completed Nov. 3 at 9:32 a.m. Beijing time ... The crew of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft will enter the Mengtian module in the afternoon," the directorate states.It is noted that the completion of the Tiangong station assembly became possible after its third module, called Mengtian, was launched into Earth orbit in October.

Scientists at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), the University of Innsbruck (Austria), and the University of Geneva (Switzerland) have discovered for the first time the naked pulsating core of a massive star. It turned out to be an object in the Gamma Dove (γ Columbae) binary system, which was previously thought to be a typical white-blue star. About the discovery reported in an article published in the journal Nature Astronomy.γ Columbae is located about 870 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Dove and is a binary system, its main component is a pulsating star of spectral type B, whose mass is six times the mass of the Sun. Scientists have shown that although the temperature and gravity on the surface of this star are consistent with what one would expect from a typical white-blue subgiant, the helium, carbon, and nitrogen content of the outer envelope is dramatically different from normal stars and fits the pattern of the CNO cycle - thermonuclear reactions in the stellar core.It is thought that stars can expose their inner cores only in very rare cases, when they evolve into unusual types of stars - Wolf-Raye stars, which represent a late stage in the life of massive stars, or hot helium subdwarfs. Wolf-Raye stars produce strong winds that can blow away their own outer envelope, while hot dwarfs are the result of the transfer of the outer envelope from a low-mass star to a neighboring star. In theory, main-sequence stars that burn hydrogen, turning it into helium, can also lose their envelope if the conditions are right for this, but so far this has not been observed.Scientists have rejected alternative explanations for the unusual elemental composition of γ Columbae. According to one of them, helium, nitrogen and carbon, which catalyze thermonuclear reactions in the core, can move to the surface of the star by hydrodynamic mixing, but the ratios between N/C and N/O in Gamma Dove are too extreme for this process. A similar process can be observed in young stars with strong internal mixing, but this requires them to rotate very rapidly and to be much more massive.The observed mass fractions of those elements affected by the CNO cycle correspond well to a 4-mass solar mass core in stars of 12 solar masses that are running out of hydrogen fuel. According to the theory of stellar evolution, at this stage the star is expanding. If it is in a binary system, the second star may sink into its outer shell and begin to approach its spiral neighbor, eventually leading to the removal of the shell from the system, which leaves behind a stripped core.The model predicts that the star will live only 10,000 years in this state, making the likelihood of detecting other massive stars in the naked core stage very low. It is assumed that the object will end its life like Wolf-Raye stars, like Type Ib supernovae, which occur by the gravitational collapse of a core stripped of its hydrogen envelope.

Jeffrey Gordon, professor at Ben-Gurion University (Israel), presented NASA a project to create an uninterrupted power supply system on the moon without the use of batteries. This is reported in a press release on Phys.org; the scientist described his idea in more detail in an article published in Renewable Energy.The creation of long-term inhabited lunar bases requires plants that will continuously extract thousands of tons of oxygen from the lunar soil for rocket fuel or life support systems. This requires a source that will supply energy during the lunar night, which lasts about 15 Earth days. The only renewable source of energy on the Moon is solar radiation, so previously it was assumed that expensive batteries would be used.According to Gordon, it is much cheaper and more practical to use arrays of photovoltaic batteries, which will be installed along the lunar latitude near the poles. In this way, these arrays would form a ring, much of which would always be on the day side. Additionally, power lines need to be laid to the factories and settlements that will be placed near the polar regions. This concept uses a unique combination of several factors: the lack of atmosphere, the almost zero tilt of the lunar rotation axis in relation to the ecliptic plane and the small diameter of the moon.The specific power of such a solution far exceeds the alternatives currently being considered by NASA. The ratio of the total mass of the system to the energy it produces is a hundred times lower than that of battery-powered solar panels, and six times lower than that of the nuclear reactors that power conventional turbines and generators.Gordon presented his findings to NASA experts at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, in August. He said the space agency has expressed a willingness to reconsider a plan that now calls for providing the lunar colonies with nuclear power instead of solar power.

SpaceX for the fourth time launched the most powerful rocket in the world - the superheavy Falcon Heavy. It is reported on Twitter.The launch occurred from the launch pad 39A Space Center John F. Kennedy in Florida. The launch was ordered by the Pentagon. The purpose of the payload, launched into geostationary orbit, is classified.As writes NASASpaceFlight.com, the head end of the carrier has at least two spacecraft: the first, TETRA-1, and the second, an unknown satellite. It is possible that the rocket carries other classified spacecraft as well.After the launch, two reusable Falcon Heavy side boosters, each representing the first stage of a Falcon 9 heavy rocket, successfully returned to Earth.Launched 50-th for the company SpaceX this year. The previous Falcon Heavy launched in 2019.In August, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was certified by the U.S. Space Force, having received permission to use Falcon Heavy to launch reconnaissance satellites.

An international team of astronomers has discovered the largest and most potentially dangerous asteroid in eight years. The results are described in The Astronomical Journal.The NOIRLab program used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor Blanco four-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to record three near-Earth asteroids. Discovering the objects was quite problematic because they are in a hard-to-observe orbit between Earth and Venus, and the bright sunlight interfered with the study.The first body is 2022 AP7, 1.5 kilometers wide, whose orbit could someday encounter an asteroid with our planet. The other two objects, named 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, pose no danger to Earth. 2021 PH27 is of particular interest to scientists because it is the closest asteroid to the Sun.In addition to calculating the potential danger from some cosmic bodies, observing asteroids is necessary to understand the distribution of small bodies in the solar system, as well as the influence of the Sun and gravity on their fragmentation.In October 2022, a team of specialists from different countries noticed that the known near-Earth asteroid Ryugu has similar features to the rare Cl group of meteorites. Scientists suggest that Ryugu may be the parent body of these objects.

Hubble Space Telescope has detected a multiple light echo supernova explosion 2016adj, which arose due to the reflection of radiation from the dust bands of the galaxy Centaurus A. The discovery of the unusual phenomenon is reported in an article published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.The supernova SN 2016adj was discovered in February 2016 at a peak brightness of 16 stellar magnitudes. It originated in the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A, located 10 to 16 million light-years from Earth. It was classified as a Type Ic supernova, which occurs when the core of a massive star, stripped of its hydrogen and most of its helium envelope, collapses due to a stellar wind or accretion of material onto a companion star. Observations of the supernova and the region around it were made with the wide-angle camera 3 Hubble telescope from February 22, 2016 to July 28, 2021.A characteristic feature of Centauri A are dark bands that are part of a thick gas-dust disk. The dense interstellar clouds are good conditions for light echo, a phenomenon in which light from the initial bright flash is reflected from distant objects and arrives late to the observer. As the light from a supernova propagates farther and farther away, more and more regions of the gas-dust clouds "light up," creating a series of rings of light.The first LE1 light echo was detected just 75 days after the peak of the supernova flare. It appeared as a semicircle with an angular radius of 0.27 arc seconds (for comparison, the angular radius of the Moon is 14-16 arc minutes). The echo expanded radially until 1991 days after the peak of the flare at an average rate of 0.012 arc seconds per month, which is 12 times the speed of light. The illusion of superluminal motion is explained by the fact that the reflected light comes from regions lying in the plane between the supernova and the observer, but these regions are projected to more distant regions, the light from which has not yet had time to reach the observer.At the end, the light echo took on the character of concentric rings: ring LE2 lay inside LE1, while the other two, LE3 and LE4, were outer rings. From the timing of the rings, as well as the unusual evolution of their color, scientists determined that the first echo was generated by a dense lumpy layer of interstellar medium located in the foreground of the supernova, while the others were dust layers with wide gaps. Although the layer that produced LE2 most likely lies closer to the supernova, its delayed manifestation is due to the presence of a significant gap in the line-of-sight between the flare and the Earth.The authors of the paper note that a three-dimensional map of the distribution of dust structures can be constructed from the light echo data and approximately learn about their properties. In addition, SN 2016adj generated the earliest light echo known, since in previous cases, the reflected radiation became visible only a few hundred days after the explosion.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have recorded on Mars traces of the former northern ocean. The results are described in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.The outlines of the ancient ocean have been discovered through new topographic maps of the planet. They were able to discern more than 4,000 miles of ridges, which were grouped into 20 systems. These structures are actually deltas of former rivers and underwater channels - remnants of the coastline.Observations have shown that the topography is about 3.5 billion years old with a layer of sediment of at least half a mile that covered hundreds of thousands of square yards. The results suggest that the planet was once experiencing rising ocean levels, which corresponded to a prolonged warm and humid climate, not the one that exists today.

An international team of scientists has discovered signs of modern volcanic activity on Mars. Under the surface of the planet, in the area of faults Cerberus Fossae, probably, is a clot of molten lava, which causes the Mars shocks recorded by seismometers mounted on the spacecraft InSight. This is reported in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy.Since 2018, when NASA's InSight mission deployed the SEIS seismometer, more than 1,300 Mars shocks have been recorded. Their epicenters were located in the Cerberus region, home to a series of faults, or grabens, called Cerberus Fossae (Cerberus furrows). During the probe's first year, planetary scientists recorded low-frequency seismic waves indicating the continued expansion of the faults. The origins of these Mars shocks are thought to be located in the lower part of the Martian crust or in the upper part of the mantle, at depths of 15 to 50 kilometers.However, the most common type of seismic activity is high-frequency Mars shaking, the hypocenter of which is located at a relatively shallow depth. Until December 31, 2021, 1150 events were recorded, but scientists have not been able to associate them with a specific area of Mars and explain their origin.In the new work, scientists analyzed both low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) seismic waves. Most of the low-frequency events turned out to be associated with the central Cerberus Fossae furrow. As for the HF waves, the researchers first determined relative source distances for them and then studied their distribution, which corresponded to the entire length of the Cerberus Fossae region. An assessment of the total seismicity showed that the central furrow was the source of at least 50 percent of the total shaking that was recorded by SEIS.The LF shocks, whose source is located in the Cerberus Fossae region, are characterized by a reduced frequency compared to seismic waves coming from other areas. The most likely explanation is that there is an elevated temperature zone under the furrows, where rocks heat up and soften. At the same time, scientists have found no evidence of volcanism in the seismic data, so the structure is probably dormant or inactive. HF earthquakes are most likely due to ruptures in the structure of the central furrow itself above the volcanic fault.There is also a dark Cerberus Mantling Unit (CMU) around the furrow, which is thought to be a sign of relatively recent volcanic activity about 53,000 to 210,000 years ago. Researchers speculate that the earthquakes could either be the latest echoes of this process, or could be a sign that magma is moving eastward toward the next eruption site.

The Hubble telescope has photographed a nebula in the constellation of Orion with an unusual appearance. The photo was published on the Hubble website of the European Space Agency.The image shows NGC 1999, a reflection nebula. This is what astronomers call nebulae that are illuminated by surrounding stars rather than emitting light on their own. NGC 1999 is about 1,350 light-years from the Sun, in a region of active star formation. The source of light for the nebula is V380 Orionis, a young star visible in the center of the "well."The nebula itself around the star is the remnant of the cloud from which the luminosity emerged. The reason for the formation of an unusual "gap" in the center of the cloud is not clear to astronomers.The image was obtained in 1999, but only now it has been processed and published.Previously, astronomers have discovered gravitational anomalies in nearby star clusters.

Losses of the American company Boeing on the manned spacecraft program Starliner, which, together with the Crew Dragon should become a replacement for the Russian Soyuz MS, have increased, approaching $ 900 million. This is reported by SpaceNews.It is noted that in the third quarter of the Starliner company wrote off 195 million of its own funds. The rest of the funds were recorded in previous reporting periods.At Boeing, the main loss on the manned spacecraft program associated with the failure of the mission Orbital Flight Test (OFT), as a result of which the spacecraft without a crew was unable to reach the International Space Station (ISS)."There remains a risk that we may record additional losses in future periods," the company said in a statement.In August, NASA Commercial Flight Program Manager Steve Stich said the first manned flight of the U.S. Starliner spacecraft to the ISS could take place in February 2023.

According to the head of the Manned Flight Centre, the design of the habitable compartment of the spacecraft has now been completed and manufacturing of the module has started, which will last for six monthsNEW DELHI, Oct. 28. India will start flight tests of the Gaganyan transport manned spacecraft in February next year. R. Umamaheshwaran, head of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Manned Flight Center, said."We plan to conduct at least 17 flight tests of the Gaganyan spacecraft before its first test flight in Earth orbit, scheduled for December 2023. "The project has become international and India is working closely with Russia and a number of other countries on its implementation," DD News quoted Umamaheshwaran as saying Friday at the ongoing India Space Congress 2022 (ISC-2022) in New Delhi.According to the head of the Manned Flight Center, the design of the Gaganyan spacecraft's habitable compartment has now been completed and manufacturing of the module has begun, which will last six months. "A list of candidates to participate in the first manned flight of the Gaganyan has also been formed. It includes four Indian Air Force pilots who previously trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Now they are continuing to train for the mission at the ISRO center in Bangalore," Umamaheshwaran said.Last November, ISRO postponed sending the Gaganyan mission into orbit because of the coronavirus pandemic, which halted most work on the project in March 2020.In August 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially announced that his country would send its first national space crew into orbit by August 2022, when India will celebrate 75 years of liberation from British colonial rule. The name of the project is Gaganyan (from the Sanskrit "gagan" meaning "heaven"), that is, "Heavenly Ship." It was originally planned that the crew would spend five to seven days in orbit, and before that the ships would be launched in unmanned mode to test the equipment. Specially designed robots to test life support systems were to be on board these ships.

First stage of Falcon 9 carrier previously used in seven launchesNEW YORK, Oct. 28. SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 launch vehicle with another constellation of Starlink microsatellites on Thursday. The launch is being broadcast on the company's website.The launch from the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base (California) took place at 18:14 local time. Fifty-three microsatellites will be launched into low Earth orbit.The launcher's first stage has previously been used in seven launches. SpaceX employees intend to return this Falcon 9 element to Earth. It is expected that after the launch of the stage in the automatic mode smoothly descend to the floating platform Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific. This technology allows the company to reduce the cost of successive launches.The Starlink network is designed to provide Internet access by deploying a large number of vehicles. SpaceX estimates that launching a total of 11 thousand satellites and putting them into operation will cost $10 billion. The company assures that it will be able to provide broadband internet access at speeds of 1 Gbit per second, which corresponds to the 5G standard. Since May 2019, SpaceX has put more than 3,100 Starlink satellites into orbit.

Scientists at the University of Turku (Finland) have studied the neutron star Hercules X-1, located at a distance of 21 thousand light-years, and found that it precesses as a spinning toy. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.Hercules X-1 is an X-ray pulsar, which, as the researchers found, belongs to the class of accretion. The energy source powering the X-ray emission is matter flowing from a companion star. Observations of the object were made with the International X-ray Polarimeter Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft, which measures the polarization of X-rays.The observed degree of linear polarization, in which the electric field vector of electromagnetic radiation oscillates in one plane, was about 10 percent, well below the theoretical expectation of 80 percent for this object, and remains low throughout the pulsar's rotation cycle. The degree and angle of polarization varied with the phase of the pulsar rotation, which allowed us to measure the position angle of the object's rotation and the slope of the magnetic field, which is a key quantity for modeling the pulsar's emission.The simulations showed that the observed polarimetric characteristics of the system from the viewpoint of the Earth observer correspond to a shift of the pulsar rotation axis relative to the angular momentum of its orbit in the binary system by 20 degrees. This is a strong indication of neutron star precession, when the axis of rotation changes its position in space. Final proof of precession is expected later when IXPE observes Hercules X-1 in another phase of the precession cycle.IXPE was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in December 2021, and the vehicle is now 600 kilometers above the Earth's surface. The mission is a collaboration between NASA, the Italian Space Agency and scientists from 13 countries.

An international team of physicists has made a mysterious discovery that challenges Newton's classical law of gravity and is consistent with an alternative theory called Milgrom Dynamics (MOND). The results are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), and a preprint of the paper is available in the arXiv repository.Scattered star clusters that have so-called "tidal tails" - extended groups of stars that lie outside the cluster - have been studied. Tails are formed due to the scattering of the cluster as a result of interaction with the galactic environment and due to the expansion of the parent gas cloud as a result of processes occurring within the cluster (such as stellar winds or supernova outbursts). One of the tails is the leading one, while the other, the posterior one, is directed in the opposite direction and extends behind the cluster.Different models of gravity, evaluating the interaction of the stars inside the cluster and the cluster itself with the surrounding galactic medium, predict the asymmetry of the tidal tails in different ways. According to Newtonian gravity, the tails should be symmetrical. Astronomers have found that in five scattered clusters, the leading tails within 50 parsecs of the center contain noticeably more stars than the trailing ones, which is consistent with the MOND theory prediction.MOND, unlike Einstein's classical theory of gravity, does not require the presence of dark matter to explain the observed dependence of the velocity of matter in the galaxy on the distance from the nucleus. It is known that the outer regions of galaxies rotate faster than it can be expected from the Newtonian dynamics of visible (baryonic) matter composing stars, planets and gas-dust clouds. Hence, within the framework of classical theory, it follows that there must be some hidden mass or dark matter in the galaxy. But in 1983 the Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom (Mordehai Milgrom) proposed amendments to the Newtonian theory of gravity, according to which it turned out that the speed of stars in circular orbits does not depend on their distance from the center of the galaxy.The asymmetry of tidal clusters is the reason for a significant reduction in the lifetime of scattered clusters. Uneven ejection of matter from the cluster leads to the fact that clusters after about 200 million years after birth begin to rotate around the center of the galaxy on an increasingly elongated orbit, simultaneously spinning in the opposite direction to the direction of the orbital rotation. As the eccentricity of the orbit increases, the cluster dissipates faster and faster.In conclusion, the authors of the paper suggest a number of more direct ways to detect deviations from the Newtonian dynamics, for example, including the observation of a large number of double star systems, tracking the orbital motion of Proxima Centauri using high-precision astrometry and using a group of small spacecraft to map the gravitational field surrounding the Sun.

MOSCOW, Oct. 27. Russian companies have already begun production of the first fully domestic communications satellite, Alexei Volin, general director of the state-run Space Communications company, said Thursday."The first 100 percent Russian communications and broadcasting satellite is now in production," Volin said at the Satcomrus-2022 conference.That spacecraft will be Express-AMU4. The head company of this cooperation is the Krasnoyarsk Reshetnyov ISS. Initially it was supposed that the payload for the apparatus will be made by the French-Italian company Thales Alenia Space, but, as Volin said, it had to "not quite of its own free will" to abandon the project.Now a new cooperation of Russian enterprises has already been established, it includes 13 companies, which will produce a total of over 300 parts and assemblies. In total five satellites are in production now through Space Communications, said the General Director.Nowadays orbital constellation of SE CS consists of 13 telecommunication satellites "Express". The youngest of them in orbit, Express-AMU3 and -AMU7, launched in December 2021, started working for their intended purpose in May this year.It was previously reported that Express-AMU4 will be launched in 2026, and that in 2027 and 2028 the spacecraft with the indexes "-AMU5" and "-AMU6" will be launched. Express-40 and Express-P1 are expected to be launched in 2028 and Express-36, Express-AMU8, Express-AT3, and -AT4 in 2029. Express-AMU5 and Express-R2 will be launched in 2030. "Express-R3" will be launched in 2032.Also in 2025-2026, a system of four Express-RVs in highly elliptical orbit is expected to be deployed. They are supposed to become a part of Sphere multi-satellite orbital constellation.The Satcomrus-2022 conference is dedicated to the 55th anniversary of the 55th anniversary of the Space Communications Russian operator and the entire Russian satellite communications and broadcasting industry. The country's first television satellite distribution network was launched in 1967.

The matter is about the engagement of components of civil infrastructure in space by the West, including commercial ones, in armed conflicts, said Konstantin Vorontsov, Deputy Director of the Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.UN, October 26. U.S. commercial satellites could become legitimate targets for a strike if deployed as part of the conflict in Ukraine. Deputy Director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry Konstantin Vorontsov said this on Wednesday, speaking at a meeting of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly."Separately, we would like to emphasize an extremely dangerous trend that has clearly manifested itself in the course of events in Ukraine. We are talking about the use by the United States and its allies of civilian infrastructure components in space, including commercial infrastructure, in armed conflicts," he said. - Quasi-civilian infrastructure could be a legitimate target for retaliation. As a result of Western actions, the sustainability of peaceful space activities, as well as numerous socioeconomic processes on the ground on which human well-being depends, primarily in developing countries, are at unnecessary risk.