United Launch Alliance has a target date for its Vulcan Centaur rocket's inaugural flight: May 4th, 2023. Company chief Tory Bruno has announced the four-day launch window starting on May 4th in a call with reporters, where he explained the factors that prompted the company to come up with the schedule. 

According to Parabolic Arc, the primary "pacing item" for the launch is Blue Origin's BE-4 engine, which will power the rocket's first stage. The companies are still working on its qualifications, since they found some inconsistencies among the ones ULA has tested. While the performance variation wasn't huge, the ULA wants to make sure it's not a symptom of a bigger issue. 

ULA still also has to conduct a series tests for the heavy-lift launch vehicle, including a wet dress rehearsal, wherein it will be fully loaded with propellants and has to complete a practice countdown. Finally, Vulcan Centaur's main payload, Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lunar lander, needs to head to space within a specific window of time each month to be able to fly its desired trajectory to the moon. 

Vulcan Centaur was supposed to have its maiden flight in 2022, but Astrobotic asked ULA to delay its launch to give it more time to finish the NASA-funded lunar lander. Bruno said Astrobotic has just finished testing the Peregrine and will soon be making final preparations before shipping it to the rocket's launch location at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

In addition to the lunar lander, the rocket will also carry two prototype satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation to space. The demo satellites' deployment will give Amazon the opportunity gather real-world data to be able to finalize the design and operation plans for its broadband satellite system. 

If Vulcan Centaur successfully flies for the first time on May 4th, it will mark the beginning of a new era for ULA. It plans to eventually replace the Delta IV Heavy and Atlas rockets with the Vulcan Centaur once it's done with its remaining launch obligations. 

The James Webb Telescope has been giving us clearer views of celestial objects and exposing hidden features since it became operational last year. Now, according to a study conducted by an international team of astrophysicists, it may also completely change our understanding of the cosmos. 

Upon looking at images taken by the telescope near the Big Dipper, the scientists found six potential galaxies that formed just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. That they could be almost 13 billion years old wasn't what makes them odd, though, it's that they could have as many stars as the Milky Way according to the team's calculations. The scientists explained that they should not exist under current cosmological theory, because there shouldn't be enough matter at the time for the galaxies to form as many stars as ours has. 

What the scientists saw in the images is a few fuzzy but very bright dots of light that look red to our instruments, indicating that they're old. Joel Leja, one of the authors of the study, told Space that scientists typically expect to see young and small galaxies that glow blue when peering into the ancient universe, since they appear to us as "objects which have just recently formed out of the primordial cosmic soup." (Don't forget that it takes time for light to reach Earth, so we're essentially looking back in time when we view telescopic images.) 

"We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find. It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question," Leja said. James Webb previously captured images of even older galaxies that formed around 350 million years after the Big Bang. But they're tiny and don't challenge our knowledge of astrophysics. 

For these six galaxies to appear old and massive means they were forming hundreds of stars a year shortly after the Big Bang. In comparison, the Milky Way only forms around one to two new stars every year. Further, these potential galaxies are about 30 times more compact in size than ours despite having as many stars. 

The scientists admit that there's a possibility that the fuzzy red dots they saw are something else, such as faint quasars or supermassive black holes. They could also be smaller in reality compared to the projected size the scientists got from their calculations. The team needs more data and to verify their findings through spectroscopy, but they think they could have official confirmation sometime next year. 

Russia has set a new date for when it will send a rescue ship to the International Space Station to retrieve the three astronauts whose Soyuz return craft was compromised in December. The country’s Roscosmos space agency told AFP on Saturday it is targeting a February 24th launch for MS-23, the uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft that is scheduled to bring back cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, from the International Space Station.

Roscosmos delayed the mission last Monday after Progress 82, a supply ship that had been docked with the ISS since last October, began leaking coolant over the weekend. Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio flew to the space station in September, and they were supposed to return on the same Soyuz spacecraft that brought them there. In December, however, the spacecraft sprung a leak, due to an apparent meteoroid strike. One month later, Roscosmos announced it would send a second Soyuz craft to retrieve the three astronauts. The timing of the leaks lead to some speculation that a manufacturing issue was at fault for the Soyuz leak, not an errant space rock as Roscosmos had said. Earlier this week, the agency shared images (seen above) showing the location of the coolant leak and reported micrometeoroid strike. 

On Saturday, Roscosmos said it had carefully inspected the rescue ship to ensure it was undamaged and ready for flight. One day earlier, Progress 82 separated from the ISS. Per Space News, video broadcast during the undocking procedure failed to show any obvious signs of damage to the resupply craft. According to NASA, Progress 82 will initiate a deorbit burn at 10:15PM ET tonight. Provided Roscosmos doesn’t delay MS-23’s launch, the spacecraft will arrive at the ISS two days before Space X’s Crew-6 mission is scheduled to launch on February 26th. That flight will bring two NASA astronauts, a United Arab Emirates astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the space station.

In a new update, Virgin Orbit has confirmed that the launch failure of its first UK mission was likely caused by a fuel filter that had been "dislodged from its normal position." That created a cascade of events that led to the shutdown of the second stage rocket, which ultimately fell back to Earth along with its payload, according to data gathered so far. The investigation is being led by United Launch Alliance's Jim Sponnick and Virgin Chief Engineer Chad Foerster, with oversight from the US FAA, UK Air Accidents Investigation branch and other authorities. 

The company's historic "Start Me Up" mission launched from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9th and Virgin confirmed things went well at the start. "The ignition, first stage flight, stage separation, second stage ignition and fairing deployment of the LauncherOne rocket were nominal," it wrote. "Each of these milestones constituted a first-of-its-kind achievement for any orbital launch attempt from western Europe."

That pesky $100 filter highlights the challenges of spaceflight, though. After it dislodged from its proper place in the fuel feedline, a downstream pump was starved for fuel and began operating at a significantly higher-than-rated temperature, investigators found. Parts downstream of that and in the vicinity eventually malfunctioned, causing the engine to stop. "The early thrust termination ended the mission, and the second stage and its payloads fell back to Earth, landing in the approved safety corridor in the Atlantic Ocean."

Virgin Orbit is portraying the failure as a learning experience, but as the first UK orbital launch ever, the timing wasn't ideal. The company noted, however, that all four prior operational flights succeeded, sending 33 payloads to their required orbits. 

The company is now creating a plan to replicate flight conditions to determine the root cause or causes of the failure, it said. "Numerous tests are underway to support the investigation and help lead to definitive conclusions. Ultimately, all credible causes of the failure will be addressed prior to the next LauncherOne mission."

Astronomers at the European Space Agency (ESA) used the James Webb Space Telescope to capture an image of a spiral galaxy that resembles our home, the Milky Way. The star system, LEDA 2046648, sits a billion light-years away from ours in the constellation Hercules; it contains thousands of galaxies, trillions of stars and countless planets.

The ESA released the picture on January 31 (highlighted this week by The NY Times). The space agency described it as a mere calibration image to “verify the telescope’s capabilities as it was prepared for science operations.” ESA astronomers snapped it on May 22, 2022, with the Webb telescope’s Near InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

That ultra-powerful camera can detect longer infrared wavelengths produced by light from this far away. Redshifting describes the stretching of light’s wavelength as it moves away from us, increasing until it appears redder than expected. It occurs because of the universe’s expansion: Distant systems like LEDA 2046648 keep moving farther from Earth.

European Space Agency

Most of the visible blobs surrounding LEDA 2046648 are also galaxies, although several stars can be discerned by their diffraction spike patterns. Some objects in the image could be as old as 300 million years after the Big Bang. Of course, an image of anything one billion light-years away means we’re viewing the galaxy’s light from a billion years ago. So astronomers are eager to study early galaxies like this one (and even older ones) to help clarify the types of stars that condensed out of the Big Bang — and how supermassive black holes ended up in most galaxies’ centers.

Whether or not Blue Origin puts a lander on the Moon, it might play a key role in sustaining lunar operations. Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company has revealed that it can produce solar cells and transmission wire using simulated Moon regolith. The firm's Blue Alchemist technique uses molten electrolysis to separate the lunar soil's aluminum, iron and silicon from bound oxygen to extract key materials. The process can build solar cells, cover glass and aluminum wire using only sunlight and the reactor's silicon.

This approach would not only save explorers the trouble of importing material, but would be kinder to both the Moon and Earth. There are no carbon-based emissions, no chemicals and no need for water. The resulting solar cells can operate on the Moon for over a decade despite a "harsh" environment, Blue Origin claims.

As Ars Technicaexplains, Blue Origin is pitching this as a solution for NASA's Artemis program and missions to Mars. The space agency could establish bases or other long-term installations while minimizing the environmental impact. While the concept of using regolith to build outposts isn't new, earlier efforts have largely focused on habitats rather than the power supplying those off-world facilities.

Whether or not Blue Origin's tech reaches NASA is another matter, as the company has a mixed relationship with the US administration. While NASA is backing the Orbital Reef space station and will use New Glenn to fly a science mission to Mars, it lost a key lunar lander contract to SpaceX and failed in its challenge of the $2.9 billion deal. As novel as Blue Alchemist tech may be, it's not guaranteed to win business.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but a Russian spacecraft docked with the International Space Station has sprung a leak. On Saturday morning, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency disclosed on Telegram that a Progress cargo ship docked with the ISS had lost cabin pressure. NASA later said the depressurization was due to a coolant leak.

“The reason for the loss of coolant in the Progress 82 spacecraft is being investigated,” NASA announced. “The hatches between Progress 82 and the station are open, and temperatures and pressures aboard the station are all normal. The crew, which was informed of the cooling loop leak, is in no danger and continuing with normal space station operations.”

Per Space.com, Progress 82 arrived at the ISS on October 28th. Before Saturday's announcement, the spacecraft was scheduled to leave the station on February 17th. It’s unclear if Roscosmos will move forward with that timeline as originally planned. Russia’s Progress spacecraft are designed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere after they complete their resupply missions, meaning there’s no way for Roscosmos to investigate the leak on the ground. The timing of the discovery comes on the same day that another Progress spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS, and less than two months after another Russian spacecraft sprung a leak at the space station.

In December, Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft began leaking coolant just as cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev were preparing for a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Roscosmos later blamed the incident on an apparent meteoroid strike. Unless there’s an emergency at the ISS, Roscosmos has deemed the spacecraft unfit to transport humans. The agency will launch another Soyuz craft later this month to bring Petelin and Prokopyev, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, back to Earth.

Ars Technica’s Eric Berger points out, the Progress incident raises doubts about whether Soyuz MS-22 was actually hit by a micrometeorite. Russia never released images of the impact, and the country’s space program has a history of recent issues. In 2021, for instance, Roscosmos blamed a software bug on the Nauka misfiring that temporarily moved the ISS out of its usual orientation.

NASA has selected Blue Origin's New Glenn, the company's heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle that has yet to go on its first launch, for a science mission to Mars. As Reuters notes, it's also the company's first interplanetary NASA contract. The mission is called Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers or ESCAPADE, and it was designed to study the planet's magnetosphere using twin spacecraft. NASA is targeting a late 2024 launch for the mission, which means we won't have to wait too long to finally see the New Glenn in action — if the Jeff Bezos-owned space corp can prevent further development delays, that is.

The New Glenn vehicle is the company's answer to SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and other company's heavy-lift vehicles. Blue Origin initially targeted a 2020 date for its first launch — and NASA approved it for future unmanned scientific and exploration missions that year — but the event kept getting pushed back. It was moved to 2021 and then to 2022. By the end of March last year, Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin's SVP for New Glenn, admitted that the vehicle wasn't going to fly for the first time in 2022 and that the company was in the process of setting a new date. 

NASA has granted Blue Origin the contract for ESCAPADE under the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program, which was designed to foster the growth of commercial launch services in the US. The agency intends to use launch vehicles from program participants specifically for "small satellites and Class D payloads" that can tolerate higher risk. In other words, VADR contracts are meant for lower-cost missions. "By using a lower level of mission assurance, and commercial best practices for launching rockets, these highly flexible contracts help broaden access to space through lower launch costs," NASA said in its announcement of New Glenn's selection. 

The ESCAPADE mission will launch from Space Launch Complex-36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It will take about 11 months for the mission to reach the red planet. After that, it will take a few more months for the twin spacecraft to reach the orbit ideal for gathering information about the Martian magnetosphere. The data it will provide can help give scientists a better understanding of space weather, so that safeguards could be put in place to better protect astronauts and satellites in our continued exploration of outer space. 

Virgin Orbit's first orbital launch from UK soil, which was supposed to be a huge milestone for the company and for the region, may have ended in failure because of a component that cost around $100. According to SpaceNews, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart has revealed at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California that the evidence so far points to a filter in the rocket's second stage engine getting dislodged and causing issues.

If you'll recall, the company launched its historic "Start Me Up" mission from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9th, and things seemed to flow smoothly at first. Virgin's LauncherOne rocket was able to detach from its carrier aircraft, and the company reported a successful stage separation. But soon, it became clear that the rocket wasn't able to reach orbit as planned. "[The rocket's] upper stage experienced an anomaly," a company spokesperson told Engadget at the time, and that "prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage." They added: "This event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever achieving orbit." 

The LauncherOne rocket for the mission was carrying satellites from seven customers, including government entities. One of its payloads was a joint project between the UK Defense Science and Technology Laboratory and the US Naval Research Laboratory called CIRCE (Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment). Virgin Orbit promised to conduct a full investigation into the root cause of the anomaly, but it didn't wait for results to come back before announcing that it was going to attempt another UK launch as soon as later this year. 

The company isn't done with its investigation, Hart said during the event, but he was confident enough to reveal the investigators' findings: "Everything points to, right now, a filter that was clearly there when we assembled the rocket but was not there as the second stage engine started, meaning it was dislodged and caused mischief downstream," he said. "This is like a $100 part that took us out." Hart also said that Virgin Orbit is no longer going to use that filter and that it's currently looking for potential fixes. 

Scientists will soon have a spaceborne tool to study environmental changes at a very high resolution, and you won't have long to wait to learn more about it. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is holding a question and answer session today (February 3rd) at 5PM Eastern to discuss NISAR (NASA-ISRO SAR), an Earth-mapping satellite built in tandem with the Indian Space Research Organization. It's not launching from India until early 2024 and is planned to operate for three years, but it includes breakthrough tech that could help understand Earth and cope with natural disasters. 

NISAR is the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequencies (the L and S microwave bands). This will let it systematically map the Earth's crust at an exceptional level of detail — it can detect changes under 1cm (0.4in) across. That will let NISAR observe even subtle nuances of earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters. It will also help monitor long-term processes, including the crust's evolution, ecosystem disruptions and ice sheet collapses.

Access to data will also play an important role. NISAR offers worldwide coverage every 12 days, making time-based imagery more practical. The mission team hopes to make data readily available to the public in one to two days, but can deliver that data within hours in an emergency. Anyone willing to parse the information can make use of it.

With an estimated $1.5 billion price, NISAR is expected to be the most expensive Earth imaging satellite to date. The investment may be worthwhile, though. The satellite's data could help governments react to and prepare for natural disasters, and improve humanity's understandings of climate change and threats to food security.