Welcome to Edition 6.36 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX wants to launch the next Starship test flight as soon as early May, the company's president and chief operating officer said this week. The third Starship test flight last week went well enough that the Federal Aviation Administration—yes, the FAA, the target of many SpaceX fans' frustrations—anticipates a simpler investigation and launch licensing process than SpaceX went through before its previous Starship flights. However, it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for Starship to start launching real satellites.

 

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Starship could threaten small launch providers. Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX's giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship's ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.

 

Well, yeah ... SpaceX's dedicated rideshare missions are already reshaping the small satellite launch market. The price per kilogram of payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launching a Transporter mission is less than the price per unit on a smaller rocket, like Rocket Lab's Electron, Firefly's Alpha, or Europe's Vega. Companies operating only in the smallsat launch market tout the benefits of their services, often pointing to their ability to deliver payloads into bespoke orbits, rather than dropping off bunches of satellites into more standardized orbits. But the introduction of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for last-mile delivery services has made SpaceX's Transporter missions, and potentially Starship rideshares, more attractive. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles," Fragnito said.

 

Rocket Lab launches again from Virginia. Rocket Lab's fourth launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, and the company's first there in nine months, took off early Thursday with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government's spy satellite agency, Space News reports. A two-stage Electron rocket placed the NRO's payload into low-Earth orbit, and officials declared it a successful mission. The NRO did not disclose any details about the payload, but in a post-launch statement, the agency suggested the mission was conducting technology demonstrations of some kind. “The knowledge gained from this research will advance innovation and enable the development of critical new technology," said Chris Scolose, director of the NRO.

 

A steady customer for Rocket Lab ... The National Reconnaissance Office has become a regular customer of Rocket Lab. The NRO has historically launched larger spacecraft, such as massive bus-sized spy satellites, but like the Space Force, is beginning to launch larger numbers of small satellites. This mission, designated NROL-123 by the NRO, was the fifth and last mission under a Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract between NRO and Rocket Lab, dating back to 2020. It was also Rocket Lab's second launch in nine days, following an Electron flight last week from its primary base in New Zealand. Overall, it was the 46th launch of a light-class Electron rocket since it debuted in 2017. Rocket Lab is building a launch pad for its next-generation Neutron rocket at Wallops. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

 

Night flight for Astrobotic's Xodiac. The Xodiac rocket, a small terrestrial vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology testbed, made its first night flight, Astrobotic says in a statement. The liquid-fueled Xodiac is designed for vertical hops and can host prototype sensors and other payloads, particularly instruments in development to assist in precision landings on other worlds. This first tethered night flight of Xodiac in Mojave, California, was in preparation for upcoming flight testing with the NASA TechLeap Prize’s Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge. These flights will begin in April, allowing NASA to test the ability of sensors to map a landing field designed to simulate the Moon's surface in near-total darkness.

 

Building on the legacy of Masten ... Xodiac has completed more than 160 successful flights, dating back to the vehicle's original owner, Masten Space Systems. Masten filed for bankruptcy in 2022, and the company was acquired by Astrobotic a couple of months later. Astrobotic's primary business area is in developing and flying robotic Moon landers, so it has a keen interest in mastering automated landing and navigation technologies like those it is testing with NASA on Xodiac. David Masten, founder of Masten Space Systems, is now chief engineer for Astrobotic's propulsion and test department. "The teams will demonstrate their systems over the LSPG (Lunar Surface Proving Ground) at night to simulate landing on the Moon during the lunar night or in shadowed craters." (submitted by Ken the Bin)

 

US military taps Firefly to study cislunar missions. The military's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has signed an agreement with Firefly Aerospace to conduct a "trade study" on its capabilities to launch Firefly's Elytra space tugs and support missions beyond geosynchronous orbit, a region of space the military calls xGEO. The xGEO region of space includes the Moon and orbits around it. The military is interested in "responsive access" to cislunar space as NASA, commercial companies, and other countries launch more missions to explore the Moon. According to the DIU, access to this region of space is "absolutely necessary" for the US military to "foster safe and secure commercial and civil growth." The DIU is managing the Sinequone program to examine commercial launch and orbital transfer systems that could deliver payloads to xGEO orbits or cislunar space.

 

Possible demonstrations ... The DIU said it received 112 solution briefs from 94 companies in response to the Sinequone solicitation. Firefly's Elytra transfer vehicle hasn't flown in space yet, but the company plans to test it in orbit for the first time later this year following a launch on Firefly's Alpha rocket. Firefly's study for the DIU could lay the groundwork for up to two Firefly demonstration missions with three to six military-sponsored spacecraft that will advance responsive access to xGEO. Firefly is also building a robotic lunar lander to fly on a NASA-funded mission later this year. “Firefly’s robust vehicle lines and proven responsive space capabilities put us in a unique position to rapidly service the vast region of space from GEO to the Moon and beyond,” said Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SLC-40 is ready for astronauts. Upgrades at SpaceX's most-used launch pad in Florida got a trial run Thursday with the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship heading for the International Space Station, Ars reports. This mission, known as CRS-30, is SpaceX's 30th resupply mission to the space station since 2012. But what's new this time is it was the first launch in four years of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In the last few months, SpaceX has erected a new tower at SLC-40 with an access arm to ready the launch pad for future Crew Dragon launches on Falcon 9 rockets. The Cargo Dragon is the same size and shape as Crew Dragon, so SpaceX used this resupply mission to test out the upgrades at SLC-40 before making it available for human spaceflight missions.

 

Relieving congestion ... Launch congestion is becoming a thing, and having SLC-40 as an option for crew launches will relieve pressure on nearby Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), which until now has been SpaceX's only launch pad designed to accommodate Crew Dragon missions. LC-39A is also SpaceX's only Falcon Heavy launch pad. There have been times, as recently as last month, when two missions that required launches from LC-39A were ready to fly at the same time, leading to tough choices by SpaceX. This is something that SpaceX can avoid in the future, now that SLC-40 is available for a wider range of launches.

 

Europe turns to SpaceX for more launches. The European Union has reached an agreement with the United States that will allow for the launch of four Galileo navigation satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Ars reports. According to Politico, the security agreement permits staff working for the EU and European Space Agency to have access to the launch pad at all times and, should there be a mishap with the mission, the first opportunity to retrieve debris. This will be the first time Galileo satellites, similar in function to the US military's GPS satellites, have been exported outside European territory. With the agreement, final preparations can begin for two launches of two satellites each on the Falcon 9 rocket from Florida later this year. The satellites, which each weigh about 700 kilograms, will be launched into an orbit about 22,000 kilometers above the planet.

 

No rides available in Europe ... The EU regards Galileo as a national security program. Like GPS, these satellites have dual use for civilian and military applications. European officials would prefer to launch these satellites on European rockets. In fact, at one time, these satellites were supposed to fly on Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket. But the Ariane 6 still hasn't flown, and a backup option, Russia's Soyuz, is no longer available after Europe and Russia cut ties on joint launches following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This has led ESA to turn to SpaceX's Falcon 9 for several launches, including a flight with the Euclid space telescope last year and a flight with an ESA Earth science satellite coming up in May. Now, the EU and ESA, partners on the Galileo program, are buying two more Falcon 9 flights from SpaceX.

 

A rare countdown abort for Soyuz. On Thursday, a crew of three people was due to launch on a Soyuz rocket bound for the International Space Station. However, the launch scrubbed at about 20 seconds before the planned liftoff time, just before the sequence to ignite the rocket's engines was initiated, due to unspecified issues, Ars reports. The three people inside the Soyuz spacecraft, on top of the rocket, were NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus. Assuming Russian engineers fix whatever problem caused Thursday's countdown to abort, the next opportunity to launch the Soyuz MS-25 mission is no earlier than Saturday.

 

This doesn't happen often ... Such scrubs are rare. The Soyuz booster and its launch systems are typically robust, launching regardless of weather conditions—watching an orbital, liquid-fueled rocket launch during a snowstorm is quite a trip. And the Russians have plenty of experience with the booster. Since its debut in 1966, across several variants, the Soviet Union and Russia have launched more than 2,000 Soyuz rockets.

 

Chinese launch is a milestone for Moon program. The next phase of China's Moon program began with the launch of a new data relay satellite Monday to link lunar landers and rovers on the far side of the Moon with ground controllers back on Earth, Ars reports. This launch, using China's relatively new Long March 8 rocket, sent the Queqiao-2 relay spacecraft toward the Moon, where it will enter an elliptical orbit and position itself for the arrival of China's next robotic lunar lander, Chang'e 6, later this year. Queqiao-2 will relay radio signals to and from Chang'e 6 as it scoops up rock samples from the far side of the Moon for return to Earth.

 

Further use … After Chang'e 6, at least two more Chinese lunar missions will also use relay services provided by Queqiao-2. The robotic Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8 missions, scheduled for launch in 2026 and 2028, will target landing sites in the Moon's south pole region, where observations from orbit show evidence of water ice locked inside the dark floors of polar craters. While NASA is ahead of China in the effort to return astronauts to the Moon, the launch of Queqiao-2, China's second lunar relay satellite, makes China the leader in building out this type of infrastructure at the Moon. The US space agency is not developing any lunar data relay satellites on its own. Instead, NASA is relying on commercial companies and international partners to build and launch relay stations for future US landers going to the far side.

 

Ariane 6 is coming together in Kourou. The two stages for Ariane 6’s first flight are now assembled as one and ready for the next step on the road to launch, according to the European Space Agency. The upper stage and main stage were connected in the launcher assembly building at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Once integration is completed, the two-stage core will roll out to the launch pad and be raised vertically. This week also marked another milestone in Kourou for the first flight of Ariane 6. ArianeGroup, the rocket's prime contractor, completed manufacturing of the first of two strap-on solid rocket boosters for the inaugural Ariane 6 launch. This booster is now in storage awaiting transfer to the launch pad, where ground teams will attach it and an identical booster to each side of the Ariane 6 core stage once it arrives at the pad later this spring.

 

Payloads confirmed … The first flight of Ariane 6 remains scheduled for sometime between June 15 and July 31. Because it's the first launch, Ariane 6 will not launch any large valuable payloads. Instead, commercial startups, space agencies, and university teams will take advantage of the flight opportunity to launch nine small satellite payloads and two small reentry capsules into low-Earth orbit. These include missions to test heat shield technology and reentry systems for ArianeGroup and The Exploration Company, along with CubeSats sponsored by ESA and NASA. (submitted by Ken the Bin, Jay500001, and EllPeaTea)

SpaceX eyes quick turnaround for next Starship flight. Starship reached near-orbital velocity during its third test flight last week, largely validating its capability as an expendable rocket while SpaceX continues to try to nail down vehicle recovery, Payload reports. With a less cumbersome regulatory and hardware update period ahead, SpaceX expects an expedited turnaround time and is targeting the next Starship test flight in six weeks, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and chief operating officer. Some improvements SpaceX will likely try to test on the fourth Starship test flight include better control of the Super Heavy booster on the descent, securing heat shield tiles, and eliminating roll issues on Starship during orbital operations and reentry.

 

FAA is onboard …“We didn’t see anything major. We don’t think there’s any critical systems for safety that were implicated,” Kelvin Coleman, head of the FAA's space division, said Monday. “Usually if there’s not any critical systems for safety implicated, the mishap investigation can be pretty clean and it can move pretty quickly.” Based on the FAA's decision, the Starship test flight last week technically resulted in a mishap because the vehicle did not reach Earth's surface intact. This triggers a mishap investigation by SpaceX, which the FAA must review before issuing a launch license for the next Starship flight. However, Coleman said the issues SpaceX encountered with Starship last week didn't reveal any safety concerns. Shotwell said the next Starship launch won't carry any Starlink satellites, but SpaceX will instead use the test flight to demonstrate the ship's ability to survive reentry into the atmosphere. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)

Next three launches

March 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-42 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 23:57 UTC

March 23: Soyuz 2.1a | Soyuz MS-25 | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | 12:36 UTC

March 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-46 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21:00 UTC

 

Scientists are keen to develop new materials for lightweight, flexible, and affordable wearable electronics so that, one day, dropping our smartphones won't result in irreparable damage. One team at the University of California, Merced, has made conductive polymer films that actually toughen up in response to impact rather than breaking apart, much like mixing corn starch and water in appropriate amounts produces a slurry that is liquid when stirred slowly but hardens when you punch it (i.e., "oobleck"). They described their work in a talk at this week's meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

 

As we've previously reported, oobleck is simple and easy to make. Mix one part water to two parts corn starch, add a dash of food coloring for fun, and you've got oobleck, which behaves as either a liquid or a solid, depending on how much stress is applied. Stir it slowly and steadily and it's a liquid. Punch it hard and it turns more solid under your fist. It's a classic example of a non-Newtonian fluid.

 

In an ideal fluid, the viscosity largely depends on temperature and pressure: Water will continue to flow regardless of other forces acting upon it, such as being stirred or mixed. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the viscosity changes in response to an applied strain or shearing force, thereby straddling the boundary between liquid and solid behavior. Stirring a cup of water produces a shearing force, and the water shears to move out of the way. The viscosity remains unchanged. But for non-Newtonian fluids like oobleck, the viscosity changes when a shearing force is applied.

 

Ketchup, for instance, is a shear-thickening non-Newtonian fluid, which is one reason smacking the bottom of the bottle doesn't make the ketchup come out any faster; the application of force increases the viscosity. Yogurt, gravy, mud, and pudding are other examples. And so is oobleck. (The name derives from a 1949 Dr. Seuss children's book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck.) By contrast, non-drip paint exhibits a "shear-thinning" effect, brushing on easily but becoming more viscous once it's on the wall. Last year, MIT scientists confirmed that the friction between particles was critical to that liquid-to-solid transition, identifying a tipping point when the friction reached a certain level and the viscosity abruptly increased.

 

Wu works in the lab of materials scientist Yue (Jessica) Wang, who decided to try to mimic the shear-thickening behavior of oobleck in a polymer material. Flexible polymer electronics are usually made by linking together conjugated conductive polymers, which are long and thin, like spaghetti. But these materials will still break apart in response to particularly large and/or rapid impacts.

 

So Wu and Wang decided to combine the spaghetti-like polymers with shorter polyaniline molecules and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate, or PEDOT:PSS—four different polymers in all. Two of the four have a positive charge, and two have a negative charge. They used that mixture to make stretchy films and then tested the mechanical properties.

 

Lo and behold, the films behaved very much like oobleck, deforming and stretching in response to impact rather than breaking apart. Wang likened the structure to a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs since the positively charged molecules don't like water and therefore cluster into ball-like microstructures. She and Wu suggest that those microstructures absorb impact energy, flattening without breaking apart. And it doesn't take much PEDOT:PSS to get this effect: just 10 percent was sufficient.

 

Further experiments identified an even more effective additive: positively charged 1,3-propanediamine nanoparticles. These particles can weaken the "meatball" polymer interactions just enough so that they can deform even more in response to impacts, while strengthening the interactions between the entangled long spaghetti-like polymers.

 

The next step is to apply their polymer films to wearable electronics like smartwatch bands and sensors, as well as flexible electronics for monitoring health. Wang's lab has also experimented with a new version of the material that would be compatible with 3D printing, opening up even more opportunities. “There are a number of potential applications, and we’re excited to see where this new, unconventional property will take us,” said Wang.

 

Antibodies are incredibly useful. Lots of recently developed drugs rely on antibodies that bind to and block the activity of specific proteins. They're also great research tools, allowing us to identify proteins within cells, purify both proteins and cells, and so on. Therapeutic antibodies have provided our first defenses against emerging viruses like Ebola and SARS-CoV-2.

 

But making antibodies can be a serious pain, because it involves getting animals to make antibodies for us. You need to purify the protein you want the antibodies to stick to, inject it into an animal, and get the animal to produce antibodies as part of an immune response. From there, you either purify the antibodies, or to purify the cells that produce them. It's time-consuming, doesn't always work, and sometimes produces antibodies with properties that you're not looking for.

 

But thanks to developments in AI-based protein predictions, all that hassle might become unnecessary. A recently developed diffusion model for protein structures has been adapted to antibody production and has successfully designed antibodies against flu virus proteins.

Making the antibody of your choice

Humans (and many other mammals) make antibodies that are four-protein complexes composed of two heavy and two light proteins. Both heavy and light proteins have constant regions, which are the same or similar among all antibodies produced. They also both have a variable region, which is unique to every antibody. It's the variable region that's responsible for recognizing proteins in viruses and other pathogens. Some other mammals, like camels, skip the light proteins and have antibodies that are simply a pair of heavy proteins (which still recognize pathogens via the variable regions of the heavy proteins).

 

The body doesn't know what proteins it will eventually need to recognize. So, it simply makes a lot of antibody-producing cells, each with a unique combination of heavy and light variable regions. When any of these cells run into the protein their antibodies recognize, they start dividing and produce a lot of the needed antibody. It takes time for these cells to mature and additional time to purify them. Plus, there's no guarantee that the specific combination of variable regions will be the optimal one for recognizing a protein.

 

The only way to avoid the hassle and uncertainty of getting an animal to generate antibodies for us is to figure out how to design antibodies that will recognize what we want. And that just hasn't been possible. We don't understand enough about how proteins fold up into a three-dimensional configuration to design one that will adopt a shape of our choice—one that wraps around a specific target.

 

We still don't really understand enough to do that intentionally. But in recent years, we've trained AI software to take a string of amino acids and accurately predict the three-dimensional structure that this protein would adopt. And, more recently, people have figured out how to merge these with diffusion models to create software that can design proteins that will adopt a specified configuration.

 

It turns out that this approach can be adopted for designing antibodies.

Training for antibodies

Antibodies present a distinctive challenge in that they don't simply have to adopt a specific configuration; they have to shape that configuration around another molecule and present the right sort of chemical environment to make any interactions sticky. However, the basic concept of training a diffusion model ended up working out well.

 

The basic concept behind diffusion models is that they're trained on both the end state (meaning a photo, or the structure of a protein), and noisy versions of that state. Once trained, if they're given something that's mostly noise, they'll readily hallucinate their way to something that resembles a reasonable end state.

 

So, the team behind the new work, led by the University of Washington's David Baker, adapted this approach to work with antibodies. There are many examples of detailed structures of an antibody bound to the protein it recognizes. So, the researchers started with these and added noise by shifting the position of the amino acids of the antibody. These target/noise combinations were fed to RFDiffusion, the previous software used for AI-based protein design.

 

The process worked in the sense that the resulting software could produce an amino acid sequence that it predicted would bind to a specific protein target. However, it produced a lot of predictions for each target, and the authors used other protein structure software to evaluate the strength of the interactions between the proposed antibody and its target.

 

In the end, they made antibodies the software predicted would bind to a number of disease-relevant proteins (they tested examples from the flu virus, the respiratory syncytial virus, and a toxin from Clostridium difficile). All of them stuck to their targets, although the strength of the interaction varied considerably. The team also purified the antibody-flu virus protein complex, and determined its structure, showing it largely reflected the software's prediction.

More to come?

The researchers acknowledge that they still have work to do, writing, "there is considerable room for improvements, as the binding affinities are modest." In animals, the genes for antibodies often undergo accelerated mutation, which produces additional variants that can fine-tune the interactions with pathogens. It might be possible to perform a similar process in software to improve affinities once a structure has been identified.

 

Still, even given the limited success, this could be a very useful tool. Antibodies are used for many things, and we could use them for many more if we could target them to additional proteins. And the researchers suggest that it would be relatively easy to modify the software to allow it to target non-protein chemicals.

 

The bioRxiv. Abstract number: 10.1101/2024.03.14.585103v1  (About the arXiv).

 

 

Former NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, a three-star Air Force general known for a historic handshake in space with a Soviet cosmonaut nearly 50 years ago, died Monday in Florida. He was 93.

 

Stafford was perhaps the most accomplished astronaut of his era who never walked on the Moon. He flew in space four times, helping pilot the first rendezvous with another crewed spacecraft in orbit in 1966 and taking NASA's Apollo lunar landing craft on a final test run before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon in 1969.

 

By his own account, one of the greatest moments in Stafford's career came in 1975, when he commanded the final Apollo mission—not to the Moon but to low-Earth orbit—and linked up with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Soviet cosmonauts. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) planted the seeds for a decades-long partnership in space between the United States and Russia, culminating in the International Space Station, where US and Russian crews still work together despite a collapse in relations back on Earth.

 

"Today, General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heavens, which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as a peacemaker in the Apollo-Soyuz mission," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "Those of us privileged to know him are very sad but grateful we knew a giant."

 

According to a report in The New York Times, Stafford's wife, Linda, said he had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer.

No false moves

Stafford was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, on September 17, 1930. He was a child of the Dust Bowl and dreamed of becoming a pilot from the time he was in grade school. After graduating with honors from the US Naval Academy, Stafford switched services and joined the Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot.

 

He attended the Air Force's Experimental Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, then became a test pilot and instructor. He authored textbooks and flight manuals used by later classes of test pilots, some of whom also went on to become astronauts.

 

In 1962, NASA selected Stafford as one of nine test pilots for the agency's second class of astronauts. Within two years, NASA assigned Stafford to fly on the first flight of the Gemini spacecraft, the two-man capsule designed to demonstrate spacewalk techniques, rendezvous, and docking, key capabilities to future Apollo flights to the Moon.

 

But Stafford's commander on Gemini 3, Alan Shepard, was grounded for health reasons. NASA opted to swap them for the mission's backup crew, and Stafford had to wait to fly on Gemini 6 a few months later.

 

That mission, which was supposed to attempt the first docking between two spacecraft in orbit, didn't get off to an auspicious start. Commander Walter "Wally" Shirra and Stafford were supposed to guide their Gemini spacecraft to a linkup with an unpiloted target vehicle called an Agena, which would launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, about 90 minutes before Gemini 6, which sat on a different launch pad a couple of miles away.

 

"We could hear it roar off the pad, and 90 minutes later, when it came across the Cape, we were going to go," Stafford recalled in a 2015 oral history interview with NASA. The launch failed, and the Agena target vehicle did not make it into orbit, so Gemini 6 was grounded.

 

Within a few weeks, NASA officials devised a new flight plan for Gemini 6. This new mission, called Gemini 6A, would rendezvous with the Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965, less than two months after their launch was scuttled due to the Agena failure. This wouldn't achieve the goal of physically docking two spacecraft in orbit, but it would get close, allowing NASA and its crewmen to demonstrate two capsules could fly in formation while orbiting the Earth.

 

This was an essential capability NASA had to prove in order to meet President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

 

"You got to remember, the whole thing, we’re building this big building at the Cape, with the giant Saturn V (rocket), the lunar module, command module, all based on doing a rendezvous around the Moon," Stafford said. "Nobody had ever done one. That was critical. Everything was based on rendezvous."

 

 

With Gemini 7 already in space, Stafford and Schirra strapped into their seats again to launch on the renamed Gemini 6A mission. As the countdown reached zero, they felt the engine on their Titan II rocket rumble to life more than 100 feet below. But the rocket didn't go anywhere, and the engines shut off moments later.

 

It was a hair-raising moment. Schirra had his hand on a D-ring between his legs, ready to eject himself and Stafford out of the capsule for what would surely be a violent ride. If Schirra pulled the handle, the mission would be ruined, the spacecraft destroyed, and the astronauts would risk injury or worse. The Gemini spacecraft was pressurized with pure oxygen prior to launch. Lighting off the rockets of the astronauts' ejection seats in that environment could be disastrous.

 

"We didn’t do a thing," Stafford said. "We had lots of simulations of hold kills, but none exactly like that. But we knew in the seat of our pants that we hadn’t lifted off. We also didn’t know about (how it would react in) 100 percent oxygen ... We had been soaking like that for two hours. Shoot, if we’d fired that, bang, pyrotechnics, open the hatches and snub them, fire the rockets, boy, you’d see two Roman candles going up."

 

Technicians discovered an umbilical plug prematurely fell from the bottom of the rocket, causing the engine shutdown. But that wasn't the only problem. One of the rocket's two engine chambers was already losing thrust before the countdown cut off, and inspections revealed someone left a dust cover in the engine during manufacturing.

 

In three days, those problems were resolved, and Gemini 6A lifted off on December 15, 1965.

 

Schirra and Stafford flew their spacecraft within about a foot (30 centimeters) of Gemini 7, which carried astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a two-week flight in orbit, the longest human spaceflight mission to date. Gemini 6A returned to a splashdown after about one day in orbit.

 

 

Stafford's second mission, Gemini 9A, came less than six months later. He took command of Gemini 9A after the prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, died in an airplane crash in February 1966. Eugene Cernan was Stafford's crewmate on Gemini 9A.

 

The flight plan for Gemini 9A was supposed to be similar to the original profile for Gemini 6, with the objective of docking with an Agena target vehicle in low-Earth orbit. Gemini 8, commanded by Neil Armstrong, achieved the first docking with an Agena on the preceding Gemini mission.

 

But once again, the Agena didn't make it into orbit due to a rocket failure. NASA launched a backup target a couple of weeks later, but the aerodynamic shroud protecting it during launch failed to properly jettison. Gemini 9A launched anyway, and Stafford and Cernan approached the target vehicle several times before NASA officials abandoned the docking demonstration.

 

Cernan went ahead with a planned spacewalk on Gemini 9A, but the excursion was mired by trouble. Cernan's spacesuit became rigid as it pressurized, and he had difficulty maneuvering outside the spacecraft. His spacesuit visor started fogging up, and Cernan barely made it back inside the spacecraft. The astronauts safely returned to Earth after nearly four days in space.

Boulders down below

Stafford's next mission, Apollo 10, was the dress rehearsal for Armstrong and Aldrin's Apollo 11 landing. He paired up with Cernan again to test the Apollo lunar module on the Moon, taking the spidery-looking spacecraft within 47,000 feet of the lunar surface on May 22, 1969. Astronaut John Young flew with them to the Moon but stayed behind in lunar orbit to take care of the Apollo 10 command module.

 

The Apollo astronauts named their spaceships after characters in the Peanuts comic strip. The command module was christened Charlie Brown, while the lunar module got the name Snoopy.

 

Flying slightly higher than an airliner at cruising altitude, Stafford and Cernan marveled at the Moon's appearance. Large boulders—perhaps as big as Houston's Astrodome, Stafford later recalled—filled their narrow field of view as they peered out of Snoopy's windows

 

"There's enough boulders around here to fill up Galveston Bay," Stafford said. "It looks like we're getting so close, all we have to do is put the tail hook down and we're there."

 

Even if Stafford wanted to, and he wished he could have, the Snoopy was too heavy and didn't have enough fuel to make it down to the Moon's surface and then back into orbit. "My lunar module was too heavy to land. I would have been out of fuel," he later said. "Neil had the first lightweight lunar module, and he landed with 17 seconds of fuel. So I wish could have, but no dice."

 

Handshake in orbit

Following Apollo 10, Stafford served as chief of NASA's astronaut corps for nearly two years and then took a job as deputy director of flight crew operations. In 1971, he traveled to Moscow to represent the United States at the funeral of three Soviet cosmonauts who died in space on Soyuz 11, which depressurized just before reentry.

 

Around the same time, officials in the US and Soviet governments were discussing plans for a joint space mission, called Apollo-Soyuz or Soyuz-Apollo, depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you resided on. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin signed an agreement in 1972 approving the project. NASA named Stafford commander of the Apollo portion of the mission the following year.

 

 

NASA astronauts Vance Brand and Donald "Deke" Slayton rounded out the Apollo crew. Alexei Leonov, the first person to perform a spacewalk, commanded the Soyuz spacecraft. He was joined by cosmonaut Valery Kubasov.

 

Apollo-Soyuz was emblematic of a détente in the Cold War. This provided an opening for the joint space mission, which President Kennedy first proposed in the early 1960s.

 

Speaking in 2015, Stafford said he and his Apollo-Soyuz crewmates preferred to focus on the mission's technical challenges rather than its geopolitical implications. "We kept politics completely out of it," he said. "We never discussed politics. It was just the mission and we were going to make it a success."

 

For one thing, engineers needed to devise a way for Apollo and Soyuz to dock with one another. This required the design of a new docking mechanism, with an airlock in between the ships, which operated with entirely different atmospheres. Apollo's crew cabin was pure oxygen and low pressure, while Soyuz was kept at sea-level conditions, with the same mix of nitrogen and oxygen as Earth's atmosphere.

 

Stafford was a one-star Air Force general when he flew on Apollo-Soyuz in July 1975. Before becoming an astronaut, Stafford viewed himself as a "cold warrior" eager to fight communist forces in Korea or elsewhere. But he became fond of Russia's space program, particularly Leonov, whom he considered "like a brother."

 

"We had a very, very good team," Leonov said in 2005. "We understood each other. It was a necessary condition of our cooperation."

 

The handshake in orbit between Stafford and Leonov is an enduring image. Stafford, speaking Russian with a thick Oklahoma drawl, said, "May our joint work in space serve for the benefit of all countries and peoples on the Earth."

 

Apollo-Soyuz was a one-off mission, but it paved the way for deeper cooperation in space between the United States and Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russian cosmonauts flew on the space shuttle, and nine space shuttle missions docked with Russia's Mir space station in the 1990s, rotating US astronauts in and out on long-duration stays.

 

Now, the United States and Russia are again geopolitical adversaries, and nearly all semblance of cooperation between the two nations on Earth has withered. Still, though, both nations rely on one another to maintain and operate the International Space Station, which has now been in orbit for more than a quarter-century.

 

Stafford retired from the Air Force in 1979 and continued traveling to Russia for the rest of his life. He adopted two Russian children and attended the funeral of Leonov, the legendary cosmonaut, in 2019.

 

Never fully embracing retirement, Stafford remained an active participant in NASA's human spaceflight programs and chaired a study in 1991 advising the White House on how NASA should set off to, once again, explore the Moon and eventually send people to Mars. Stafford was "instrumental" in involving the Russians on the ISS program, according to an obituary posted on the website of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in his Oklahoma hometown.

 

After the death of seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, Stafford co-chaired an oversight committee charged with assessing NASA's compliance with the recommendations of the independent investigation into the accident. Stafford served as chairman of NASA's ISS Advisory Committee until his death.

 

Speaking to public audiences in the last few years, Stafford still displayed an encyclopedic knowledge of his space missions, reciting numbers and statistics as if he was reading a checklist. Perhaps, then, it's no surprise that in his autobiography Carrying the Fire, the late astronaut Michael Collins wrote that Stafford had a "fantastic memory and eye for technical facts and figures."

 

Stafford, Collins wrote, was the "world's greatest human computer."

 

 

 

Good morning. It's March 19, and today's photo comes from the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured it during his most recent visit to the orbiting laboratory in 2012.

 

After sharing the photo online this weekend, Pettit described how he captured this effect:

 

Star trail view via fisheye lens from the Cupola module aboard the ISS. A 360 degree view of Earth’s horizon shows green airglow in the lower part of the atmosphere (from atomic oxygen emissions), faint red airglow above the green (also due to atomic oxygen), purple aurora, and the soon to rise sun. The green airglow is about 120km thick which includes most of what we think of as our atmosphere. Star trails move in circles to the right and left of our flight path while those in the direction of motion move in a straight line. Cities at night form streaks from our orbital motion with an occasional flash of lightning as the purple spots. Captured with Nikon D3s, 8mm f2.8 fisheye, ISO 3200, 25 minute time exposure assembled from 30 second frames.

A chemical engineer by training, Pettit was one of the real pioneers of astrophotography during his two previous stays on the ISS. He is also quite the tinkerer and inventor—the kind of person you'd like to have along on a journey to Mars because he could probably improvise a fix to most problems.

 

The good news is that Pettit is heading back to space later this year, in September, on a Soyuz spacecraft. When he returns to Earth next year, he will be just a month shy of his 70th birthday!

 

Source: Pettit on reddit

 

We’ve managed to discover quite a lot about our Universe from our relatively limited vantage point here on Earth. Many of those discoveries have been worthy of nothing more than an updated entry in some catalog. But some have been deeply revolutionary, completely changing the way we view the cosmos and our relationship to it.

 

What follows is a list of what I, a theoretical cosmologist, believe to be the most impactful discoveries ever made in astronomy. To help winnow down the possibilities to a manageable top-five ranking, I had to concoct some criteria. First, we're looking at discoveries that are both broad and deep (in the scientific sense), findings that simultaneously reached further than any previous discovery and also enabled (or at least accelerated) a new paradigm or branch of astronomy.

 

Second, I want to emphasize discoveries that were not obvious and didn’t just need someone to build a big enough telescope or powerful enough computer. I want discoveries that needed radical leaps of intuition and science-minded daring—where an enterprising scientist went out on a limb and followed their curiosity wherever it led.

 

Lastly, these sorts of lists will always include bias, so let me put mine front and center. I am a theorist, so I'll naturally be more inclined to find theoretical insights more interesting, relevant, and horizon-expanding than purely observational exploits. That philosophy will help shape my list.

 

I’m sure you'll have your own picks, and you may or may not disagree with the rankings I’m about to present. That’s fine. In fact, I hope the following list provides a springboard for discussion and, because science is fun, celebration of our many accomplishments.

 

So without further ado, presented in chronological order because I couldn’t make myself rank them by order of importance, I present to you the greatest astronomical discoveries of all time.

 

So far. According to me.

1) We’re gonna need a bigger boat

This first discovery is so old that we don’t even have direct access to the work of the man who accomplished it, a certain Greek polymath by the name of Eratosthenes. Living around 250 BCE, Eratosthenes was the first to develop an accurate method for measuring the circumference of the Earth. And like all great theorists before and since, he didn’t even need to get out of his pajamas to do it.

 

We only know of the work of Eratosthenes from a summary provided centuries later by another Greek astronomer, Cleomedes, who is mostly famous for… telling us about Eratosthenes. According to his summary, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth by waiting for the summer solstice. At the solstice, the Sun stood directly overhead at noon at the city of Syene (today Aswan) in southern Egypt. Eratosthenes lived in Alexandria, several hundred miles north, so at that precise moment, the Sun was a little off from directly overhead. By measuring the angle of the Sun’s position and combining that with the known distance to Syene (something calculated by professional walker-measurers), Eratosthenes could calculate Earth’s circumference. He arrived at a startlingly accurate measurement, within a few percent of the modern value.

 

 

Presumably by the time of Eratosthenes, anyone who was paying attention already knew the Earth was round—the point of this work wasn’t to disprove flatness but to measure the circumference of an already assumed globe. But Eratosthenes was perhaps the first person in history to make a measurement of something far beyond direct human perception. There was no way for anybody to send teams of walker-measurers out to travel the entire circumference; instead, Eratosthenes devised a clever trick that used our relation to the heavens to let the Sun do the measuring for us.

 

Eratosthenes wrangled celestial objects and made them do his bidding. This was no mere astrology, with its tortured attempts to use the stars and planets to divine the fortunes of us mortals on Earth. This was astronomy, using careful and clever measurements to discover something new about the world.

2) A call to order

At the dawn of the scientific revolution, many prominent thinkers, philosophers, and even theologians (to be clear, there wasn't a large difference between these groups at the time) helped us make radical leaps in our understanding of the Universe. We had Galileo with his fancy telescope, Copernicus with his wild heliocentric idea, and more.

 

And then we had Kepler. Johannes Kepler. The brightest pupil of Tycho Brahe (who was perhaps the greatest astronomer to ever live, at least according to one T. Brahe), Kepler would go on to provide the first clean, simple, and universal description of the motion of objects in the heavens. Among pages and pages of theoretical musings that mostly focused on the divine music of the heavens, Kepler described three laws of planetary motion: the planets moved in ellipses, their motion carved out equal areas in equal time, and there was a relationship between a planet’s distance from the Sun and the duration of its orbit.

 

Nothing like this had ever been deduced before. Working from an ungodly number of hand-written tabulations of planetary positions, Kepler’s work provided the theoretical springboard for the entire scientific revolution. Here, Kepler was able to succinctly and accurately describe a whole host of phenomena with three simple statements. Kepler’s laws were so simple and so easy to calculate that it drove the transition from a geocentric to a heliocentric conception of the Universe. Without ellipses, the heliocentric model of Copernicus, the one championed by Galileo, wasn’t that much simpler than previous models. With elliptical orbits, the Sun-centered Universe was a slam dunk.

 

 

But it was Kepler’s third law, where he discovered a universal formula relating a planet’s distance to its orbital speed, that really set the groundwork for the entirety of modern physics, a physics centered on unification and universalization. It’s all about trying to find simple statements that can explain as much as possible, and the first one to get us down this road was Kepler. He discovered a simple law that described the behavior of every planet, regardless of its composition or position or distance from the Sun, from any star.

 

Working nearly a century after Kepler, Isaac Newton would publish his theory of universal gravitation as an attempt to explain Kepler’s laws. From there, we can look to the work of Maxwell, Einstein, and other giants as they brought order to a chaotic cosmos—all building on Kepler.

3) Does my universe look big in these pants?

It wasn’t enough for Edwin Hubble to discover that a) galaxies exist and b) they’re really far away from us. These observations, made in the early 1920s, should have been more than adequate to earn him a Nobel prize and cement his place in scientific history. Hubble made our Universe very big in a way that nobody else ever had. He provided the first solid evidence that the Andromeda “nebula” was really an island of stars separated from us by millions of light-years, orders of magnitude greater than even the wildest conceptions of “extremely distant” were at the time.

 

But he just couldn’t help himself. Working with the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory—at the time, the largest telescope in the world—he discovered that our Universe wasn’t just big. It was getting bigger.

 

In a series of careful, precise, painstaking observations, Hubble revealed that galaxies were on the move. By then, astronomers had gotten used to the idea of planets moving, stars moving, and giant gas clouds moving. But we were just getting our heads around the concept of galaxies when Hubble forced us to contend with their motion. And in a surprise twist that almost nobody expected, the motion of those galaxies wasn’t random.

 

Hubble discovered that, on average, every galaxy is receding away from us and that the speed of their recession is proportional to their distance from us. At the end of his short, readable paper on the subject, Hubble wondered aloud if there was already a theory available to explain the evidence: the work of dear old Albert and his general theory of relativity.

 

Some other folks, like Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre, had already used relativity to guess that we might just live in an expanding Universe. But those were just guesses. This was evidence. Hard and hard-to-get evidence. Evidence that would give birth to an entire field: physical cosmology. In less than a generation, we would be forced to revamp the picture of the Universe that we all carry in our heads. Prior to Hubble’s work, astronomers assumed that the Universe was static, forever unchanging throughout eternity. Hubble’s result clearly demonstrated that we live in an evolving, dynamic, living Universe—one that was different in the past and continues to change with every passing day.

 

One that has a finite age and a finite extent. One that has a birth—the Big Bang—and one that will someday die.

4) Of course black holes are on the list

This entry has no single figure or unique observation that changed our view of the Universe in a short period of time. Instead, it took decades to convince the astronomical community that black holes were real. We are still grappling with that realization today.

 

It began with Einstein, although he didn’t know it. Einstein reformulated our understanding of gravity in terms of the bending and warping of spacetime (he did so, by the way, to unite Newton’s gravity with his own special theory of relativity, continuing the program of unification started by Kepler). Mere months after Einstein published his general theory of relativity, the German Karl Schwarzschild discovered how to write down the solution for the gravitational environment around a spherically symmetric ball of mass like, handily enough, the Sun.

 

In Schwarzschild's equations, there was a special radius, a distance from the center of that ball of mass, where all hell broke loose and the math suggested that something catastrophic happened. Unfortunately, Schwarzschild then promptly, and quite tragically, fell ill in the trenches of World War I and died. That horror meant he never got to witness the horror that he unleashed on the world of physics.

 

Physicists and astronomers spent decades debating what would happen if you could compress a bunch of matter below this “Schwarzschild radius,” as it came to be known. Some argued that gravity would always win and just keep compressing the matter until it collapsed into an infinitely dense point. Most argued that this was ridiculous because nothing is infinitely dense, and some other force or mechanism would avert complete disaster.

 

 

Before it was even discovered, the madness inside a Schwarzschild radius got a name: black hole, an object of intense theoretical scrutiny and observational skepticism. Slowly, ever so slowly, the evidence for their existence continued to grow. Nowadays, we take them as a given, but that’s after nearly a century of effort put into theory to flesh them out and observations to look for their influence in the cosmos.

 

But we still don’t understand them. We know that the singularities, those points of infinite density, don’t really exist, but we don’t know what to replace them with because we don’t have a better understanding of gravity at those scales. We don’t know what happens at the event horizons, the cooler name we have now for the Schwarzschild radius. And everything gets worse when we try to incorporate quantum mechanics into the picture. So black holes are almost a field of astronomy in their own right. They sit there, taunting us with their existence, refusing to yield their secrets.

 

Jerks.

5) How to make an apple pie

When Carl Sagan offered viewers the recipe for an apple pie in his famous Cosmos segment, he had to start with the Big Bang. In the first few minutes of the existence of the Universe, our cosmos manufactured hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. Fast-forward to the present day and we have an entire periodic table full of elements. But how do we get from a primordial ooze of light elements to the ingredients needed to make an apple pie?

 

The answer is in the stars. In 1920, the great astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington took the latest developments in quantum mechanics, special relativity, and subatomic physics to guess that nuclear fusion played a role in the generation of a star’s heat. But it would take until 1957 for the full picture to come into focus thanks to a quartet of researchers: Margaret Burbidge, her husband Geoffrey Burbidge, William (“Willy”) Fowler, and Sir Fred Hoyle.

No Nobel prizes. No tickertape parades. No headlines racing across the globe. Just good, careful, methodical, comprehensive science. In their work, they created a detailed and complete accounting of how stars produce elements through nuclear fusion. How primordial hydrogen is burned in the heart of every Main Sequence star to produce helium. How, once near the end of their lives, those stars fuse helium into carbon and oxygen. How heavier stars can go on to produce silicon, oxygen, iron, and more. And how their cataclysmic deaths via supernovae can flood the rest of the periodic table.

 

This is the story of us. Of everything. Of the grand symphony of stars that have lived and died and recycled their elements, generation after generation over billions of years. With this insight into stellar nucleosynthesis, the circle is complete. The heavens are not some abstract realm, accessible to human perception but otherwise disconnected from us. We are made of the ashes of dead stars, and someday in the distant future, our molecules will be recycled into the creation of a new system. There are chains, light-years long and millions of years deep, that connect the stars to us and us to the stars. It's in this work that we finally understand our place in the Universe, our part in the great cosmic drama.

 

And it turns out that the Universe can make a decent apple pie.

 

What can live for over 3,000 years, weigh over 150 tonnes and could be sitting almost unnoticed in your local park? Giant sequoias (known as giant redwoods in the UK) are among the tallest and heaviest organisms that have ever lived on Earth, not to mention they have the potential to live longer than other species.

 

My team’s new study is the first to look at the growth of giant sequoias in the UK—and they seem to be doing remarkably well. Trees at two of the three sites we studied matched the average growth rates of their counterparts in the US, where they come from. These remarkable trees are being planted in an effort to help absorb carbon, but perhaps more importantly they are becoming a striking and much-admired part of the UK landscape.

 

To live so long, giant sequoias have evolved to be extraordinarily resilient. In their native northern California, they occupy an ecological niche in mountainous terrain 1,400–2,100 meters above sea level.

 

Their thick, spongy bark insulates against fire and disease, and they can survive severe winters and arid summers. Despite these challenges, these trees absorb and store CO₂ faster and in greater quantities than almost any other in the world, storing up to five times more carbon per hectare than even tropical rainforests. However, the changing climate means Californian giant sequoias are under threat from more frequent and extreme droughts and fires. More than 10 percent of the remaining population of around 80,000 wild trees were killed in a single fire in 2020 alone.

Tree giants from the US

What is much less well-known is that there are an estimated half a million sequoias (wild and planted) in England, dotted across the landscape. So how well are the UK giant sequoias doing? To try and answer this, my team used a technique called terrestrial laser scanning to measure the size and volume of giant sequoias.

 

The laser sends out half a million pulses a second and if a pulse hits a tree, the 3D location of each “hit” is recorded precisely. This gives us a map of tree structure in unprecedented detail, which we can use to estimate volume and mass, effectively allowing us to estimate the tree’s weight. If we know how old the trees are, we can estimate how fast they are growing and accumulating carbon.

 

As part of a Master’s project with former student Ross Holland, and along with colleagues at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, we measured giant sequoias across three sites—Benmore botanical gardens in Scotland, Kew Wakehurst in Sussex, and Havering Country Park in Essex. These sites span the wettest (Benmore) and driest (Havering) climates in the UK, enabling us to assess how rainfall affects growth.

 

The fastest-growing trees we measured are growing almost as fast as they do in California, adding 70 cm of height and storing 160 kg of carbon per year, about twice that of a native UK oak. The trees at Benmore are already among the tallest trees in the UK at 55 meters, the current record-holder being a 66-meter Douglas Fir in Scotland. The redwoods, being faster growing, are likely to take that title in the next decade or two. And these trees are “only” around 170 years old. No native tree in the UK is taller than about 47 meters. We also found significant differences in growth rates across the UK. They grow fastest in the north, where the climate is wetter.

 

So, how did these trees get here? Exotic plant collecting was big business in the 18th and 19th centuries, in large part as a display of wealth and taste. Giant sequoias were first introduced in 1853 by Scottish grain merchant and keen amateur collector Patrick Matthew, who gave them to friends. Later that same year commercial nurseryman William Lobb brought many more from California, along with accounts of the giant trees from which they came.

 

Giant sequoias quickly became a sensation and were planted to create imposing avenues, at the entrances of grand houses and estates, in churchyards, parks and botanic gardens. The letters about these trees helps us to accurately age planted trees, enabling us to calculate their growth rates.

 

Normally, you need to take samples from a tree’s core to get an accurate age estimate, but that can damage the tree.

Imagine their potential

UK sequoias are unlikely to grow as tall as their Californian counterparts, which tend to grow in forests, due to lightning strikes and high winds—always a risk when you’re the tallest thing in the landscape rather than one among many. More recently, there has been a resurgence in planting giant sequoias in the UK, particularly in urban settings. This is because of their carbon storage potential and perhaps because people seem to really like them.

 

We urgently need to understand how UK trees will fare in the face of much hotter, drier summers, stormier winters, and with increased risks of fire. Global trade is also increasing the spread of disease among plantlife. More work is needed to consider the impact of planting non-native species like giant sequoias on native habitats and biodiversity but our work has shown that they are apparently very happy with our climate so far.

 

More importantly, we have to remember that trees are more than just stores of carbon. If we value trees only as carbon sticks we will end up with thousands of hectares of monoculture, which isn’t good for nature.

 

But these giant sequoias are here to stay and are becoming a beautiful and resilient part of our landscape.

 

Mathias Disney, Reader in Remote Sensing, Department of Geography, UCL.

 

If you have a dog or cat, chances are you’ve given your pet a flavored chewable tablet for tick prevention at some point. What if you could take a similar pill to protect yourself from getting Lyme disease?

 

Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing such a pill for humans—minus the tasty flavoring—that could provide protection against the tick-borne disease for several weeks at a time. In February, the Irvine, California–based biotech company announced results from a small, early-stage trial showing that 24 hours after taking the drug, it can kill ticks on people, with the effects lasting for up to 30 days.

 

“What we envision is something that would protect you before the tick would even bite you,” says Bobby Azamian, CEO of Tarsus.

 

Lyme disease is a fast-growing problem in the United States, where approximately 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for it each year, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is likely an overestimate, because many patients are treated after a tick bite even if an infection isn’t confirmed, but it underscores the burden of Lyme disease on the health care system—which researchers at the CDC and Yale University put at nearly $1 billion per year.

 

The disease is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which gets passed to humans through the bite of an infected tick. In most cases, a tick has to be attached for around 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can be transmitted. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash that looks like a bullseye.

 

Without a vaccine for Lyme disease on the market, current prevention includes using insect repellents such as DEET and permethrin and wearing closed shoes, long pants, and long sleeves when in a tick-infested area.

 

“We’ve seen increasing rates of tick-borne diseases over the years, despite being told to do tick checks, use DEET, and impregnate your clothes with permethrin,” says Paul Auwaerter, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who studies Lyme disease.

 

A more effective treatment strategy would be welcome, Auwaerter says, especially because Lyme disease can sometimes cause serious health issues. Antibiotics are usually effective when taken early, although about 5 to 10 percent of patients can have lingering symptoms for weeks or months. If left untreated, the infection can spread to the joints and cause arthritis. It can also become established in the heart and nervous system, causing persistent fatigue, numbness, or weakness.

 

The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells. Lotilaner is already approved as a veterinary medicine under the brand name Credelio to control fleas and ticks in dogs and cats.

 

“Our animals have better options than we do for tick prevention,” says Linden Hu, a professor of immunology at Tufts Medical School who led the Tarsus trial. “There are quite a few drugs and vaccines available for dogs and cats, but there's nothing for us.”

 

Tarsus first developed lotilaner for human use as an eye drop to treat blepharitis, or inflammation of the eyelid, which is caused by tiny mites. That drug, Xdemvy, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2023. It stuns and kills mites present in the eyelid. Azamian and his team had the idea to test it against ticks in people. The oral version of the drug enters the bloodstream and is passed to a tick when it bites and starts sucking blood.

 

“A lot of drugs are tested in animals, but very few are commercialized for animal use and then go to human use,” Azamian says.

 

In a Phase II trial, 31 healthy adults took either a low or high dose of the Tarsus pill, or a placebo. Researchers then placed sterile ticks on participants’ arms and, 24 hours later, measured how many died. They also observed tick death 30 days after a single dose of the pill. At day one, 97 percent of ticks in the high-dose group and 92 percent in the low-dose group had died, while only 5 percent of ticks in the placebo group had. One month out, both doses of the pill killed around 90 percent of ticks. The company reported no serious adverse events from the pill, and none of the participants dropped out due to side effects.

 

“The takeaway is that it killed the ticks really quickly,” Hu says. “And the effect lasted for a long time.”

 

The fact that the drug targets ticks, rather than the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, means that it could protect against other tick-borne diseases that are spreading in the US, including babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Thanks to climate change and exploding deer populations, ticks are expanding their ranges—and carrying diseases with them.

 

Tarsus has not proven that its pill can actually prevent Lyme disease. That will require testing the drug in hundreds of people who are at high risk of contracting the disease. But Hu is cautiously optimistic: “This pill is potentially a pre-exposure prophylaxis that you don’t have to think about.”

 

Azamian imagines it as something people would take before going hiking or on a camping trip or just going outside in any tick-infested area.

 

“There is that subset of people that truly have persistent symptoms after Lyme disease that can really be devastating,” Auwaerter says, “so preventing that would be an amazing opportunity.”

It's been four months since NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft sent an intelligible signal back to Earth, and the problem has puzzled engineers tasked with supervising the probe exploring interstellar space.

 

But there's a renewed optimism among the Voyager ground team based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. On March 1, engineers sent a command up to Voyager 1—more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth—to "gently prompt" one of the spacecraft's computers to try different sequences in its software package. This was the latest step in NASA's long-distance troubleshooting to try to isolate the cause of the problem preventing Voyager 1 from transmitting coherent telemetry data.

Cracking the case

Officials suspect a piece of corrupted memory inside the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of three main computers on the spacecraft, is the most likely culprit for the interruption in normal communication. Because Voyager 1 is so far away, it takes about 45 hours for engineers on the ground to know how the spacecraft reacted to their commands—the one-way light travel time is about 22.5 hours.

 

The FDS collects science and engineering data from the spacecraft's sensors, then combines the information into a single data package, which goes through a separate component called the Telemetry Modulation Unit to beam it back to Earth through Voyager's high-gain antenna.

 

Engineers are almost entirely certain the problem is in the FDS computer. The communications systems onboard Voyager 1 appear to be functioning normally, and the spacecraft is sending a steady radio tone back to Earth, but there's no usable data contained in the signal. This means engineers know Voyager 1 is alive, but they have no insight into what part of the FDS memory is causing the problem.

 

But Voyager 1 responded to the March 1 troubleshooting command with something different from what engineers have seen since this issue first appeared on November 14.

 

"The new signal was still not in the format used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team wasn’t initially sure what to make of it," NASA said in an update Wednesday. "But an engineer with the agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory."

 

Now, engineers are meticulously comparing each bit of code from the FDS memory readout to the memory readout Voyager 1 sent back to Earth before the issue arose in November. This, they hope, will allow them to find the root of the problem. But it will probably take weeks or months for the Voyager team to take the next step. They don't want to cause more harm.

 

"Using that information to devise a potential solution and attempt to put it into action will take time," NASA said.

 

This is perhaps the most serious ailment the spacecraft has encountered since its launch in 1977. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn before getting a kick from Saturn's gravity to speed into the outer solar system. In 2012, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space when it crossed the heliopause, where the solar wind, the stream of particles emanating from the Sun, push against a so-called galactic wind, the particles that populate the void between the stars.

 

Engineers have kept Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, alive for more than 46 years, overcoming technical problems that have doomed other space missions. Both probes face waning power from their nuclear batteries, and there are concerns about their thrusters aging and fuel lines becoming clogged, among other things. But each time there is a problem, ground teams have come up with a trick to keep the Voyagers going, often referencing binders of fraying blueprints and engineering documents from the spacecraft's design and construction nearly 50 years ago.

 

Suzanne Dodd, NASA's project manager for Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, recently told Ars that engineers would need to pull off their "biggest miracle" to restore Voyager 1 to normal operations. Now, Voyager's 1 voice from the sky has provided engineers with a clue that could help them realize this miracle.

 

Human brains (and the brains of other vertebrates) are able to process information faster because of myelin, a fatty substance that forms a protective sheath over the axons of our nerve cells and speeds up their impulses. How did our neurons evolve myelin sheaths? Part of the answer—which was unknown until now—almost sounds like science fiction.

 

Led by scientists from Altos Labs-Cambridge Institute of Science, a team of researchers has uncovered a bit of the gnarly past of how myelin ended up covering vertebrate neurons: a molecular parasite has been messing with our genes. Sequences derived from an ancient virus help regulate a gene that encodes a component of myelin, helping explain why vertebrates have an edge when it comes to their brains.

Prehistoric infection

Myelin is a fatty material produced by oligodendrocyte cells in the central nervous system and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system. Its insulating properties allow neurons to zap impulses to one another at faster speeds and greater lengths. Our brains can be complex in part because myelin enables longer, narrower axons, which means more nerves can be stacked together.

 

The un-myelinated brain cells of many invertebrates often need to rely on wider—and therefore fewer—axons for impulse conduction. Rapid impulse conduction makes quicker reactions possible, whether that means fleeing danger or capturing prey.

 

So, how do we make myelin? A key player in its production appears to be a type of molecular parasite called a retrotransposon.

 

Like other transposons, retrotransposons can move to new locations in the genome through an RNA intermediate. However, most retrotransposons in our genome have picked up too many mutations to move about anymore.

 

RNLTR12-int is a retrotransposon that is thought to have originally entered our ancestors’ genome as a virus. Rat genomes now have over 100 copies of the retrotransposon.

 

An RNA made by RNLTR12-int helps produce myelin by binding to a transcription factor or a protein that regulates the activity of other genes. The RNA/protein combination binds to DNA near the gene for myelin basic protein, or MBP, a major component of myelin.

 

“MBP is essential for the membrane growth and compression of [central nervous system] myelin,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Cell.

Technical knockout

To find out whether RNLTR12-int really was behind the regulation of MBP and, therefore, myelin production, the research team had to knock its level down and see if myelination still happened. They first experimented on rat brains before moving on to zebrafish and frogs.

 

When they inhibited RNLTR12-int, the results were drastic. In the central nervous system, genetically edited rats produced 98 percent less MBP than those where the gene was left unedited. The absence of RNLTR12-int also caused the oligodendrocytes that produce myelin to develop much simpler structures than they would normally form. When RNLTR12-int was knocked out in the peripheral nervous system, it reduced myelin produced by Schwann cells.

 

The researchers used a SOX10 antibody to show that SOX10 bound to the RNLTR12-int transcript in vivo. This was an important result, since there are lots of non-coding RNAs made by cells, and it wasn’t clear whether any RNA would work or if it was specific to RNLTR12-int.

 

Do these results hold up in other jawed vertebrates? Using CRISPR-CAS9 to perform knockout tests with retrotransposons related to RNLTR12-int in frogs and zebrafish showed similar results.

 

Myelination has enriched the vertebrate brain so it can work like never before. This is why the term “brain food” is literal. Healthy fats are so important for our brains; they help form myelin since it is a fatty acid. Think about that next time you’re pulling an all-nighter while reaching for a handful of nuts.

 

Cell, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.011

 

 

One of the best things about spaceflight is its power to dazzle us.

 

I will never forget seeing the first images of Pluto and its moon Charon for the first time, with their vibrant colors and exotic geology. A world with super-sized ice volcanoes? Oh my. Similarly affecting were up-close views of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, revealed by Europe's Philae lander. And it is difficult to forget the harrowing footage of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars.

 

But no space agency or company has dazzled us more in the last 10 years than SpaceX. The company produces moments of wonder and originality that are both breathtaking and full of promise. What SpaceX does best is provide us a glimpse into a tantalizingly close future.

 

And that happened again on Thursday with the third Starship launch.

Was that sci-fi?

The moment of true amazement came about 45 minutes into the flight, as Starship descended an altitude of 100 km and began entering a thicker atmosphere. For a couple of minutes, we were treated to unprecedented views of atmospheric heating acting on a spacecraft. It's one thing to know about the perils of plasma and compression as a spacecraft falls back to Earth at 27,000 km/hour into thickening air. It's another thing to see it.

 

Let's step back for just a moment to realize how these unprecedented views were possible.

 

Starlink terminals on the ship were sending signals to satellites in low-Earth orbit, which then sent them back to Earth. This is not a new idea. For the last 40 years, NASA has used a small constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites to communicate with spacecraft, beginning with the Space Shuttle. Starship was able to communicate with these satellites upon its reentry, but it was only at a low data rate, and it dropped out as the plasma thickened. The Starlink connection remained longer and is what enabled the stunning video of reentry.

 

To accomplish this, SpaceX had to build a reusable rocket, the Falcon 9, which is capable of reflying many times. This enabled the company to launch more than 5,500 Starlink satellites and create a global network. (SpaceX operates, by a factor of 10, more satellites than any other company or country in the world). Because of this, it was able to produce unprecedented data and video of Starship's turbulent reentry.

 

 

The journey to reach this capability has produced many of those dazzling moments. There was that first land-based landing of the Falcon 9 rocket days before Christmas in 2015. It was followed a few months later by the first landing of a booster on a drone ship. (For me, this CRS-8 booster landing on a boat felt like the first actual sci-fi thing I'd ever seen in my life). There was Starman in orbit and the dual booster landing with the first Falcon Heavy launch. And so on.

 

These SpaceX moments feel like a portal opening into the future. That is their power. The first booster landings hinted at the possibility of reusing first stages. The dual booster landing suggested it could be done at scale. Today, we're seeing this promised future as some Falcon rockets fly 20 times, and SpaceX is likely to approach a truly unprecedented 150 launches this year. This high launch cadence enabled Starlink, through which SpaceX has delivered high-speed broadband around the world and in space.

 

What Thursday's revelatory reentry footage promises is a world in which launch is cheap and abundant. No longer will we need to worry so much about mass or volume, which have been tyrannical overlords to mission planners since the inception of spaceflight nearly seven decades ago.

Where Starship goes from here

This was the third test flight of Starship, and for the second time in a row, the Super Heavy booster completed a full-duration burn and executed a successful "hot staging" separation from the Starship upper stage. This is significant because it means the most powerful first stage ever built can now be considered operational.

 

SpaceX still hasn't quite mastered the art of landing this first stage. On Thursday, Super Heavy performed a flip maneuver and a boostback burn to reorient itself for a soft landing at sea. However, not all of the requisite Raptor engines relit for a landing burn, and the rocket exploded about 500 meters above the Gulf of Mexico.

 

This is fine progress for just the third test flight, and it seems reasonable to expect a soft landing at sea during the next mission or two. SpaceX has pretty much solved first-stage landings, with some 275 successes with its Falcon 9 rocket. Therefore, it would not surprise me to see the company land a booster back at its Starbase facility in South Texas this year. Reuse of these massive stages could begin in a year or two.

 

Starship will clearly take longer. It is the more difficult technology. Notably, the vehicle completed a full-duration burn on Thursday and could easily have put itself into a stable orbit around Earth. Just to put a fine point on this, Starship this week did what every rocket in history this side of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Space Shuttle has done before: achieved a nominal orbital insertion and lost its first and second stages.

 

The flight "failed" only because SpaceX is pushing Starship for full reusability. During its coast phase Thursday, the vehicle began to roll. This precluded an attempt to re-light the vehicle's Raptor engines in space, the company confirmed Thursday night.

 

So we're probably a flight or two from SpaceX understanding and controlling Starship in space. Still bigger questions surround the vehicle's ability to survive that fiery reentry with a (hopefully) reusable tile system. A fully reusable Starship upper stage is certainly years away.

Already an amazing vehicle

But even with those caveats, Starship is already the most revolutionary rocket ever built. Because of a relentless focus on costs and cheap building materials, such as stainless steel, SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.

 

This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

 

Bluntly, this is absurd.

 

For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA's Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That's nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it's almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.

 

Then there's the European Space Agency's Vega rocket. Its costs are roughly on par with a Starship that has a reusable first stage. For $37 million, with Vega, you get about 1.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. Again, that's a factor of 100 times less payload than Starship.

 

Perhaps you're beginning to understand the revolution that's underway with the Starship vehicle?

 

But it's not just the cost or the payload. It's the cadence. SpaceX has four more Starships, essentially, ready to go. We have already seen SpaceX's proficiency with the Falcon 9 rocket. Does anyone doubt we'll see double-digit Starship launches in 2025 and many dozens per year during the second half of this decade? Access to space used to be a rare commodity. What happens to our species and its commerce in space when access is not rare or expensive?

 

This is the future into which we got a glimpse this week.

 

Welcome to Edition 6.35 of the Rocket Report! It's been a big week for rocket failures, with a small launch in Japan going sideways shortly after liftoff, a rare misstep for China's Long March family of rockets, and another Starship flight test. The latter mission was not really a failure, of course, in that the experimental vehicle took a big step toward becoming operational with a nominal first stage performance and good flight of Starship in space.

 

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Japanese small-lift rocket lost shortly after liftoff. Tokyo-based startup Space One failed Wednesday to become Japan's first private firm to put a satellite into orbit after its solid-fuel Kairos rocket burst into flames just seconds after liftoff, The Japan Times reports. The 18-meter, 23-ton Kairos rocket, carrying a mockup of a government spy satellite, took off from a new space facility in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture. The rocket exploded in midair five seconds after launch, with its remains falling onto a nearby mountainous area.

 

No impact to big dreams ...  Live news footage of the event showed fragments of the rocket lying on the ground, as firefighters attempted to extinguish a large fire. The fire was put out eventually, and nobody was hurt. Space One executives said they are investigating the cause of the explosion but remained committed to the startup’s goal of undertaking 20 launches per year by the end of 2029 and 30 launches in the 2030s. (submitted by tsunam, Jay500001, gizmo23, and Ken the Bin)

 

Stratolaunch deploys and honest-to-goodness payload. Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle. This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released a viable payload, the first Talon-A vehicle, TA-1, which is intended to fly at hypersonic speed. During the flight, TA-1 didn't quite reach hypersonic velocity, which begins at Mach 5, or five times greater than the speed of sound, Ars reports.

 

A big step for Ursa Major ... The TA-1 vehicle was powered by the Hadley rocket engine designed and built by Ursa Major, which specializes in the development of rocket propulsion engines. Hadley is a 5,000-lb-thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene, oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle rocket engine for small vehicles. Founded in 2015, Ursa Major seeks to provide off-the-shelf propulsion solutions to launch customers. While Ursa Major started small, the company is already well into the development of its much larger Ripley engine. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay50001)

 

Stoke Space tests second stage. The Washington-based launch company recently carried out the first test of the full-size 30-thruster version of the innovative engine that Stoke is producing for its in-development second stage, NASASpaceflight.com reports. This will be an integral part of its future Nova rocket, which aims to be a fully reusable rocket. The engine test took place on February 26 and follows the engine’s first test flight on its prototype vehicle, Hopper 2, in September 2023. On that testbed half of the 30 thrusters were fired.

 

A flight every 24 hours? ... At approximately 30.5 meters tall when fully stacked, Nova is being designed to launch with a wide variety of potential payloads and functions. These include not only deploying satellites but also performing manufacturing and science experiments in the vacuum of space and microgravity before returning to Earth. Furthermore, Nova could even be used for collecting and returning satellites or removing space debris. (submitted by Jay50001)

 

Phantom Space raises some bridge funding. The small launch company announced that it has increased its total fundraising to $37 million, Payload reports. Phantom Space is aiming to launch its Daytona rocket for the first time in mid-2025. Daytona is a 500-kg class, two-stage launcher that uses Hadley engines supplied by Ursa Major.

 

Daytona debut in California ... Company cofounder Jim Cantrell estimates that Phantom Space will need to secure another $30 million to get through that launch. He said a full Series B raise is underway to prepare. Daytona will likely make its debut from Vandenberg Space Force Base, where Phantom Space has already secured permission to launch from. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Chinese lunar launch fails. A pair of Chinese spacecraft, apparently intended for lunar orbit, have likely been lost following an issue with a Long March rocket’s upper stage on Wednesday, Space News reports. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, but there was no official acknowledgment of the launch until early Thursday when Chinese state media Xinhua announced the DRO-A and B spacecraft had not been inserted accurately into their designated orbit by the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage.

 

First Long March issue in four years ... Xinhua provided no details of the nature of the DRO-A and B satellites. However, it is thought that the pair were intended to enter a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. If correct, this would have seen DRO-A and B target a high lunar orbit that moves in the opposite direction to the moon’s rotation around Earth. The launch issue appears to be the most serious issue with Long March rockets since an April 2020 launch failure. The Palapa-N1 satellite for Indonesia was lost due to a Long March 3B third stage failure. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

 

Starliner launch delayed due to ISS schedule. The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself, Space News reports. Starliner will fly on an Atlas V rocket, and the launch date moved from April 22 to no earlier than May 1. NASA managers have said the key factor in the schedule was other missions to the station.

 

Finding room at the inn ... "What we’ve been doing is watching how we progress with the Crew-8 launch and the CRS-30 mission," said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, in a briefing after the early March launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission to the ISS. SpaceX’s CRS-30 cargo mission is scheduled for launch on March 21 and will stay at the station for about a month. After it departs, the Crew-8 spacecraft will move from its current forward docking port on the Harmony module to the zenith port to allow Starliner to use the forward port. Those ports are the only two available on the station for both Starliner and Dragon spacecraft. (submitted by Jay500001)

Starship completes third flight test. SpaceX's new-generation Starship rocket, the most powerful and largest launcher ever built, flew halfway around the world following liftoff from South Texas Thursday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability to carry heavyweight payloads into low-Earth orbit. The successful launch builds on two Starship test flights last year that achieved some, but not all, of their objectives and appears to put the privately funded rocket program on course to begin launching satellites, Ars reports.

 

A few boxes left unchecked ... While it made it closer to splashdown than before, the Super Heavy booster plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in an uncontrolled manner. If everything went perfectly, the booster would have softly settled into the sea after reigniting its engines for a landing burn. A restart of one of Starship's Raptor engines in space—one of the three new test objectives on this flight—did not happen for reasons SpaceX officials did not immediately explain. All in all, this flight marked an important step forward as SpaceX develops the Starship launch system.

 

India's next-gen launch vehicle takes place. India is in the preliminary stages of designing its Next Generation Launch Vehicle, which will be used to construct a space station and potentially land Indian astronauts on the Moon. The chair of the Indian space agency, S. Somanath, provided details about the project to the Times of India. Internally nicknamed "Soorya," the rocket is expected to have three stages and use a combination of methane and kerosene fuels.

 

A hefty throw, but a long way to go ... The Indian space agency intends for the rocket to be capable of putting 10 tons into geostationary transfer orbit, or about 10 percent more than a fully expendable Falcon 9 rocket. This is also about double the capacity of India's most powerful rocket to date, the LVM-3. Although the details are still being worked out, elements of the next-generation rocket are intended to be reusable, with the intent of bringing the per-kg launch costs down to $1,900 to low-Earth orbit. Somanath said he is "hopeful" the rocket will be ready by 2034 or 2035.

 

Final Delta IV Heavy gets a date. Liftoff of the final Delta IV Heavy rocket is now planned for March 28 from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. According to the rocket's operator, United Launch Alliance, this will be the 16th flight of the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle and the 389th and final flight of the Delta program. This mission truly marks the end of an era.

 

Moving on to a single-core solution ... This NROL-70 mission will carry an unspecified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. This is the final Delta IV Heavy as ULA transitions its future missions from the East and West Coasts to the new, single-core Vulcan rocket. The company still has a couple of dozen Atlas Vs to fly before completely transitioning to Vulcan. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

 

Sizing up SLS costs. To date, NASA has spent about $29 billion developing the Space Launch System rocket, Payload estimates, making it the most costly element of the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. Orion is the next most costly element, at $25 billion to date. NASA owns the rocket, which was largely contracted out to Boeing (core stage), Aerojet Rocketdyne (engines), and Northrop Grumman (solid rocket booster).

 

Frustration at costs is warranted ... The report notes that the SLS rocket's development costs are significantly less than those, adjusted for inflation, of the Saturn line of rockets that powered the Apollo program. However, it adds, the "Apollo vehicles were developed over 60 years ago as novel tech, and given the rapid cost reductions witnessed in other advanced hardware during that period, frustration with Artemis’s high price tag is justifiable. The disappointment is particularly pronounced when we juxtapose these expenses with the costs of current commercial vehicles." The SLS rocket is largely derived from NASA's Space Shuttle.

 

Rocket cargo program gets a budgetary go. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rocket Cargo Vanguard program gets “real boy” status as a Space Force prototype effort—and a new name, Point-to-Point Delivery—in the service’s fiscal 2025 budget request, Breaking Defense reports. While the dollar amount is small at only $4 million in research, development, test & evaluation, the funding request marks the up-to-now experimental effort to literally rocket military supplies around the planet as a formal “new start” for the service.

 

Airdrop payload delivery sought ... The initial Rocket Cargo concept is to blast military kit from one earthly base to another to rapidly equip deployed forces, with the Space Force already eyeing potential use in the Indo-Pacific theater. But in the future, service officials can see the possibility of transporting cargo routinely to space-based outposts or to and from space stations. The program’s endgame is to buy delivery services from commercial providers. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

March 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-44 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 23:04 UTC

March 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-16 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02:20 UTC

March 20: Electron | Live and Let Fly | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 06:40 UTC

 

The race is on to generate new technologies to ready the battery industry for the transition toward a future with more renewable energy. In this competitive landscape, it’s hard to say which companies and solutions will come out on top.

 

Corporations and universities are rushing to develop new manufacturing processes to cut the cost and reduce the environmental impact of building batteries worldwide. They are working to develop new approaches to building both cathodes and anodes—the negatively and positively charged components of batteries—and even using different ions to hold charge. While we can't look at every technology that's in development, we can look at a few to give you a sense of the problems people are trying to solve

Cleaner manufacturing

The California-based company Sylvatex has developed a water-free, efficient process for manufacturing cathode active material (CAM). “This process innovation reduces the total cost of CAM by 25 percent, while using 80 percent less energy and eliminating water use and sodium sulfate waste streams,” said Virginia Klausmeier, CEO and founder of Sylvatex.

 

Sylvatex’s goal is to impact the carbon footprint of the battery-manufacturing process, according to Klausmeier. She argued that other companies have scaled up an inefficient process as the market has grown rapidly. “These plants are utilizing 200 million gallons of water annually. Cathode material makes up like 50–70 percent of the cost of the battery pack.”

 

According to Alex Kosyakov, co-founder and CEO of the battery-component company Natrion, the usual process for manufacturing lithium-ion cathodes and batteries has many steps. Manufacturers begin by taking ores with low initial concentrations of mined metals such as cobalt, manganese, aluminum, and nickel. They break them down into very small pieces in immense vats containing rotating blades or ceramic balls.

 

The companies treat the ores with a solution of sulfuric acid that contains large amounts of water. Sulfate salts are extracted after this step. The treatment results in the release of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which causes acid rain and creates workplace safety issues.

 

Then, the manufacturers mix sulfate salts with lithium salts, combine them, and grind them into powders. They heat the powders in massive furnaces to high temperatures to remove impurities and then heat them again to fuse the lithium with the metal and oxygen.

 

After this, to make the cathodes, they usually mill the powders again. They then make an ink or slurry by combining the resulting powder with solvents and binders. They paint the resulting liquid onto aluminum foil and let it dry. Next, they cut the coated foil to size, layer it with the other battery materials, press the resulting layers in a rolling press, wind it into a spool or coil, and put it into the battery can.

 

“What we did was we developed a process that we call our ‘next-gen’ process that is waterless,” Klausmeier said. “It uses a versatility or flexibility of feedstocks without the sulfate molecules so you don't have any of that waste, so you can use a broader range of inputs that can come from recycled materials… or mined and refined materials that have to be mined and refined less.”

 

Klausmeier said her company uses hydroxides or metal oxides as feedstocks. The process involves combining these materials with a proprietary additive that she describes as “not quite a surfactant” in a pot that blends it together. This is followed by a calcination step. (Calcination involves raising the temperature of a compound in an environment with limited oxygen but not heating it up so much that it melts.)

 

Removing the sulfur from the process reduces the manufacturing hazards of creating the CAM.

Developing sodium-ion batteries

After its success supplying lithium-ion batteries to the electric vehicle market, Northvolt has been working secretly on a sodium-ion battery technology and is now ready to talk about it, according to Andreas Haas, senior manager of the company’s sodium-ion program. “After two years, we got to the point where our sodium-ion technology is actually the best-performing in the market, as far as we have seen it. We're looking at 160 watt-hours per kilogram, which is on par with the incumbent iron-phosphate batteries.”

 

The sodium-ion batteries are designed for energy-storage applications, Haas said. They have sustainability, safety, and cost benefits. “For stationary energy storage where… we also have a presence, there is an increasing appetite for less-energy-dense but also less-expensive alternatives.” Meaning less expensive than lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), a variant of lithium-ion batteries.

 

“What we did in the last years is that we looked at the need for iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries,” Haas said. “Ninety-nine percent of the cathode material for [LFP] batteries [is] made in China, so there is not really a competitive way of localizing it elsewhere. We tried to actually find a technology that is even surpassing [LFP] batteries, and that is where, for us, sodium-ion fits in.”

 

For the sodium-ion batteries, Northvolt is using Prussian White as a cathode, Haas said. It is an iron-based pigment that was first synthesized by a painter in Berlin in 1704. In 2012, John Goodenough, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for lithium-ion batteries, discovered that it’s a promising cathode material, as its structure can incorporate sodium ions. Since Prussian white is only composed of carbon, nitrogen, and iron, it is relatively affordable. The anode material is hard carbon made out of biowaste, such as shells and wood. The new manufacturing process is resulting in a lower carbon footprint for the product and reduced fire hazards during use.

 

In contrast to lithium, which is more geographically limited, sodium from brine is available in many parts of the world, Haas said. “On top of that, we're also avoiding other critical raw materials, which are usually quite expensive and also have quite volatile prices—namely nickel, cobalt, copper, and graphite. So there is not really anything in the cell that is leading to a higher price point.”

Alternate materials

In addition to commercial development, sodium-ion technologies are being studied by the academic world. To pursue sodium-ion research, the University of California, Los Angeles announced that it will open a new center this year—the Center for Strain Optimization for Renewable Energy, or STORE center. This center is replacing a previous one called Synthetic Control Across Length-scales for Advancing Rechargeables (SCALAR). Both centers are funded by the US Department of Energy and have regional academic partners in California.

 

“This new center is focused on the idea that sodium is significantly bigger. It's much harder to shuttle it in and out of crystal structures,” said Sarah Tolbert, distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA. “As a result, sodium-ion batteries are much shorter life span than lithium-ion batteries. What this new center is trying to do is to come up with crystal structures and anodes and cathodes that can put sodium in and out reversibly many times and quickly so that you can get performance more similar to lithium-ion batteries out of the lower-cost sodium system.”

 

Inserting fluoride ions into lithium-ion batteries as charge carriers was one successful accomplishment of SCALAR, Tolbert said. “You can store twice as much energy.” However, the fluoride is extremely chemically reactive. “I don’t know if fluoride-ion batteries are going to become commercial or not, but there is potential.”

 

Lithium or sodium can be put into metal alloys, Tolbert said. This results in the whole material becoming ductile and amorphous. It can expand without cracking. Usually, battery components are brittle; when they break, the electrical circuit can be damaged.

 

SCALAR has also experimented with making lithium-ion batteries charge faster. Tolbert’s team made separator materials that were porous—which she describes as “battery Swiss cheese”—so that liquid electrolyte materials can infiltrate the pores and the lithium ions only have to move a short distance. This results in automotive batteries that charge in under 10 minutes rather than in several hours.

 

Researchers at SCALAR have been using conductive polymers in batteries as well, Tolbert said. “We found that we could make things cycle much much faster.” This speeds up the charging and discharging process.

Creating hyperthin anodes

Lithium metal anodes for batteries could be much thinner, according to Srini Godavarthy, CEO of Li-Metal Corp. His company is working to create ones that are between two and 20 microns thick. (Typical lithium-ion batteries have lithium in the cathode, not the anode.)

 

The process of making the lithium metal can also be greatly simplified. It is usually made through a lithium chloride electrolysis process, Godavarthy said. His company is skipping many of the steps and going straight from lithium carbonate to battery-grade lithium metal.

 

“The traditional processes—they take the carbonate to the chloride, they take the chloride to technical-grade lithium metal, and they distill the technical-grade lithium metal to battery-grade lithium metal,” Godavarthy said.

 

Godavarthy’s customers are looking to have a higher energy density and a faster charge, he said. They are also looking for batteries that are relatively less flammable. The new process increases the energy density of the battery on a weight basis by a factor of two. It increases it on a volumetric basis by a factor of three.

 

Today’s anodes have copper current collectors, Godavarthy said. Graphite, which can store lithium, is deposited on the copper. Customers were looking to cut down on materials by using lithium on copper, but the copper was very expensive. Li-Metal Corp. used a metalized polymer as a substrate. While it was metalized with copper, it used far less metal, reducing the cost of the substrate by a factor of 100. This substitution also reduced the battery’s weight and increased its energy density.

 

For the metal production, Li-Metal Corp. uses molten electrolysis, Godavarthy said, based on lithium carbonate salt that is melted down. The electrolysis transforms it into pure lithium metal through a process that, unfortunately, emits carbon dioxide. The resulting metal is shaped into cast ingots of different shapes. Some of them can be used in anode-production machines and others can be cast into small pellets or long cylinders. The lithium is heated up, and its vapor is deposited on the polymeric substrate using a process called physical vapor deposition, which creates a very thin film.

 

“Given the cost of lithium, the industry's going toward thinner and thinner lithium anodes, and that's why our PVD technology becomes more critical for the industry,” Godavarthy said.

 

The company’s currently scaling up the process, with an engineering firm completing a design for a 25-ton cell, which will be much larger than the 2.5-ton cell the company is currently using for the pilot, Godavarthy said. The lithium-metal-production machinery will be scaled up during the second half of this decade, most likely.

 

There’s a broad array of companies competing to become the pioneers of battery technology used in electric vehicles and energy storage. There’s no guarantee that any of the companies or researchers here are developing technologies that will catch on. But this article will hopefully provide a sense of how dynamic and competitive the market is behind the scenes.

 

Kat Friedrich is a former mechanical engineer who started out as an applied mathematics, engineering, and physics major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has completed a graduate degree focusing on science and environmental journalism and has edited seven news publications, two of which she co-founded. She is the editor-in-chief of the energy magazine Solar Today.

 

Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It's responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary component of dietary fiber, so it's hard to overstate its importance to humanity.

 

Given its ubiquity and the fact that it's composed of a bunch of sugar molecules linked together, its toughness makes it very difficult to use as a food source. The animals that manage to extract significant calories from cellulose typically do so via specialized digestive tracts that provide a home for symbiotic bacteria—think of the extra stomachs of cows and other ruminants.

 

Amazingly, humans also play host to bacteria that can break down cellulose—something that wasn't confirmed until 2003 (long after I'd wrapped up my education). Now, a new study indicates that we're host to a mix of cellulose-eating bacteria, some via our primate ancestry, and others through our domestication of herbivores such as cows. But urban living has caused the number of these bacteria to shrink dramatically.

Finding the plant eaters

While cellulose-eating bacteria that make humans their home were found back in 2003, only a single species from this group has been identified since. The work here, done by a large international collaboration, focused on getting a more complete picture of what's living in our guts. To do so, they obtained gut samples from humans and ruminants. These were used to obtain DNA from the bacteria that live there, which were used for DNA sequencing.

 

Computer analysis of DNA has gotten good enough that it can take all the sequences obtained from a random population of species and assemble the genomes of individual species from the mix. Those genomes were then compared to those of known cellulose-digesting bacteria to identify those with similar collections of genes. (Cellulose-digesters tend to build large protein scaffolds that allow specialized digestion enzymes to cluster together, and the researchers looked for genes with features that allow this sort of clustering.)

 

In the end, they identified 25 genomes from ruminants and another 22 from humans. An evolutionary analysis suggested there were four distinct groups of cellulose-digesting species in humans.

 

To get a better sense of these bacteria, the researchers obtained more human gut samples, along with those from other primates, as well as some vintage poop samples that humans left behind over 1,000 years ago—nearly 2,000 samples in total. One thing that was clear is that some of these lineages have a long history in our ancestors. Some of them have branches in many other primates (the researchers checked macaques, baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees), but not present in ruminants.

 

The other thing that was clear is that their prevalence is changing with changes in the human diet. In non-human primates, the frequency of these bacterial strains was in the 30–40 percent range. That was similar to the frequencies seen in the old samples of human feces but higher than that seen in present humans. Here, there was a strong division. Present-day hunter/gatherers and those living in a rural environment, both of whom eat very high fiber diets, still had about 20 percent prevalence of these cellulose-digesting species. By contrast, those in industrialized countries had a prevalence under 5 percent.

 

In general, the more fiber in the diet of a culture, the more diverse their cellulose-digesting bacteria were. So, their diversity in humans has been going down as more of our population has shifted into urban living.

Putting together the right genes

While humans contain strains that we got from our primate ancestors, there were additional strains present that didn't match up quite as well. The researchers found that these strains grouped within those that are present in ruminants. "Our evolutionary analysis strongly suggests that [these strains] likely originated in the ruminant gut and later transferred to humans, possibly during domestication," the researchers conclude.

 

The researchers also examined the other metabolic genes found in the genomes of cellulose-digesters. These indicated that there are additional adaptations to the animal's diet. For example, the strains found in primate guts often had genes that enabled the digestion of chitin, a different polymer that is a major component of insect exoskeletons. By contrast, some human-specific strains had enzymes that can efficiently break down the cell walls of plants like rice, wheat, and corn.

 

The analysis of these other metabolic genes suggests that they were initially obtained from other bacteria found in the guts of animals. So, the process of horizontal gene transfer between species appears to be a key feature of the adaptation of cellulose-digesters to their hosts.

 

So, while humans lack specialized structures to digest cellulose, there's still some cellulose digestion going on in our guts—although how much will depend a lot on our diets. To be clear, the bacteria that do the digesting are doing it for their own purposes. But the enzymes they use for the digestion have to be exported outside the cells, as it's impossible to import the polymers inside bacterial cells. So at least some of the digestion products end up being taken by the human digestive system.

 

In addition, many gut bacteria use the energy they get from our food to produce chemicals that are helpful to humans—which may help explain some of the benefits of high-fiber diets. So, while these bacteria may be a minor component of our ability to process food, we may still learn that they make critical contributions to our health.

 

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adj9223  (About DOIs).