Search

> When the lander got down within about 30 km of the lunar surface, they tested the rangefinders again. Worryingly, there was some noise in the readings as the laser bounced off the Moon. However, the engineers had reason to believe that, maybe, the readings would improve as the spacecraft got nearer to the surface. > > "Our hope was that the signal to noise would improve as we got closer to the Moon," said Tim Crain, chief technology officer for Intuitive Machines, speaking to reporters afterward. > > It didn't. The noise remained. And so, to some extent, Athena went down to the Moon blind.

> After Athena landed, the engineers in mission control could talk to the spacecraft, and they were able to generate some power from its solar arrays. But precisely where it was, or how it lay on the ground, they could not say a few hours later.

> Based on a reading from an inertial measurement unit inside the vehicle, most likely Athena is lying on its side. This is the same fate Odysseus met last year, when it skidded into the Moon, broke a leg, and toppled over. > > "I would like to get a picture," Altemus said. "I would like to get more data before we can determine the orientation."

> On Tuesday Wilmore, Williams, and Hague participated from orbit in a news conference with reporters. What is notable about the news conference is that it marks the first time any NASA official—a handful of previously scheduled media availabilities have been canceled—has been on the record with media since the politicization of Crew 9's return and Musk's call to deorbit the space station early. > > ... > > Q. Elon Musk said he made an offer to bring Butch and Suni home last year, but it was denied by the White House. Is this true? > > Wilmore: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.

> "We need an off-ramp for reliance on the SLS," said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in written testimony. He issued the statement in advance of a hearing about US space policy, and the future of NASA's Artemis Moon program, before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. > > A physicist and influential policy expert, Pace has decades of experience researching and writing space policy. He has served in multiple Republican administrations, most recently as executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. He strongly advocated for the SLS rocket after Congress directed NASA to develop it in 2011. > > "Ideally, NASA should be able to buy heavy lift services to send payloads to the Moon—up to about 45 metric tons to 'trans-lunar injection' which is about the same performance as the SLS Block 2," Pace wrote. "I was a supporter of SLS when it was created as NASA required heavy-lift vehicles to send humans to the Moon and Mars. At the time, it did not appear (to me) that a private sector heavy-lift vehicle would be feasible within two decades. Today, the situation is different, with heavy-lift options from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance."

> To understand why the odds from NASA are changing and whether we should be concerned about 2024 YR4, Ars connected with Robin George Andrews, author of the recently published book How to Kill an Asteroid. Good timing with the publication date, eh?

> Ars: Why are the impact odds increasing?

> Robin George Andrews: The asteroid’s orbit is not known to a great deal of precision right now, as we only have a limited number of telescopic observations of it. However, even as the rock zips farther away from Earth, certain telescopes are still managing to spy it and extend our knowledge of the asteroid’s orbital arc around the Sun. The odds have fluctuated in both directions over the last few weeks, but overall, they have risen; that’s because the amount of uncertainty astronomers have as to its true orbit has shrunk, but Earth has yet to completely fall out of that zone of uncertainty. As a proportion of the remaining uncertainty, Earth is taking up more space, so for now, its odds are rising. > > Think of it like a beam of light coming out of the front of that asteroid. That beam of light shrinks as we get to know its orbit better, but if Earth is yet to fall out of that beam, it takes up proportionally more space. So, for a while, the asteroid’s impact odds rise. It’s very likely that, with sufficient observations, Earth will fall out of that shrinking beam of light eventually, and the impact odds will suddenly fall to zero.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/32252842

> > It is difficult to see Airbus and some of the other large, institutional space companies in Europe banding together and becoming nimble and more efficient operators in spaceflight. That would require enormous changes in companies that have decades of ossified culture, with layers of management that are difficult to cut through.

Article highlights:

> Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years.

> But privately, Musk has been critical of NASA's plans, suggesting that the Artemis Program has been moving too slowly and is too reliant on contractors who seek cost-plus government contracts and are less interested in delivering results.

> During the last 10 days, Musk has begun airing some of these private thoughts publicly. On Christmas Day, for example, Musk wrote on X, "The Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program. Something entirely new is needed." > > Then, on Thursday evening, he added this: "No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction."

> The fate of Artemis is an important question not just for NASA but for the US commercial space industry, the European Space Agency, and other international partners who have aligned with the return of humans to the Moon. With Artemis, the United States is in competition with China to establish a meaningful presence on the surface of the Moon.

> In all likelihood, NASA will adopt a new "Artemis" plan that involves initiatives to both the Moon and Mars. When Musk said "we're going straight to Mars," he may have meant that this will be the thrust of SpaceX, with support from NASA. That does not preclude a separate initiative, possibly led by Blue Origin with help from NASA, to develop lunar return plans.