Tag: space.com

Repeating bursts of radio waves coming from a distant dwarf galaxy probably aren’t signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, but that hasn’t stopped a group of E.T. hunters from investigating this peculiar phenomenon. 

In August, scientists with the $100 million Breakthrough Listen initiative began observing an object known as FRB 121102. The object is one of less than 40 known examples of a fast radio burst (FRB), an incredibly bright flash of radio waves. Scientists don’t yet know what causes FRBs, which is why they took a particular interest in FRB 121102. While all other observed FRBs are single explosions of radio waves, this one was releasing bright flashes of light over and over again.

A new study, co-authored by scientists with Breakthrough Listen, reveals the conclusions of those August observations: nearly 100 percent of the light from FRB 121102 is polarized, meaning the orientation of the light waves are all in the same direction. Most radiating objects in the universe produce unpolarized light, so the uniformity of light from FRB 121102 could help scientists narrow down the type of object or environment that might be producing those flashes. (You can read our full story here.)

“As far as the FRB121102 goes, I don’t think there is any slight possibility that [the pulses] are from an extraterrestrial intelligence,” Vishal Gajjar, a scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said yesterday (Jan. 10) during a news conference at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. 

The primary reason for Gajjar’s skepticism is that the object is in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light-years away from Earth. A civilization trying to contact another civilization probably wouldn’t bother to create such a powerful signal, simply because the time it would take to receive a reply would be prohibitively long. For example, the radio waves from FRB 121102 took 3 billion years to reach Earth — the civilization that sent the message might very well be dead and gone by the time it received a reply! 

But Gajjar said Breakthrough Listen is also interested in investigating unexplainable phenomenon in the universe, even if those phenomena are naturally occurring.

Polarized light

One explanation for the polarized light coming from FRB 121102 could be the presence of a very strong magnetic field, according to a statement from the University of California, Berkeley, where the Breakthrough Listen laboratory is based. The only known place in the universe with such strong magnetic fields is in the vicinity of a massive black hole — such as the supermassive blackholes thought to lie at the centers of most galaxies — that has gas and dust falling into it, according to the statement. The authors of the paper hypothesize that the source of the radio waves could be another highly magnetized object, known as a magnetar, that lies near a massive black hole. A magnetar is a type of neutron star, an incredibly dense nugget of material about the size of a city, that forms when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. 

If this is, in fact, the source of FRB 121102, Gajjar said that’s another reason to suspect that the signal is natural, not artificial: An environment with such an extreme magnetic field wouldn’t be very habitable because of the extreme conditions it would create, he told Space.com in an interview. 

The polarization of light from FRB 121102 was also observed by a group of scientists using the William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Breakthrough Listen used the Greenbank Radio Telescope in West Virginia, coupled with a massive computing system that consists of 32 computing nodes, each taking in 1 gigabyte of data per second. In an hour, that adds up to the equivalent of 18,000 DVDs, Gajjar said at the news conference. 

The huge computing backend allows the researchers to capture a wide range of radio frequencies simultaneously, providing a more complete picture of the irregular pulses coming from FRB 121102. 

The Breakthrough researchers observed the FRB in some of the higher-frequency radio waves emitted by the FRB, where they found pulses of light that lasted for between 0.00003 and 0.009 seconds in duration. Those incredibly short pulses can be used to indicate the size of the object emitting them, and, according to the paper, the object could be as small as 10 kilometers across, or the typical size of a neutron star, according to the statement. The researchers say they plan to study the repeating FRB in even higher frequencies than what was reported in the paper, which could potentially help them narrow down the possible sources of the burst even further, according to the statement. 

At the news conference, the paper’s authors said there are many other hypotheses that could explain FRBs. It is unclear yet if the peculiar behavior of FRB 121102 is unusual among all FRBs or just among those that scientists have been able to observe, they said, but there are new radio telescopes coming online soon that will be able to scan for these events and help researchers learn more about them.  

Recently, Breakthrough Listen scientists have also studied the space rock ‘Oumuamua that scientists believe came from another solar system, and “Boyajian’s Star,” which has mystified astronomers with its strange flickering. 

Editor’s note: This article previously stated that the dwarf galaxy is 3 billion miles away from Earth; it is 3 billion light years away.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX has delayed its two commercial crew test flights by four months, according to a new NASA schedule released Jan. 11, raising questions about whether it or Boeing will be able to send astronauts to the International Space Station by the end of the year as previously planned.

The updated schedule, which NASA said represents “the most recent publicly releasable dates” for the two companies, lists an uncrewed test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in August 2018, followed by a crewed test flight in December. The previous schedule released by NASA, in October 2017, stated those flights would take place in April and August 2018, respectively. 

SpaceX spokesperson Eva Behrend, in a statement to SpaceNews, did not discuss the reasons for the delay. “SpaceX continues to target 2018 for the first demonstration missions with and without crew under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program,” she said. [Watch: SpaceX, Boeing Launching Space Taxi Test Flights in 2018]

Behrend instead focused on the progress the company has made in the development of its Crew Dragon vehicle. “In 2017, significant progress was made towards the production, qualification and launch of Crew Dragon — one of the safest and most advanced human spaceflight systems ever built — and we are set to meet the additional milestones needed to launch our demonstration missions this year.”

In a Jan. 4 release, NASA outlined some of the milestones ahead for SpaceX before those test flights. They include “continued, rigorous qualification testing” of both the Merlin engines used on the Falcon 9 as well as the Dragon’s SuperDraco thrusters, tests of the Dragon’s parachutes, post-splashdown recovery tests, and testing of the pressure suits that will be worn by astronauts flying on the Dragon.

At the time of the release, NASA had not disclosed the latest delays, but the list of milestones suggested delays were likely. For example, NASA said that a second round of Dragon parachute system validation tests “will be completed by mid-2018,” which under the previous schedule would have been after the uncrewed test flight.

The Boeing schedule released by NASA is unchanged from the previous version, with an uncrewed test flight of its CST-100 Starliner scheduled for August 2018 and a crewed test flight in November. However, in an interview in September 2017, Chris Ferguson, director of Starliner crew and mission systems at Boeing, suggested the crewed test flight could be delayed until early 2019.

At that time, Ferguson said Boeing’s goal was to name the crew of that crewed test flight — one NASA astronaut and one Boeing test pilot — about 12 months before launch, but wanted to wait until the schedule was more certain before doing so. The company has yet to announce that crew.

The Jan. 4 NASA release also listed a number of major upcoming milestones for Boeing’s vehicle, including spacecraft construction and testing, pressure suit tests, abort engine and thruster tests and continued parachute tests.

NASA continues to rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the ISS, but had hoped to shift those duties to commercial vehicles by the end of this year. In October, NASA exercised an option in a contract with Boeing for three additional Soyuz seats on missions in the first half of 2019, which Boeing had obtained as part of a settlement with RSC Energia. The additional seats mean NASA does not have to rely on commercial crew vehicles for ISS crew transport until the second half of 2019.

“We’re still thinking about ways to buy additional margin if we have to. There’s a whole spectrum of options that we are considering,” said Kirk Shireman, ISS program manager, at a Dec. 11 press conference at the Kennedy Space Center. He did not elaborate on those options.

“We are going to look for options until he first rotation flight, because that’s our job, to be prepared for contingencies,” he added, “but I think we are absolutely progressing and look forward to demo flights in 2018.”

The status of the NASA commercial crew program will be the subject of a Jan. 17 hearing by the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, which the committee announced Jan. 10. Boeing and SpaceX executives are scheduled to testify, along with officials from NASA, the Government Accountability Office and NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

WASHINGTON — Reusable rocketry in Europe took a step forward last year with a funding boost for Prometheus, a program meant to develop a reusable engine manufacturable at one-tenth the cost of the Ariane 5’s first-stage liquid engine. A parallel effort dubbed Callisto could test a European ability to launch, return and refly a rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in South America.

The French and German space agencies (CNES and DLR, respectively) have for the past two years collaborated on a scaled-down rocket that would allow Europe to practice different aspects of recovery and reuse. Callisto’s first flight is planned for 2020.

Callisto officials said the goal of the program is not to create a new vehicle in 2020 — the Ariane 6 is scheduled to debut that same year — but to establish a base of knowledge for future launch vehicles that could, maybe, be reusable. [Reusable Rocket Launch Systems: How They Work (Infographic)]

“Prometheus and Callisto are two key elements of our future launcher preparatory roadmap,” Jean-Marc Astorg, head of CNES’s Launch Vehicles Directorate, told SpaceNews. “Prometheus is a new engine to equip Ariane 6 evolutions or brand-new launchers, and Callisto is developed to learn about reusability in Europe, which we have not done before. We are lacking an experience by operation of recovering a vehicle and reflying it. This is exactly what we would like to do with Callisto.”

Around 1 to 2 percent of Ariane 6’s 3.6-billion-euro ($4.3 billion) development budget is spent on Callisto, Astorg said, describing it as a “modest approach.” Callisto is still in a preliminary design phase, he said, with a full decision on the realization of the demonstrator anticipated this June.

“What we do on Callisto will be very useful to check if reusability is interesting from a cost point of view,” Astorg said. “That will feed our work in the coming years.”

France is leading Callisto’s guidance system and flight software development, Astorg said, and providing the launch site. The Guiana Space Centre won’t need major investments because of the small size of Callisto, he said.

Hansjörg Dittus, executive board member for space research and technology at DLR, told SpaceNews that his agency will bring trajectory, aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic expertise to Callisto, as well as assistance on some subsystem aspects.

Development of a liquid-hydrogen tank would likely be developed in cooperation between the two countries, Astorg said, with industry supplying the engine — which has not been decided — and the liquid-oxygen tank, he said. Callisto’s current configuration calls for a hydrogen engine, Dittus said.

The SpaceX effect

The idea for Callisto did come in part as a response to SpaceX, which has now landed 20 boosters and flown five customers on used rockets, but both Astorg and Dittus describe the project as very different.

“It’s not a copy of what SpaceX is doing,” Dittus said. “In some aspects we are also skeptical [about reusability as] the right path, but we will see what is best and then we can come up with ideas of how we proceed.”

Dittus said Callisto would help understand key technologies that would then influence future studies and investments beyond 2020. Questions, he said, include:

• To what extent do the stages have to be winged?
• What is the throtability of engines?
• What kind of engines would be the best to use for reusability?

“That’s why we do this now,” he said.

Asked whether it was a concern that SpaceX will be much further ahead by the time Callisto flies, Astorg said not being first brings some advantages, such avoiding the use of kerosene in favor of more reusable-friendly fuels like hydrogen or methane. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Merlin engines use liquid oxygen and kerosene. The U.S. company is investing in a methane and liquid-oxygen engine called Raptor for the Big Falcon Rocket, the successor to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. 

“To be the first to test a technology is very good to be in the media, but it is not always good to be the first in business,” he said. “Today we operate Ariane 5 with 82 successes in a row. We are now close to the first flight of Ariane 6 in 2020. These are our main workhorses to service our needs and for the launch commercial market. For the future we will need to learn from our own experience, we will need to check what others are doing to find the right vehicle for the future.”

“With Ariane 6, industry will reduce the launch cost by two with a new organization and also using technologies tested on CNES demonstrators 10 years ago,” he added. “We are working now on the technologies that will again reduce the launch cost by two in 10 years from now.”

Callisto + Prometheus?

Callisto scale

Callisto’s size as compared to today’s European launcher family, Vega, Soyuz and Ariane 5.

Credit: CNES

Prometheus was originally a CNES project with industry partner ArianeGroup, but last year evolved into a European Space Agency program with substantially more funding (ESA signed a 75 million euro contract with ArianeGroup in December for the first two prototypes). Callisto, in contrast, is not an ESA program, and its progress is somewhat separate from Prometheus. Astorg said Callisto will need to launch with a different engine because it will be too small for Prometheus, and also because Prometheus will not be ready to fly on Callisto in 2020.

The first vision of Callisto is projected at 13.5 meters high and one meter in diameter, Astorg said. As the project matures, larger versions would fly that could then potentially use Prometheus, he said.

Dittus said if Callisto were to use Prometheus, it would likely be as an ESA project.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

Monster black holes hide in the centers of most galaxies in the universe, and now, a new technique is helping scientists measure the mass of some of the very largest black holes in the universe, even when they lie at the centers of very faint, distant galaxies. The new approach could dramatically improve scientists’ understanding of how these behemoths form and evolve, and how they influence galaxy evolution.

“This is the first time that we have directly measured masses for so many supermassive black holes so far away,” Catherine Grier, a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State, said in a statement from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Grier led a project to measure the masses of a wealth of so-called supermassive black holes using SDSS data. She reported the results Tuesday (Jan. 9) at the American Astronomical Society meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

“These new measurements, and future measurements like them, will provide vital information for people studying how galaxies grow and evolve throughout cosmic time,” Grier said. [Images: Black Holes of the Universe]

Mass-measuring black holes

Based on decades of galactic observations, astronomers now theorize that the heart of nearly every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole (SMBH). These monstrous beasts can be millions or billions of times more massive than Earth’s sun. Black holes don’t radiate or reflect light, so these SMBHs can’t be seen directly. But as the gravity of an SMBH draws in dust and gas from the surrounding galaxy, it creates a swirling disk of material that falls into the black hole. That infalling material heats up and begins to radiate light, making the black hole “visible” (albeit indirectly). In some cases, the light from these disks becomes brighter than all of the stars in the galaxy; these incredibly bright galaxies are then called active galactic nuclei (AGN). The brightest AGN are called quasars, which astronomers can see all the way across the visible universe; they indicate the presence of a supermassive black hole, according to the statement.

Black holes have only three measurable properties — mass, spin and charge — so calculating the mass is a huge part of understanding an individual black hole. In nearby galaxies, astronomers can observe how groups of stars and gas move around the galactic center and use those movements to deduce the mass of the central black hole. But distant galaxies lie so far away that telescopes can’t resolve the stars and clouds of material around the black hole, according to the statement.

A technique known as reverberation mapping has made it possible for astronomers to measure the masses of these outlying black holes. First, researchers compare the brightness of the radiating gas in the outer region of the galaxy with the brightness of the gas found in the inner region of the galaxy. (This inner region, very close to the black hole, is known as the continuum region). The gas in the continuum region affects the fast-moving gas farther out. However, light takes time to travel outward, or reverberate, causing a delay between the changes seen in the inner region and their effect on the outer region. Measuring the delay reveals how far away the outer disk of gas is from the black hole. Coupled with its rotation rate around the galaxy, this allows astronomers to measure the SMBH’s mass, Grier told Space.com in an email.

But the process is painfully slow. To observe the reverberation effect, an individual galaxy must be studied over and over again for several months, while distant quasars can take several years of repeated observations, researchers said in the statement. Over the past 20 years, astronomers have managed to use the reverberation technique for only about 60 SMBHs in nearby galaxies and a handful of distant quasars.

As a part of the SDSS Reverberation Mapping Project, Grier and her colleagues have begun mapping SMBHs faster than previously possible. The key to this faster mapping comes from the project’s dedicated wide-view telescope, located at the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, which can collect data on multiple quasars at the same time, according to Grier. It is currently observing a patch of the sky that contains about 850 quasars. 

The researchers observed the quasars with the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope in Hawaii and the Steward Observatory Bok Telescope in Arizona to calibrate their measurements of the incredibly faint objects. In total, the researchers have now measured reverberation time delays for 44 quasars, and they used those measurements to calculate black hole masses ranging from 5 million to 1.7 billion times the mass of Earth’s sun, according to the statement.

“This is a big step forward for quasar science,” Aaron Barth, a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the team’s research, said in the statement. “They have shown for the first time that these difficult measurements can be done in mass-production mode.”

The new measurements increase the total number of galactic SMBH mass measurements by about two-thirds. Because many of those galaxies are very far away, the new measurements reveal SMBH masses from further back in time, to when the universe was only half its current age.

By continuing to observe the 850 quasars with the SDSS telescope over multiple years, the team will accumulate years of data that will allow them to measure the masses of even fainter quasars, whose longer time delays cannot be measured with a single year of data.

“Getting observations of quasars over multiple years is crucial to obtain good measurements,” said Yue Shen, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois and principal investigator of the SDSS Reverberation Mapping Project. “As we continue our project to monitor more and more quasars for years to come, we will be able to better understand how supermassive black holes grow and evolve.”

After the current fourth phase of the SDSS ends in 2020, the fifth phase, SDSS-V, will begin. SDSS-V features a new program called the Black Hole Mapper, in which researchers plan to measure the SMBH masses in more than 1,000 quasars, observing fainter and older quasars than any reverberation mapping project has ever managed.

“The Black Hole Mapper will let us move into the age of supermassive black hole reverberation mapping on a true industrial scale,” Niel Brandt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a longtime member of the SDSS, said in the statement. “We will learn more about these mysterious objects than ever before.”

Follow Nola Taylor Redd at @NolaTRedd, Facebook, or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Neil Armstrong was a NASA astronaut most famous for being the first person to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969. An accomplished test pilot, Armstrong also flew on the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. He retired from NASA in 1971 and remained active in the aerospace community, although he chose to keep mostly out of the public spotlight. Armstrong died Aug. 25, 2012, at age 82.

Armstrong was famously reticent about his accomplishments, preferring to focus on the team that helped him get to the moon rather than his own first steps. “I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work,” Armstrong said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program in 2005, according to Reuters. 

In another interview, when asked what it feels like to have his footprints remain on the moon’s surface for thousands of years, Armstrong said, “I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up,” Reuters added.

An official biography of Armstrong was published in 2005, called “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.” It was written by James R. Hansen, a former NASA historian and later a history professor at Auburn University. 

Early career and NASA work

Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on Aug. 5, 1930. His parents were Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. Armstrong was a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952 and served in the Korean War. Armstrong got a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University in 1955; much later (after he became world-famous) he received a master of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970. As a NASA test pilot, Armstrong flew the X-15, a rocket-powered, missile-shaped aircraft that tested the limits of high-altitude flight. He flew more than 200 different aircraft, from jets to gliders and even helicopters.

NASA test pilot Neil Armstrong is seen here next to the X-15 ship #1 after a research flight.

Credit: NASA

In 1962, Armstrong was selected with NASA’s second group of astronauts, who flew on the two-seat Gemini missions to test out space technology, and the three-seat Apollo missions that ultimately took 12 people to the surface of the moon. Armstrong’s first flight was the command pilot of the Gemini 8 mission in March 1966, the sixth crewed mission of that series. 

Armstrong and pilot David Scott did the first orbital docking of two spacecraft, joining their Gemini 8 spacecraft to an uncrewed Agena target vehicle. However, the mission quickly turned into an emergency situation when a thruster on the Gemini 8 spacecraft was stuck open. With the astronauts whipping around faster than one revolution per second, Armstrong managed to gain control again by using the re-entry system thrusters. The mission — the first serious emergency in space — ultimately ended safely, but splashed down early because the re-entry system was used.

Armstrong narrowly avoided a nasty accident in May 1968 while using the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, a machine that could fly somewhat like a lunar module and simulate landings on the moon. Fuel for his thrusters ran out and Armstrong was forced to eject just seconds before the vehicle crashed. Armstrong escaped unharmed.

Apollo 11 and the first moonwalk

The first public announcement NASA made about the Apollo 11 crew’s selection was in January 1969, but chief astronaut Deke Slayton had made the decision several weeks earlier. Slayton chose an all-veteran team of Neil Armstrong (Gemini 8), Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (Gemini 12) and Michael Collins (Gemini 10). Armstrong was tapped to command the mission. His responsibilities included landing on the moon alongside Aldrin, the pilot of the lunar module Eagle. Collins would remain in lunar orbit aboard the command module Columbia. (Collins was originally supposed to be backup pilot for Apollo 11, but his spot in the flight sequence was moved after required surgery on his back forced him off the prime crew for Apollo 8.)

The crew was not fully certain they would be the first on the moon; NASA had a tight sequence of missions happening every few months, and all mission objectives needed to be accomplished for each one to get Apollo 11 to the moon in time. Missions before Apollo 11 included the first crewed trip around the moon (Apollo 8, December 1968), the first test of the lunar module in space (Apollo 9, March 1969) and the first simulated lunar landing (Apollo 10, May 1969). 

However, the crewmembers were cognizant that their trip was planned to be the first landing, and designed their mission patch with that in mind. It featured an eagle holding an olive branch in its talons; the crew also left their names off of the mission patch to make the mission more representative of humans in general, according to Collins’ book “Carrying the Fire” (1974).

Apollo 11 lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in sight of vast crowds of people who camped there to watch the launch on July 16, 1969. The crew journeyed to the moon for four days, achieved lunar orbit, and separated the two spacecraft on July 20. 

As the crew descended to the surface, they could see landmarks below passing by several seconds early, and they reported to Mission Control that they would be several miles away from their planned landing area. Subsequently, the Eagle’s computer displayed several program alarms due to the computer being “overloaded” with tasks and needing to restart. Mission Control guidance officer Steve Bales (with assistance from computer engineer Jack Garman) told the crew they were okay to go to the surface. (Much later, an investigation found the computer was overloaded because a rendezvous radar switch was in the wrong position, sending signals in error to the computer.)

Armstrong took over the landing himself when he saw that the computer was guiding them to a boulder-filled landing zone. Landing was achieved at 4:14 p.m. EDT (2014 GMT) with only 25 seconds of fuel left. Armstrong announced, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Capsule communicator and astronaut Charles Duke responded from Earth: “Roger … Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

The schedule called for the astronauts to sleep before the first moonwalk, but they elected to go outside early because they felt they would not be able to sleep. In view of a black-and-white television camera transmitting his movements live to Earth, Armstrong descended Eagle’s lander and touched his left foot upon the surface at 10:56 p.m. EDT July 20 (0256 GMT July 21). His first words were “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” (The “a” was lost to radio static, but later analysis of the sound wave showed that Armstrong did say it.)

Armstrong and Aldrin together explored the surface during a moonwalk that lasted 2 hours and 36 minutes. They collected 48.5 pounds (22 kilograms) of material from the surface —including 50 moon rocks — as well as deploying experiments, planting the U.S. flag and taking a moment to speak with then-U.S. president Richard Nixon. The Eagle’s crew lifted off safely from the moon on July 21, docked with Columbia, and voyaged back to Earth for a successful ocean landing on July 24. The astronauts went into quarantine to mitigate the (unlikely) risk that they were carrying some sort of moon germs back with them, and then embarked on a world tour to celebrate the mission.

After Apollo 11, and Armstrong’s death

After his time as an astronaut, Armstrong was deputy associate administrator for Aeronautics at NASA headquarters. He resigned from NASA in 1971. Subsequently, from 1971 to 1979, he was professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., in Charlottesville, Va. Armstrong also participated in the Rogers Commission, which was a presidential commission tasked to look at the causes and events of the fatal Challenger shuttle explosion of Jan. 28, 1986, that killed seven astronauts. 

Armstrong chose to mostly stay out of the spotlight after leaving NASA, although he did reappear periodically for interviews or for anniversary events concerning Apollo 11. While his public statements were few, he did follow spaceflight news of his day and occasionally made comments on what was happening. He remained a vocal supporter of suborbital spaceflight. On the other hand, the former Apollo astronaut was publicly critical of plans to shift the crewed spaceflight from NASA to private spacecraft.

On Aug. 7, 2012 —two days after Armstrong turned 82 years old — the famed moonwalker underwent coronary bypass surgery. Complications from that surgery resulted in his death Aug. 25. 

“Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend,” his family wrote on the website neilarmstronginfo.com. “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request,” they added. “Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

Tributes poured in from many public figures, including then-U.S. president Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, then-NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Apollo 11 crewmates Aldrin and Collins, and various space representatives in the public, private and not-for-profit spheres. 

“Neil was among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time,” Obama’s statement read in part. “When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible.”

A private memorial service for Armstrong was held Aug. 31, 2012, at the Camargo Club in Cincinnati. ) Two weeks later, a publicly televised memorial service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. 

Armstrong was buried at sea Sept. 14, 2012, in a ceremony aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea. Armstrong’s family was on board when the ship left port in Mayport, Fla., and released his ashes somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Obama ordered flags around the United States to fly at half-staff on the day of the funeral.

Armstrong’s legacy

In 2015, the Smithsonian Institution revealed that Armstrong had kept aside a cloth bag full of small parts from the lunar module Eagle, which lay undiscovered for decades until his widow Carol found it. While Armstrong made no mention of this bag in decades of interviews, the bag was discussed a few times during the mission itself. 

It is unknown how Armstrong ultimately gained possession in the bag, but it was common during the Apollo years for astronauts to retain souvenirs of their flights. (A month after Armstrong’s death, Obama made legal a bill to allow Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts to retain legal title to these mementos.) Former “Mythbusters” host Adam Savage subsequently created a carry bag based on the design of Armstrong’s “purse”; the design was actually used in several Apollo missions before and after Apollo 11. 

The Columbia spacecraft was on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., between 1976 and 2016 in the museum’s main hall. Then, the famous spacecraft was removed for restoration at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, the annex to museum. Meanwhile, the main hall was renovated and a new “Destination Moon” gallery began construction, with intentions to redisplay Columbia there when it re-opens. The spacecraft itself is currently on tour, reaching locations in Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Seattle. It will be at the Museum of Flight in Seattle for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in July 2019. 

In a 2013 BBC documentary, Armstrong’s brother Dean said that he knew of the famous first words on the moon several months before Apollo 11 touched down. Dean reported that Armstrong passed him a handwritten note as the brothers played a late-night game of Risk, according to British newspaper the Telegraph. However, Dean’s remarks contradicted many statements by Armstrong himself, who said that the words didn’t come to him until he arrived on the moon. The other Apollo 11 astronauts have also backed up Armstrong’s assertions.

In 2017, a rare gold lunar model was stolen from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio. “Entry to the museum was discovered and taken was a solid gold replica of the 1969 Lunar Excursion Module that landed on the moon,” Russel Hunlock, Wapakoneta police chief, stated in a release. “The piece is very rare as it was presented to Neil Armstrong in Paris, France, shortly after the moon landing.” 

A Neil Armstrong biography will come to theaters in 2018. The movie is based upon the James R. Hansen book “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong” and will star actor Ryan Gosling.

Additional reporting by Space.com staff

Miguel Claro is a Lisbon, Portugal-based professional photographer, author and science communicator who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of the international astrophotography project The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “skyscapes” that connect Earth and the night sky. Join him here as he takes us through his photograph “Lunar Christmas Earthshine Above Mértola Castle.” 

One day after the new moon disappeared in the night sky on Dec. 18, the face of the slender, crescent moon was only 2 percent illuminated by sunlight. But the other 98 percent of the moon’s face escaped total darkness thanks to a phenomenon called lunar earthshine. 

Even when direct sunlight lights up only a portion of the moon as seen from Earth, sunlight that reflects off our planet can illuminate the rest of the lunar surface, giving the unlit region a dim and subtle glow. 

Leonardo da Vinci explained the phenomenon in the early 16th century when he realized that both Earth and the moon reflect sunlight at the same time. Light associated with earthshine is reflected from the Earth to the moon and back to Earth. 

In this night-sky photo from Mértola Village in Portugal’s Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, a dark silhouette of the moon’s round face is visible, along with the thin, bright sliver of the waxing crescent moon. In the foreground on a hilltop is the beautiful and well-preserved medieval castle, decorated with Christmas lights around the walls.

To see more of Claro’s amazing astrophotography, visit his website: miguelclaro.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

UPDATE: ABC News reported Tuesday evening (Jan. 9) that Zuma plummeted into the Indian Ocean. The ABC News report cites a single, unnamed “U.S. official.”

Something weird is going on with a classified SpaceX payload launched Sunday night (Jan. 7), codenamed Zuma. Either the mission failed, and a U.S. spy satellite was lost in space, per Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal reports that were posted Monday (Jan. 9), or it succeeded, per SpaceX.

Loren Grush, a reporter at The Verge and SpaceX expert, does a good job of untangling the threads in an article posted early today (Jan. 9).

First, here’s what’s known:

SpaceX, as usual, livestreamed the launch, and everything appeared to go as planned. Then, as usual with classified payloads, the livestream cut off before the separation of the nose cone and deployment of the satellite it holds. However, unusually, neither SpaceX nor Northrop Grumman (the company that built Zuma) initially confirmed a successful launch. The next datapoint came from U.S. Strategic Command, part of the Department of Defense that tracks all such orbiters. Strategic Command added a new satellite to its Space-Track.org catalog after the launch, designated USA 280, but — as usual for classified objects — did not provide an orbital path.

“That likely means someone within Strategic Command added Zuma to the catalogue after the satellite completed an orbit,” Grush wrote.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg then reported, drawing on government sources, that Zuma did not separate from the rocket. Bloomberg reports that the upper stage failed, and the Journal reports that the spacecraft fell back to Earth. The upper or second stage of the rocket is the section just below the payload. Once the first stage helps boost the entire craft to a certain altitude, it gets released and the upper stage ignites to ultimately bring the payload to its final orbit. “Following first stage separation, the second stage Merlin ignites and takes the payload to a parking orbit before igniting again to place the payload into its final orbit. Once the second stage orbit ignites, the payload fairing is jettisoned,” Spaceflight Insider reports.

However, SpaceX is sending signals that — at least on that company’s end — everything worked properly. In a pair of statements to Grush, the company said “reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally” and later, from President/COO Gwynne Shotwell, “For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night.”

What does all of this mean?

It’s unclear. But Grush writes that SpaceX appears to be trying hard to communicate that it did everything right, without excluding the possibility that there was a failure once things entered Northrop’s sphere of responsibility. It’s certainly possible that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully lofted Zuma to orbit, but that Zuma failed to deploy or operate properly after deployment.

It might become clearer in the coming weeks whether a new satellite now orbits the Earth, alive or dead, as amateur astronomers try to spot the object. Already, one such early datapoint has come in: Peter Horstink, the Dutch pilot of a Boeing 747-400 freighter flying at 35,000 feet (about 10,700 meters) just north of Khartoum, Sudan, photographed a green-blue “spiral” that, according to SatTrackCam Leiden’s blog, was likely the result of the Falcon 9 upper stage depressurizing and venting fuel.

This is the image taken by Dutch pilot Peter Horstink, from his aircraft over Khartoum near 3:15 UT, 2h 15m after launch.
This is probably the Falcon 9 venting fuel.#Zuma pic.twitter.com/EEsl7e1sQP

— Dr Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) January 8, 2018

Read Grush’s full report at The Verge.

Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 1:04 pm Jan. 9 was updated at 11:25 am Jan. 10 to include reporting from ABC News.

Originally published on Live Science.

Two of the Guardians of the Galaxy are crossing over to the real space station to engage teens in science.

Rocket and Groot, characters from the Marvel comic book franchise, are taking sides in a competition that challenges students to propose microgravity science and technology investigations based on the talking raccoon’s and tree-like creature’s respective attributes. Two of the submitted ideas will be chosen to launch to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will be performed inside the U.S. National Lab later this year.

The “Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge” is presented by Marvel Entertainment and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the non-profit responsible for overseeing the research conducted aboard the National Lab. [The Weirdest Aliens of the Marvel Universe]

“[This] is a great way to bridge the comic book community with the space community to advance science, technology, engineering and math education,” Kenneth Shields, CASIS Director of Operations and Educational Opportunities, said in a statement announcing the competition on Wednesday (Jan. 10). “Rocket and Groot have characteristics that are researched onboard the ISS daily, and to allow students to propose experiments based on their favorite superheroes will be an exciting way to engage our nation’s youth about STEM principles and the space station.”

“The Guardians of the Galaxy” Groot and Rocket Raccoon were depicted on a 2016 mission patch representing U.S. National Lab research.

Credit: collectSPACE.com

This is Rocket and Groot’s second crossover with CASIS and the International Space Station. In 2016, the duo were featured on a mission patch representing all of the science that was launched to the U.S. National Lab that year. The patch, which in its embroidered form was also flown to the space station, depicted Rocket and Groot looking up at the orbiting outpost in the night sky.

For this new contest, students are invited to pick between “Team Rocket” or “Team Groot,” representing two separate research opportunities.

Students joining Team Rocket are challenged to suggest concepts inspired by Rocket Raccoon’s ability to improvise as a “starship pilot, military tactician, technological genius and leader.” These flight ideas are focused on technology development and materials innovation, such as developing satellite technology to be deployed from the space station or evaluating metal alloys in microgravity.

Students joining Team Groot and Team Rocket in the Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge will propose ideas based on the characters’ respective attributes.

Credit: Marvel and CASIS via collectSPACE.com

Students interested in biological and regenerative science can align with Team Groot. Experiments modeled after the plant-based superhero could include growing crops on the station as a potential food source for future astronauts or studying the gene expression of space-exposed seeds.

Team Groot payloads will need to fit in a CubeLab, a self-contained 4-inch (10 centimeters) square provided by the space services company Space Tango. Concepts for Team Rocket must fit in the similarly sized NanoRacks NanoLab, which includes a circuit board to activate the experiment.

The competition is open through Jan. 31. Entrants need to describe their idea and explain why performing it in space will enhance their findings. The contest is open to students in the United States between the ages of 13 and 18.

After the contest concludes, CASIS will choose two of the submitted concepts to turn into reality, launching them to the space station this year.

For more information or to enter, see the Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge website at spacestationexplorers.org/marvel.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2018 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

While John Young, who died on Jan. 5 at age 87, is famous for his Apollo 16 moonwalks and his role as commander of the first space shuttle mission, the NASA astronaut is also remembered for a small scandal he triggered with a sneaky act: smuggling a corned-beef sandwich into space.

Young slipped the sandwich into his pocket just before launching on Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965. It was the first U.S. mission to carry two astronauts — Young and his crewmate, Gus Grissom. But the Soviets had launched their own two-person mission, Voskhod 2, less than a week earlier, so tensions were already high among politicians when Gemini 3 safely made it to space and efficiently completed its objectives.

The corned-beef sandwich sparked a brief conversation between Young and Grissom, according to the Gemini 3 transcript. The chat lasted for only about a minute of the nearly 6-hour mission.[John Young in Photos: Astronaut, Moonwalker, Shuttle Pioneer]

“What is it?” Grissom asked. “Corned-beef sandwich,” Young replied. “Where did that come from?” Grissom asked. Answered Young: “I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?”

Grissom tasted the sandwich but quickly announced he would stick it back in his pocket because it was starting to break up. Young suggested the sandwich was “a thought … not a very good one.” Replied Grissom: “Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together.”

A corned beef sandwich, embedded in acrylic, is exhibited at the Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, Ind., to “memorialize the infamous sandwich” on Gemini 3.

Credit: Raymond K. Cunningham, Jr. via collectSPACE.com

Shortly after returning home from the mission, Grissom later recounted the taste test for Life magazine. “I took a bite, but crumbs of rye bread started floating all around the cabin,” he said, adding that he and Young enjoyed “the chance to carry out some real ‘firsts’ in spaceflight.” [Space Food Evolution: How Astronaut Chow Has Changed (Photos)]

But the brief incident sparked a review by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations, in which one member of Congress called it “a $30 million sandwich” and politicians cited safety concerns about crumbs interfering with spacecraft operations. Several senior NASA officials, including then-Administrator James Webb, testified at the proceedings. 

Young recalled that review in his 2012 memoir “Forever Young”: “Today the theater that took place inside the meeting room that day strikes me as totally comic, but I can assure you that those testifying for NASA at the time were not smiling.” 

A frequently cited quote from that meeting comes from George Mueller, then NASA’s associate administrator for manned space flight: “We have taken steps … to prevent recurrence of corned-beef sandwiches in future flights,” he said.

Corned beef flies officially in 1981

The offending sandwich came from a Cocoa Beach, Florida, deli called Wolfie’s Restaurant and Sandwich Shop, at the Ramada Inn. (The chain closed in 2002, according to Space.com partner site collectSPACE.) Noted astronaut prankster Wally Schirra bought the sandwich and gave it to Young, who smuggled it on board in a spacesuit pocket.

For context, early space food (by today’s standards) was pretty bland, with astronauts often needing to suck nutrition out of a pouch. Today, astronauts commonly make their own sandwiches (and even pizzas) on the International Space Station — but they use tortilla bread to reduce crumbs. 

“I didn’t think it was any big deal,” Young wrote in his memoirs of the sandwich, pointing out that one of the mission objectives had been to test NASA food anyway. “It was very common to carry sandwiches — in fact, the corned beef was the third sandwich that had been carried on a spacecraft.” 

Corned beef did appear on the menu of the first space shuttle mission in April 1981 — which Young happened to command.

While the infamous sandwich is no longer available to historians, a similar one, preserved in acrylic, is on display at the Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, Indiana.

Chris Kraft was NASA’s flight director during Gemini 3. In his 2001 memoir, “Flight,” Kraft defended the astronauts’ actions. “No matter how brave or focused an astronaut is, there’s a tension in spaceflight that none of us on the ground can truly appreciate. A moment of diversion up there is no bad thing.”

Young added that, in any case, the sandwich was missing some ingredients. “It didn’t even have mustard on it,” he wrote. “And no pickle.”

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.