China Responds to 'Space Race' | Black Hole Parties in Deep Space? (Top 5 in Space Today)

In this episode we'll talk about China's reaction to yesterday's story of NASA's declaration of an ongoing space race.  We'll also review efforts by AFRL to protect the space environment and recent findings by scientists about the nature of black hole clusters.  Welcome to the Undiscovered Country.

5.  First Launch of 2023!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched into a brilliant blue sky this morning (Jan. 3) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying 114 satellites to orbit — the second-most spacecraft ever lofted on a single mission.

Today's flight, called Transporter-6, is notable for another reason as well: It marked the 15th mission for this particular Falcon 9's first stage, tying a reusability record that SpaceX set just last month. It was also SpaceX's 200th flight and the company's 161st successful rocket landing.

The rocket’s upper stage started releasing its 114 payloads into sun-synchronous orbit nearly an hour after liftoff, a process involving 82 individual deployments that took more than a half-hour to complete. SpaceX was able to confirm 77 of the deployments in real time.

Packed though Transporter-6's manifest may be, the mission still fell well short of the most-satellites-launched record. That mark is held by SpaceX's Transporter-1, which sent 143 satellites to orbit in January 2021.

https://www.space.com/spacex-transporter-6-mission-launch-success

https://spacenews.com/spacex-begins-2023-with-transporter-6-launch/

4.  Black Hole Party

In a recent study, scientist have explained that some black hole collisions may occur in densely packed, "carnival-like" star clusters. The finding hints at what binary black hole systems looked like before the black holes merged and what may trigger such violent events.

The clues to the origins of black hole collisions were discovered within the gravitational waves that such mergers send rippling through the very fabric of space-time, as first predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

They discovered that some of the black hole pairs that the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration — a group of laser interferometers located in the U.S., Italy and Japan, respectively — detected in gravitational waves had highly flattened or elliptical orbits. These flattened orbits resembled those of long-period comets, like Halley's Comet, rather than an orbit of a planet like Earth, which implies that the black hole merger that released the gravitational waves could have occurred in dense star clusters.

The findings suggest that, of the 85 black hole mergers detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA since 2015, at least 35% happened in star clusters.

Isobel Romero-Shaw, a physicist at the University of Cambridge who led the study, said in a statement that "When a pair of black holes evolve together in isolation, they're like a couple performing a slow waltz alone in the ballroom. It's very controlled and careful; beautiful, but nothing unexpected.  Contrasting to that is the carnival-style atmosphere inside a star cluster, where you might get lots of different dances happening simultaneously; big and small dance groups, freestyle, and lots of surprises!"

https://www.space.com/black-hole-carnivals-mergers-star-clusters

3.  AFRL uses RPOD for SSA (and other acronyms)

In recent months the Air Force Research Laboratory has been expanding its collaboration with commercial industry on technologies to inspect, repair and refuel satellites on orbit — not to extend the lives of just any satellites, but especially those responsible for keeping an eye on adversary spacecraft and potentially dangerous space junk.

AFRL’s Tristan Griffith directly linked “rendezvous, proximity operations and docking,” or RPOD, to future space situational awareness (SSA), saying that it was a “critical” component.

According to Astroscale US President Ron Lopez, demonstrating that such close-in maneuvers and spacecraft docking can be done safely “will enable on-orbit servicing, which in turn, … is what is going to underpin the growth of that trillion dollar economy that everybody talks about, but also underpins [an] in-space logistics chain . . . . Space is the only domain of military operations that does not have a logistics tail, and that’s changing now.”

According to a paper by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, “Space logistics is the science of planning and carrying out the movement of humans and materiel to, from and within space combined with the ability to maintain human and robotics operations within space.”

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/01/afrl-wants-on-orbit-servicing-tech-to-enhance-space-monitoring-logistics/

2.  RIP Walt Cunningham

Former NASA astronaut Walter Cunningham, who flew on the first test of the Apollo command module in Earth orbit, has died at the age of 90.

Walter Cunningham was chosen with NASA's third group of astronauts in 1963 and became only the second civilian to fly into space when he launched on the Apollo 7 mission on Oct. 11, 1968. The 11-day flight, which followed the loss of the Apollo 1 crew in a fire on the launch pad the year earlier, served as a critical shakedown cruise for the redesigned command module before it could fly astronauts to the moon.

In addition to being NASA's first three-person crew to fly into space, Apollo 7 was also the first American flight to include live television from space.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1951 and served on active duty as a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot from 1953 until 1956, flying 54 missions as a fighter pilot in Korea.

Cunningham left NASA in 1971 and, after attending Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program, went on to become a businessman, investor and director of a number of public and private companies. He hosted a radio talk show, "Lift-off To Logic," and was a frequent lecturer.

https://www.space.com/apollo-7-astronaut-walt-cunningham-obituary

1.  China's not interested in a space race?

All of China's activities in outer space are intended for the country's social, economic and technological development rather than for the "space race" with other nations. That is the conclusion from Chinese space insiders in response to NASA administrator Bill Nelson's recent space race declaration.

Yang Yuguang, a senior space industry observer in Beijing and vice-chair of the International Astronautical Federation's space transportation committee said "We carry out spaceflights to develop high technology and improve economic growth and people's living standard. We don't take part in the space race with any other countries because competition in this regard is meaningless."

"If some people are so fond of the space race, then it is their own space race and we will not get involved. . . . In terms of moon landing, it is our business to decide when we will send our astronauts there, and it is none of any other's country's business. And when others will land their people on the moon, that too is none of China's business."

"As long as your spacecraft will not affect the safety of ours, you can place them anywhere you wish, but if you deliberately land a spacecraft very close to ours and its engines' blaze damages our equipment, then such acts are nothing but provocations."

What do you think citizens?  Is the US trying to pick a fight? Or is China just denying the obvious? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_not_in_space_race_industry_insiders_say_999.html

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinas_space_exploration_spurred_by_helping_humanity_999.html

 

Thank you for joining me. Links to all the stories are in the description.  Keep ahead of all of the most important things happening by checking out my other recent episodes. I would love to hear your thoughts on everything I talked about here today.  I am honored to be a part of this community of citizens in this Undiscovered Country of ours. I’ll see you again next time.