NASA AFFECTED BY PARTIAL G OVT SHUTDOWN

Hey Space Placers!

Article on how partial government shutdown is affecting NASA.

Sky Guy in VA

THE NEW SPACE RACE

Hey Space Placers!

Interesting article about China and the new space race.

I wrote about this in March of last year .

While the US contends with the longest federal government shutdown in the Nation's history - NASA is essentially shut down - China is exploring the far side of the Moon.

The American people had better wake up and demand their elected members of Congress to their jobs  instead of putting politics over country.

China's Communist Party is focused, financially supported and moving ahead in space.

America needs to do the same.

Sky Guy in VA

CHANG'E 4 LANDING VIDEO

Hey Space Placers!

I can look at this all day......the landing video of China's Chang'e 4 far side lunar lander.



I look forward to seeing more Chang'e 4 videos from China National Space Administration.

I also look forward to see other Nations' lunar landing video - India's Chandrayaan 2 possibly at the end of January 2019 and China's - Chang'e 5 in late 2019. There are also four PRIVATE companies attempting Moon landings. 

Per Sky and Telescope:

• SpaceIL: This Israeli-based company plans to launch its Beresheet lunar lander (named for the first Hebrew word in the Book of Genesis) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 13, 2019. The spacecraft will take about two and a half months to reach the Moon, through a slow cycle of elliptical raising orbits.
• ALINA: Germany's Autonomous Landing and Navigation module (ALINA) could bring two Audi lunar quattro rovers near the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow landing site in 2019. ALINA is operated by the Part-Time Scientists, and the company is working to secure a launch contract with SpaceX.
• Moon Express: The sole remaining U.S. entry in the Google Lunar X prize competition, Moon Express still intends to field two missions in 2019: the MX-1E lander and the Lunar Outpost MX-3 lander. The company plans to launch these missions on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, which carried out several successful launches from the company's Mahia New Zealand launch complex in 2018. MX-1E will carry a small optical telescope, a laser retro-reflector, and a Celestis memorial container.
• Team Indus: Headquartered in Bangalore, India, this company is also looking to secure a launch contract in 2019. Two other teams, Synergy Moon and Hakuto, are looking to piggyback with Team Indus.

Looks good for space missions in 2019. 

Sky Guy in VA

AMAZING CYGNUS A

Hey Space Placers!

Been a LOT of astronomical news coming out of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Seattle this week.

Read this amazing story about a supermassive black hole in the Cygnus A Galaxy that has a ricocheting jet blasting from a giant black hole has been captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.




We are living in a golden age of discovery about our Universe, galaxy and solar system. With more spacecraft missions to the Moon and solar system, space based telescopes, and monster ground based telescopes it is only going to get better.

Sky Guy in VA

HST'S MAIN CAMERA NOT WORKING

Hey Space Placers!

Bad news about Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

The primary camera, Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, is broken and not working.

Worse yet, NASA cannot pull in the people necessary to try and fix it because of the stupid partial government shut down.

The problem is that NASA Goddard, where many of HST's expert work, is closed.

We'll have to see what happens.......

Sky Guy Greg

CHECK OUT THE NEW BINARY ASTEROID

Hey Space Placers!

We continue to learn more about our solar system almost every single night.

Here is the latest binary asteroid .

Range-Doppler radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2016 AZ8 with range resolution (vertical axis) of 7.5 m/pixel and Doppler frequency resolution (horizontal axis) of 0.03 Hz where (left) is the sequence of images over the almost 40 min of data and (right) is the first frame, obtained over about 3 min.

Pretty amazing what we can see with radar on these worlds.

Sky Guy in VA

TRIANGULUM GALAXY AS SEEN BY HST

Hey Space Placers!

Happy 2019.

Back from being sick and the holidays.

Check out this INCREDIBLE video of the nearby Triangulum Galaxy (M-33) released today by the SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE  using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images:



Be sure to read the story about the 665 MB picture taken by HST.

Release type: American Astronomical Society Meeting
CREDIT: NASA, ESA

For comparison here is my astrophoto of M-33 taken with my 10-inch telescope and DSLR:

Local Group Galaxy M-33 in a 10-inch Telescope and DSLR
Credit: Greg Redfern

Sky Guy in VA