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SpaceX executive pitches Starship for space debris cleanup

Link: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/10/27/spacex-executive-pitches-starship-for-space-debris-cleanup/

SpaceX could use its Starship vehicles to clear out space debris in Earth orbit, alongside the program’s more publicized purpose of ferrying people and cargo to the moon and Mars, a company executive said.

The Starship is the upper stage of a giant new rocket SpaceX is developing to boost more than 100 metric tons, or more than 220,000 pounds, of payloads into low Earth orbit. With in-orbit refueling, the Starship’s methane-fed engines could propel more than 100 metric tons of cargo to the moon, Mars, and other deep space destinations, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX is designing the Starship and its massive booster rocket — named the Super Heavy — to be fully reusable. Both vehicles will come back to Earth for vertical landings to be turned around for more missions.

“Not only will it decrease the costs of access to space, it’s the vehicle that would transport people from Earth to Mars,” Shotwell said in an interview with Time’s technology columnist Patrick Lucas Austin. “But it also has the capability of taking cargo and crew at the same time, and so it’s quite possible that we could leverage Starship to go to some of these dead rocket bodies — other people’s rocket’s, of course — basically pick up some of this junk in outer space.”

In the hunt for Planet Nine, astronomers eye a new search technique for the elusive world

Link: https://www.space.com/planet-nine-search-observing-technique

Finding Planet Nine may require looking at telescope images in a different light.

Astronomers are vetting a "shifting and stacking" technique that could aid the hunt for the putative world, which some researchers think lurks undiscovered in the far outer system, way beyond Pluto's orbit.

The strategy involves shifting space-telescope images along sets of possible orbital paths, then stacking the photos together to combine their light. The technique has already been used to discover some moons in our solar system, and it could potentially spot Planet Nine — also known as Planet X, Giant Planet Five or Planet Next — and other extremely farflung objects, researchers said.

Astronomers are vetting a "shifting and stacking" technique that could aid the hunt for the putative world, which some researchers think lurks undiscovered in the far outer system, way beyond Pluto's orbit.

The strategy involves shifting space-telescope images along sets of possible orbital paths, then stacking the photos together to combine their light. The technique has already been used to discover some moons in our solar system, and it could potentially spot Planet Nine — also known as Planet X, Giant Planet Five or Planet Next — and other extremely farflung objects, researchers said.

"You really can’t see them without using this kind of method," Malena Rice, an astronomy Ph.D. student at Yale University in Connecticut, said in a statement. "If Planet Nine is out there, it’s going to be incredibly dim."

In a test, the researchers found the faint signals of three known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) — small bodies that circle the sun beyond Neptune's orbit — in shifted and stacked TESS images. The scientists then conducted a blind search of two distant patches of sky, turning up 17 new TNO candidates.

"If even one of these candidate objects is real, it would help us to understand the dynamics of the outer solar system and the likely properties of Planet Nine," Rice said. "It’s compelling new information."

NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon

Link: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-sofia-discovers-water-on-sunlit-surface-of-moon/

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has...