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What a week in space and astronomy!
It's been a hectic and busy few days for astronomy and space exploration tech.
Probably the largest single event was the 8th launch of SpaceX's Starship yesterday. This is the largest rocket even flown - larger even than NASA's Saturn V rocket that took humanity to the Moon in the 1960s - and it a major part of plans to land people on Mars in the coming decade. This flight launched successfully and the booster was captured back the launch pad, however like the previous mission, the Starship spacecraft itself exploded after a few minutes of flight.
After 8 launches of this massive rocket, no payload the size of a Corgi has been placed into orbit. See more here.
Roll on Starship 9!
A far more successful space mission was the Lunar landing of Blue Ghost 1 by Firefly Aerospace.
Blue Ghost on the Moon with us all on the blue dot in the background. Say cheese
This is a private mission carrying a range of instruments and scientific packages. It was FIrefly Aerospace's first attempt at landing on the Moon.
The second Moon lander from Intuitive Machines touched down software on the Lunar surface on the 8th March 2025, however it appears like their previous spacecraft, to have tipped over in its side. (I'm not an engineer, but it seems to me that if tall, spindly landers like those from IM fall over and the wider, squat lander from Firefly nails it on the first attempt, you might want to get someone in to look at that...)
IM-2 on its side on the Moon's surface
Only a few hours ago, NASA announced that they had received some data from IM-2 before the mission ended.
On March 5th 2025, NASA also announced that it was shutting off two of the remaining instruments on the Voyager 2 spacecraft to preserve dwindling power and to help extend its mission as it journeys further into interstellar space.
An artist’s concept depicts one of NASA’s Voyager probe. Image via: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 probes were launched in 1977 and provided our first up close glimpses of the Solar System's ice and gas giants before travelling further into space. This power down will hopefully keep the electricity generated from the decay of plutonium in their systems flowing for while longer:
“The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL. “But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.”
If you read our article a few weeks ago about Open Star Clusters and how to view them with your telescope, I mentioned that while we know of about 1,000 open star clusters in the Milky Way, many more are hidden by cloud of gas and dust. It now looks like astronomers have just found another nine open clusters! More details in the fairly technical article here. These newly found clusters won't be able to spotted in your telescope but don't worry - there's still plenty that you can discover and explore.
A couple of years ago you might have spotted a BINTEL article about rogue planets. These are planets that have either formed around a star and then been ripped away from their host system or might have even formed in deep space. They're estimated to exist in vast numbers throughout the Milky Way and likely in other galaxies as well. You can read more here.
On the 3rd of March, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of SIMP 0136, a free-floating "super Jupiter" only 20 light years away.
An artist's impression of SIMP 0136 - please note this cannot be imaged like this using any telescope
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the team was not only able to identify SIMP 1036, but it also found it seems to exhibit weather characteristics that cannot be explained by the planet's clouds of gas alone. A really fascinating object and you can read more here.
As always, astronomy is a constantly evolving science with new and often puzzling discoveries always being made.
Cheers,
Earl White
BINTEL
8th March 2025
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