Science
Mercury up close: Japanese-European space mission gets 1st glimpse of planet – Global News
A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.
The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34 p.m. GMT (7:34 p.m. EST) Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down.
After swooping past Mercury at altitudes of under 200 kilometers (125 miles), the spacecraft took a low resolution black-and-white photo with one of its monitoring cameras before zipping off again.
The European Space Agency said the captured image shows the Northern Hemisphere and Mercury’s characteristic pock-marked features, among them the 166-kilometer-wide (103-mile-wide) Lermontov crater.
The joint mission by the European agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was launched in 2018, flying once past Earth and twice past Venus on its journey to the solar system’s smallest planet.
Five further flybys are needed before BepiColombo is sufficiently slowed down to release ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The two probes will study Mercury’s core and processes on its surface, as well as its magnetic sphere.
The mission is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Colombo, who is credited with helping develop the gravity assist maneuver that NASA’s Mariner 10 first used when it flew to Mercury in 1974.
© 2021 The Canadian Press
Science
Federal government announces creation of National Space Council – CBC News
Canada’s space sector received a boost from the federal government in its budget, both in terms of money and vision.
The 2024 budget included a proposal for $8.6 million in 2024-25 to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), which invests in technologies for humanity’s return to the moon and beyond.
In addition to the funding, the federal government also announced the creation of a National Space Council, which will be “a new whole-of-government approach to space exploration, technology development, and research.”
For Space Canada, an organization comprised of roughly 80 space sector companies including some of Canada’s largest, such as Magellan Aerospace, Maritime Launch and MDA, it was a welcome announcement.
“We’ve been advocating for it since the inception of our organization, and we were really very happy, and we applaud the federal government’s commitment announced in the budget,” said Brian Gallant, CEO of Space Canada.
Gallant said that investment in space is an investment in Canada.
“Two-thirds of space sector jobs are STEM jobs. These are good paying solid jobs for Canadians. And on top of that, we have approximately $2.8 billion that is injected into the Canadian economy because of the space sector,” he said.
The U.S. formed its National Space Council in 1989, but it was disbanded in 1992 and reestablished in 2017.
In the 2023 budget, the government announced proposed spending of $1.2 billion over 13 years, that was to begin in 2024-25, to the CSA’s contribution of a lunar utility vehicle that would assist astronauts on the moon. The as–yet–developed vehicle could help astronauts move cargo from landing sites to habitats, perform science investigations or support them during spacewalks on the surface of the moon.
It also proposed to invest $150 million over five years for the LEAP program.
MDA, the company behind Canadarm, was also pleased with the announcement.
“Canada has an enviable global competitive advantage in space and the creation of a National Space Council is critical to Canada maintaining that leadership position,” CEO Mike Greenley said in an email to CBC News.
“Space is now a rapidly growing, highly strategic and competitive domain, and there is a real and urgent need to recognize its importance to the lives of Canadians and to our economy and national security.”
The next project for MDA is Canadarm3, which will be part of Lunar Gateway, a international space station that will orbit the moon. It will serve as a sort of jumping-off point for astronauts heading to the moon and eventually beyond.
“The Lunar Gateway is a great opportunity for Canada and for MDA Space to not only provide the next generation of Canadarm robotics but to clearly plant our flag as a core national and industry participant in the Artemis era,” Greenley said.
Lunar Gateway is set to begin construction no earlier than 2025, according to NASA.
Science
Astronomers discover Milky Way's heaviest known black hole – Xinhua
JERUSALEM, April 16 (Xinhua) — Astronomers have found BH3 is by far the heaviest known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, 33 times the mass of the Sun.
An international research team found the black hole when looking into the latest data group recorded in the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, Israel’s Tel Aviv University (TAU) said in a statement on Tuesday.
The black hole is located 1,500 light-years away from Earth, said TAU, whose researchers participated in the study of the newly discovered binary system.
In binary systems, a visible star can be found orbiting a massive but unseen companion, indicating the latter is a black hole.
Binaries have revealed around 50 suspected or confirmed stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way, but scientists think there may be as many as 100 million in our galaxy alone, according to NASA.
Stellar-mass black holes are formed when a star runs out of its nuclear combustion fuel and collapses.
The massive black hole BH3 was detailed in the open-access journal Astronomy & Astrophysics for further study.
Science
'Almost hit my son' – Space junk crashes through Florida home – BBC.com
“It almost hit my son” – three years ago the International Space Station threw out refuse into space, expecting it to undergo “a natural re-entry”.
But a heavy piece of debris crashed through a home in Naples, Florida, narrowly missing the householder’s son.
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