The Space Roundup - Dec 12th, 2021
Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!
Are you ready for yet another week of space awesomeness?
Quick note: if you haven’t subscribed yet, don’t miss an issue by subscribing below to receive your weekly dose of space awesomeness:
Ah! And if you want to sponsor this newsletter, drop me an email.
3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!
Launches everywhere!
What an amazing week full of successful rocket launches!
Rocket Lab launched another pair of BlackSky satellites as its final launch of the year, with the promise of launching way more rockets next year.
China reached a very important launch milestone this week: its 49th launch in 2021 and the 400th (yeah, you read it right!) launch of the Long March rocket family. What a milestone!
Commercial space
We have also witnessed some updates related to commercial activity in space this week. Blue Origin launched its third crewed mission carrying six people to the edge of space.
And a Soyuz rocket took two Japanese private astronauts to the ISS. One of them is Yusaku Maezawa, the billionaire that founded SpaceX’s Dear Moon mission, so this is kind of a training mission to him before going to the Moon.
Roscosmos also announced it has selected the first cosmonaut to fly to the ISS onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission next year. It’s going to be a woman: Anna Kikina. In exchange, a NASA astronaut will fly onboard a Soyuz rocket. So nice to see this kind of friendly exchange between both nations.
Silent Martian Helicopter
After its last flight, our loved helicopter Ingenuity is now out of reach of the Perseverance rover’s radio antenna. This means we just know it’s ok, but the broken transmissions won’t let it send data back and therefore it can’t plan another flight until the rover drives back to it or it blindly flights vertically to restore communications (in a possibly suicidal mission?). Oh, no! Let’s see what the team decides about it. Crossing fingers!
Cool astronomy!
Some interesting studies this week! A group of astronomers found a galaxy with no dark matter. Weird. Dark matter is supposed to be the reason why galaxies and galaxy clusters do not fly apart, but now apparently there’s a galaxy about 250 million light-years away that has none of this material, so this changes everything. Interesting!
This wasn’t the only mind-boggling discovery: apparently, a massive exoplanet 10 times as massive as Jupiter has been identified orbiting a two-star system. This is now the most massive planet-hosting system ever found: b Centaury.
SpaceX updates
Is BocaChica the only spaceport for Starship? Not anymore! The company has started building a pad for Starship at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Wow.
It also has successfully launched a new space telescope: NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer telescope. It’s going to be amazingly interesting because it’s going to study new aspects of black holes, dead stars, and other cool new phenomena that need to be explored yet.
Pic of the week
This week I wanted to share this picture of an ESA rocket launch. It was brought to my attention on Twitter by my dear space-friend @astroGianca (thanks, mate! ;) - It is the launch of Soyuz VS26 on December 5th carrying the two GPS satellites Galileo 27 and 28. (Credit: ESA). Amazing pic!
Launches of the week
Monday, Dec 13th - Kuaizhou 1A
Monday, Dec 13th - Ekspress-AMU3 & AMU7 | Proton-M/Briz
Monday, Dec 13th - Long March 3B
Sunday, Dec 19th - SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 | Türksat 5B
And that’s it for this week!
If you like the Space Roundup please share it with others and if you want to support the project, please go to Patreon to see available subscription options starting from as little as $3/month.
Cheers from sunny Spain!
Juan, the Curious Astronaut