orbit

While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

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Until recently, the space race was about seeing who could get there first. Today, the question is different: who will be able to turn on the light on the Moon? While companies like Google or Nvidia imagine satellites loaded with computers for their Artificial Intelligence, Russia has hit the table with a much more earthly (or lunar) plan: installing a small nuclear power plant on the surface of our satellite. A reactor by 2036. The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has signed a state contract with the aerospace company NPO Lavochkin to develop a lunar nuclear power plant. According to Reutersthe deadline marked in the contract is 2036. However, the political times are much more aggressive: Yury Borisov, head of Roscosmos, has placed the real operational window between 2033 and 2035. Although official statements sometimes avoid the word “nuclear” directly, project participants dispel any doubts, the Kurchatov Institute (a leader in nuclear research in Russia) and Rosatom (the state atomic flagship company) are in charge. As the Interfax media points outthe objective is to power the infrastructure of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a joint project with China that seeks to move from “round trip” missions to a permanent human presence. But why what nuclear? A colony on the Moon faces nights that last 14 Earth days. During that time, the frigid temperatures and lack of light make the solar panels useless to keep astronauts alive or power life support systems. Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, he explained in an interview with the Russian agency TASS that Russia must “run forward.” According to this medium, the country seeks to consolidate its leadership through the “Atomic Project 2.0”, which includes new generation reactors and closed cycle systems. It’s not just about science; Russia admits that partners like China and India have learned a lot from them and are now direct competitors. Eyes in the sky: preparing the ground. For the Russian reactor to reach the Moon, Moscow is already preparing the logistics. According to another TASS statementRussia plans to launch 52 satellites from the Vostochny cosmodrome. Among them, the Aist-2T stands out, capable of creating 3D models of the lunar terrain and monitoring emergency situations. It is the necessary infrastructure so that the “lunar atom” does not suffer the same fate as the failed Luna-25 probe in 2023. The Moscow-Beijing axis: a long-range alliance. This deployment is not a solitary effort. As Interfax detailsRussia and China formalized their ambition in May 2024 with a memorandum of cooperation for the joint construction of this nuclear plant. They are not starting from scratch: both countries presented a roadmap in 2021 that includes five joint missions to deploy modules in lunar orbit and surface. While Russia brings its historical advantage in space nuclear facilities, China provides the scientific capacity and resources for the ILRS Station to be permanently inhabited from 2030. The board of the new Cold War. Washington has not stood idly by in the face of the Russian-Chinese alliance. NASA has received a clear directive from the current administration, in which they state that They need a reactor on the Moon by 2030. “We are in a race with China,” said Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and who has led this directive. The background of this urgency is not only prestige, but the control of strategic resources. The Moon is the great deposit of Helium-3, an extremely rare isotope that is emerging as the “fuel of the future” for nuclear fusion. The White House’s fear is that if the alliance between Russia and China comes sooner, they will be able to declare “exclusion zones,” blocking access to this isotope and other essential metals for the technology industry. Faced with this threat, the US has increased the power of its nuclear project from the original 40 kW to a minimum power of 100 kW. Infrastructure over prestige. The space race of the 21st century has ceased to be a question of prestige and has become a question of infrastructure. While Big Tech tries to solve its energy limits with promises of servers in orbitRussia and China have opted for the pragmatism of the reactor on solid, but lunar, soil. Image| freepik Xataka | The race to bring data centers to space promises a lot. Physics says otherwise

China had been testing a mysterious satellite in orbit for years. A counterespionage company has finally revealed what it was

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On October 16, the starry skies of the Canary Islands were illuminated by a spectacular fireball that crossed the sky from south to north. It was not a meteorite, it was a Chinese satellite that until a few days ago had been a complete mystery. A mystery called XJY-7. Since its launch in December 2020, as part of the maiden flight of the Long March 8 rocket, the Xinjishu Yanzheng-7 had been an unknown. China officially described it as a “new technology verification satellite.” Aside from a blurry render, the world knew almost nothing about its configuration, purpose, or capabilities. And although its re-entry was news in itself, the real news is that, just before it disintegrated, an Australian company managed to photograph it in orbit, finally solving the mystery of what it was and what it was doing up there. Counterespionage in orbit. Using its network of satellites to photograph other objects in orbit, the Australian company HEO achieved what ground-based radars could not: take photos of the XJY-7 up close. The images and the 3D model that HEO built from them revealed features that China had neglected to mention. According to the company has declared to SpaceNewsthe satellite was not a simple test platform; It was equipped with “a large radar antenna” and, most tellingly, a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) antenna. It was a spy satellite. SAR is an advanced remote sensing technology that allows high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface to be obtained in any weather conditions, day or night. The “mysterious” test satellite was, in reality, an advanced surveillance and remote sensing satellite. The HEO observations also revealed a fascinating detail about its design: the satellite had fixed solar panels. This forced it to “rotate its entire body” to maintain power generation, a behavior that the Australian company was able to verify through multiple simultaneous observations from different angles. Satellites that monitor satellites. Traditional monitoring methods (ground-based radars and telescopes) are no longer sufficient to monitor the activity of other nations in orbit. HEO uses a network of more than 40 sensors in flight to take satellite-to-satellite images for your clients. When one of its associated satellites passes near a target, it takes a photo of it. It is a “non-invasive flyby method” that offers real photographs where you can see antennas, panels, thrusters and payloads. With this technique, HEO has managed to identify more than 80 space objects before they appeared in any public catalogue. In an environment where satellite constellations are deployed by the dozens, knowing whether an object is an operational satellite, a piece of space junk, or what type of antenna it carries is crucial for intelligence and defense. Mysterious until his re-entry. Ironically, the mystery that surrounded XJY-7 in its useful life also accompanied it in its death, as the United States Space Command never issued a reentry alert. This is “strange” for an object of this size, says expert Marco Langbroek. It is estimated that XJY-7 had a mass of between 3,000 and 5,000 kg. That an object weighing more than three tons bypassed re-entry warning systems highlights the gaps in conventional space tracking. Even worse when it comes to a satellite with secret capabilities. Image | H.E.O.

Russia is building a nuclear weapon capable of destroying all satellites in orbit

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In 1962, the world looked on the edge of the nuclear abyss when the United States discovered the installation of Soviet missiles in Cubaa few kilometers from its coasts. The tension derived from that geopolitical pulse symbolized the fragility of the strategic balance and the ease with which a technological advance or risky play could precipitate the planet towards a total confrontation. Today, more than sixty years later, United States evokes That historical episode when warning about a similar threat, although transferred to space. A new crisis. The announcement that Russia would be developing a Orbital nuclear weapon Able to disable the totality of the satellites in land low orbit has turned on alarms in Washington, with direct comparisons to That crisis of the missiles of Cuba that we commented. According to the declassified data For the US Congress, this system would combine an initial physical attack that would generate a reaction in orbital destruction chain with a nuclear pulse destined to fry the electronics of all affected satellites. The result. It would be, in his opinion, devastating: With the collapse of GPS, communications, intelligence and early missile alert systems, all critical elements for global safety and economy. The United States argues that the weapon, not yet operational, could be unusable for orbit for a whole yeargenerating an unprecedented strategic vacuum in which both Washington and its allies would be exposed to conventional or even nuclear threats without the coverage of their space constellations. The role of satellites. Today orbit More than 12,000 satellites that fulfill vital functions for modern life: from television and navigation services to international military and economic architecture. In fact, the war in Ukraine has already demonstrated its vulnerability when the Russian attack against Viasat In 2022 he left tens of thousands of users without service in much of Europe. More recently, the kidnapping of a satellite signal to issue the Victory Day Parade In Ukraine he showed how cyberspace and outer space are intertwined as new battlefields. The experts They warn that it is enough to exploit outdated software or insecure communication links to disable key satellites, which makes space a Achilles heel of Western democracies. The new space race. We have gone counting. The announcement of the possible Russian weapon coincides with the resurgence of the Spatial competition for the domain of the extraterrestrial resources. The moon has become The centerpiece Of this rivalry: its wealth In Helio-3fuel potential for future nuclear fusion reactors, has triggered plans to establish permanent bases. NASA advertisement the installation of a small nuclear reactor as an initial step to consolidate presence before they do so Russia or Chinathat they already project their own lunar plants. The control of strategic areas of the lunar surface is perceived as a determinant to define the next global hegemony in energy and technology, in a context where the growing demand for energy for artificial intelligence accelerates competition. China between half. While Russia is silent about the alleged antisatellite weapon, China has reacted denouncing Washington for “militarizing space” and accusing it to expand military alliances that convert spatial domain into a war zone. Beijing insists that he opposes an arms race outside the earth, although in parallel promotes projects of space mining and Bases on the Moon that place it on the same competitive board as the United States and Russia. Chinese rhetoric is presented as a guarantor of the international order against a United States accused of exacerbating tension, although the simultaneous development of Technological capabilities of Great reach It reveals a broader power game. Washington’s response. Created In 2019the US space force has assumed the task of protecting national interests in orbit, from communications constellations to military intelligence and navigation satellites. Its fleet includes The X-37ban unmanned ferry that executes prolonged secret missions In orbit and symbolizes Washington’s will to dominate this area. Although small compared to branches such as the army or the navy, the space force It expands and the pentagon Plan to consolidate Soon its headquarters. For US military controls, safe access to space is already a vital interest in national security. The perspective of Russia deploying a space nuclear weapon raises the challenge to a Unpublished scale: The possible paralysis of world satellite infrastructure, with military, economic and psychological consequences comparable to a strategic nuclear attack. A turning point. Be that as it may, the ghost of a “missile crisis in space” reflects that the competition is no longer limited to land, sea and air, not even to cyberspace, but reaches the orbital and lunar domain as new power scenarios. If the United States is right and Russia is allowed to advance with An antisatellite weaponthe global strategic balance could be altered radically, inaugurating an era in which the great powers dispute not only territories, but also access to the infrastructure that sustains modern life. The urgency, both for some and for others, seems clear: or firm limits are established in the military use of space, or the risk that the next great international crisis explodes hundreds of kilometers above our heads will be increasingly real. Image | Steve Jurvetson In Xataka | Bombard the poles with nuclear weapons or build a giant magnet: the most reposted ideas to terraft Mars In Xataka | China has just taken another step in the technological and spatial conquest: an orbital computing network designed for AI

The first European attempt to launch a commercial rocket at orbit has ended up explosion to northern Norway

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First attempt. The inaugural launch of the Spectrum rocket, a test mission without payload called “Going Full Spectrum”took off at 12:30 CET on March 30 from the Andøya Space Puerto, in Norway. Originally scheduled for March 24, the flight was delayed several times due to bad weather conditions. After lighting their nine engines, the Spectrum He cleared the launch platform and rose without problems for 18 seconds. Then he began to lose control or overwhelming his orientation to the point of turning. In the second 30, all the engines went out and the rocket began to fall. The realization changed camera, but an explosion was heard shortly after. “A success!” The impact of the rocket near the platform and the fireball of the explosion They were captured by the Norwegian press. Despite the ruling, Isar Aerospace declared the launch A success. The CEO of the company, Daniel MetzlerHe added that the flight “has fulfilled all our expectations” with “an impeccable takeoff, 30 seconds of flight and we could even validate our flight termination system.” Although the rocket did not define, he turned off his engines not to deviate before falling. The launch platform is apparently intact. Flight launchers 2 and 3 are already in production. ISAR has compiled numerous data in this first test. Spectrum. What Isar Aerospace’s rocket has not been able to validate is the first orbital launching title of a European private company, since it has not reached orbit. Now the achievement is still open to other rockets such as RFA One of the German Rocket Factory Augsburg or Miura 5 of the Spanish Pld Space. Spectrum is a two -stage rocket and 28 meters high designed to transport up to 1000 kg to the low terrestrial orbit. The first stage has nine Aquila engines and the second one has one, optimized for space vacuum. All of their own design, with carbon fiber tanks without coating and 3D printed engines, fed with oxygen and liquid propane. Isar Aerospace. It was founded in 2018 in Germany with a Spacex -inspired approach: integrated production vertically and very automated, with the idea of ​​producing many prototypes, testing them and improving their design through multiple iterations. It is very well financed with a total investment of 400 million euros, which has taken the opportunity to build a new headquarters 40,000 square meters near Munich. According to Isar, it will have the capacity to produce 40 Spectrum rockets per year. Norway. Isar Aerospace has an exclusive platform in the Andøya Space Puerto in Norway, chosen for its ideal location to reach polar orbits and heliosíncronas and because the rocket takes off on the open ocean. It also has the meteorological problem that has been seen the days before the launch. Images | Isar Aerospace In Xataka | Europe’s access depends on the United States. ESA has presented a strategic plan to become independent

The European Hera probe has just sent us its first photos for the story: we orbit Mars

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Despite how much we have explored Mars, we had few photos of Deimos, the smallest and distant from its two moons. The European Space Agency has just solved it. Launched October 7, 2024ESA’s hera probe goes towards Dimorfo, the first asteroid diverted by humanity. Understand the effects of historical impact that NASA’s Dart probe achieved In 2022 it will be Europe’s contribution to the International Planetary Defense Mission as we detect new potentially dangerous objects in the Solar System. Before getting to Dído, the binary asteroid system of which Dimorfo is part, the Hera probe has flown Mars to gain speed. The gravitational assistance maneuver It happened last night and it was totally successful: Not only because hera shortened his travel time in several months, saving a crucial amount of fuel, but because he took more than a thousand photos. Deimos and the surface of Mars through the Hara Camera (ESA) Moving at 32,400 km/h with respect to Mars, Hera went to just 5000 km from the red planet, taking advantage of its gravity to gain energy. But also to photograph The moon deams only 1000 km A distance, a historical overflow that was possible thanks to the fact that ESA had adjusted the trajectory of the probe to coincide with the satellite. When the images arrived, the agency scientists project them on a large screen at the European Space Operations Center. All present, including Brian May, a astrophysicist in spectroscopy and guitarist of Queen, exploded in shouts and applause. Deimos and the surface of Mars through the infrared thermal chamber (ESA/Jaxa) Affected by the mare coupling, we always look at Mars with the same face, so Hera has photographed his remote sidehis most unknown face. With 12.4 km in diameter, Deimos, a dark moon and covered with dust in potatoes could be a remnant of a great impact on Mars or an asteroid captured by the gravitational attraction of the planet. During your overfruit, Hera used for the first time Three scientific instruments outside the Earth-Luna system: its black and white sensor used for autonomous navigation, its hyperspectral image sensor (which exceeds the limits of the human eye in terms of visible and infrared colors that it is capable of detecting) and its infrared thermal chamber. In addition to the photos, the exercise has served as training for the main mission, but Dimorfo will be a much more complex objective of photographing: the 151 -meter diameter asteroid is Didimo’s moon, which measures 780 meters. The encounter between the probe and the asteroids should occur in December 2026. Two cubesats that travel inside Hera They will approach the asteroids. Image | THAT In Xataka | NASA and ESA have taken a turn in their predictions on the asteroid: the new data almost rule out the impact

If today we can see a planetary alignment it is because the entire orbit solar system in the same plane. And not by chance

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Tonight we will have a chance to see one of the astronomical events of the year, The great planetary alignment: Seven planets (all the major planets of our solar system) will be visible in the night sky. To understand why this phenomenon and discover what it is and what is not, it is convenient to keep in mind some details about the dynamics of our solar system and its history. That is, the very story of the planets that accompany ours in the orbit around the sun. Ecliptic. The name of the phenomenon itself, Planetary alignmentindicates that it is an event in which the planets are arranged in a row. However, we must bear in mind that when we talk about this we do not talk about the planets forming a precise row in their orbital displacements as in textbooks, nothing is further from reality. The alignment of the planets refers to the fact that, at some point, these appear aligned in the night sky, that is, it is an apparent alignment from our terrestrial point of view that occurs around an imaginary line that crosses the night sky. This imaginary line is the ecliptic, but in reality it is much more than a line marked by the planets. And it is that most of the objects of our solar system move through it. Even the stars seem to move following the path that this brand. From the album to the planets. Strictly, the ecliptic It is defined as the imaginary plane that contains the orbit of the earth around the Sun. That is why this imaginary line is marked by the movement of our star in a daily transit by the celestial vault. However, due to the fact that the orbits of planets, satellites and asteroids of our solar system orbit in different planes, the ecliptic and its surroundings become the projection in the vault of the sky of an album, the disk formed by all this infinity of orbits of objects that rotate at different distances already varied speeds but practically always in similar planes. It is no accident that almost all the subject of our solar system is presented on this album. To understand the reason, we have to go behind in time, to the formation of our solar system, to the era in which around our star there were no planets, but a Protoplanetary disc. Return to the origins. The origin of the solar system is in a cloud of gas and matter that ended up concentrating. In doing so, Due to the conservation of angular momentumthe cloud was taking one more disk appearance, turning at the same time on itself. The center of that cloud continued to concentrate, until it reached critical mass and density for the formation of a star, the sun. The rest of the album was orbiting around the sun, now like a ringthe so -called protoplanetary disk. The dust also began to concentrate on different points of this album also due to gravity. Progressive clashes were giving rise to increasingly large concentrations, dust that became increasingly large rocks until planets and asteroids were formed, all still turning in the same direction in which millions of years ago revolved the protoplanetary disc and, before, the original cloud. The movement of the Earth. There is another factor that contributes to all objects from heaven to seem to scroll in unison and it is the fact that the Earth’s rotation axis is aligned with the axis of rotation of its orbital movement. This is more or less common, although there are exceptions such as Uranus. If we were on this planet, we would see night after night that the stars distant to us move from this to west normally, but the solar ecliptic would move very differently, a more exaggerated version of the solar movement given in the polar circles, with a seasonal cycle of days and nights. This implies that in summer, the ecliptic plane would be a circle in the celestial vault, something very different from what we perceive from Earth. In Xataka | Guide not to miss a unique planetary alignment: the best applications and websites to locate the seven planets Image | NASA/JPL

The Pentagon has shared for the first time a photo taken with its secret spacecraft. The most striking is your orbit

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The Pentagon has broken by surprise the hermeticism around to the X-37b space plane of the US space force. For the first time we have seen an image taken from the secret ship, which Fly for years No crew. The photo. Maybe what has done irresistible Publish this image Be the captivating views of the Earth that enjoys the aircraft. The photo was taken near the highest point (the peak) of the elliptical trajectory in which A Falcon Heavy rocket from Spacex He launched the X-37B space plane. And it is an amazingly high and elliptical orbit (185 x 35,188 kilometers, according to the Marco Langbroek researcher) which explains why they needed all the Power of a Heavy Falcon To launch it. The context. X-37B is a small robotic ship operated by the American Air Force and Space Force that was last launched in the late 2023. It is designed to test new exploration and space defense technologies, so its missions are largely secret. The current mission is the seventh and focuses on experimenting with “highly elliptical orbits” and “aerofrenado maneuvers” capable of repositioning the ship with a minimum amount of fuel, something that the United States considers vital in a scenario of growing spatial competition, especially by Chinawhich has its own secret space plane. Why this photo is striking. It is not the first time that we see the earth to tens of thousands of kilometers, but so far, the mission of X-37b had taken in an almost absolute silence. This is the first time we see a snapshot captured by the vehicle itself while still in space. Of course, the image is not recent. It was taken on January 30, 2024, according to JPEG’s metadata, a date that The most skeptics verified Comparing the pattern of clouds on planet Earth with the clouds that meteorological satellites recorded that day. What is X-37b for. In addition to demonstrating aerobraking (taking advantage of atmospheric braking to change orbit), X-37B has performed tests with plant seeds to study the effects of radiation on plant growth and has deployed small useful loads to recover them later, which Open the door to potential satellite surveillance or repair applications. This ability to interact with small satellites It is also suspected of the Chinese unmanned ship, Shenlong. Both China and the United States study the deployment and recovery of satellites in these prolonged missions to be able to take advantage of them in the future. In Xataka | China flew Europe with its secret space plane. An Austrian fan managed to photograph him

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