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May 11, 2021

May new moon 2021: See Mercury, Venus and Mars in the moonless evening sky, ,

The new moon occurs Tuesday (May 11) at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). That same day the moon reaches apogee, the furthest point from Earth in its orbit, and in the days afterward the young moon will pass by Mercury and Venus in the evening sky.

New moons occur when the moon is directly between the Earth and sun, and the two share their celestial longitude, a projection of the Earth’s longitude lines on the sky. This position is also known as a conjunction. If you could see the dark sky during the day, the moon would only be noticeable as it blocked out stars. But the sun is so bright that it makes that kind of observation impossible from Earth. The exceptions are solar eclipses, in which the moon passes directly in front of the sun.

On average, the moon is about 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers from the Earth, but the actual distance varies between as close as about 222,000 miles (356,000 km) and as far as about 239,000 miles (406,000 km), because the moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular. When the moon reaches new phase Tuesday, it will be 252,592 miles (406,508 km) away from Earth, according to NASA.

Related: 2021 Moon Phases Calendar

Visible planets

On the day of the new moon, Mercury and Venus will be in the evening sky, though only Mercury will be easily visible because Venus is so close to the setting sun. From New York City at about 8:30 p.m. local time — sunset is at 8:02 p.m. — Mercury will be about 13 degrees above the west-northwest horizon. The sky should be getting dark enough where it is visible by that time. Venus will only be about 3 degrees high; at sunset the planet is only at an altitude of 10 degrees. Venus is bright enough that a sharp-eyed observer might catch it against the glow of the sky at sunset.

The slender, crescent moon will make a close pass to Venus on Wednesday (May 12) and Mercury on Thursday (May 13). On Wednesday the moon will only be one day old, and so close to the sun that it will be very difficult to see — though an interesting and fun exercise is to see if you can catch a glimpse of it at sunset. The moon will pass about 42 arcminutes to the south of Venus at 6:03 p.m. local time in New York, according to the skywatching site In-The-Sky.org, and at sunset the moon and Venus will be about 6 degrees above the horizon.

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This sky map shows where Venus, Mercury and Mars will be visible from New York City on May 11, 2021, about 30 minutes after sunset. (Image credit: SkySafari app)

The conjunction with Mercury is an easier target. On Wednesday (May 12) at 1:58 p.m. EDT (1758 GMT) the moon will pass about 2 degrees to the south of Mercury. The event will be difficult to observe during the day, as the moon will still be quite close to the sun, the thin crescent easily lost in the sun’s glare.

Seeing the tiny planet Mercury will be very difficult without a telescope, and attempting to observe any celestial bodies in the vicinity of the sun can be dangerous. Accidentally looking through a telescope or binoculars at the sun, even for a moment, is an invitation to permanent retinal damage and even blindness.

It’s far better to wait until sunset, which will be at 8:04 p.m. in New York City. At that point Mercury will be about 19 degrees above the horizon with the moon to its left. If you can spot the two-day-old thin crescent of the moon, you can catch the innermost planet. Both will set by about 10 p.m. local time. As the sky darkens you can try to see Venus before it sets at about 9:08 p.m.

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The one-day-old moon will be in conjunction with Venus on May 12, 2021. (Image credit: SkySafari app)

Moving to the next planet out, Mars will be visible after sunset in the western sky. The Red Planet sets at about midnight, and by 8:30 p.m. on May 11 it is about 36 degrees above the horizon almost due west, in the constellation Gemini, the twins.

Jupiter and Saturn both remain predawn sights. Saturn rises first, at 1:45 a.m. local time in New York City, in the constellation Capricornus, the sea goat. Jupiter follows at 2:30 a.m., in the constellation Aquarius, the water bearer. By 5 a.m. Jupiter and Saturn will be 23 degrees and 27 degrees high, respectively, in the southeast. Saturn will be to the right of Jupiter.

Stars and constellations

The sun is setting later in mid-northern latitudes, and it doesn’t get dark until about 8:30 p.m., at the start of nautical twilight, when the sky will be dark enough for the stars to come out and the sun is at 6-12 degrees below the horizon. The winter constellations such as Orion, the hunter and Canis Major are all hugging the western horizon; they will set completely well before midnight.

Turning slightly northwards, you can see Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, the charioteer, which will still be relatively high, about one-eighth of the way to the zenith (the point directly overhead) from the horizon.

To the right and below Auriga you can spot the “W” shape of the constellation Cassiopeia, the legendary queen of Ethiopia who boasted that she and her daughter were more beautiful than the Nereids. Since the boast made Poseidon angry, she was forced to sacrifice her daughter Andromeda, but Perseus saved her. The legendary hero is just to the left of Cassiopeia in the sky, and to her right is her husband king Cepheus.

Straight up from the Cassiopeia is due north, and you will hit the Little Dipper and Polaris, the North Star. Opposite Polaris from Cassiopeia, you will see the Big Dipper, with the “bowl” upside down. The two stars at one end of the bowl (they will be on the left side) are Alpha Ursae Majoris and Beta Ursae Majoris, respectively called Dubhe and Merak. Those point to Polaris, the North Star. Following those “pointers” in the opposite direction, you find the constellation Leo, the lion, which will be almost at the zenith from mid-northern latitudes. The two stars at the back of the bowl point directly to the star Regulus, the brightest star in Leo. The more northerly star is called Megrez while the other is called Phecda.

If you think of Regulus as the front of Leo, with the sickle shape forming a head and mane, you can follow Leo’s gaze along the zodiac, the constellations the sun passes through as it moves against the stars during the year. If you’re facing so that Leo’s head is to the right (you will be looking just west of south), you can find the constellation Cancer, the crab, which forms a faint trapezoid shape in front of Leo. In the other direction, trailing Leo is the Virgo constellation, which will be to Leo’s right and towards the horizon. Following Virgo, just rising, is Libra, another faint constellation that is harder to see in urban areas.

As the night progresses observers can see Scorpio start to come over the horizon by about 11 p.m. At that point Antares, the bright star in the scorpion’s heart, will be about 10 degrees high in the southeast.

In the Southern Hemisphere, winter is approaching. In Melbourne, Australia, the sun sets at 5:21 p.m. on May 12 (the new moon occurs at 5 a.m. local time). By 7 p.m. when it is fully dark, the Southern Cross constellation will be just east of south — from Melbourne it is about 45 degrees above the horizon on May 12. The Southern Cross will be above the constellation Centaurus, which contains Alpha Centauri (otherwise known as Rigil Kentaurus), the closest star to our solar system. Turning east you can see the constellation Scorpius, the scorpion rising (though “upside down” from the Southern Hemisphere). Continuing to turn north observers will first spot Virgo, and then Leo, Cancer and Gemini.

Moving upwards from the Southern Cross — toward the north, and the zenith — Southern Hemisphere observers will find the three constellations that make up Argo, the ship: Puppis the deck, Vela the sail, and Carina the keel.

The Southern Cross can be used to locate south, much as the Big Dipper in the Northern Hemisphere can locate north. If you draw an imaginary line from the two brightest stars in the Southern Cross, which form the “vertical” post, extend it about four and a half times the length and drop a vertical line to the horizon, you are pointed due south.

The south celestial pole is in the constellation Octans, the octant, a relatively faint triangle of stars — there’s no equivalent of Polaris. So another way to locate it is to use the “pointers” in Centaurus, Alpha and Beta Centauri. Centaurus is the constellation just below the Southern Cross in the sky, and Alpha and Beta are its two brightest stars. If you draw an imaginary line from halfway between those two stars and another bright star, Achernar (the end of Eridanus, the river), the halfway point marks the pole.

Editor’s Note: If you snap an amazing night sky picture and would like to share it with Space.com’s readers, send your photos, comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

You can follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:16

First bottle of wine ‘aged in space’ is for sale at Christie’s, ,

About 20 years ago, some grapes from the Bordeaux region of France were picked, crushed and fermented into merlot, just as countless of similar grapes had been before them. Then, in November 2019, those lucky grapes were launched into space.

This space wine — actually 12 bottles of Petrus 2000 merlot, normally valued at about $6,000 apiece — spent 438 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where a team of incredibly disciplined astronauts refrained from drinking it. The wine circled Earth many times, subject to the uncertain effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation, before finally returning to land aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on Jan. 14, 2021.

Now, one of those bottles of rare cosmic wine can be yours… if you’re a millionaire.

In a statement published May 4, Christie’s auction house announced it will sell a single bottle of the space-aged Petrus 2000 through its Private Sales website (a brokerage service that connects private buyers and sellers outside of the auction house). The bottle is expected to fetch about $1 million, according to BBC News, and comes packaged in a custom trunk that includes a bottle of terrestrial Petrus 2000 (so you and your rich friends can compare the tannins, or whatever) and a corkscrew crafted from a meteorite.

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Here is the custom trunk to accompany your bottle of space wine. Includes a decanter and a meteorite corkscrew. (Image credit: Christie’s Images Limited 2021)

Proceeds from this sale will help fund future space-wine research by Space Cargo Unlimited, the private company that sent the bottles to the ISS in 2019. The company has five more wine-related experiments in the works, including a study of the effects of microgravity on grapevine shoots and a plan to study the fermentation process in space, according to Live Science sister site Space.com.

But for now, the big question is: Does space wine taste different? According to a blind taste-test conducted in March 2021, the answer is yes! When a panel of 12 people (including both wine experts and scientists) sipped a glass of the space-aged Petrus 2000 alongside a glass of the regular Earthly variety, they detected clear differences.

NASA and Axiom ink deal for 1st private astronaut mission to space station, ,

NASA and Texas-based company Axiom Space have agreed on terms for the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, which will launch as soon as January 2022.

The agreement, which was announced on Monday (May 10), includes only a portion of the assorted exchanges required to make a flight like this a reality, but it will result in a net payment from NASA to Axiom of $1.69 million. The agreement will allow Axiom to send a retired NASA astronaut and three passengers to the orbiting laboratory aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for a journey of about a week in the first crewed space station mission for exclusively private interests.

“This truly is a renaissance in U.S. human spaceflight, I think that’s the perfect word for what we’re experiencing,” Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, said during a news conference held Monday. “History can feel incremental when you’re in it, but I really feel like we are in it this year. This is a real inflection point, I think, with human spaceflight.”

The mission, dubbed Ax-1, marks a new milestone in NASA’s continuing push to transition low Earth orbital activities to commercial entities: first by hiring companies to ferry supplies to the space station, then by hiring SpaceX and Boeing to build the crew vehicles that are just coming into operation, and now by opening the station itself to companies.

Until now, the handful of non-professional astronauts who have visited the space station have done so on missions that were otherwise focused on standard governmental priorities in orbit. On Ax-1, the passengers will be pursuing research and outreach projects independent of NASA’s work during their time in orbit.

“We are excited to see more people have access to spaceflight through this first private astronaut mission to the space station,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, said in a statement. “One of our original goals with the Commercial Crew Program, and again with our Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development Program, is that our providers have customers other than NASA to grow a commercial economy in low Earth orbit.”

The path to launch

Ax-1 is scheduled to blast off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center as soon as January 2022 for a flight of about 10 days total, about eight of which would be spent on the space station. The mission is the first crewed flight in NASA’s effort to promote commercial development of low Earth orbit. The agency wants companies to take over this region of human spaceflight so that it can focus time and money on more distant destinations like the moon and Mars.

Retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, veteran of four spaceflights and vice president of Axiom Space, will lead the mission, seeing his first launch in more than a decade. Three paying passengers will join him: Larry Connor, an American real estate entrepreneur who will serve as pilot on the mission; Mark Pathy, a Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Eytan Stibbe, an Israeli businessman and fighter pilot.

How much each passenger has paid for the experience is not public knowledge. “We don’t generally talk about the specific payments that our customers make,” Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said during the news conference. “It’s been widely reported as numbers in the tens of millions, which I wouldn’t argue with, but we generally don’t talk about the specific pricing.”

The quartet will be the first fully private crew to visit the International Space Station; previous private spaceflyers have flown as a single individual accompanied by government astronauts conducting a routine mission. Axiom has chosen for each planned flight it arranges to be led by a retired astronaut to increase comfort with the arrangement, Suffredini said.

“The Ax-1 crew has its work cut out for it,” Lopez-Alegria said during the news conference. “We acknowledge the responsibility of setting the bar for future private missions and we embrace that challenge. Eytan, Larry and Mark are very serious individuals who are dedicated to being the best they can be in the mold of a NASA astronaut. They’re not interested in being tourists.”

Axiom doesn’t know yet which SpaceX vehicle its mission will launch on, Suffredini said. “It really depends on when the missions occur, so it’s possible we could be on the Crew-2 vehicle but it really just depends on how things worked out going forward.” (That capsule, dubbed Endeavour, is currently docked to the space station on its second crewed visit.)

Suffredini noted that Axiom’s preparations are on track and the prelaunch plan includes padding should any delays arise along the way.

Lopez-Alegria said that he and the rest of the crew will begin training activities later this month. In July, the full crew will visit the foothills of Alaska for team bonding, he added, then he and Connor will conduct a week of training with SpaceX regarding the Crew Dragon vehicle specifically. The crew will be focused on training full-time beginning in October, he added, for both the International Space Station and the Crew Dragon.

A bargain flight

The mission requires Axiom to secure a complicated arrangement of agreements with partners including SpaceX, Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and more. The newly announced agreement with NASA is only one piece of that puzzle.

The agreement covers items like food and water for the crewmembers, professional astronaut time to prepare the space station for the vehicle’s visit, and other costs associated with visiting the space station, NASA and Axiom representatives said during the news conference. The full text of the agreement has not been made publicly available.

The costs incorporated into the agreement were determined in 2019, when NASA first announced it would be willing to welcome up to two private astronaut flights to the space station per year, each for up to 30 days. At the time, NASA officials estimated that a visit could cost around $35,000 per night.

Between that pricing scheme, the agreement not representing a comprehensive accounting of the mission costs, and NASA paying Axiom for stowage capacity on the flight back to Earth for science payloads that must remain cold, the new agreement will result in NASA paying Axiom a balance of $1.69 million.

However, Ax-1 will be the only mission to fly at such bargain rates. In late April, NASA updated its prices for space station visits, SpaceNews reported earlier this month. According to the publication’s calculations, the cost increase is dramatic.

“Under the old policy, the life support and crew supplies for a hypothetical four-person, one-week mission to the ISS would cost $945,000, a figure that doesn’t include stowage, data or power,” SpaceNews wrote. “Under the new policy, the cargo, food and supplies charges for the same mission would be more than $2.5 million at the low end of the quoted cost ranges, plus $10 million in per-mission fees.”

That price change is due to Axiom and other similar companies wanting more visits to the space station than NASA can support, according to NASA officials.

“We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions,” Angela Hart, manager of commercial low Earth orbit development at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during the news conference.

“At this point, the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on station will be,” she said, specifying that the lack of balance between supply and demand was why the agency updated its procedure for visiting commercial missions, in order to make clear that time on the space station “is such a limited resource.”

What’s next for Axiom

Presumably, opportunities for private astronaut missions will be distributed among multiple companies. “We are not the only peas in the pod,” Suffredini said.

However, Axiom does have three more missions in planning, Suffredini noted, and has its sights set on an ambitious flight schedule. “We would like to fly at a cadence [of] about roughly twice a year; it probably works out to once every seven months or so,” he said, while emphasizing that Axiom’s schedule will depend on those of SpaceX, Boeing and the space station itself.

Axiom has most recently been in the news for brokering a last-minute seat for NASA aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule that launched in April. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei occupied that seat, joining Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov; the trio are now a month into their stay in orbit. In exchange, NASA will fly an astronaut of Axiom’s selection on a U.S. commercial vehicle in 2023.

Axiom also holds an agreement with NASA to send a habitable commercial module to dock with the International Space Station. The company plans to later separate that module, which will become the base of an independent space station fully operated by Axiom.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:15

Moonshot Museum to feature window into Astrobotic lunar lander work, ,

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A new space museum set to open next year will have an unusual highlight: lunar artifacts that have yet to land on the moon.

The Moonshot Museum, now under construction, will be located in the Pittsburgh headquarters of Astrobotic, a company building lunar landers and robotic rovers for NASA and commercial moon missions. The museum’s feature attraction will be a large picture window through which visitors will be able to see into Astrobotic’s clean room and witness spacecraft being assembled and readied for launches to the moon.

The Moonshot Museum will be Pennsylvania’s first museum dedicated solely to space exploration. In addition to offering a literal window into Astrobotic’s work, the facility will host interactive exhibits, educational programs and curated experiences aimed at educating visitors, especially students, about possible career paths in the space industry.

“It’s about creating STEAM [science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics] opportunities that will change a child’s life,” Bill Peduto, Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh, said in a statement released by Astrobotic. “Looking in through that clean room window, they’ll be able to see something that will leave this planet, and they’ll be changed forever.”

“It’s about bringing the moon to Pittsburgh,” said Peduto.

Astrobotic is currently working on two funded lunar landing missions scheduled to launch over the next few years.

The company is preparing its Peregrine lander to become the first U.S. spacecraft to touch down on the moon since the Apollo missions and first privately-owned and operated vehicle to do so. Peregrine Mission One (PM1) will deliver more than two dozen payloads to Lacus Mortis, a hexagonal-shaped plain on the near side of the moon, including scientific packages as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Astrobotic is also building a larger Griffin lander, which on its first mission in 2023 will bring NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the lunar south pole to survey for water ice.

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Astrobotic’s Griffin analog model (at left) and Peregrine structural test model in the company’s clean room. (Image credit: Astrobotic)

In addition, the company and Carnegie Mellon University are developing a mid-sized rover called MoonRanger to build high fidelity 3D maps of the lunar surface and demonstrate high-speed, long-range and communication-denied exploration.

Astrobotic is gifting the facilities and utilities for the Moonshot Museum, which will operate as a nonprofit organization.

“We want to provide the ‘spark’ — that moment when an individual is inspired to pursue a space or tech career who may not have otherwise done so,” said John Thornton, Astrobotic CEO and chair of the Moonshot Museum’s board of directors. “For Astrobotic, success is as much about execution of its other-worldly missions and business as it is about engaging with and serving the communities it is a part of.”

Seed funding and startup operations for the new museum have been provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

“The Foundation made this lead gift to enable people to see first-hand Pittsburgh’s leadership role in the future of lunar travel, and to inspire young people to imagine their own futures in this exciting and growing industry,” said Sam Reiman, director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

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The Moonshot Museum logo. (Image credit: Moonshot Museum)

The Moonshot Museum’s mission is “to make space more accessible by inspiring a diverse audience to write the future of space commerce, science, exploration, and settlement.” Both digital and on-site educational workshops will simulate real space missions and foster tech career awareness and readiness in the Pittsburgh region and around the world.

The programs will aim to propel individuals of all backgrounds to pursue space careers across a variety of disciplines, from science and engineering to medicine, business, law, policy, and the humanities and arts.

“When you mention space, people think of different things. Whether it’s stars, planets, astronauts or engineers, a common theme is the persistence of curiosity. Curiosity is a spark that can either catch fire or fizzle out — and we want it to catch!” said Sam Moore, executive director of the museum.

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:13

Is war in space inevitable?, ,

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Here on Earth, the air, land, and sea are zones of conflict, clashes and combat. There is a growing perception that next up is the ocean of space, transformed into an arena for warfare.

There is ongoing chatter regarding military use of space by various nations. The freshly established U.S. Space Force, for instance, is busily shaping how best to protect U.S. and allied interests in the increasingly contested and congested space domain.

What conditions could lead to clashes in space? Is such a situation a given, or can conflicts be short-circuited ahead of time? Could nations “slip into” off-planet muscle-flexing, quarreling and actual warfighting in space that might spark confrontation here on terra firma?

Space.com contacted several leading military space and security experts, asking for their opinions on the current status of the militarization of space.

Pass interference

The term “warfare in space” could entail things that are already taking place, said Mark Gubrud, an adjunct assistant professor in the Curriculum in Peace, War & Defense at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He pointed to jamming satellite communications, laser dazzling of photo-snapping satellites, hacking systems to selectively block or eavesdrop on phone or data streams, and probing systems to see if they can be hacked.

“While the full extent of such activities may not be known, they appear to occur sporadically up to now,” Gubrud said. According to some reports, he said, the U.S. and perhaps others have made extensive use of the ability to intercept and interfere with commercial telecom traffic, though this is an asymmetric capability of major powers that presents little risk of escalation.

Gubrud said that all of these forms of harmful interference could potentially lead to escalation risks as they are more widely and commonly practiced and as adversaries develop reciprocal capabilities.

“Therefore, we should build on the United Nations Outer Space Treaty with a further treaty that bans all forms of harmful interference and weapons for causing interference,” he said.

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The U.S. Space Force has been established to keep a keen military eye on the space domain that is congested and contested by numbers of nations. (Image credit: Nicholas Pilch/U.S. Air Force)Absence of binding commitments

The greatest danger will arise from a massive proliferation of Earth-based anti-satellite systems that are able to affect spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit and beyond, or the pre-deployment of various types of such weapons in space that would allow them to reach their targets within minutes or seconds, rather than hours, Gubrud said.

“Here the potential for rapid escalation becomes a severe threat to nuclear stability, as the main confronting powers would almost certainly be the US, Russia and China,” he said. The only good news here is that this hasn’t happened yet, he added, probably because there is enough recognition of how dangerous it would be.

“So really, the path to war in space is a space arms race, one that has long been postponed but that is only made more imminent and potentially explosive as technology advances in the absence of binding commitments to space arms control,” Gubrud concluded.

Tailgating

Space is already weaponized by dual-use robotic spacecraft serving as weapons to disable our satellites, said Brian Chow, an independent policy analyst with over 25 years’ experience as a senior physical scientist specializing in space and national security.

“Because their peaceful uses are important to space prosperity, they should not be banned,” Chow said. “Actually, we can accept some rules and measures so that we can enjoy the benefits of these spacecraft and prevent them from harming our satellites at the same time.”

Chow senses that the present problem is that the international community has not prohibited spacecraft, whether peaceful or hostile, from staying arbitrarily close to satellites operated by another nation. An adversary is not prevented from placing its dual-use spacecraft close to our satellites in peacetime.

“Once these spacecraft are in place, mounting attacks from such a close range would give us insufficient warning time to fashion a defense and save our targeted satellites,” Chow told Space.com.

The international community is ambiguous about whether a nation is allowed to tailgate another country’s satellites, Chow said. Also, the current U.S. national security space strategy is ambiguous about preemptive self-defense, including when it faces a threat from space stalkers, he said.

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The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a constellation of satellites that provides position, navigation and timing data to military and civilian users globally. Next-generation satellites are designed to thwart jamming and signal-spoofing by aggressors (Image credit: Lockheed Martin and U.S. Space Force)Dangerous ambiguities

The uncertainties surrounding preemption and stalking are dangerous, Chow said. For instance, China could reason that space stalkers would be the best type of anti-satellite system, because it would present the United States with two bad choices.

“First, the United States could preemptively destroy the space stalkers to save the targeted satellites so as to maintain space support to military operations during crisis and war,” Chow said. “However, without discussing and resolving these two ambiguities with the international community in peacetime, the United States could be condemned as the aggressor who fired the first shot, which led to a war in space possibly spreading to Earth — something both sides tried to avoid,” Chow said.

Secondly, Chow said that the United States may not be able to fight effectively without the support of some critical satellites.

“Facing these two bad choices, the United States might end up not intervening at all. This would be the perfect outcome for China, as it prevented U.S. intervention without firing a single shot,” Chow said. “If we keep using the current space policy without necessary and needed changes, the U.S. and other nations could ‘stumble into’ such conflicts.”

Lose-lose proposition

“I’m not a huge believer in inevitability,” said Wendy Whitman Cobb, an associate professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. “Analysts have constantly been saying that attacks and weapons in space are inevitable and right around the corner since the 1960s.”

It has long been recognized, said Whitman Cobb, that one country attacking a satellite of another is a lose-lose proposition for those concerned.

“Not only would the space environment be cluttered with debris making it harder to operate there, but it would be open season on all satellites including their own,” she said. “Because of the stability that monitoring from space gave to the nuclear arms race, it was just better to allow satellites to freely operate rather than threaten your own strategic position.”

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In 2019, India tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon. The target of the Mission Shakti test was the country’s Microsatellite-R satellite, specifically built to be destroyed as it replicated the size of a typical adversary’s defense spacecraft. China, Russia and the United States have also seriously researched ASAT technology. (Image credit: India Defense Research & Development Organization)Economic repercussions

The flourishing commercialization of space and the global economy’s reliance on space-based systems makes open conflict in space very costly, as Whitman Cobb points out in her recent book, “Privatizing Peace: How Commerce Can Reduce Conflict in Space” (Routledge, 2020).

“It only takes one piece of debris to take down a satellite through which financial transactions and key communications are routed. The wrong satellite could have significant economic repercussions that would not be isolated to one country alone,” Whitman Cobb said. “Thus there should be both strategic and economic considerations that restrain countries in their use of weapons in space.”

That said, Whitman Cobb added that it is still possible for states either to stumble into conflict or to have conflict be initiated by rogue states like North Korea or Iran. The electromagnetic pulse from a detonating nuclear device, for example, would quite quickly and easily take out all satellites in the vicinity.

“It’s certainly a non-discriminatory weapon, but, backed into a corner, it’s not far out of the realm of possibility for North Korea or Iran,” she said.

Because of the dual nature of space technology and the inherent secrecy involved, there’s a significant chance of misperception, Whitman Cobb said, stressing that misunderstandings of not just technology but also intent could easily lead to conflict. (Her views are her own, based on open source, unclassified information and are not representative of the Department of the Defense or the Air Force.)

Chest thumping

There is a lot of talk that space is now weaponized, so the attitude in certain quarters is that the U.S. would be remiss to not “keep up,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

“Dual-use technology has meant that there have been ‘potential’ space weapons around for at least a decade, but now we are moving, if not running, toward the overt weaponization of space,” Johnson-Freese said. She thinks what might be going on relates to putting some parameters around the Space Force mission to organize, train and equip.

“That can be broadly defined — as the Trump Administration seemed inclined to do — or reined in a bit to abate some of the chest-thumping, warfare-fighting connotations given to its creation, some of which Space Force has since perpetuated,” Johnson-Freese added, noting that her views are her own and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, nor the Naval War College.

Perhaps the Biden Administration will tone down the chest-thumping rhetoric. But should technology development and war fighting plans continue?

“Yes, I think that’s inevitable. I also think, however, that without some measure of accompanying space diplomacy, there is a distinct danger of space war of some sort being a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Johnson-Freese. “I would like to see a major effort by this new administration in space diplomacy, specifically toward transparency and confidence building measures.”

Leonard David is author of “ Moon Rush: The New Space Race ,” which was published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:12

Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti can deliver 60fps gameplay in more budget-friendly laptops, Cameron Faulkner

[image error] Nvidia RTX 3050

Nvidia

Nvidia’s RTX 30-series lineup of mobile graphics chips has two new members joining today: the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and 3050. They sit beneath the GeForce RTX 3060 in terms of specs and performance, with less video memory (4GB) and fewer dedicated Tensor AI and RT cores available to perform ray tracing and handle AI-enhanced effects like DLSS.

Despite this, Nvidia says that the RTX 3050 Ti is capable of going beyond 60fps in games like Call of Duty: Warzone, Outriders, Control, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Minecraft — all with ray tracing settings on. That’s pretty good, considering it’ll show up in gaming laptop starting at $849. The RTX 3050 will appear in laptops starting at $799. We already know that Samsung’s new Galaxy Book Odyssey will…

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:00

Dell’s new XPS 15 and XPS 17 get upgraded with Intel’s long-awaited 11th Gen H-series chips, Chaim Gartenberg

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Dell’s new (familiar looking) XPS 17 for 2021 | Image: Dell

Intel has just announced its new 11th Gen processors for more powerful laptops, and Dell is ready with refreshed versions of its XPS 15 and XPS 17 laptops that add the new chips, along with Nvidia’s latest RTX 30-series laptop GPUs.

The new models are virtually the same on the outside as the more substantial 2020 refresh, which saw the reintroduction of the largest 17-inch size and a redesign for the 15-inch model to better match Dell’s popular XPS 13 design.

But both laptops now offer improved specs, featuring Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake H-series chips, bringing the company’s 10nm process to Dell’s more powerful laptops. Both the XPS 15 and XPS 17 can now be configured with the six-core i5-11400H or eight-core i7-11800H and i9-11900H…

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:00

Lenovo’s Legion 7i and 5i Pro gaming laptops have tall 16:10 QHD displays, Cameron Faulkner

[image error] Lenovo Legion 7i

QHD, 16:10 aspect ratio, 165Hz. So many buzzwords. | Lenovo

Lenovo is banking hard on 16-inch QHD displays in the taller 16:10 aspect ratio with its new lineup of Legion 7i and 5i Pro gaming laptops, and I’m all for it. These laptops are a showcase for crisper, more spacious displays that have a fast 165Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support, as well as faster processors by way of Intel’s new 11th Gen H-series CPUs. They’re also among the first laptops announced to support Nvidia’s lower-end GeForce RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti graphics chips, in addition to more powerful GPU options.

The Legion 7i is the flagship and can fit the most amount of power, supporting up to a 165W total graphics power (TGP) variant of Nvidia’s RTX 3080 (16GB) with a boost clock of 1,710MHz. That’s more power-hungry than what we’ve…

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:00

MSI’s new laptops take aim at the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Monica Chin

[image error] The MSI GL66 Pulse half open on a table, with black and purple lights in the background. The screen displays the MSI dragon-shield logo on a black background.

This is the GL66 Pulse, which starts at $949. | Image: MSI

MSI has announced a number of gaming and creator laptops that include Intel’s brand-new Tiger Lake H processors. The models will be available for purchase on May 16th.

MSI is best known for its high-end gaming laptops, but the company has made a few attempts to diversify its portfolio over the past few years. The manufacturer made a play for deep-pocketed professionals with its Summit Series business line last year, and it also sells some lower-priced models tailored to content creators. The new Creator Z16 is its first attempt to enter the market of premium content-creation machines, targeting customers that MSI bluntly calls “MacBook Pro users.”

Creator Z16 models start at $2,599

There are two Creator Z16 models, with the base model…

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Published on May 11, 2021 04:00

May 10, 2021

Pony.ai unveils its next-gen robotaxi with LIDAR from Luminar, Andrew J. Hawkins

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Pony.ai’s next-generation robotaxi is distinctive because it appears to be missing the cone-shaped LIDAR sensor perched on the roof that’s typical of most autonomous vehicles. That’s because the startup, which is based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, is teaming up with Luminar to use the fast-growing LIDAR company’s sleek new sensors that are more flush with the vehicle’s roof.

The new vehicles with Luminar’s LIDAR sensor won’t be up and running until 2022, but Pony.ai founder and CEO James Peng said preparation was already underway for mass production of the next-gen robotaxi. After testing the vehicle next year, Peng said it will be ready for the company’s robotaxi customers in 2023. Pony.ai currently offers limited…

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Published on May 10, 2021 04:00

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