'I think we all know that hope is fading.' Private Odin asteroid probe is tumbling in space
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
The world's first private spaceraft built to visit an asteroid is slowly tumbling in space and the outlook is dire.
The spacecraft, called Odin, launched atop a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday (Feb. 26) on a mission to fly by the small asteroid 2022 OB5 for AstroForge, a company that aims to eventually mine the nearby space rock. But just hours after liftoff, Astroforge hit snags with the probe. The last contact was 20 hours after launch.
"I think we all know the hope is fading as we continue the mission," AstroForge founder Matt Gialich said in a video update on X early Saturday (March 1). "So we're going to keep our head up. We're going to keep trying over the weekend, and we'll see how far we get."
At the time of Gialich's update Saturday morning, the Odin spacecraft was over 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) from Earth and largely following its intended trajectory. On Friday, AstroForge said the spacecraft's solar panels were generating power, with tracking data showing it at its expected position. But the probe has not sent full telemetry on its status.
Gialich said AstroForge experienced challenges with ground stations designed to keep communication lines open with Odin after launch.
"And I think missing our early ground stations really hurt the ability of us to fix any potential problems we had," he said.
The 265-pound (120 kilograms) Odin was only designed to last 2.5 hours on its internal battery, but AstroForge received its last contact from the probe 20 hours after liftoff, boosting confidence that the spacecraft is powered.
Odin is tumbling ever so slowly as it flies through space, Gialich added, confirming one theory based on observations of the spacecraft.
"And when I say tumble, this is a really, really low speed tumble," Gialich said. "But in short, we don't know why and that's going to be the problem going forward."
AstroForge's mission team is working through the weekend on recovery efforts, but options may be limited.
"We have a plan over the weekend, and there is still a chance that we are going to be able to recover the vehicle," Gialich said. "We do think we have some theories on what's going on, and if one of them is true, there is still a recovery path."
RELATED STORIES:
— SpaceX rocket launches private moon lander and NASA 'trailblazer' to hunt for lunar water (video)
— Space mining company AstroForge identifies asteroid target for Odin launch next month
— Space mining startup AstroForge aims to launch historic asteroid-landing mission in 2025
Gialich said AstroForge will share a more detailed update on its website this weekend, followed by an in-depth analysis on the anomaly next week.
Gialich founded AstroForge with the goal of mining the vast resources from asteroids for use on Earth and in space. The Odin mission is a scouting effort to fly by asteroid 2022 OB5 to record images and data that would set the stage for a landing by AstroForge's next mission, called Vestri.
The company built Odin in just 10 months, Gialich said. It launched as a piggyback payload alongside the company Intuitive Machines' Athena moon lander, NASA's Lunar Trailblazer moon orbiter (which is also suffering issues after launch) and a small orbital tug demonstrator built by Epic Aerospace.
Gialich stressed that AstroForge is committed to that Vestri asteroid landing mission despite the challenges facing its Odin probe.
"We have probably the best group of investors in the world. A lot of them have doubled down on this company," Gialich said. "So regardless of the outcome of Odin, regardless if we ever talk to it again or we don't, we're going to roll these findings into the next mission.
"And we'll see you back here in about a year when we take another stab at it."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Digital Trends
3 hours ago
- Digital Trends
SpaceX Starlink rivalry grows as next Kuiper deployment nears
Amazon is about to send another batch of Project Kuiper internet satellites to orbit as it seeks to take on SpaceX's Starlink service to provide broadband internet to customers around the world. The tech giant has a long way to go before it has any hope of effectively challenging Starlink, but with its second launch set for next week, progress is being made toward its goal. Recommended Videos Project Kuiper is currently targeting Monday, June 16, for the launch of 27 internet satellites aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The KA-02 mission comes seven weeks after the first Project Kuiper launch, which also deployed 27 internet satellites. Commenting after the inaugural launch, Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper, said: 'We've designed some of the most advanced communications satellites ever built, and every launch is an opportunity to add more capacity and coverage to our network.' SpaceX began deploying its Starlink internet satellites six years ago and now has more than 7,000 of them in low-Earth orbit, bringing broadband connectivity to more than 5 million customers globally. Project Kuiper says its initial constellation will be made up of more than 3,200 satellites, with more than 80 missions needed to reach that goal. To that end, Amazon has put together a busy launch schedule, with six additional satellite deployments planned for ULA's Atlas V rocket, at least 38 on ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket, and dozens more with Arianespace and Blue Origin. SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket may even help out. Amazon is targeting as early as the end of this year for the launch of a high-speed, low-latency satellite-powered internet service, with as few as 1,000 satellites needed for global coverage. Building out the constellation to the targeted 3,200 satellites will help to boost network performance and reliability for paying customers.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
World's first images of the sun's south pole spark 'a new era of solar science'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Just this once, it's OK to stare at the sun — provided you're looking at the European Space Agency's (ESA) newly released, history-making images of the solar south pole. Taken near the sun on March 23 and revealed to Earthlings Wednesday (June 11), the new images from ESA's Solar Orbiter show a view of our star that no human or spacecraft has ever recorded before. While Earth and the other planets orbit relatively in line with the sun's equator on an invisible plane called the ecliptic, Solar Orbiter spent the last several months tilting its orbit to 17 degrees below the solar equator — bringing our star's enigmatic south pole into view for the first time ever. "Today we reveal humankind's first-ever views of the Sun's pole," Carole Mundell, ESA's director of science, said in a statement. "These new unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science." The new images capture the solar pole in a broad swath of visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, using three of Solar Orbiter's 10 onboard instruments. The result is a colorful confetti of solar data, including an unprecedented look at the perplexing tangles of the sun's magnetic field as it prepares to flip, and the high-velocity movements of specific chemical elements as they ride plumes of plasma that make up the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles that governs space weather throughout our solar system. These data will help improve our understanding of the solar wind, space weather and the sun's roughly 11-year activity cycle for years to come, according to ESA. But of particular interest right now, as the sun spits out flares in overdrive during its period of peak activity (called solar maximum), are the magnetic measurements taken with Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument. Related: NASA spacecraft snaps eerie image of eclipsed sun with an extra moon overhead. What's going on? PHI's maps of the solar magnetic field highlight an intriguing paradox: While most magnets have a distinct north and south pole, the sun's south pole is roiling with both north and south polarity magnetic fields (shown as blue and red patches in the corresponding images). According to ESA, this mess of magnetism is a temporary phenomenon that hints that the sun's magnetic field is about to flip, as it does once every 11 years or so. This magnetic reversal signifies the end of the high-activity solar maximum and begins a transition toward the relative calm of the next solar minimum. When the next minimum begins, approximately five to six years from now, the sun's poles should show only one type of magnetic polarity apiece as our star takes a break from launching violent space weather tantrums. RELATED STORIES —A mysterious, 100-year solar cycle may have just restarted — and it could mean decades of dangerous space weather —NASA's Parker Solar Probe spots powerful magnetic explosion aimed at the sun's surface —Ancient superpowered solar storm that hit Earth 14,000 years ago is the 'biggest ever identified' Solar Orbiter will have several more chances to test these predictions over the coming years. With a little help from the gravitational pull of Venus, Solar Orbiter will continue tilting its orbit further from the solar equator, reaching a tilt of 24 degrees in December 2026 and a whopping 33 degrees in June 2029. These ever-more-angular vantage points will expose the solar poles in even greater detail, improving our knowledge of our home star with every flyby. "This is just the first step of Solar Orbiter's 'stairway to heaven'," Daniel Müller, ESA's Solar Orbiter project scientist, said in the statement. "These data will transform our understanding of the Sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar activity."
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Laws of physics are still broken: Attempt to explain away black holes' central singularity falls short, scientist says
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Reports of the singularity's demise may have been premature. Earlier this year, new research suggested a potential solution to one of the most troubling aspects of modern physics — that "singularities" seem to exist at the hearts of black holes. The idea of the singularity has existed since black holes first emerged from the solutions to Albert Einstein's magnum opus theory of gravity, general relativity, which was published in 1916. It represents the point at which mass becomes infinitely dense — so concentrated that the curvature of space-time (the four-dimensional unification of space and time) it creates becomes infinite also. This was and remains somewhat concerning, because it represents a breakdown of the laws of physics. Thanks to their central singularity, black holes don't obey the laws of physics — even general relativity, the theory that first described them. That's a paradox that just won't do for many physicists, who are working hard to eliminate it by busting the central singularity. One of them is Robie Hennigar, a researcher at Durham University in England. "The singularity is the most mysterious and problematic part of a black hole. It's where our concepts of space and time literally no longer make sense," Hennigar told back in March. "If black holes do not have singularities, then they are much more ordinary." In a study published in February, Hennigar and his colleagues used an effective theory that modified the Einstein field equations of general relativity so that gravity behaves differently when space-time is highly curved. This replaces the central singularity with a highly warped static region located at the core of the black hole. Unfortunately, this recipe of gravity just isn't to the taste of many scientists, including Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven, who told that he has three main issues with the team's theory. "Firstly, the team assumes the existence of five dimensions, whereas the experiments and observations indicate that we live in a four-dimensional space-time," Poplawski said. While lots of other theories that could account for singularities also rely on extra dimensions (string theory needs at least 11!), no evidence of such extra dimensions has yet presented itself. "Secondly, in the team's model, the interior of a black hole is static," Poplawski continued, explaining that gravitational field equations predict that space-time within the outer boundary of a black hole, the event horizon, can't be static. "Thirdly, their model adds ad hoc an infinite number of terms to the field equations, for the purpose of eliminating a singularity," Poplawski added. "That lacks a solid physical motivation, and it is merely a mathematical exploration of a theory of gravity with extra dimensions." The singularity-busting theory differs from a great deal of other attempts to solve this issue, which take the route of uniting general relativity with quantum physics, our best theory of the universe on subatomic levels, attempting to produce a unifying theory of "quantum gravity." That doesn't mean those theories are any closer to answering the singularity puzzle, however. One of the most favored unification theories is string theory, mentioned above, which replaces point-like particles with vibrating strings. "The problem with string theory is that it requires extra dimensions, for which there is no experimental evidence," Poplawski said. "Also, there are many forms of string theory, so it would be impossible to falsify it. Another problem is that many forms of string theory require the existence of supersymmetric particles, for which there is no experimental evidence. Consequently, string theory is not a physical theory."Poplawski added that attempts to eliminate black hole singularities within a classical physics framework have also failed or will fail because they are entirely mathematical and lack what he describes as "deep physical motivation." Of course, that doesn't mean there is no value in exploring ideas, as the singularity-busting team has done. "There could be some mathematical value to exploring ideas like this," Poplawski said. "Sometimes physicists invent new mathematical techniques or find solutions to equations that could be used in other branches of physics." Related Stories: — James Webb Space Telescope sees little red dots feeding black holes: 'This is how you solve a universe-breaking problem' — Largest-ever discovery of 'missing link' black holes revealed by dark energy camera (video) — Black holes can squash star formation, James Webb Space Telescope finds So does Poplawski think that humanity could ever discover what lies within a black hole and close the book on physics-breaking singularities for good? Yes, but with a caveat. "I believe humanity will discover what lies at the heart of a black hole only if every black hole creates a new universe and our universe was accordingly created in a black hole," Poplawski said, referring to a hypothesis he has been working on since 2010. "If our universe was created in a black hole, its early expansion could be tested with the cosmic microwave background radiation, and possibly in the future, with neutrinos or gravitational waves, which could probe the earlier times in the universe," Poplawski continued. "Otherwise, we would not be able to empirically understand what happens inside a black hole." Getting to the bottom of this mystery may be incredibly difficult, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Poplawski cited the example of another aspect of physics that emerged from the theory of general relativity and took great perseverance to solve: tiny ripples in space-time called "gravitational waves." "It took 100 years to detect gravitational waves on Earth after Einstein predicted them from his equations of general relativity," Poplawski said. "Therefore, it may take decades before we find out what happens in black holes."
