Hey and welcome again to Max Q. On this concern:
- The primary photos from James Webb House Telescope are right here
- Lunar Outpost eyes up moon markets
- Information from ABL House Techniques, Skyrora and extra
By the best way…we’re proper across the nook from TC Periods: Robotics, a full-day digital gathering of among the world’s main founders, technologists, engineers, researchers and buyers in robotics and AI! Register and be taught extra right here.
OK, on to the information.
James Webb House Telescope (JWST) is likely one of the most fun astronomical missions in years. With JWST, scientists are hoping to be taught extra concerning the universe, from star formation to black holes to exoplanets.
This week, NASA launched the primary 5 photos from the optical instrument they usually did not disappoint. The primary picture, revealed by President Joe Biden, is a chic photograph of the cluster SMACS 0723. As NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson put it, “In the event you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm’s size, that’s the a part of the universe that you just’re seeing, only one little speck of the universe.”
Try this story on what the opposite 4 photos inform us concerning the universe and this deep dive from Devin Coldewey into simply how a spacecraft one million miles away manages to ship dozens of gigabytes of knowledge again to Earth.
Picture Credit: NASA (opens in a brand new window)
I caught up with Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus a couple of months after the corporate closed a $12 million seed spherical, led by Explorer 1 Fund with participation from Promus Ventures, House Capital, Kind 1 Ventures and Cathexis Ventures.
Lunar Outpost is creating rovers and different applied sciences for terrestrial and area functions, and it already has a handful of area missions lined up for 2023 and past. For the primary mission, Lunar Outpost will ship a 10-kilogram rover, known as the Cell Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), to the moon’s south pole on a mission in partnership with Nokia and Intuitive Machines in early 2023. The corporate can also be sending a rover to discover the mysterious Reiner Gamma characteristic on the moon in a totally funded mission for NASA, additionally in partnership with Intuitive Machines. To high it off, it’s a part of a group that features Northrop Grumman, Michelin, AVL and Intuitive Machines that’s bidding on a contract to construct a crewed lunar terrain car for NASA.
“We noticed our opponents beginning to attempt to catch up and we felt like this funding can’t solely be utilized to additional differentiate ourselves, and dig a little bit little bit of a moat, if you’ll, but in addition speed up our commercialization timeline for cislunar area,” Cyrus stated.
Picture Credit: Lunar Outpost (opens in a brand new window)
Extra information from TC and past
- ABL House Techniques performed a profitable static-fire take a look at of the RS1 rocket from Kodiak, Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Advanced, CEO Harry O’Hanley stated.
- BlackSky was awarded $4.4 million from the U.S. Intelligence Superior Analysis Tasks Exercise (IARPA) for machine studying tech integral to IARPA’s House-based Machine Automated Recognition Method Program.
- Daybreak Aerospace was awarded €1.4 million ($1.4 million) from the European Fee to additional develop its hydrazine-replacement propulsion expertise.
- The European House Company’s Vega C rocket had a profitable first flight from French Guiana, with the launch operated by Arianespace and the car designed by prime contractor Avio. Arianespace stated it’s concentrating on 4 launches per yr.
- ESA has officially terminated its cooperation with Russia’s Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission.
- Rocket Manufacturing unit Augsburg fired its Helix engine for 74 seconds, bringing the engine’s long-duration hot-fire marketing campaign to an finish. Subsequent up is the built-in system take a look at, the corporate stated.
- Rocket Lab launched the primary of two missions for the U.S. Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace. It’s aiming to launch the second mission simply 10 days later, the quickest launch cadence for the corporate to date.
- Roscosmos terminated its head Dmitry Rogozin on the identical day that the Russian area company and NASA stated they’d trade astronaut seats on missions to the Worldwide House Station.
- Skyrora has opened a 55,000-square-foot rocket engine manufacturing facility in Scotland, which can energy the corporate’s inaugural launch car, Skyrora XL.
- SpaceX launched over two tons of cargo to the Worldwide House Station, together with a lot of very cool scientific experiments and a NASA instrument that can measure mud and mud cycles, an essential variable to mannequin future local weather eventualities and ecological phenomena like snowmelt and algae blooms.
- SpaceX’s Tremendous Heavy booster had a little bit, er, hiccup when the engine spin-start take a look at led to a fiery explosion.
- House Capital launched its quarterly report on area sector investing, discovering that there was one other $6.1 billion poured into 92 firms within the second quarter of this yr. The VC agency stated it didn’t imagine the business was at “existential danger” regardless of dire macro financial situations.
- Virgin Galactic is opening a brand new manufacturing facility in Arizona, which it says could have the capability to supply six spaceships per yr.
Picture of the week
Picture Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Come on…how might I not select the deep-field panorama from JWST?! As an apart, try this cool story from Mary Beth Griggs on why it appears to be like like there’s a lot lens flare on this picture (spoiler: it’s not lens flare).
Bonus JWST-related hyperlinks:
This cool device from John Christensen that compares the pictures from JW to these taken by the noble Hubble House Telescope. It actually drives house simply how loopy superior is the brand new optical instrument.
A Reddit person made a video displaying the place, precisely, the “Cosmic Cliffs” are positioned within the universe. It’s jaw-dropping.
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