Do you have a link to the story?
A quick Google search only turned up a special donut Krispy Kreme is offering that will be available for several full days around the eclipse. Which is just normal promotional stunt stuff.
Lost in Space
It wouldn't be the first time that food companies have done promotions for astronomical events. That donut looks insane, though.
In fact, the Associated Press just dropped this: From Krispy Kreme to SunChips, more and more companies roll out total solar eclipse promotions
Lots of them are getting in on the fun.
Vulcan Cert-2
Ars Technica: With payload questions, it’s likely Vulcan will not launch again until fall
Vulcan's second certification flight is delayed again, to no earlier than September 2024. The reason is the payload. It's supposed to carry the maiden launch of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser resupply vehicle, which is still undergoing certification.
ULA needs a second successful flight in order to qualify for national security launches, so the longer it's delayed, the longer it will take for Vulcan to start earning its keep. It is possible that the company could need to look for something else to launch on Cert-2, although nothing has been said officially about that.
The article also mentions Blue Origin's BE-4 engines as a pacing item. Apparently they're taking longer to deliver than anticipated.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 8:56:17 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
And why not? The next eclipse visible in the US won't be for another 50 years.
Lost in Space
Polaris Dawn
SpaceX announced yesterday that the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly the Polaris Dawn mission has been sent off for vacuum chamber testing ahead of its planned launch this summer.
This is a major milestone for certification of the vehicle, and it's more complicated than it sounds. Normally, Dragon would operate with a fully pressurized cabin, but since the crew of Polaris Dawn will perform a spacewalk, the cabin will be depressurized during that time, and that means that everything inside it will have to work in a vacuum.
As a reminder, one of the primary goals of this mission is to reach the highest orbital altitude of any human spacecraft since Gemini — not counting Apollo, which went to the Moon. The vehicle will test space-to-ground communication via Starlink, among other technologies, and its crew will conduct the first completely private EVA in human history.
If everything goes as planned, Crew Dragon will be capable of much more dynamic missions, such as on-orbit repair of satellites — something only previously possible using Space Shuttle. It will also provide valuable experience to inform development and certification of Starship's crew capabilities.
We are expecting a spacesuit reveal soon, according to hints from mission commander Jared Isaacman. I'll stay on top of that and post as soon as I know more.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 11:40:57 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Edit: This was already posted last page.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 9:31:28 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
minseok42 reported about that on the last page (from Reuters).
Edited by Smeagol17 on Apr 5th 2024 at 4:25:41 PM
Lost in Space
Whoops, my bad! Well, how about some more Webb images?
NASA: NASA’s Webb Probes an Extreme Starburst Galaxy
JWST imaged the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away, and observed star formation occurring at a rate ten times faster than in the Milky Way. Supernova remnants litter it like trash from a rave. Tendrils of gas and dust show where newborn stars have blasted away the surrounding medium.
In the below image, Hubble's is on the left and Webb's is on the right.
No X-Rays or Radio from the Nearest Black Holes and Implications for Future Searches. This concerns Gaia BH 1, a binary 1560 light years away that consists of a star much like the Sun and a companion 9 times as massive that is almost certainly a black hole. It was discovered last year and is the closest known black hole.
Folks have found that it does not emit any X-rays, implying that if this black hole is absorbing matter from the other star's stellar wind, it's not doing it to any significant degree. Not that this system would be very habitable, anyway; the black hole sits at about 2 astronomical units from the star and would disturb any habitable planetary orbit, and most formation scenarios of such a system imply significant disturbances.
This system also poses a problem for the theory that black hole masses grow over time as the universe expands, because in such a scenario the black hole would most likely start off with a mass of less than 2.2 solar masses, below the neutron star mass limit.
Lost in Space
As I understand it, most models of supermassive black hole formation have them starting with far more than 2.2 M☉, if not from direct collapse. There could be billions of smaller black holes littering the universe that failed to accrete enough matter to kickstart their growth without disrupting that model.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Only if there is a physical distinction between SMBH and standard economy sized black hole. Otherwise, this black hole would have evolved from a less than 2.2 solar mass progenitor, which is impossible unless either a) there is some mechanism that can create a black hole below the neutron star mass limit or b) the mass growth ("cosmological coupling") also applies to neutron stars and the like.
Edited by SeptimusHeap on Apr 5th 2024 at 3:46:50 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
Black holes follow an exponential curve for growth, as their maximum rate of accretion scales with their mass. A black hole at the very bottom end of that curve could take an incredibly long time to grow, but one starting much higher up would grow significantly faster.
If low-mass black holes are often found in environments where they accrete extremely slowly — in this case, because the stellar wind from the companion star may be too hot — I don't see how that challenges the evolution models for SMBHs, many of which would have started much, much larger and had much more gas and dust to accrete.
Granted, I'm not familiar with the details of the math; I'm a total layman where this stuff is concerned.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
That's the conventional black hole growth paradigm, but what I am talking about is the hypothesis proposed last year that black hole mass grows with the expansion of the universe. I don't think that's supposed to be accretion-driven growth.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
I don't know much about that idea. Would probably need a PBS Space Time video to explain it. 
Edit: Is the idea that black holes also eat dark energy, or something like that?
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 10:21:09 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
That they constitute dark energy, sort of, if they grow at the requisite rate. Going by this paper, anyway, which notes that this theory has received a rather icy reception due to e.g the above mentioned issue of small black holes starting out too light.
Lost in Space
Starship IFT-4
At Starbase, Texas, Super Heavy Booster 11 just executed what appeared to be a nominal static fire test of its engines ahead of the fourth Starship test flight. NASA Spaceflight livestreamed it. Ship 29 is back at the production site getting its final preparation work done, including replacement of its nosecone heat shield tiles.
This milestone comes less than three weeks after IFT-3, representing a dramatic increase in the pace of flight preparations between missions. Assuming that nothing needs to be replaced or repaired on the booster or ground equipment, the next step would be to stack Ship 29 and perform a wet dress rehearsal. Gwynne Shotwell wasn't lying about the six-week timeline. FAA approval would be the final step.
Launch and Event Schedule
Here's what to look out for this weekend and into next week. I am omitting Starlink missions for brevity.
- Soyuz MS-24 undocking | Apr 6 03:55 UTC. The Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft will undock from the ISS tomorrow morning, starting cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, Marina Vasilevskaya, and astronaut Loral O'Hara on their trip back home. Landing is expected at 07:18 UTC that same day.
- SpaceX | Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bandwagon-1 | Apr 7 23:16 UTC. This is a dedicated rideshare mission similar to the Transporter missions. I'm not sure why the name change; perhaps it's because the payloads are going into a standard orbit instead of a polar one. If so, I think that's the first time.
- ULA | Delta IV Heavy | NROL-70 | Apr 9 16:53 UTC. ULA will try to launch NROL-70 again after the first attempt was aborted due to a GSE issue.
- Roscosmos | Angara A5/Blok DM-03 | Vostochny Angara Test Flight | NET Apr 9. Roscosmos will be launching its Angara rocket for the third time and the first from Vostochny on the country's east coast. There is no payload — as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the rocket has no customers.
Solar Eclipse
Ars Technica: Here are the winners and losers when it comes to clouds for Monday’s eclipse
Check this article to see if you'll have a good view of Monday's solar eclipse over the continental United States. I'm in a cloudy region. Fuck.
Rocket delivery — to your door?
Reuters: China's Taobao working with startup on deliveries by reusable rocket
Chinese rocket maker Space Epoch is working with Alibaba's online shopping platform Taobao to make reusable rockets for express deliveries that could arrive globally in an hour, Space Epoch announced on Sunday.
The project is in early trial stages and aims to develop a rocket that can carry up to ten tons of cargo in a 120 cubic metre container, Space Epoch said in a notice posted on its official WeChat social media account.
I guess if SpaceX thinks it can employ Starship for reusable suborbital transportation, there's no reason someone else can't join the market. I wish Space Epoch luck, just bear in mind that the distinction between a suborbital delivery rocket and an intercontinental ballistic missile is very thin.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 6:33:09 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
So how did we get two comets with almost similar names: Halley’s and Hale-Bopp?
Halley's Comet was named after Edmond Halley, who concluded that 3 separately observed comets were actually the same one returning every ~75 years. Comet Hale-Bopp was named after Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, who both discovered it on the same day.
I also don't find "Halley" and "Hale-Bopp" particularly similar. I dunno, that suborbital delivery rocket seems like the equivalent of using a car for a 10m trip.
Regarding that black hole thing, I believe this is the video you are looking for, Fighteer.
A new YT channel has just been launched called skyshowtv that published 4K high speed engineering footage from launches. So far, they have a video about Artemis 1, a Virgin Galactic launch, and Starship IFT2. The latter shows the rather spectacular explosion of the booster. They are also planning to live stream the solar eclipse.
Edited by petersohn on Apr 7th 2024 at 9:27:47 PM
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
Redmess
What a cool robot. Now we need to figure out how to actually get it to Enceladus.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
SpaceX | Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bandwagon-1 | 23:16 UTC
Coming up today, SpaceX is launching its first Bandwagon rideshare mission. This is similar to the Transporter missions, but it is heading to a mid-inclination (45 degree) low Earth orbit instead of a polar or Sun-synchronous orbit. Livestreams: SpaceX (X), NASA Spaceflight (YouTube)
According to the manifest, there are eleven payloads aboard, massing around 1.6 metric tons. This is very light for Falcon 9 and so it has a lot of performance to spare.
Liftoff is at 7:16 PM EDT from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. The booster is B1073.14, which will return to land on LZ-1.
Edit: Launch and landing were successful. We didn't get second-stage views because one of the payloads is classified, but it did reach the proper orbit.
If the statistics people are correct, this was SpaceX's 300th consecutive successful Falcon mission.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 7th 2024 at 7:45:49 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Moon Rovers
NASA: NASA Selects Companies to Advance Moon Mobility for Artemis Missions
NASA has selected Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab to advance capabilities for a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) that Artemis astronauts will use to travel around the lunar surface, conducting scientific research during the agency’s Artemis campaign at the Moon and preparing for human missions to Mars.
These new-generation lunar rovers will have autonomous capabilities and may be designed to be used across multiple landings. The current selection is not final; the three competitors will be reduced to one at a later date. The maximum contract value is $4.6 billion, and the rover will need to be delivered to the Moon for the Artemis V mission.
Additional multimedia: NASA Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle (Official NASA Trailer), NASA News Conference on Lunar Terrain Vehicle for Artemis Missions
Lost in Space
2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA (Official Broadcast)
If you can't watch the eclipse yourself, streaming it on YouTube is the next best option.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 8th 2024 at 2:22:28 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Another live stream by Everyday Astronaut.
And one by skyshowtv. This one has no commentary.
Happy eclipse day everyone!
Krispy Kreme is offering a special flavour that will only be available during the eclipse (so, 4,5 minutes).
This is the stupidest promotion I've ever heard. Who in their right mind is going to shop for a stupid candy bar during a once-in-a-lifetime event?
Optimism is a duty.