Asteroid

• Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) (“Rocket Lab” or “the Company”), a global leader in launch services and space systems, today announced it has set the launch window for its next Electron launch.
• The ‘Beginning Of The Swarm’ mission is scheduled to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand during a 14-day launch window that opens on April 24th.
• The capability of Electron’s Kick Stage to perform multiple engine burns in space and deploy individual satellites to unique orbits is critical to this mission.
• Rocket Lab has three launch pads at two launch sites, including two launch pads at a private orbital launch site located in New Zealand and a third launch pad in Virginia.

• And that suggests their demise came suddenly, with the impact of a giant asteroid.
• The discovery of the 180km-wide Chixculub asteroid impact crater in Mexico suggested a sudden extinction of dinosaurs and other species, driven by the impact.
• But others have argued that a long, slow decline in dinosaur diversity contributed to their extinction.
• It’s not just that dinosaur fossils are so rare; the fossil record is also patchy.
• Because it’s such a huge landmass, Africa probably had far more dinosaur species than North America.

What we’ve found

• Dinosaurs may have swum out to islands searching for food, as deer and elephants do today, and some might have drowned.
• Other dinosaurs might have been washed out to sea by floods or storms, or drowned in rivers that carried them downstream to the ocean.
• And so, studying marine beds, and working over many years, we’ve slowly put together a picture of Africa’s last dinosaurs, bone by bone.
• It was smaller than Chenanisaurus, about five metres long – small by dinosaur standards, but large compared to modern predators.
• If so, that means dinosaurs were cut down in their prime; burning out rather than fading away.

What our findings show

• For over 100 million years, they evolved and diversified, producing a remarkable range of species: predators, herbivores, aquatic species, even flying forms, the birds.
• Then in a single, catastrophic moment, everything was wiped out in the months of darkness caused by dust and soot from the impact.

Nicholas R. Longrich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• It’s going to be a bumper time for space missions in 2024 – especially to the Moon, our nearest neighbour.
• Rather than peering through telescopes to look at the stars, I prefer to see them in a vial in my lab.
• So it was a great delight to see the safe return of Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023.

CLPS missions

• Nasa’s series of Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) missions, many of which will launch in 2024, are set to bring a variety of instruments to the Moon.
• The CLPS programme is part of Nasa’s Artemis initiative to continue human exploration of the Moon.
• CLPS-2 is timetabled to launch in early January 2024, and there are four other CLPS missions planned for launch throughout the year.

Trailblazer

Continuing the lunar theme, Nasa’s Trailblazer mission travels to the Moon to understand where any water is situated. Is it locked inside rock as part of the mineral structure, or is it deposited as ice on the rocky surface? Trailblazer is currently scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2024. However, no precise date has been confirmed. It’s a small mission, part of the Artemis human lunar exploration programme.

Chang'e 6

• This is particularly significant because the spacecraft will collect material from the lunar farside – the South Pole Aitkin Basin.
• This is a region where it is believed there is abundant frozen water.

Hera

In September 2022, Nasa’s Dart mission encountered a system consisting of two asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed into Dimorphos (the junior partner). The impact had a purpose: to see if such a collision could divert the asteroid in its path – a necessary goal if ever Earth were to be the target of a direct hit by an incoming asteroid.

• But what we don’t know (and won’t until Hera arrives in 2026) is how effective the impact was.
• Hera will investigate in detail – and its results will help to define Earth’s planetary defence protocol.

Europa Clipper

• Launching almost at the same time as Hera is a Nasa flagship mission: the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.
• Excitingly, Europa may host life in the form of a substantial fauna analogous to the animals that live on the deep ocean floor around hydrothermal vents.

• Europa Clipper will fly past Europa between 40 and 50 times, taking detailed images of the surface, monitoring the satellite for icy plumes – and, most importantly, looking to see whether this moon has the conditions suitable to support life.
• The investigation will be complemented by observations from Esa’s Juice mission, which is currently on its way to Jupiter.

MMX

• I will finish it with my anticipation of further delights to come.
• The launch of the Japanese Space Agency’s Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission to Phobos is currently scheduled for September 2024, and designed to return material to Earth in 2029.

Monica Grady works for The Open University. She receives funding from The UKRI-Science and Technology Facilities Council. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London and Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. She tweets (X's?) as @MonicaGrady

• Utilizing Fibertek's Uplink Laser Assembly (ULA), NASA's Psyche mission Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) payload has achieved a milestone in space communication.
• HERNDON, Va., Dec. 11, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- NASA's Psyche mission Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) payload has achieved a milestone in space communication.
• Utilizing Fibertek's Uplink Laser Assembly (ULA), the mission successfully uplinked data from Earth to the Psyche spacecraft on route to the Psyche asteroid, an achievement first reported on November 16, 2023.
• Fibertek's High Power laser used in NASA JPL's successful "first light" communication success from 16 million kilometers away.