Science & Technology

N. Korean satellite plunges into sea after rocket failure

Published

4 months ago

May 31, 2023

(Last Updated On: May 31, 2023)

A North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday ended in failure, sending the booster and payload plunging into the sea, North Korean state media said, and the South’s military said it had recovered parts of the launch vehicle, Reuters reported.

The new “Chollima-1” satellite launch rocket failed because of instability in the engine and fuel system, state news agency KCNA reported.

The flight was the nuclear-armed state’s sixth satellite launch attempt, and the first since 2016. It was supposed to put North Korea’s first spy satellite in orbit.

It prompted emergency alerts and brief evacuation warnings in parts of South Korea and Japan. The notices were withdrawn with no danger or damage reported.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday the military was conducting a salvage operation to recover what is believed to be parts of the space launch vehicle. The military shared pictures of debris pulled from the water.

Officials from the United States, Japan, South Korea held a phone call, where they “strongly condemned” the launch, Japan’s foreign ministry said.

“The three countries will stay vigilant with high sense of urgency”, the statement said.

North Korea had said it would launch its first military reconnaissance satellite between May 31 and June 11 to boost monitoring of U.S. military activities.

South Korea last week placed satellites in orbit with a domestically designed and produced rocket for the first time, and China sent three astronauts to its space station as part of crew rotation on Tuesday, read the report.

The rocket plunged into the sea “after losing thrust due to the abnormal starting of the second-stage engine,” KCNA reported, in an unusually candid admission of a technical failure by the North.

Pyongyang’s National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA) will investigate the “serious defects” and take action to overcome them before conducting a second launch as soon as possible, KCNA said.

In data provided to international authorities, North Korea said the launch would carry the rocket south, with stages and other debris expected to fall over the Yellow Sea and into the Pacific Ocean.

Air raid sirens wailed across the South Korean capital of Seoul about 6:32 a.m. (2132 GMT Tuesday) as the city warned citizens to prepare for a potential evacuation. Later alerts said the city warning had been a mistake.

“I was so panicked. Nine-one-one lines were busy and the internet was slow,” said Lee Juyeon, 33, a resident in the city of 9 million who was preparing to shelter in a basement with her young child before learning it was a false alarm.

Calm quickly returned in Seoul, while South Korean stocks (.KS11) and the won currency traded firmer.

The Japanese government also issued an emergency warning over its J-Alert broadcasting system for residents of the southern prefecture of Okinawa to take cover indoors early on Wednesday morning.

It later said the rocket would not fly into Japanese territory and lifted the warnings.

On Tuesday, Ri Pyong Chol, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, said ongoing joint military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea required Pyongyang to have the “means capable of gathering information about the military acts of the enemy in real time.”

The White House condemned a launch using ballistic missile technology and said in a statement it was assessing the situation in coordination with allies, Reuters reported.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said North Korea’s rocket disappeared from radar above the Yellow Sea and did not make it into space, and added the government had no further information to share now.

“We strongly condemn North Korea’s actions,” he said. Tokyo lodged a complaint to Pyongyang through diplomatic channels in Beijing, he said.

Before Wednesday’s launch, the U.S. State Department said any North Korean launch that used ballistic missile technology would violate multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“Space launch vehicles (SLVs) incorporate technologies that are identical to, and interchangeable with, those used in ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles,” a State Department spokesperson said.

North Korea has attempted five other satellite launches, with two placed in orbit, including during its last such launch in 2016. Its capacity for constructing working satellites remains unproven, however, analysts say.

“To the best of our knowledge, North Korea has a very limited capacity to build satellites,” said Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation, a U.S.-based space policy and security organisation. “They have launched a couple of satellites before, but all of them failed immediately after launch or shortly thereafter and none of them appeared to have any significant capability.”

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Science & Technology

Three astronauts return to Earth after a year in space

Published

3 days ago

September 29, 2023

Ariana News

(Last Updated On: September 29, 2023)

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts returned to Earth on Wednesday after being stuck in space for just over a year. American Frank Rubio set a record for the longest U.S. spaceflight — a result of the extended stay.

The trio landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan, descending in a Soyuz capsule that was rushed up as a replacement after their original ride was hit by space junk and lost all its coolant while docked to the International Space Station, AP reported.

What should have been a 180-day mission turned into a 371-day stay. Rubio spent more than two weeks longer in space than Mark Vande Hei, who held NASA’s previous endurance record for a single spaceflight.
The Soyuz capsule that brought Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin back was a replacement launched in February. Russian engineers suspect a piece of space junk pierced the radiator of their original capsule late last year, midway through what should have been a six-month mission. Engineers worried that without cooling, the capsule’s electronics and any occupants could overheat to dangerous levels, so the craft returned empty.

There wasn’t another Soyuz to launch a fresh crew until this month. Their replacements finally arrived nearly two weeks ago.

“No one deserves to go home to their families more than you,” the space station’s new commander, Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, said earlier this week.
Prokopyev told ground controllers throughout the descent that all three were feeling good. They experienced more than four times the force of gravity as their capsule streaked through the atmosphere and came to a touchdown in the barren Kazakh steppes, ending up on its side. Helicopters moved in with recovery crews to fetch the astronauts.

“It’s good to be home,” Rubio said after being pulled from the capsule.

Rubio, 47, an Army doctor and helicopter pilot, said at a news conference last week that he never would have agreed to a full year in space if asked at the outset. He ended up missing important family milestones including the oldest of his four children finishing her first year at the U.S. Naval Academy and another heading off to West Point.

Rubio had said the psychological aspect of spending so long in space was tougher than he expected. He may hold on to this record for a while. NASA has no plans as of now for more yearlong missions.

It was the first spaceflight for Rubio and Petelin, 40, an engineer. Prokopyev, 48, an engineer and pilot, has now pulled two long station stints.
They logged 157 million miles (253 million kilometers) since launching from Kazakhstan last September and circled the world nearly 6,000 times.

Science & Technology

NASA’s first asteroid sample on track for Sunday parachute landing in Utah

Published

1 week ago

September 23, 2023

Ariana News

(Last Updated On: September 23, 2023)

A NASA space capsule carrying a sample of rocky material plucked from the surface of an asteroid three years ago hurtled toward Earth this weekend headed for a fiery plunge through the atmosphere and a parachute landing in the Utah desert on Sunday.

Weather forecasts were favorable and the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx was on course to release the sample-return capsule for final descent as planned, with no further adjustments to its flight path needed, NASA officials said at a news briefing on Friday, Reuters reported.

Mission managers are expecting a “spot-on” touchdown on the U.S. military’s vast Utah Test and Training range, west of Salt Lake City, said Sandra Freund, program manager at Lockheed Martin, which designed and built the spacecraft.

The round, gumdrop-shaped capsule is scheduled to land by parachute at 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT), about 13 minutes after streaking into the top of the atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, capping a seven-year voyage.

If successful, the OSIRIS-REx mission, a joint effort between NASA and scientists at the University of Arizona, would mark the third asteroid sample, and by far the largest, ever returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan’s space agency over the past 13 years.

OSIRIS-REx collected its specimen from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999 and classified as a “near-Earth object” because it passes relatively close to our planet every six years. Scientists put the odds of it striking Earth at 1-in-2,700 in the late 22nd century.

Bennu is small as asteroids go, measuring just 1,600 feet (500 meters) in diameter – slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall but tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinasours.

Like other asteroids, Bennu is a primordial relic of the early solar system whose present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. It thus holds valuable clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and may even contain organic molecules similar to those necessary for life to evolve.

“We’re literally looking at geologic materials that formed before Earth even existed,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told reporters last month.

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting the asteroid before venturing close enough to sink its robot arm into the loose surface on Oct. 20, 2020, in a grab-and-go maneuver.

The spacecraft embarked on a 1.2-billion-mile cruise back to Earth in May 2021.

The Bennu sample is estimated at 250 grams (8.8 ounces), far surpassing the amount of material carried back from asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and asteroid Itokawa in 2010.

On arrival, the new sample will be flown by helicopter to a “clean room” set up at the Utah test range for initial examination, then transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

The main portion of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, meanwhile, is expected to sail on to explore yet another near-Earth asteroid.

Science & Technology

Explainer: What to know about October’s ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse

Published

1 week ago

September 22, 2023

Ariana News

(Last Updated On: September 22, 2023)

Millions of people in the Americas will be in a position to witness an astronomical treat on Oct. 14 with a solar eclipse in which – weather permitting – the moon will be seen passing in front of the sun.

The eclipse is due to be visible along a path covering parts of the United States, Mexico and several countries in Central America and South America, Reuters reported.

Here is an explanation of the type of solar eclipse that will occur and where it will be visible.

WHAT IS AN ANNULAR SOLAR ECLIPSE?

A solar eclipse happens when the moon journeys between Earth and the sun, blocking the view along a small path of Earth of some or all of the sun’s face as it passes. The one that will occur on Oct. 14 is a type called an “annular solar eclipse.” This occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun at a time when the moon is at or close to its farthest point from our planet. It does not completely obscure the face of the sun, unlike in a total solar eclipse.

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE A RING OF FIRE?

Because the moon is farther than usual from Earth during an annular solar eclipse, the moon will not completely obscure the sun, instead looking like a dark disk superimposed atop the sun’s larger, bright face in the sky. As a result, the eclipse will momentarily look like a ring of fire surrounding the dark disc of the moon. A total solar eclipse is due to occur on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada.

WHERE WILL IT BE VISIBLE AND WHAT IS ITS PATH?

According to the U.S. space agency NASA, the path in the United States where the maximum obscuring of the sun will occur on Oct. 14 runs through parts of several states beginning at 9:13 a.m. PDT (12:13 p.m. EDT/1613 GMT) in Oregon, then California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The path then crosses over parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia and Brazil before ending at sunset in the Atlantic Ocean. People in much larger parts of North America, Central America and South America will be able to see lesser obscuring of the sun – still an impressive sight.

HOW BIG ARE THE EARTH, MOON AND SUN?

The moon will nearly cover the sun’s face, as visible from Earth, only because the moon – in actuality much smaller than the sun – is so much closer to our planet. The moon’s diameter is 2,159 miles (3,476 km), compared to the sun’s diameter of about 865,000 miles (1.4 million km) and Earth’s diameter of 7,918 miles (12,742 km).

WHAT IS THE SAFEST WAY TO WATCH AN ECLIPSE?

Experts warn that it is unsafe to look directly at the bright sun without using specialized eye protection designed for solar viewing, risking eye injury. Because the sun is never fully blocked by the moon in an annular solar eclipse, it is never safe to look directly at it without such eye protection. Viewing it through a camera lens, binoculars or telescope without making use of a special-purpose solar filter can cause severe eye injury, according to these experts. They advise using safe solar viewing glasses or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times during an annular solar eclipse, noting that regular sunglasses are not safe for viewing the sun.

HOW DO SOLAR ECLIPSES DIFFER FROM LUNAR ECLIPSES?

Lunar eclipses occur when Earth is positioned between the moon and the sun and our planet’s shadow is cast upon the lunar surface. This leaves the moon looking dim from Earth, sometimes with a reddish color. Lunar eclipses are visible from half of Earth, a much wide area than solar eclipses.