Pristine (1/5/23)

Happy Thursday. This is your captain Rachael speaking.

It’s good to be back. I couldn’t be more excited for the upcoming year in space science. With all the lunar and planetary missions slated for 2023 and our shiny new telescopes taking images of the far reaches of the universe, this is bound to be a busy year for Parallax.

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Intercepting the Perfect Comet

For the first time, we may be able to get a look at a pristine comet from the outer reaches of the solar system.

Last month, ESA officially announced that it had signed a contract with the Italian arm of OHB to build the Comet Interceptor mission, a group of three spacecraft designed to hunt down a comet on its first trip toward the Sun. This first-of-its-kind mission, rather than choosing its target before launch, will instead stand guard about a million miles away from Earth to attempt a rare sighting of this kind of comet.

Keeping it pristine: Most comets we see around here come from the delightfully-named Oort cloud, a band of icy rocks floating in a huge sphere at the furthest reaches of the solar system. Every once in a blue moon, a collision will knock a rock off course and send it hurtling toward the Sun, leaving behind that iconic trail of gas.

A “pristine” comet is one that’s on its first trip toward the Sun, before the inner solar system’s heat has altered the delicate composition of its surface. These are very tough to spot. Most comets we’ve found have already swung by the Sun, making it tough to know how they would have looked before leaving the Oort cloud.

Comet Interceptor’s plan: ESA and OHB Italia are thinking ahead, putting a mission in position before they’ve even spotted a pristine comet. Instead, Comet Interceptor, consisting of a main spacecraft and two smaller probes, will travel to Lagrange Point 2, where JWST currently resides. From there, it’ll be waiting and watching for a pristine comet to pass by. When the opportunity arises, the spacecraft be ready to move.

Right now, Comet Interceptor is in the early stages of its development. It’s currently slated for launch in 2029.

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Other News from the Cosmos

• The Fermi bubbles, two huge gamma-ray-emitting regions on either side of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, were likely formed by fast-blowing winds, a study from Tokyo Metropolitan University found.

• An experiment to collect space-based solar power, the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD), launched aboard Transporter-6 this week.

• A solar-powered device demonstrated the ability to extract water out of the air and split it into hydrogen and oxygen fuels.

• The solar corona is significantly hotter than the surface of the Sun, and DOE researchers developed a model to determine why.

• Lunar soils collected by the Chang’e-5 mission contain water samples that may have come from the solar wind.

Rachael's Recs

👂 Research by ear: Most of us tend to think of astronomy as a visual pursuit, in which astronomers capture and analyze ever-deeper images of the universe. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In an article for Scientific American, reporter Timmy Broderick explores how the sonification of astronomical observations is making the field more accessible and helping to accelerate new discoveries.

🎙️ Shameless plug: This week, I appeared on Payload’s podcast, Pathfinder, to chat with Tess Hatch about all things space. Our conversation covered my journey to Payload and Parallax, the inner workings of a daily newsletter, and our musings and predictions for the future of the space industry. Check out the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple.

The View from Space

The VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile captured this image of the Sh2-54 nebula in infrared, revealing stars previously hidden behind dense gases.