SpaceX Launch on May 19

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif., on Friday targeted May 19 for the launch of its upcoming demonstration mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff time is at 4:55 a.m. EDT, with a launch window that is instantaneous.

This follows a launch dress rehearsal April 30 by the SpaceX launch team that concluded with a brief engine firing to verify the company's Falcon 9 rocket is ready to launch. The practice countdown also tested some of the systems on the Dragon spacecraft that will fly to the space station.

SpaceX is preparing for its second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, demonstration to show that private industry can build and launch spacecraft on regular cargo resupply missions to the station. This rocket and spacecraft will not carry people, but will have about 1,200 pounds of supplies onboard for the six astronauts and cosmonauts working on the space station.

Mission plans call for an extensive set of tests in space requiring the Dragon spacecraft to show that it can move precisely in orbit and approach the space station carefully. Only after these tests are successful will the spacecraft be allowed to approach the orbiting laboratory close enough to be grappled and berthed by the station's robotic arm.

The Falcon 9 is powered by nine Merlin engines, and SpaceX reports that all nine were lit and run at full power for two seconds during the test The rocket's second stage is powered by a Merlin vacuum engine, which runs on refined kerosene and liquid oxygen, the same fuel and oxygen combination that was used on NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket first stage.

The SpaceX mission will be a landmark for the privately run company that used the same rocket/spacecraft combination in December 2010, to become the first private organization to launch and recover a spacecraft from Earth orbit.

Credit: NASA

Cygnus-X

Cygnus-X is an extremely active region of massive-star birth some 4500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Using ESA’s Herschel space observatory's far-infrared eyes, astronomers can seek out regions where dust has been gently heated by stars, pointing them to dense clumps of gas where new generations of stars are forming.

Bright white areas highlight zones where large stars have recently formed out of turbulent clouds, especially evident in the chaotic network of filaments seen in the right-hand portion of the image. Here, dense knots of gas and dust mark intersections where filaments meet and collapse to form new stars, and where bubble-like structures are carved by their immense radiation.

In the centre of the image, fierce radiation and powerful stellar winds from stars undetected at Herschel’s wavelengths have partly cleared and heated interstellar material, which then glows blue in this representation.

Below and to the right, a shell of gas and dust has likely been ejected from a supergiant star at its centre, but which is not seen directly in this image.

Strings of compact red objects scattered throughout the scene map the cold seeds of future generations of stars.

Credit: ESA

April MNASSA ready for download

The April 2012 issue of MNASSA has just been published on the MNASSA Download Page at http://www.mnassa.org.za/