Space News for December 2021: More news about Space Stations and Astronomers get a new orbiting X-ray Telescope.

Space tourism is back in the news as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and CEO of the e-commerce site Zozotown, has traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Accompanying Maezawa was his own personal assistant and videographer Yozo Hirano who will film his boss’s activities during their 12-day stay in orbit. Unlike the Inspiration 4 tourist flight back in September, Maezawa’s mission also included the veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin as pilot.

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (r) with his personal cameraman Yozo Hirano (l) and Russian Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin (c) before takeoff to the ISS. (Credit: PCMag)

Maezawa’s visit to the ISS with his assistant makes eight non-professional, paying customers who have traveled into orbit this year, in addition to the four Inspiration 4 crewmembers there were also the Russian actress and her cameraman / producer back in October. That equals the total number of tourists who had ever flow into orbit before 2021 and is 40% of all the people who went into orbit this year. No matter how you look at it space tourism is now a significant portion of the space industry.

Russian Actress Yulia Peresild spent nearly two weeks aboard the ISS shooting scenes for the first feature film to be shot, partially in orbit! (Credit: CBS News)

Another sign of the growing importance of tourism and just general commercialization in space are the ongoing plans for future commercial space stations. NASA has made it clear that the space agency wants out of the business of running a space station in Low Earth Orbit. In order to move forward on the Artemis program going back to the Moon while maintaining a presence in LOE NASA has decided to help build a commercial space station that it could then rent space on.

Right now the fate of the ISS is very much up in the air. Scheduled to remain in orbit until about 2030 there is talk of sections being used for a new station or the whole thing might be brought down from orbit. (Credit: ESA)

To help finance this effort NASA has provided a combined $416 million dollars to three aerospace firms, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origins and Nanoracks corporations to fund the design phase of their space station efforts. The plan is for the space agency to choose one of the designs in 2025 and then help finance the construction of that commercial space station. NASA would then become one of the tenants of that station while other nations or corporations; even tourists could also be tenants. By the way NASA’s choosing one of the three designs doesn’t mean that the two rejected ones won’t get built. If the commercial space industry really takes off in the next half dozen years there may very well be a need for multiple space stations in LOE.

Illustration of Northrop Grumman’s plan for a commercial space station. NASA is helping to fund the design of this station and would be one of the tenants once the station is built. (Credit: Northrop Grumman Newsroom)

The current schedule is for the ISS continue to provide a home in LOE for astronauts until 2030 while the first modules of any new commercial space station would be launched in 2028 or 29. Nevertheless with China now building its own space station in orbit and the push for a commercial station it won’t be long before things start getting a mite crowded up there.

Blue Origin’s design for a station is called the Orbital Reef. It certainly is fancier than Northrop Grumman’s but in space that’s not always a good thing. (Credit: Spaceflight Now)

Of course LOE isn’t only occupied by space stations, in fact there are thousands of unmanned satellites circling our globe right now, many of them are commercial in nature, like communication satellites. Then there are the satellites designed to look back at the Earth, to study it from a height. These include both weather satellites and landsats.

Then there are the space telescopes designed to study the rest of the universe from outside the limiting effects of Earth’s atmosphere. The most famous of these space telescopes is of course the Hubble space telescope, which has revolutionized astronomy in the years since it was launched. But there are others like the Kepler planet hunting telescope or the Chandra X-ray telescope.

Perhaps the most famous satellite since Sputnik, the Hubble telescope has revolutionized our view of the Universe. (Credit: Business Insider)

On the 8th of December a new X-ray telescope was launched into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. At a cost of $188 million dollars the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer or IXPE telescope may not be as newsworthy as the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch on the 25nd of December. Nevertheless in its own way IXPE will have many opportunities to add to our knowledge of such high-energy astrophysical objects as black holes, pulsars and magnetars.

The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer or IXPE Space Telescope will peer deeply into the heart of astronomical objects such as black holes and pulsars. (Credit: Semantic Scholar)
Launched aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket the IXPE telescope took off from Kennedy Space Center on December 8th. (Credit: NASAspaceflight.com)

You see the difference between IXPE and the Chandra X-ray telescope is that IXPE measures the polarization of the X-rays it detects. All light, whether visible or X-rays or radio waves have an amplitude that can either go up and down or side to side as the wave travels through space. This is the polarization of the light, either vertical, up and down, or horizontal, side to side.

Most of the light in the Universe is unpolarized, that is made of of many different polarizations. Certain materials only allow a distinct polarization to pass through. This allows scientists to study the conditions under which the light is generated. (Credit: ScienceFacts.net)

In most cases, say the light from the Sun, there is a random mixture of polarizations. Calculations in both quantum electrodynamics and general relativity however tell us that in certain very intense regions, strong magnetic or gravitational fields, the X-rays that are generated should be polarized in certain ways. Therefore by measuring the polarization of the X-rays coming from just outside a black hole’s event horizon, or from the surface of a pulsar IXPE will be able to give astronomers new details about the conditions there.

The first ever image of a black hole. The IXPE telescope will look at the light coming from just outside the event horizon of black holes hopefully revealing some of their secrets. (Credit: NASA)

Every time astronomers look at the Universe in a new way they’ve discovered new details that profoundly changed our knowledge. One can only hope that IXPE, and James Webb when it finally begins operation, will revolutionize astronomy the way that Hubble and Chandra and Kepler already have.’

Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope of Christmas day. Although the launch went perfectly the JWST still has more than a month of travel and several complicated, and critical instrument deployments to carry out before it can be called a complete success. (Credit: Science)

And hopefully astronomers will soon have an even more powerful tools for learning about the Universe as on Christmas day at 1220 GMT the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was successfully launched from French Guyana aboard an Arian 5 rocket. Now I just said that the launch was successful but the JWST still has a lot of complicated maneuvers to complete before it can begin its work of discovery. I intend to discuss the JWST at length in a post in another month or two so, for the moment I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that the telescope’s deployment continues to be a success.