Artemis I launches
It was third time lucky for Artemis I! Having repaired the issues preventing the previous two launch attempts, as well as damage from Hurricane Ian, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, carrying the uncrewed Orion spacecraft, blasted off from Launch Complex 39B in Cape Canaveral, Florida on 16 November at 01:47am EST (06:47 UTC).
This news broke just as we were going to print and we will of course have much more on this in our next issue
A tight-knit pair
A ‘cataclysmic variable’ binary pair of stars has been discovered orbiting each other once every 51 minutes – the shortest timing known to date. The pair, located in Hercules, will get even closer together over the next 70 million years, eventually reaching an orbit time of just 18 minutes before drifting away from each other.
Red alert for supergiants
Red supergiants could blink out a warning alert before they go supernova, as dust building up around them causes their light to dim by up to 100 times, it’s been discovered. Our nearest such star, Betelgeuse, exhibited slight dimming in 2019, but not enough to herald an imminent explosion.
Native American woman in space
Nicole Aunapu Mann, a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in northern California, has become the first Native American woman in space. She launched to the International Space Station on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on 5 October.
Wobbly black holes
A pair of colliding black holes, dubbed GW200129, are orbiting each other so quickly they’re distorting spacetime, causing them to wobble about their axis (an effect known as precession) faster than any pair seen before. Discovered using gravitational waves, the duo precess every few seconds – 10 billion times faster than any previously measured.
Five years to deorbit
The US’s Federal Communications Commission has changed its rules, reducing the time operators have to deorbit defunct spacecraft from 25 years to just five, in an effort to combat space debris. The new rule affects all satellites that launch from US soil and orbit under 2,000km.