Incoming! A severe G4 Geomagnetic Storm is expected to arrive around 02:00 UTC Friday night / Saturday morning.
At least 5 Coronal Mass Ejections took place over the past 24 hours, directed towards Earth. These originated from a large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA region 3664).
There is potential for disruption of communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations.
It's now 27 days since Sunspot region 3664 lobbed the CMEs that produced the great aurora show on May 10.
In 27 days, the Sunspot has undergone one full rotation and region 3664, now renamed as 3697, is back in a similar position as May 10. Although the sunspot region is still quite active - it generated an M6.1 flare today, but no CME - it seems to have thankfully lost some of its punch. No major CMEs have been launched during this round.
Another parting shot by sunspot region 3697, as it rotates away from sight. An M9.7 flare at 0128 UTC resulted in Moderate (S2-S3) solar radiation storms today.
A solar radiation storm (also known as a Solar Proton Event or SPE) is caused by protons that travel a fraction of the speed of light and reach earth within hours.
A moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm is expected around 00:00 UTC Jun 12.
Preparations for NASA’s Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test Launch are in progress.
Launch time: 12:25 pm ET
"The two NASA astronauts aboard, flight commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, will test the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system, including launch, docking, and return to Earth. After a one-week stay docked to the International Space Station, the Starliner and crew will land under parachutes in the western United States."
9:30 a.m. EDT – Arrival coverage begins.
12:15 p.m. – Targeted docking to the forward-facing port of the ISS Harmony module
2 p.m. – Hatch opening
2:20 p.m. – Welcome remarks
3:30 p.m. – Post-docking news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
After some issues with the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters, Starliner is now proceeding towards the ISS. At the 10m hold point the spacecraft will hold for 6 minutes to wait for nominal lighting.
Next docking time window starts at 13:33 EDT (17:33 UTC).
China's Chang'e 6 mission to the moon was launched today.
The spacecraft and mission are very similar to Chang'e 5, which brought lunar rock samples back to earth in 2020, except that the Chang'e 6 landing site is on the far side of the moon (43.0°S 154.0°W).
Comms will take place via the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, which was launched on March 20 and is in an elliptical lunar orbit of 200×16,000 km at 62.4° inclination.
"The last time there was an F/EF2+ tornado anywhere around the DC or Baltimore area in the month of June was 6/24/1996 when a 20 mile F2 hit in the SW burbs of Washington DC.
F2 6/24/1996
F2 6/3/1980
F2 6/16/1973
F3 6/9/1961
Safe to say at least one EF2+ tornado touched down tonight based of damage and radar which would make it the 1st strong tornado in June in nearly 30 years."
Modern spacecraft like JWST use a newer type of gyroscope - the "Hemispherical Resonator Gyroscope" (HRG). It uses a quartz hemisphere vibrating at its resonant frequency in a vacuum; the hemisphere's rate of motion is sensed by the interaction between the hemisphere and sensing electrodes on the HRG housing.
There are no moving parts, flexible leads or bearings.
Extremely reliable but high mfg complexity.
MTBF = 10 million hours!
Hubble's gyros contain a wheel spinning at 19,200 rpm on gas bearings. The wheel is mounted in a sealed cylinder, which floats in a thick fluid. The gyro’s motor is powered via hair-thin wires that traverse this fluid.
Rotations of the spacecraft cause tiny movements of the axis of the wheel, which are measured and fed to Hubble’s flight computer.
Hubble's gyros were the most accurate in the world in their time. But prone to failure ...