February 2021

Starship SN9 blasting off (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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It was afternoon in the USA when SpaceX conducted in Boca Chica, Texas, the flight test of the Starship prototype identified as SN9, the second after the one conducted on December 9, 2020. SN9 was supposed to solve the problems of the previous prototype and it too carried out regularly its flight up to an altitude of about 10 kilometers and then attempted a controlled landing at the end of a series of maneuvers. After 6 minutes and 26 seconds of flight, like its predecessor, SN9 landed too fast and was destroyed as a result. SpaceX confirmed that its good results with regards to Starship’s maneuverability, but landing is still an issue. With the many first-stage landings of the Falcon 9 rocket, it’s making that kind of maneuver look easy, but it requires perfect systems tuning.

Artist's concept of Swift J1818.0-1607 with its magnetic field (Image courtesy OzGrav, Carl Knox)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports a study on the magnetar Swift J1818.0-1607 that describes its behavior, more complex than expected. A team of researchers led by Marcus Lower of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia observed it between May and October 2020 with the Parkes radio telescope noting that its emissions varied from that of a magnetar to that of a pulsar, alternating typical behaviors of these two types of neutron stars. It eventually settled into the magnetar state, and that can offer insights into the evolution of these strange objects.