Boeing’s troubles contrast with SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew contractor, which is preparing for its third operational crewed voyage to the International Space Station on Oct. 31. Technical hiccups, such as one with the toilet on Crew Dragon, have not hindered those plans, and SpaceX is working on a remedy ahead of the flight.
She declined to comment on any differences in how Boeing and SpaceX tackle technical difficulties, other than to say that Boeing has historically employed a typical systems engineering approach when working with NASA.
The initial sighting in question might have been the furthest distant supernova ever witnessed. A near-infrared flare corresponded with the position of one of the Universe’s initial galaxies, according to the publication that described it. If the light originated there, the redshift created by the intervening distance indicates that the initial burst was in the ultraviolet region, implying that it was the result of a supernova. That would imply that we had witnessed the demise of one of the Universe’s early stars, which may be a momentous discovery.
However, given the period and source of the observations, other authors have argued that the site would have also corresponded with the position of a defunct Russian booster. And the chances of witnessing a piece of space debris are far greater than the chances of witnessing the explosion of a faraway star. As a result, the publications contended that we have most likely not witnessed a supernova.
The authors of the original publication that described the observations disagree with the criticisms. Here’s a great overview of the current state of the debate. Whatever the outcome of such discussions, the presence of space debris has made interpreting observations far more difficult.
Breakthrough Listen published two articles on Monday that outline a SETI observation effort centered on Proxima Centauri. This star is the nearest to the Sun and has a planet in its habitable zone. The first publication is mostly a description of the technique and gear utilized by the Murriyang radio telescope at Australia’s Parkes Observatory, as well as raw statistics from the observations.
These numbers provide some insight into the difficulties that SETI researchers confront. Over 4 million distinct signals emerged above the noise during the observations, surpassing the threshold for analysis. The great majority of these signals, however, were fake; they either occurred once and never returned or were there when the telescope was pointed to other objects that functioned as controls.
Even after all of the erroneous signals were removed, over 5,000 occurrences were investigated further. The vast majority of them came from frequency bands where human transmitting gear is known to exist. When all of these criteria were taken into account, only one signal, known as blc1, was judged important enough to investigate further.
Blc1 was detected in several views of Proxima Centauri over many hours, but not when the telescope was directed elsewhere. It was narrow, present throughout a single Hertz of the spectrum, as opposed to the larger signals produced by natural processes. Blc1’s core frequency also drifted, which means it eventually traveled across the spectrum to new frequencies. This might be owing to the source moving swiftly enough to cause the frequency of the source to Doppler shift, as would be expected from a source on an orbiting planet.
So, in principle, this appears to be exactly what Breakthrough Listen researchers were hoping for.
