Space, in brief

NASA's Swift telescope was due to fall back into Earth's air early on Wednesday 4 November. [1]

The US Space Force predicted about 08:30 UTC. [1] NASA gave the time as give or take 11 hours. [3]

NASA says the chance that its falling pieces hurt anyone is about 1 in 2,100. [1]

Astronomers lose the telescope that reacted first to sudden flashes in the sky. [1] NASA has named no replacement. [1]

NASA says only that its current missions will fill the gap. [1]

Safety engineers judge a falling satellite by its casualty risk: the chance its pieces hurt anyone at all. [1]

Two things keep Swift's risk small: most of it burns up, and most of the band below it is ocean. [1]

A ball kicked blind over a hedge rarely hits anyone, because most of the field beyond is empty grass.

Live Science compared 1 in 2,100 with the 1 in 15,300 lifetime chance of a person being struck by lightning. [4]

Those are not alike: NASA's 1 in 2,100 is the chance that anyone at all is hurt. [1]

NASA and the Space Force said they would keep updating the prediction until Swift comes down. [1]

Swift is falling because it has no engine and its one rescue craft failed, so NASA can only watch it come down and give the chance of harm. [1]

They lose a telescope that turned to a burst in about 1 minute, where Hubble needs 1 or 2 days. [1]

Any surviving pieces land somewhere in the band between 20.6 degrees north and south, which takes in land where people live. [2][4]

Exactly when and where Swift came down.

NASA's window was 11 hours either side of its time, and the Aerospace Corporation's later one 2 hours; neither named a place. [3][4]

What takes over Swift's job of reacting first to sudden flashes.

NASA has named no successor and says only that current missions will fill the gap. [1]

Swift was built to work for 2 years and kept working for almost 22. Its readings are cited in about 7,000 scientific papers.

NASA's chief, Jared Isaacman, told the news site NASASpaceflight: 'Hubble, you can't let it have an uncontrolled re-entry.' [6]

Hubble is a space telescope launched in 1990. [5] Shuttle astronauts repaired it 5 times, last in 2009. [5]

Hubble now runs on 1 gyroscope, a spinning part it uses to turn and hold steady. [6] That cut its observing time by about 12%. [6]

On 29 October NASA asked companies how they could lift, repair or safely bring down Hubble. [5]

Without a push, the air will bring Hubble down in 2033 or 2034. [5] Any visit would have to fly in 2032. [5]

If money is spent on a visit, it should lift Hubble for more science, Isaacman said. [6]

Astronomers still ask for about 7 times more Hubble time than there is each year, NASA said. [5]

Engineers call the safe ending a controlled re-entry, and NASA's request asks for it as one choice. [6]

Hubble has no engine, but a 2009 shuttle crew fitted a ring a visiting craft could grab to steer it. [6]

A tug boat steers a ship with no engine of its own into the right spot in the harbour.

Replies to NASA's request are due by the end of November. [6]

Why a dead satellite's landing spot stays unknown until its last hours

In astrodynamics, the study of how craft move in orbit, a satellite with no engine is slowed by thin air on every lap

How thick that air is depends on the Sun, so the hour it drops is only roughly known

At 17,000 mph, every hour of doubt is a long stretch of the planet

Only the band under its path is sure, set by the tilt of its orbit

Trackers call their forecast a re-entry prediction, and its time window shrinks as the fall nears, so the spot is known only near the end

An engine changes this: a last push picks the time, and so the place

Nobody can name the spot because nobody knows the hour, and at 17,000 mph a single hour carries Swift across a huge stretch of the Earth.

Each is the time either side of the predicted fall. As the window shrinks, so does the stretch of Earth where the pieces could land.

Hubble is slowed by the same thin air, and with no engine its end would be just as hard to place, so NASA wants a visiting craft to lift it or steer it down.

Oasis Beta is built to come back through the air on purpose, the opposite of Swift, whose fall is set by drag and the Sun.

The band is known from the start, because the tilt of the orbit does not change; only the spot along the band waits for the last hours.

People across the band under Swift's path, from Mexico and the Caribbean to India and Africa, carry its small risk, and none of them were asked.

Isaacman says Hubble must not end the same way, but so far NASA has only asked companies for ideas, with replies due at the end of November. [6]

NASA's request asks them for ways to lift, repair or steer down Hubble. [5]

Running on 1 gyroscope has cut its observing time by about 12%. [6]

Whether any company offers a way to save Hubble before 2032, and who would pay.

NASA's request only asks for ideas, and replies are not due until the end of November. [6][5]

Democrats won control of both houses of the US Congress in the 3 November midterm elections. [8]

The US Congress, the country's law-making body, sets the yearly budget of NASA, the US space agency. [7]

Payload, a space news site, wrote before the vote that Democratic control would not change NASA's total much. [7]

Less clear is Golden Dome, a US military space plan paid for outside the normal budget. [7] Democrats are unlikely to keep that up, Payload said. [7]

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico won the Senate seat, beating Republican Ken Paxton. [9]

Texas is home to NASA's Johnson Space Center and SpaceX's Starbase rocket site. [7]

Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, spent at least $212 million backing Paxton, Al Jazeera reported. [9]

The new US Congress will likely be in office when NASA aims to land astronauts on the Moon, around 2028. [7]

Both US parties have used the power of the purse to give NASA more than the Trump administration asked. [7]

That is why Payload expected little change to NASA's total under Democrats. [7]

At home, the parent who pays decides what gets bought, however loudly anyone else asks.

Control of both houses gives them the power to block the president's plans and to open investigations. [8]

What a Democratic US Congress does with the money for Golden Dome.

It has been paid for outside the normal budget, and Payload calls its future under Democrats unclear. [7]

Whether Democrats investigate Elon Musk's time running the government's cost-cutting office.

Al Jazeera reported that Democrats were expected to if they won the US Congress, and they have won it. [9][8]

Argo Space, a Californian start-up, is building spacecraft that run on water instead of normal rocket fuel. [11]

3 brothers who worked at SpaceX founded it in 2022. [11] It has raised $20 million and has fewer than 30 staff. [11]

Its first craft, Navigator, flew in July, but 1 of its 2 solar panels failed to open. [11]

With too little power its battery drained, so the engine was never tested. [11]

Its next craft, Chiron, weighs about 200 kg and flies twice in 2027 for an unnamed national security customer. [11]

Neither flight will ride on SpaceX's Falcon 9. [11] For the first, no shared ride was free in time. [11]

'There's not launches available for sale,' said Robert Carlisle, one of the founders. [11]

Water is found on the Moon, so Argo hopes one day to refuel craft from there, not from Earth. [11]

Chemists call it electrolysis: Chiron uses solar power to split its water into hydrogen and oxygen. [11]

It burns the 2 gases in a small engine, so the water can wait in a simple tank. [11]

In a school lab, electricity passed through water makes bubbles of gas rise from two wires.

Argo says Chiron can change its speed by more than 2 km a second. [11] Its engine has not yet run in space. [11]

Argo booked an unnamed new rocket because no Falcon 9 shared ride was free within its schedule. [11]

Argo's founder said a shared Falcon 9 ride means a wait of a year and a half to two years. [11]

Which rocket carries Argo Space's first Chiron craft.

Argo says only that it is a new commercial rocket, and has not named it. [11]

Sceye, a company that builds and flies high-altitude airships, signed a 5-year deal with SoftBank, a Japanese phone company. [13]

The airships float about 20 km up, in the stratosphere, and work as phone masts in the sky. [13]

The deal builds to a fleet of at least 40 over Japan. [13] Sceye will own and fly them, and sell SoftBank the service. [13]

In September a test craft flew for 30 days, from New Mexico to Japan and back. [13]

It carried texts, calls and video straight to ordinary phones. [13]

SoftBank put $15 million into Sceye in 2025. [13]

Sceye's airships climb to their height in under 30 minutes with lifting gas, so they need no rocket. [13]

Economists call this a substitute: Sceye pitches its airships as a way round scarce rocket rides. [13]

When the cinema is sold out, people stream the same film at home instead.

Sceye wants single airships to stay up 6 months or more. [13] Its longest flight so far is 30 days. [13]

It will own the airships and sell SoftBank the service, so it is paid for a service over 5 years rather than for craft sold once. [13]

Whether Sceye's airships can stay up long enough for a real phone network.

Its longest flight so far is 30 days, and it wants single craft to stay up 6 months or more. [13]

Tumbleweed, a start-up in Vienna, raised 6.9 million euros to build its own small re-entry capsule. [12]

A re-entry capsule is a craft built to come back through the air from orbit. [12] Tumbleweed's, Oasis Beta, should fly from 2028. [12]

Tumbleweed sells room on its craft for experiments that need near-weightless conditions. [12]

Its first craft, Oasis Alpha, flew in July and carried experiments for 4 customers. [12]

Pact VC, an investment firm, led the round. [12] Tumbleweed has 3 flights booked in 2027. [12]

More customers want weightless conditions without building their own satellite, Tumbleweed says. [12]

Business schools call this vertical integration: Tumbleweed is building Oasis Beta to own more of the chain of work. [12]

It is still talking to other capsule makers, but says owning one makes the trip easier for customers. [12]

A bakery that buys its own van stops waiting for the courier to turn up.

Oasis Beta is built to come back through the air on purpose, the opposite of Swift, whose fall is set by drag and the Sun.

Physicists working at CERN, Europe's particle physics lab, picked up signals at the smallest scale ever explored. [14]

That scale is a billionth of a trillionth of a metre, about 100 billion times smaller than an atom. [14]

The team, led from Cambridge, used the Large Hadron Collider, a machine that smashes particles together. [14]

They watched beauty quarks, tiny particles that last 1.5 trillionths of a second before breaking apart. [14]

The 28 countries in the project agreed a 150 million pound upgrade to the detector. [14]

UK Research and Innovation, the British government's research funder, pulled its share of that money last year. [14]

Dark matter makes up much of the universe but has never been seen. [14] Some theories say it could show up at this scale. [14]

Physicists call this an indirect search: hunting dark matter through its effect on other particles. [14]

If dark matter is there, it could change how beauty quarks break apart, so the team counts those breakdowns. [14]

You can tell a magnet is under the table when the paper clips on top start to move.

Tim Gershon, who leads the project's team, said the UK's full part in it is now in doubt. [14]

The UK funder says it still pays CERN about 175 million pounds a year. [14]

Mary Richardson-Slipper, on the team that made the find, said she is looking at jobs abroad after the cuts. [14]

Whether the UK stays a full part of CERN's detector upgrade.

Its research funder pulled its share of the money, and the project's leader says the UK's part is in doubt. [14]

Physicists at CERN picked up signals at a billionth of a trillionth of a metre, the smallest scale anyone has explored. The 28 countries in the project agreed an upgrade that would let it catch those signals ten times as often.

3 NASA astronauts on the International Space Station voted in the US midterm elections on 3 November. [10]

They were Anil Menon, Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins. [10] They share the station with 4 others, 7 people in all. [10]

Texas passed a law allowing votes from space in 1997. [10]

Most NASA astronauts register in Harris County, home to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. [10]

Each ballot is encrypted, so only the astronaut and the county clerk can open it. [10]

Astronauts ask for an absentee ballot, a vote cast away from home, like any other American abroad. [10]

Engineers call this a relay: NASA's relay satellites pass the ballot down from the station to the ground. [10]

The ballot goes to a relay satellite, down to New Mexico, then Houston, then the county clerk. [10]

A note passed along a row of desks reaches the teacher while its writer stays in their seat.

Three astronauts on the International Space Station voted in the US elections from orbit, 29 years after Texas first made that possible.

A satellite built by Orbital Matter, a German start-up, 3D-printed a plastic beam half a metre long in orbit. [15]

The satellite, Replicator 2, went up on a SpaceX shared ride this summer with 4 printers on board. [15]

Each printer squeezes out coils of resin, a liquid plastic, and hardens them with ultraviolet light. [15]

Until now, 3D printing in weightlessness had only been done inside the International Space Station. [15]

1 of the 2 printers meant to unfold a solar panel failed. [15] The other's beam did unfold the panel. [15]

Its engineers think beams 100 metres long are possible. [15] Starlink's V2 satellites have solar panels 20 metres long. [15]

A bigger test in 2028 should open a panel making 5 kW of power. [15]

Satellites, above all those meant to be data centres in orbit, need bigger panels and heat radiators. [15] Yet each must fit inside its rocket. [15]

Engineers call this in-space manufacturing: building a satellite's parts in orbit instead of folding them up. [15]

Today big panels are folded to fit the rocket and opened in orbit. [15] A printed beam is limited only by the resin carried. [15]

A long ladder will not fit through a letterbox, but the wood to build one does.

That this is a first for a free-flying spacecraft is the company's own claim. [15]