Small Space News Story Roundup 22

Really small stories.  Let's start here: is it news that Starliner looks to be delayed another month, to April of '24?  The reference is to the first test flight that will carry two astronauts.  In my mind pretty much any launch or spacecraft test flight being delayed isn't "news" in the "man bites dog" sense and especially not Starliner.  If Starliner moved up a month from March to February, that would be news.  

Would you be surprised if SLS/Artemis II was delayed?  Not me.  According to the Ars Technica Rocket Report (not posted on the website yet):

The completion of the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission has been delayed until December due to supply chain issues and technical problems at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASASpaceflight reports.
...
At the beginning of the year, NASA officials expected the Artemis II core stage to be ready for shipment from Louisiana to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by the summer. That is now unlikely to happen before the end of the year. However, according to NASA, the readiness of the SLS rocket is not the driver of the launch date for Artemis II, which is likely to be in 2025. The primary schedule driver is the status of the Orion spacecraft that will carry a team of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon on the first crew flight of NASA's Artemis program.

Don't Forget Saturday's Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse 

That's pretty obvious and because of that, hard to consider it as news.  I'm not as interested in this one as I am in the total eclipse next April 8th, but that's just me.  A ring of fire will be pretty for a few seconds, but there's no corona visible and the whole thing is at "peak of pretty" for less time than a total eclipse.  

I figure, though, that if you were really interested in traveling to see this geometric oddity eclipse, you're probably completely aware of where to be and when to be watching.  

Where I live it's going to be in the mid 50s percent at peak eclipse, so it might well be noticeable, but it's not going to be dramatic to look at. One thing for sure, unless you're in a place where you can get a dramatic sunrise or sunset picture, it's going to be best to observe through a safe solar filter.

Space.com's coverage starts like this:

We have summarized how you can watch the annular solar eclipse 2023 online and NASA has also released an interactive map where you can track the Oct. 14 annular solar eclipse down to the last second. The 'ring of fire' is not to be missed!

 "Mysterious Magnetism" in Apollo moon rocks is natural

Back in the 1980s, geophysicists examining moon rocks from the Apollo missions were surprised to find very strong magnetic fields etched onto those samples.  The moon doesn't have a magnetic field so how did it get there?  

The puzzle had previously led a few researchers to suspect other sources of magnetism, including the possibility that the Apollo spacecraft ferrying the samples back home may be responsible. But now, a new study demonstrates that the magnetization preserved in lunar rocks is, in fact, natural in origin — and that spaceflight does not have a significant impact on the force. These findings disprove one of two big oppositions to the theory that the moon powered its own dynamo.

To do the study, eight moon rock samples from four Apollo missions were exposed to magnets that generated magnetic fields with strengths equivalent to those generated onboard a spacecraft. For two days — which replicated a return journey from the moon — the samples were specifically exposed to a field strength of 5 millitesla, which is roughly 100 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field, according to the new study.  They then observed the way the "magnetic contamination" decayed and found it could be easily cleaned using standard methods.

One of the possible explanations for magnetic artifacts "etched onto those samples" is that at some point in the past, the moon's magnetic field was stronger than Earth's.  That's a mind bender.