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P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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Perseverance looks ahead, out of Jezero Crater

12:25 pm

Panorama May 9, 2024, low resolution
Click for high resolution. Go here and here for original images.

Cool image time! The panorama above, recropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was created from two pictures taken by Perseverance’s right navigation camera on May 9, 2024 (here and here). It looks almost due west, out the gap in the rim of Jezero Crater to the mountains beyond.

The blue dot in the overview map below marks Perseverance’s location when these photos were taken. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dots indicate the rover’s planned route.

It is obvious this panorama was taken as part of the science team’s planning for Perseverance’s upcoming traverse across Neretva Vallis. The picture also gives us a nice view of the barren terrain found here in the dry tropics of Mars. There is no ice or water present anywhere, though the geology strongly suggests H2O in one form or another once shaped this landscape.

Nor is there any visible life. As much as NASA and many others devoutly wish to find some, I doubt any will be found. There is a very tiny chance the remains of long-gone microbiotic life might be found, but I wouldn’t bet much money on that either.
Overview map
Click for interactive map.

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The spiral dust streams within the Andromeda galaxy

10:15 am

Andromeda in infrared
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped and reduced to post here, was released yesterday and uses archival infrared data from the now retired Spitzer Space telescope to highlight the dust found within the Andromeda galaxy, about two million light years away.

Spitzer’s infrared view was similar to Webb’s but at a far lower resolution. In the picture above the red indicates cool dust.

By separating these wavelengths and looking at the dust alone, astronomers can see the galaxy’s “skeleton” — places where gas has coalesced and cooled, sometimes forming dust, creating conditions for stars to form. This view of Andromeda revealed a few surprises. For instance, although it is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, Andromeda is dominated by a large dust ring rather than distinct arms circling its center. The images also revealed a secondary hole in one portion of the ring where a dwarf galaxy passed through.

The data also suggested that the dust is flowing at a very steady rate into Andromeda’s central black hole. According to computer simulations, this steady rate would explain why the supermassive black holes at the center of both Andromeda and the Milky Way are relative inactive. If the dust fell in clumps rather than a steady flow, both black holes would exhibit bursts of high activity, similar to active galactic centers.

A side note for anyone wishing to star-gaze: Andromeda is actually the largest visible galaxy in the night sky, about six times with width of the full Moon. If you can get to a very dark-sky location, get your eyes very dark-adapted, and you know where to look, you can actually see it with the naked eye. I did this once at a star party, helped by a bunch of amateur astronomers. The galaxy is very faint, and it helps to use binoculars to help locate it, but once identified its size in the sky truly is breath-taking.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Update of the reusable cargo capsule by the French company, The Exploration Company

9:51 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed look at the development of the company’s second demonstrator capsule, dubbed Mission Possible, which it hopes to fly in an orbital test sometime in ’25.

Beforehand a smaller demonstrator capsule, dubbed Mission Bikini, will fly on the first launch of the Ariane-6, set for this summer.

Both demonstrators will lay the groundwork fo the launch of the company’s Nyx capsule, designed to provide freighter services to any one of the four private space stations presently being built.

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German startup loses prototype of aerospike spaceplane during test

9:44 am

The prototype aerospike test spaceplane of the German startup Polaris Spaceplanes was destroyed recently during its first test flight.

The MIRA I, from German aerospace startup Polaris Raumflugzeuge, was traveling at approximately 105 mph during takeoff when a “landing gear steering reaction” plus a side wind caused a “hard landing event,” rendering the space plane inoperable and it’s fiberglass airframe damaged beyond repair.

Its subsystems remained mostly intact – however, rather than attempt to repair the prototype spaceplane, Polaris has opted to decommission 13.9-foot-long MIRA I to go ahead with the identically shaped 16 foot MIRA II and III design.

Had it flown, it would have been the first flight test ever of an aerospike nozzle. Such a nozzle has been proposed by engineers for decades to take full advantage of the changing atmospheric pressure as a rocket lifts off. Traditional nozzles can only be shaped for one specific air pressure, and lose efficiency as the pressure changes. By using the air pressure to form one wall of the nozzle, an aerospike uses that changing pressure to always function at the highest efficiency.

The company hopes to use this design to eventually create a spaceplane that will take off from a runway, reach orbit, and then return to a runway, all without any additional stages.

Neither of the upcoming prototypes however will be able to do this. Their purpose will mostly be to test the aerospike engine at various altitudes. The company hopes to fly its full scale spaceplane, dubbed Aurora, in ’26 or ’27.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Pentagon: SpaceX effectively blocking Russian illegal use of Starlink

9:26 am

According to one Pentagon official, SpaceX has effectively blocked Russia’s illegal use of captured or illegally purchased Starlink terminals.

Plumb declined to elaborate on what tactics, techniques or procedures are being used to stem Russia’s use of the highly portable communications terminals that connect to SpaceX’s fleet of low-orbiting satellites. Ukrainian government officials had no immediate comment.

Starlink terminals continue to be advertised for sale in Russia on platforms such as e-commerce site Ozon. Their sellers say they function through subscriptions taken out in the name of residents of European countries where the technology is licensed, and they say that connections work — not within Russia’s heartlands but near border regions such as Ukraine’s occupied territories.

This week, however, users complained of unprecedented connectivity issues. On the messaging app Telegram one of the sellers recommended transferring onto a more expensive global service plan. Bloomberg hasn’t been able to independently verify whether those workarounds restore connectivity for illicit Starlink use in Russia.

The official tried to make it sound as if the Pentagon was an equal partner with SpaceX in accomplishing this work, but that’s absurd. The military is without doubt helping SpaceX anyway it can, but the bulk of the technical work is almost certainly being done by SpaceX.

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Starlink revenue in 2024 estimated at $6.6 billion

9:18 am

According to an independent analysis of the state of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, the company will generate $6.6 billion in revenue in 2024.

The independent analysis was done by the market research firm Quilty, and was based largely on extrapolating out from Starlink’s 2.7 million known subscribers.

“We’re projecting a revenue jump from $1.4 billion in 2022 to $6.6 billion in 2024.”

To put that in perspective, the combined revenue of the two largest geostationary satellite operators, SES and Intelsat, which recently announced a merger, is around $4.1 billion. “The answer lies in their subscriber base,” explained Quilty. Viasat and Hughes, two dominant players in the consumer GEO satellite internet market for over 20 years, peaked at a combined 2.2 million subscribers in 2020. Starlink surpassed that number in just a few years, he said.

The financial outlook is equally impressive. Quilty Space estimates Starlink’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes,depreciation, and amortization) to reach $3.8 billion in 2024, a significant leap from negative $128 million in 2022.”We expect Starlink to achieve positive free cash flow for the first time in 2024,” said Quilty.

This revenue number is even more astonishing when you compare it with the $12 billion in private capital the company has raised from investors since 2017. Next year alone SpaceX’s returns will cover half that investment, practically guaranteeing a generous profit in the coming years for those investors.

Even more significant, these revenues mean SpaceX now has a very healthy cash stream for completing construction of Starship/Superheavy, or in fact practically anything the company decides to build.

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Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites

9:38 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 20 more Starlink satellites, 13 of which were capable of direct cell phone use, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

49 SpaceX
20 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 56 to 32. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 49 to 39.

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May 9, 2024 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

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The edge of a vast frozen lava sea on Mars

1:36 pm

The edge of a vast frozen lava sea on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 10, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label boringly “Lava Interactions with Landscape.”

What is the lava, and what is the landscape? Here’s is my initial guess, based simply on looking at this image alone. The mound in the middle is the landscape, the rounded top of a very ancient mountain or hill. The flat plain that surrounds it is flood lava, that in the far past poured in and mostly buried the mountain.

Everything here signals a very old terrain. To get this mountain worn so smooth from the thin Martian atmosphere has to have taken more than a billion years. And that flood lava has to also be as old, because of the number of craters on its surface. I don’t know the impact rate, but I know it takes time to accumulate this number of impacts.

The sense of age is further underlined by the moat that surrounds the hill. When that lava poured in, it would have flooded right up to the mountain slope. Over time the weakest section of lava, most prone to erosion, would be that contact point. To wear it away as we now see it must have taken many eons.

All these speculations are a very unreliable guesses. To get a better understanding of this terrain it is essential we look at more than this picture alone.
» Read more

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Biden abandons Israel to appease student rioters and help Hamas survive

12:24 pm

Joe Biden, allied with Hamas
Joe Biden, appeaser to Hamas and student rioters

The mask is off: President Joe Biden has now made it clear that if Israel moves into the southern Gazan city of Rafah in order to destroy Hamas’s last batallion of soldiers as well as its leadership, he will stop sending Israel major shipments of ammunition and bombs.

President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.

Let’s distill the real significance of Biden’s decision:
» Read more

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Proposed private GPS-type satellite constellation raises $19 million

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Xona, a company that wants to build a commercial GPS-type satellite constellation, has now raised $19 million in private investment capital.

The round was led by Future Ventures and Seraphim Space. New investors NGP Capital, Industrious Ventures, Murata Electronics, Space Capital, and Aloniq also joined the round.

Xona is developing a commercial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service through a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites. The company plans to offer the service as an alternative or backup to the Global Positioning System.

It appears the commercial users of GPS want more than one American-owned system in operation in case the government’s present constellation goes out, either because of an attack, jamming, or a major technical failure, and are willing to pay for it. Xona’s constellation, once built, could initiate the full transfer of GPS responsibility from the government to the private sector.

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ULA signs contract to build a second transport ship for its Vulcan rocket

9:45 am

ULA yesterday announced it has issued contracts for the construction of a second transport ship for bringing its Vulcan rocket from the factory in Alabama to the launch sites in Florida and California.

ULA awarded Bollinger Shipyards a contract to build a second roll-on/roll-off vessel classed for both ocean-going and river service. Construction has just begun on the 356-ft-long ship at Bollinger’s shipyard located in Amelia, Louisiana with delivery to ULA expected in January 2026.

…“ULA currently has its first ship called RocketShip that has been in service for decades and with this second ship called SpaceShip our maritime fleet will enable enterprise transportation capacity of four Vulcan launch vehicles across two voyages to either the East or West Coast,” said Ellerhorst.

ULA also hired a company in Rhode Island to design and supervise the construction. The company needs two ships because it has a lot of launches scheduled over the next few years, including 38 for Amazon to help launch its Kuiper internet satellite constellation as well as a number the U.S. military.

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A French rocket startup enters the competition

9:35 am

A new French rocket startup, Hyprspace, has assembled the engine and body of a first stage demonstrator, dubbed Terminator, to be used to test that new engine in preparation for the first suborbital test launch.

On 4 May 2024, the company shared the first glimpse of the Terminator demonstrator at its facility in Le Haillan, France. According to the update, teams had worked through double shifts over a three-week period to prepare the demonstrator for its test firing. The test will be conducted at a Direction générale de l’armement missile test facility in Gironde, France. HyPrSpace has not yet revealed when the test is expected to take place.

This engine will eventually be used in the company’s planned orbital Baguette-1 rocket for launching smallsats.

We now have at least five European rocket startups, three in Germany (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, Hyimpulse), one in Spain (PLD), and one in France (Hyprspace). We also have Avio in Italy taking over ownership from Arianespace of its Vega family of rockets. That company is about to begin static fire testing a Vega-C upper stage, its engine nozzle completely redesigned following a launch failure. It hopes to resume flying by the end of the year.

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China launches earth observation satellite

9:02 pm

China this evening (May 9th in China) successfully launched an earth observation satellite into orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No word on where the first stage crashed in China, though there was a report in the Philippines that an upper stage landed near Rozul Reef and Patag Island in the West Philippine Sea. All the stages use toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

48 SpaceX
20 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 55 to 32. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 48 to 39.

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May 8, 2024 Quick space links

4:01 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

  • On this day in 1963 the private communications satellite Telstar 2 was launched on a Delta B rocket

    • Twas an entirely private mission, built and paid for by AT&T, with the near term goal of building in the mid-60s a satellite constellation to provide global telephone communications. That plan was shut down by Congress and President Kennedy, who restricted all American satellites for the next decade to a quasi-goverment corporation called Comsat, essentially destroying the American commercial satellite industry for about 20 years.

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Another COVID “vaccine” withdrawn due to its sometimes fatal side effects

3:34 pm

Sudden collapse
One of many sudden post-jab public collapses.
Click for full video.

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has now officially withdrawn its COVID “vaccine” from the market because it apparently sometimes causes severe blood clots that cause death. (I put “vaccine” in quotes because none of these jabs were ever vaccines, because they could not stop the virus in any meaningful way.)

In court documents filed with the High Court in February, the company admitted that the vaccine “can, in very rare cases, cause TTS.”

TTS stands for Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome and has been linked to at least 81 deaths in the UK with hundreds of serious injuries being reported. More than 50 people have sued the company over deaths and injuries related to the vaccine. The company has said that withdrawing the vaccine from the market is not related to the court case.

It appears the company has known these facts for quite awhile, but because governments have given it complete immunity, it had no compunction to withdraw the drug sooner. It was making too much money from it, in the billions, and it knew that any damage claims would be paid by those governments, not AstraZeneca.

Nor is this the first COVID jab withdrawn. Last year a Johnson & Johnson drug was pulled from the market. It had a similar adverse effect, causing dangerous blood clots.

Meanwhile the COVID drugs issued by Modena and Pfizer, both of which use mRNA technology, have been shown to carry their own toxicity risks.
» Read more

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Taffy terrain in Mars’ death valley

2:11 pm

Taffy terrain in Mars' death valley
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “banded terrain and possible breached crater.”

Banded terrain is another name for a geological feature dubbed “taffy terrain” and only found on Mars, and furthermore only found there in Hellas Basin, the deepest giant impact basin on the red planet. This taffy terrain is considered very young, no than 3 billion years old, and formed from the flow of some form of viscous material, though what that material is remains unsolved.

This image however may help solve that mystery. The breached crater is just off frame to the upper right. The two-fingered flow coming down from the picture’s top is the flow coming out of the crater’s gap.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

12:07 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

48 SpaceX
19 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 55 to 31. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 48 to 38.

6 comments

A former SpaceX employee gives a fascinating account of what it is like to work there

10:29 am

Link here. The account is everything you would expect. The work culture is open, efficient, and aggressive. You need to provide value and be self-motivated or you will not survive.

This one story reveals a lot:

[I]f I was in a meeting and it was adding value to what I did daily, stay, or if I was adding value based on my expertise, stay — but if neither of those things were happening, you should get up and respectfully walk out.

In one instance, a government customer came in with a 50-slide deck. Six slides into the presentation, 75% of the room had walked out. I had to tell him that if he didn’t get to the point, I’d be the only person left in the room — and only because I had to walk him out. He skipped ahead to his last five slides. That kind of environment makes you much more efficient.

I bet there are a lot of corporate workers reading this that fervently wish they had the right to walk out of a meeting that was wasting their time. Furthermore, consider that government customer: He or she brought a slide deck where 90% of the slides were fluff. That indicates the kind of work atmosphere he or she comes from.

For smart people who want to be creative, it would be an incredible pleasure to work in such an environment. No wonder SpaceX produces such good products.

9 comments

Webb data suggests a super-Earth might have an atmosphere

10:20 am

Using infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope, scientists now think the hot super-Earth exoplanet dubbed 55 Cancri e and 41 light years away might have an atmosphere made up not only of vaporized molten rock but other gases as well, such as carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide.

The exoplanet orbits much too close to its star, only 1.4 million miles away, for any life as we know it to exist. Its surface is thought to be molten, heated by that star.

The team thinks that the gases blanketing 55 Cancri e would be bubbling out from the interior, rather than being present ever since the planet formed. “The primary atmosphere would be long gone because of the high temperature and intense radiation from the star,” said Bello-Arufe. “This would be a secondary atmosphere that is continuously replenished by the magma ocean. Magma is not just crystals and liquid rock; there’s a lot of dissolved gas in it, too.”

As always, these results remain unconfirmed and are very uncertain.

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Redwire developing a satellite designed to fly in extremely low orbits

10:07 am

The orbital manufacturing company Redwire is now developing a satellite, dubbed SabreSat, to fly for long periods in extremely low orbits where the atmosphere would normally cause the orbit to quickly decay.

SabreSat, Redwire Space’s satellite for very low Earth orbit, looks more like a dart than a traditional spacecraft. “As you think about aerodynamics, you want the dart to be skinny and long, not stubby and fat,” Spence Wise, Redwire senior vice president for missions and platforms, told SpaceNews.

Redwire is designing SabreSat for government intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

The satellite would fly in orbits from 55 to 200 miles altitude. By flying so low it will get far better images and ground data than spacecraft in higher orbits. It will also be less vulnerable to attack compared to high altitude aerial reconnaissance balloons or airplanes.

Its dart-like shape will meanwhile reduce friction so that less fuel will be required to maintain its orbit.

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Orbital tug startup Starfish Space wins $37.5 million contract from Space Force

9:55 am

Even though problems with another company’s deployment system prevented a docking test in orbit last month of its Otter Pup tug, the orbital tug startup Starfish Space has won a $37.5 million contract from Space Force to further develop its autonomous rendezvous and docking system.

The newly announced $37.5 million Space Force contract will support the development of an Otter demonstration spacecraft over the course of the next four years. In its announcement of the fixed-price contract — which was awarded through the Strategic Funding Increase program, or STRATFI — the Department of Defense said the project’s goal is to “improve maneuverability on-orbit and enable dynamic space operations docking and maneuvering of Department of Defense assets on-orbit.”

Though the docking test was prevented when the tug deploying Otter Pup (owned by a different tug company, Launcher) went into an unplanned spin, Otter Pup was deployed and brought under control. Those maneuvers however used up most of its fuel. Engineers were still able to work with another orbital tug company, D-Orbit, to maneuver and rendezvous with that company’s ION tug and thus succeed in demonstrating Pup’s rendezvous technolgoy.

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Chang’e-6 enters lunar orbit

9:42 am

Chang'e-6 landing zone

China’s Chang’e-6 sample return spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit today, in preparation for its mission to land and bring back material from the the far side of the Moon. The landing zone is indicated by the red box on the map to the right, on the southern rim of Apollo Crater in the southern hemisphere. That crater is inside South Aitkin Basin, one the Moon’s largest impact basins.

The spacecraft will next adjust its orbit to prepare for sending its lander-ascender sections down to the surface. If the landing goes well, it will drill into the surface, place some material into the ascender section, which will then lift-off and dock with the orbiter-return section in orbit. The material will be transferred into the return section, which will separate and bring the material back to Earth, sometime in late June.

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Launch of first manned flight of Starliner rescheduled for May 17, 2024

9:31 am

Because ULA engineers have decided they need to replace the valve that forced a launch scrub on May 8th, the first manned launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to ISS has now been rescheduled to May 17, 2024.

The oscillating behavior of the valve during prelaunch operations, ultimately resulted in mission teams calling a launch scrub on May 6. After the ground crews and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely exited from Space Launch Complex-41, the ULA team successfully commanded the valve closed and the oscillations were temporarily dampened. The oscillations then re-occurred twice during fuel removal operations. After evaluating the valve history, data signatures from the launch attempt, and assessing the risks relative to continued use, the ULA team determined the valve exceeded its qualification and mission managers agreed to remove and replace the valve.

Replacing the valve is a somewhat routine procedure, but it will take a few days, causing the two-week delay.

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TESS resumes science operations

9:26 am

Engineers have corrected the issue that put the space telescope TESS into safe mode on April 8, 2024 and have resumed science operations.

The operations team determined this latest safe mode was triggered by a failure to properly unload momentum from the spacecraft’s reaction wheels, a routine activity needed to keep the satellite properly oriented when making observations. The propulsion system, which enables this momentum transfer, had not been successfully repressurized following a prior safe mode event April 8. The team has corrected this, allowing the mission to return to normal science operations. The cause of the April 8 safe mode event remains under investigation.

As for that April 8th safe mode, though engineers were able to return the spacecraft to normal operations after about a week, that they still do not know what caused it remains a concern.

TESS takes high resolution survey images of 93% of the sky about once per month. By comparing the data from each scan, scientists have discovered so far more than 300 transiting exoplanets as well as many supernovae and other phenomenon related to variable stars.

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May 7, 2024 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

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