Martian waves of ridges and cracks

Martian waves of ridges and cracks
Click for original image.

In preparing today’s cool image I initially planned to post an picture taken on December 26, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), as it showed a strange series of ridges that almost resembled waves or ripples on a pond.

In digging into MRO’s context camera archive to get the larger context, however, I immediately switched to the photo on the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. Taken on December 17, 2010, it shows a much more mysterious and striking set of geological features than the closer view of the high resolution image, with the wave-shaped ridges on its western half but another set of wave-shaped cracks on its eastern half.

Even more intriguing, the arcs for the ridges curve in the opposite direction from the arcs for the cracks. It is almost as if there were two flows moving in opposite directions, right next to each other.
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The remnant of the supernova from 1181, as seen in multiple wavelengths

Supernova remnant as seen in multiple wavelengths
Click for original image.

Using a number of different telescopes and observing in many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, astronomers have produced a new composite image of the remnant of a supernova that was detected in the year 1181 and remained visible to the naked eye for about six months.

That composite picture is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the press release:

X-ray observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulfur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.

Because the remnant is so dim in visible light, it has taken years of searching to locate it.

SLIM survives its second lunar night, re-establishes contact

SLIM's view after surviving its 2nd night on the Moon
Click for original image.

According to Japan’s space agency JAXA, the SLIM lunar lander has successfully survived its long night on the Moon, re-establishiing contact with ground controllers yesterday.

Last night, we received a response from #SLIM, confirming that the spacecraft made it through the lunar night for the second time! Since the sun was still high and the equipment was still hot, we only took some shots of the usual scenery with the navigation camera

One of those pictures is to the right, reduced slightly to post here. It looks west across the floor of Shioli Crater, with the far rim about a thousand feet away. The picture is identical to previous images, tilted because the spacecraft landed on its side and has limited scientific capabilities, being primarily an engineering test mission.

That this engineering test has now survived two lunar nights speaks well for its design. It tells us that future Japanese lunar landers (and rovers) will have a good chance of surviving for a long time on the Moon.

Scientists release detailed geological map of the landing site for Europe’s Franklin rover

Low resolution cropped section of map
Click for original image.

Scientists today released a new high resolution and very detailed geological map of the landing site for Europe’s Franklin rover, produced using orbital data from the U.S.’S Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter.

A very low resolution version of the map is to the right.

The work was divided into 134 one-square-kilometre areas, so that the [80-person] team could fully cover the estimated landing area. Scientists used a web-based system that allowed everyone to work on the map in parallel. The software was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and set up at ESA [European Space Agency]. Data came from the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and several instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), including the HiRISE camera, which returns images from Mars orbit at 25 cm per pixel.

The mapping leads then pieced together the information on all the areas to form a coherent map that shows the geology of the landing site in unprecedented detail. The map includes the main types of bedrock, and structures with distinct shapes like ridges and craters. It even features the material that rests on top, for example blown by the wind, or thrown long distances when meteorites impacted the surface.

The result is the highest resolution map of Oxia Planum yet, created at a scale of 1:25 000, by which every centimetre equals 250 metres on the martian surface. An average drive of 25 to 50 metres a day for Rosalind Franklin would be one to two milimetres on the map.

The team had the extra time to compile this map because the launch of Franklin to Mars was delayed a number of times because of engineering issues and the Ukraine War, which ended the Europe’s partnership with Russia, requiring ESA to find other means to launch and land the rover.

Data from Perseverance suggests the delta in Jezero Crater was formed by a wide variety of different “fluvial” events

Jezero Crater delta
Jezero Crater delta

Using data from the Perseverance rover in Jezero crater, scientists now conclude that the delta that poured through a gap in the crater’s rim was formed by a wide variety of different “fluvial” events, not a steady flow as previously assumed.

From the paper’s conclusions:

The origin of this variability as well as that of the high discharge represented by the boulder conglomerate is still unknown. Realistic hypotheses include seasonal variations due to melting of snow, glacial input with possible episodic surges punctuating more regular fluvial input, or arid climate type of flows with intense storms and related flash floods.

We do not speculate further about the nature of fluvial activity in this study. However, the variability and the presence of high discharge rates have important implications on the lake evolution. Firstly, previous modeling of Jezero delta formation used steady-state discharge rates to estimate the time required to form the delta, an assumption that we can no longer justify according to our observations. Secondly, estimates of discharge rates … may be used as upper limits for some of the peak discharge rates, although the number of flood events is still difficult to determine from the sparse outcrops and the ubiquitous presence of scree.

In other words, the delta was not formed by a single event or a long stream of liquid flowing into the crater to form the lake that scientists believe once filled the crater. Instead, that flow varied, involved numerous distinct and different events over time, and likely included glacial ice transport as well.

Not that this is a surprise, but as always, the closer we get to a planet and the more detailed our data about it, the more complicated we find its nature and origins.

The spiraling magnetic field surrounding the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole

The magnetic field lines surrounding Sagittarius A*
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now produced the first detailed image of polarized light surrounding the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”) which in turn maps out the spiraling field lines of that black hole’s magnetic field.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows that image. From the press release:

“What we’re seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy,” said Sara Issaoun, CfA NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) astrophysicist, and co-lead of the project. “Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them.”

Light is an oscillating, or moving, electromagnetic wave that allows us to see objects. Sometimes, light oscillates in a preferred orientation, and we call it “polarized.” Although polarized light surrounds us, to human eyes it is indistinguishable from “normal” light. In the plasma around these black holes, particles whirling around magnetic field lines impart a polarization pattern perpendicular to the field. This allows astronomers to see in increasingly vivid detail what’s happening in black hole regions and map their magnetic field lines.

Despite this similarlity, it still remains a mystery why the much larger M87 black hole is very active while Sagittarius A’ remains generally quiet.

Engineers resolve issue on IXPE space telescope

Engineers have resolved the issue on the IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) space telescope that was jumbling the data it was sending to Earth, and expect to return it to full science operations shortly.

On March 26, using procedures developed following that previous interruption, the team initiated a spacecraft avionics reset to address the issue, which put IXPE into a planned safe mode. The team has confirmed that IXPE is once again transmitting valid telemetry data and is now working to resume science operations, in as rapid and safe a manner as possible. The spacecraft is in good health.

The “previous interruption” was in 2023. In both cases it appears that simply rebooting the telescope’s software fixed the problem.

China’s Long March 6 rocket launches remote sensing satellite

China yesterday successfully launched a classified remote sensing satellite, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the northeast of China.

No word on where the rocket’s four solid-fueled strap-on boosters and liquid-fueld core stage crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

30 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 35 to 23, while SpaceX still leads the entire world, including American companies, 30 to 28.

Bursting bubbles of water gas on Mars

Bursting bubbles on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 12, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Because of a technical issue that leaves a blank strip down the center of recent high-res MRO images, I have filled in that gap using a MRO context camera photo taken on January 12, 2015. The resolution is much less, but by doing so we can see the ground features as a unit.

What are we looking at? According to the scientists, this picture shows “fresh-looking ruptures,” referring to the broken line of sharp tears inside that meandering canyon that almost resemble a fresh wound in flesh. As this location is at 28 degrees south latitude, it lies on the edge of dry equatorial regions, where orbital images have sometimes found hints of a few remaining buried glaciers that are much more common closer to the poles.

In this case it appears the warmer equatorial climate has acted to heat up the buried ice so that it sublimated into gas. At some point the gas pressure caused the surface to burst, much like bubbles bursting on the surface of a pot of simmering tomato sauce, leaving behind these scars.
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Report: 3D printing in space

A new report released today [pdf] from the space think tank Intro-act provides a nice detailed summary of the economic and technological state of 3D printing industry in space.

The report first outlines the types of 3D printing presently available, using plastics and metals, and then outlines the advantages of printing things in orbit rather than carrying them up from Earth. Essentially, 3D printers are the real version of replicators seen in sci-fi movies, except that reality requires much more complexity, including a whole range of different machines designed for specific materials and final products.

The report lists four companies of note:

Made in Space (acquired by Redwire Corp.), Relativity Space, and AI SpaceFactory are the leading companies in the 3-D printing segment. With the addition of Vaya Space, the list provides a more comprehensive overview of the companies that are pioneering the use of 3-D printing technology in the realm of space exploration and development, showcasing the diverse applications and innovative strategies being employed in this exciting field.

Each company appears to have a different focus. Redwire is developing 3D printers for use on ISS, Relativity developing 3D printers for building rocket components, and AI Spacefactory developing 3D printed space colonies for Mars or the Moon.

If I had to choose which company to bet on, my pick would be Relativity followed by Redwire. The former’s large 3D printing technology for rockets can be very easily shifted to other uses and products, giving it a product of great value far beyond space. Redwire meanwhile has already launched and operated printers on ISS, proving it can provide that technology to future space stations.

This industry is however in its infancy. As the private space stations presently under construction launch, their need for this technology will skyrocket, and thus there will be opportunities galore.

Orbital tug startup ExLabs plans mission to asteroid Apophis in 2028

The orbital tug startup Exploration Labs (ExLabs) has announced it is planning to use its tug to deliver three cubesats on a rendezvous mission to asteroid Apophis in 2028, shortly before the asteroid does a close fly-by of Earth in April 2029.

The article at the link provides no other information about this mission. In searching the web I was unable to find anything further. It seems this mission is at present nothing more than a proposal, issued at this time mostly for public relations purposes to showcase the abilities of its proposed orbital tug, presently under development.

This conclusion does not mean the mission won’t happen, only that it is very far from a reality.

Intuitive Machines: Odysseus is dead

In a tweet on March 23, 2024 the company Intuitive Machines announced that the mission of its first lunar lander, Odysseus, is officially over with the spacecraft failing to come back to life after sunrise on the Moon.

As of March 23rd at 1030 A.M. Central Standard Time, flight controllers decided their projections were correct, and Odie’s power system would not complete another call home.

The engineers had begun listening for a signal on March 20th, when their computer models said enough sunlight would reach the solar panels to charge its communications system.

The failure of the lander to survive the lunar night is a disappointment, but it was never considered a strong possibility. Right now the company’s main task is to prevent the issues that caused Odysseus to land too fast and tip over, so that the next two missions, scheduled for either this year or next, each deliver their payloads properly on the Moon’s surface.

SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

The beat goes on and on and on and… SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Caneveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

30 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 35 to 22, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 30 to 27.

France to award four rocket startups launch contracts worth as much as 400 million euros

Capitalism in space: According to a story today at the European Spaceflight website, the French government will later this week announce contract awards to four different rocket startups worth as much as 400 million euros.

The four launch startups that will receive a combined €400 million in subsidies are HyPrSpace, Latitude, Sirius Space Services, and the ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace.

The HyPrSpace OB-1 and Latitude Zephyr rockets will be the smallest of the lot and will be capable of delivering between 100 and 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The Sirius 1, Sirius 13, and Sirius 15 rockets will be capable of delivering between 175 and 1,100 kilograms to orbit. The Prometheus-powered Maia rocket is expected to be the most powerful, with a payload capacity of up to three tonnes when launched in its expendable configuration.

All four companies however will only receive a small upfront payment, with the bulk of the award only paid if a company achieves a maiden launch by 2028.

That the French government is now signing deals with new private and independent launch companies and not with Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency (ESA) that has always been dominated by the French, is a major development. Up until now most of the action encouraging independent rocket companies has come from Germany and Spain. That France has now joined the party signals the almost certain death knell to the failed two decade-long effort by Arianespace to make a profit, even when it controlled about 50% of the launch market.

Expect the government monopoly of Arianespace to fade away in the next five years. Expect it to be replaced with a thriving industry of mulitple rocket companies, all charging less and coming up with new ways to lower cost.

South Texas booming due to arrival of SpaceX

Link here. The article details the major tourism and industry dollars that have come into existence in the Brownsville region since SpaceX established its Boca Chica launch facility, including major development now underway to cater to the tourist business of travelers eager to get a close look at a Starship/Superheavy launch.

The article gives a sense of the reality on the ground. While the anti-Musk activist groups sue SpaceX in their attempt to shut down Starship/Superheavy development, claiming it is harming the region, stories like this put the lie to those claims.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

The tangled view of astronomers

A protostar in formation
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of young stars surrounded by an edge-on dust disk. From the caption:

FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right that is partially obscured by a dark, vertical lane of dust. The young objects are surrounded by softly illuminated gas and dust of this stellar nursery. The system is only about 2.8 million years old, very young for a star system. Our Sun, by contrast, is about 4.6 billion years old.

The blue lines on either side of that vertical dust lane are jets moving out from FS Tau B. The caption says their asymetrical lengths are likely due to ” mass is being expelled from the object at different rates,” but it just as easily be caused by the angle in which we see this object, making the nearer jet seem longer than the one behind.

That astronomers cannot move around such an object and see it from many angles explains the headline of this post. We can only see astronomical objects from one angle, and when they are complex objects such as this one, a large part of the research problem is disentangling the shapes we see into a coherent picture. Spectroscopy helps a lot, as it provides information about the speed and direction of different parts of the object, but even this can be enormously complicated and difficult to interpret.

Remember these facts when you read news reports about astronomical research. No matter how certain the press release sounds, its certainty is always tempered by many unknowns, some very pedestrian but fundamental.

Boom’s one-third-scale prototype supersonic jet finally takes off

The private startup Boom has finally flown its third-scale prototype supersonic jet, dubbed XB-1, on its first short flight, taking off on March 22, 2024 from the flight test facility in Mojave, California.

Following behind was Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg in a T-38 chase plane to observe the flight and confirm altitude and speed. With a length of 62.6 feet (19 m) and a wingspan of 21 ft (6 m) , the XB-1 achieved an altitude of 7,120 ft (2,170 m) and speeds up to 238 knots (273 mph, 440 km/h) under the force of its three GE J85-15 engines generating a maximum thrust of 12,300 lbs.

According to Boom, once its aerodynamic characteristics and flight worthiness are confirmed, the XB-1 will increase speed until it is flying on later tests in excess of Mach 1.

This prototype supersonic test plane was first unveiled in 2020, four years ago, but runway taxi tests did not begin until 2023. I suspect the Wuhan panic contributed to the three year delay between unveiling and first tests, though this is speculation.

The goal is to build the first commercial superonic passenger plane since the Concorde. At present Boom has a contract from United for fifteen Boom 12-passenger planes, plus development deals with Boeing, and Japan Airlines.

Antenna for joint NASA-ISRO radar satellite needs fix, delaying launch

The large deployable antenna for a joint NASA-ISRO radar satellite, dubbed NISAR, that was targeting a spring launch will require an extra coat of reflective material, thus delaying the satellite’s launch until the second half of this year.

In a March 22 statement, NASA said a new launch date for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission will be set at the end of April because of work to protect the spacecraft’s reflector, an antenna that is 12 meters across when fully deployed, from temperatures when in its stowed configuration. “Testing and analysis identified a potential for the reflector to experience higher-than-previously-anticipated temperatures in its stowed configuration in flight,” NASA said in the statement. To prevent those increased temperatures, a “special coating” will be applied to the antenna so that it reflects more sunlight.

That work, NASA said, requires shipping the antenna, currently with the rest of the NISAR spacecraft in India, to a facility in California that can apply the coating. NASA did not state how long the process of applying the coating, as well as shipping the antenna to California and then back to India, will take.

It appears that the need for this additional coat was discovered during environmental testing by ISRO engineers in India as part of its preparation for launch on India’s GSLV rocket. Based on the JPL website for this mission, it appears this antenna system was built by JPL.

NASA is providing the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

Though the purpose of the final environmental testing prior to launch is specifically to find such issues and correct them, the question remains why this issue occurred. One can’t help wondering if the many management problems detailed at JPL in several reports (here, herej, here) might have contributed, including the organization’s total commitment since 2022 to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion quotas, making skin color and sex the primary qualifications for hiring, rather than skill, education, or talent.

SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

The beat never ends: SpaceX last night successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its nineteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This stage is now the third that has completed a record nineteen flights. One wonders when a stage will reach twenty.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

29 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 34 to 22, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 29 to 27.

Russians launch three astronauts to ISS

The Russians today successfully launched three astronauts to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with ISS on March 25, 2024. The Russian and Belarus astronauts will stay on board ISS for about two weeks, returning to Earth on an Soyuz-2 capsule that is presently docked to ISS, taking with them an American who has just completed six months in space. The American on today’s launch will now start her own six month mission, and will return in September with two Russian astronauts who are presently on a year long mission, one of whom will likely set a new duration record for a woman.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

28 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 33 to 22, while SpaceX remains ahead of the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 27.

Martian vent or sink?

A Martian vent or sink?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 29, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Though the scientists label this image showing “channels”, what I see is either a vent or a sink, with the channels to the south indicating past flows either coming out of the depression or into it. The uncertainty exists because the surface grade in this region is essentially flat. There is a lot of small up and down variations, but overall it is very difficult to determine the general trend, suggesting that when the depression and channels formed the grade was different, and there is no way from this data to determine the angle at that time.

Were the flows that created the channels lava or water or ice? Knowing the grade when these channels formed would help answer this question, but other research now suggests the latter.
» Read more

ISRO completes second drop test runway landing of its own mini-reusable shuttle

Pushpak about to land
Click for original image

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday successfully completed the second runway landing of its own mini-reusable shuttle, dubbed Pushpak, after the vehicle was dropped from a helicopter at an altitude of 2.8 miles.

This mission successfully simulated the approach and high-speed landing conditions of RLV returning from space. With this second mission, ISRO has re-validated the indigenously developed technologies in the areas of navigation, control systems, landing gear and deceleration systems essential for performing a high-speed autonomous landing of a space-returning vehicle. The winged body and all flight systems used in RLV-LEX-01 were reused in the RLV-LEX-02 mission after due certification/clearances. Hence reuse capability of flight hardware and flight systems is also demonstrated in this mission. Based on the observations from RLV-LEX-01, the airframe structure and landing gear were strengthened to tolerate higher landing loads. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentences I think are the most significant. ISRO is pushing hard for reusability.

The concept of this spacecraft is somewhat comparable to the X-37B, though all the engineering can be applied to larger shuttles that can carry cargo and humans in and out of orbit. At the moment however Pushpak is simply an engineering test prototype, not yet ready for orbital flights. For example, the landing gears are too large and cannot be retracted, something unacceptable for orbital flights.

SpaceX launches a cargo Dragon to ISS

SpaceX today successfully launched a Dragon freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The cargo Dragon was flying for the fourth time. It will dock with ISS on March 23, 2024. The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at one of SpaceX’s landing pads at Cape Canaveral.

This was also the first Dragon launch from this particular SpaceX launchpad in four years. The company only recently reconfigured it for Dragon flights, both manned and unmanned, so that it has two options for launching NASA manned missions. NASA had demanded this before it would give SpaceX permission to launch Superheavy/Starship from that rocket’s new launchpad in Florida. The agency thought it was too close to SpaceX’s first manned launchpad, and wanted an option in case a Superheavy launch failure damaged the Dragon launchsite. With this success SpaceX is one step closer to flying operational Superheavy/Starship flights out of Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

28 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 33 to 21, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 26.

Some more “What the heck?” geology on Mars

What the heck?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small part of a region dubbed Iani Chaos, but what this geology shows is way beyond my pay grade.

Why there are those tiny aligned mounds, oriented at right angles to the slope, is not clear at all. Nor is it obvious what created the lighter chaotic terrain at the base of the slope.

The elevation difference between the low and high points is about 400 feet. The slope continues up to the west for another 600 feet to the top of a north-south ridgeline. The patterns here suggest vaguely some flows downhill, such as that widening east-to-west gap, but only vaguely.

The look at the overview map only compounds the mystery.
» Read more

Six launch companies give updates on the status of their rockets

Link here. The event was a panel at a conference where officials from SpaceX, ULA, Mitsubishi, Arianespace, Relativity, and Rocket Lab gave presentations.

Based on what is reported at the link, the Mitsubishi update was the most significant:

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) successfully launched its H3 rocket Feb. 16 after the rocket’s inaugural launch failed nearly a year earlier, a setback that Iwao Igarashi, vice president and general manager at MHI, called a “nightmare.” “There were no major problems with the rocket” on its second flight, he said.

We will have to see. Though everything worked as planned on the second flight, the true test on whether Mitsubishi has overcome the issues from the first launch will be the rocket’s third launch, presently scheduled for sometime next year.

A Relativity official said their Terran-R rocket is still targeting a first launch in 2026, while Rocket Lab was hopeful that the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket would occur by the end of this year.

China Long March 2D launches “group of satellites”; Russia scrubs manned Soyuz launch

China today successfully launched what it simply labeled as “a group of satellites”, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No other useful information was released about the payloads. Nor was there any word as to the crash site of the rocket’s first stage, which uses toxic hypergolic fuels and landed somewhere in China.

Meanwhile in Russia a launch of a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying three astronauts to ISS was aborted at about T-20 seconds for reasons that as yet remain unclear. According to NASA the next launch opportunity is March 23, 2024.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

27 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 32 to 21, while SpaceX remains ahead of the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 26.

Rocket Lab launches classified smallsat for National Reconnaissance Office

Rocket Lab in the early morning hours of March 21, 2024 successfully launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virgina.

For this launch Rocket Lab made no attempt to recover its first stage. As of posting the payloads had not yet been deployed.

A Chinese Long March 2D launch was also scheduled to occur just prior to the Rocket Lab launch, but as of posting there was no word on whether that launch had taken place.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

27 SpaceX
11 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise presently leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 32 to 20, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 25.

Cracking terraces in Valles Marineris

Overview map

Cracking terraces in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Inset

Today’s cool image returns us to the truly spectacular terrain found on the floor of West Candor Chasma, one of the giant side canyons that form Valles Marineris, the biggest canyon in the solar system, many times larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 5, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). On the overview map above its location is indicated by the red dot in the inset. The two green dots mark previous cool images from August 2022 and February 2024.

All three images show the same wild alternating dark and light terracing, suggesting many sedimentary layers like those seen in our Grand Canyon, but enhanced by the different erosion processes of the thin Martian atmosphere and its one-third Earth gravity.

The second image to the right zooms in on the area indicated by the rectangle. What makes this area doubly interesting are the cracks that appear to cut through the terraces. In the north-south crack it also appears that the terraces are now offset on each side of the crack.

Apparently, some event, likely an earthquake that occurred after the terraces formed, caused the ground to rip apart, with the earth shifting sideways on either side. Though the seismometer on the InSight lander detected no major quakes in this region, this image suggests they have occurred here, sometime in the past.

To give you a sense of scale, the canyon’s nearby rim to the west is about 14,000 higher, making that canyon wall two to three times taller than the walls of the Grand Canyon.

Spanish high-altitude balloon company to fly fullsize prototype capsule from Saudi Arabia

The Spanish high-altitude balloon startup Halo is now planning to fly from Saudi Arabia the second test flight of its fullsize prototype tourist capsule.

Headquartered in Madrid, the company, which specialises in stratospheric commercial flights, will embark on its sixth test flight from the kingdom in June, the company said in a release, with conditional approval from the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST), the Saudi Arabia authority responsible for space regulation.

Halo Space CEO Carlos Mira said in a statement that this test will validate the integrated operation of all critical systems, “bringing us one step closer to our goal,” which includes plans to begin commercial flights in 2026.

The company plans to set up bases for flights in Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Australia, and Spain, where it hopes to do high altitude tourist balloon flights to about 20 miles elevation. We should also not be surprised if it does classified reconnaissance flights for Saudi Arabia as well.

Whether it will do what it says however still depends on the final outcome of a lawsuit against it by another Spanish company, Zero 2 Infinity, which claims Halo stole its technology. The courts have ruled in Zero 2’s favor, but whether a final settlement has occurred is unclear.

SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.

“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”

The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”

That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.

We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.

Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.

I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.

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