Tag: engineering

European Commission finally awards contract to build its government Starlink-type constellation

9:38 am

The European Commission yesterday finally awarded a gigantic contract to a consortium of European satellite companises to build its government-conceived and government-designed communications constellation designed to duplicate constellations already in orbit and built by Starlink and OneWeb.

The full constellation, dubbed IRIS2 and first proposed in 2022, is expected to have 290 satellites. The consortium, dubbed SpaceRISE, is led by satellite companies SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, and also includes Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Airbus Defence and Space, Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat, and Thales SIX.

In other words, practically every major European aerospace company gets a piece of the pie.

According to a 31 October press release, the European Commission aims to have the IRIS2 service up and running by 2030. The project was initially expected to cost approximately €6 billion, of which the European Commission would provide 60%, with the rest being covered by private industry. However, recent reports have indicated that the project’s budget will likely reach as much as €10 billion.

Based on these numbers, it is going to take more than six years to launch, with each satellite costing about 3.5 million euros.

This is a very typical European government project, conceived not to fill a real need but to make sure there is a European version of something for Europe to use. It is also conceived as a way to transfer cash to as many European aerospace contractors as possible. Considering the number of companies involved and the fact that the whole constellation is government designed, expect the budget to well exceed ten billion euros before completion, and take far longer to become operational than presently planned. For example, the project was first proposed more than two years ago and only now has the contract been issued. In that time SpaceX conceived and has practically launched its entire direct-to-cell Starlink constellation of about the same number of satellites.

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Weird ring-mounds in one of Mars’ largest craters

3:03 pm

Weird ring mounds on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 16, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labels these strange features “ring-mound landforms,” a term that has been used to describe [pdf] only vaguely similar features previously found in the Athabasca flood lava plain almost on the other side of Mars. That paper suggested that those ring mounds formed on the “thin, brittle crust of an active fluid flow” created by an explosive event. Since Athabasca is considered Mars’s most recent major flood lava event, the fluid was likely lava, which on Mars flows more quickly and thinly in the lower gravity.

Thus, in Athabasca the ring-mounds formed when a pimple of molten lava from below popped the surface.

But what about the ring mounds in the picture to the right?
» Read more

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Post-collision images of two galaxies

10:56 am

Post-collision imagery by Hubble and Webb
Click for original image.

Using both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, astronomers have now produced multi-wavelength images of the galaxies NGC 2207and IC 2163, as shown to the right.

Millions of years ago the smaller galaxy, IC 2163, grazed against the larger, NGC 2207, resulting today in increased star formation in both galaxies, indicated by blue in the Hubble photo. From the caption of the combined images:

Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year. Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form.

The two images to the left leaves the Hubble and Webb separate, making it easier to see the different features the different wavelengths reveal. From this caption:

In Hubble’s image, the star-filled spiral arms glow brightly in blue, and the galaxies’ cores in orange. Both galaxies are covered in dark brown dust lanes, which obscure the view of IC 2163’s core at left. In Webb’s image, cold dust takes centre stage, casting the galaxies’ arms in white. Areas where stars are still deeply embedded in the dust appear pink. Other pink dots may be objects that lie well behind these galaxies, including active supermassive black holes known as quasars.

The largest and brightest pink area in the Webb image, on the bottom right and a blue patch in the Hubble image, is where a strong cluster of star formation is presently occurring.

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Russia launches military satellite

9:38 am

Russia today (October 31st in Russia) successfully launched a classified military satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.

The flight path took the satellite over the Arctic, where the rocket’s lower stages crashed harmlessly.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

107 SpaceX
49 China
12 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 124 to 73, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 107 to 90.

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Nearly four dozen anti-SpaceX activists organize to flood public meeting

9:29 am

At a public meeting of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on October 17, 2024 nearly four dozen anti-SpaceX activists apparently arrived en masse in order to overwhelm the public comment period with negative opinions about the company and its operation at Boca Chica.

The report at the link, from the San Antonio Express-News, is (as usual for a propaganda press outlet) decidedly in favor of these activists, and makes it sound as if these forty-plus individuals, apparently led by the activist group SaveRGV that has mounted most of the legal challenges to SpaceX, represent the opinions of the public at large.

What really happened here is that the Brownsville public has better things to do, like building businesses and making money, much of which now only exists because of SpaceX and that operation at Boca Chica. Thus, the only ones with time or desire to organize to show up at these kinds of meetings are these kinds of activists.

It might pay however for some of the more business-oriented organizations in Brownsville to make sure they are in the game at the next public meeting, scheduled for November 14, 2024 [pdf]. This would not be hard to do, and it would certainly help balance the scales, which at present are decidedly been warped by this small minority of protesters.

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SpaceX: Only five more launches needed to complete Starlink direct-to-cell constellation

9:11 am

According to a tweet posted by SpaceX shortly after yesterday’s first launch from Vandenberg, the company needs only five more launches to complete its first constellation of Starlink direct-to-cell satellites.

More information here. At the moment the company has launched 260 of this version of its Starlink satellites. Since each launch places 13 more satellites in orbit, that means the first full iteration of the constellation will contain 325 satellites.

The satellites will allow cell phone users on the ground to use the constellations like a cell tower, thus providing service in areas where ground cell tower service does not exist. At the moment T-Mobile has a deal with SpaceX, so its subscribers will be able to use this service as soon as it is operational.

When when this be achieved? This story once again illustrates the speed in which SpaceX operates. The first launch of direct-to-cell Starlink satellites occurred on January 2, 2024, and in the last ten months the company has completed 23 launches to get the constellation where it is presently. At that pace the entire consellation might be complete before the end of this year.

The competition for this service is certainly fierce. The other satellite company offering this service, AST Mobile, has launched the first five satellites in its constellation, and has deals with AT&T and Verizon. Its design is different, and will only require 110 satellites to complete the constellation. At the moment five are about to become operational. It hopes to start regular launches next year to complete the constellation.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

3:13 pm

SpaceX this afternoon completed its second launch today, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral carrying 23 Starlink satellites.

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

The earlier launch was from Vandenberg, also with a payload of Starlink satellites.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

107 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 124 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 107 to 89.

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“What the heck?” lava on Mars

1:47 pm


Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it was likely snapped not for any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.

When the science team does this they try to pick interesting locations. Sometimes the picture is relatively boring. Sometimes, like the picture to the right, it reveals weird geology that is somewhat difficult to explain. The picture covers the transition from the smooth featureless plain to the north, and the twisting and complex ridges to the south, all of which are less than a few feet high.

Note the gaps. The downgrade here is to the west, and the gaps appear to vaguely indicate places where flows had occurred.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites

9:38 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

106 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 123 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 106 to 89.

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JAXA confirms first hop of Callisto delayed until ’26

9:32 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now confirmed what France’s space agency CNES had revealed in August, that the first 100-meter-high hop of the government-proposed Callisto engineering Grasshopper-type test rocket will not take place any earlier than 2026.

This joint project of JAXA, CNES, and Germany’s space agency DLR was first proposed in 2015, and by 2018 was aiming for a 2020 launch. Four years past that target date and they are still not ready to launch. Remember too that even after it completes its test hop program an operational orbital rocket would have to be created. It does not appear this can easily be scaled up to fit Ariane-6.

SpaceX meanwhile conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015. It has subsequently completed well over 300 actual commercial flights, reusing first stages up to 23 times.

The contrast between these government agencies and that private company is quite illustrative.

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China launches new crew to its space station

3:55 pm

China today successfully launched a new three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s side boosters or lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China. The crew will dock with the station mid-day tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

105 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 122 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 105 to 89.

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A return to Phantom and the reminiscences of an Apollo astronaut

3:04 pm

Charles Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut
Charles Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut

Yesterday I had to pleasure of getting my second tour of the Phantom Space facilities, located here in Tucson. Jim Cantrell, the founder of the Tucson-based rocket/satellite company Phantom Space, had last week graciously invited me to attend the event he was holding there, where astronaut Charles Duke, from the April 1972 Apollo 16 lunar landing, would be giving a talk to the company’s employees, investors, and customers. Duke had become an advisor for the company, and this would be his first visit to its operations.

First, the talk by Charles Duke, describing his life and Apollo 16 walk on the Moon, was as usual awe-inspiring, mostly because Duke spoke like every astronaut I’ve ever met so matter-of-factly about what he had done. During the second of three excusions on the surface with his commander John Young, they drove their rover up the slope of nearby Stone Mountain, climbing to an elevation of 500 feet, the highest any human has so far been on the lunar surface. From there he could look back and see for miles, including the entire valley where the lunar module was nestled as well as the mountains and craters that surrounded it.

When I asked him if he had had any sense of his remoteness from humanity, his response was a good-natured laugh. “We felt at home there!” They had done so much study of the terrain beforehand, including simulations, that from the moment they approached to land it all looked very familiar. This is where they were supposed to be!

Following Duke’s presentation we all were given a tour of the facility. My first visit there had been in 2022. At the time Cantrell’s effort was to aggressively succeed from his earlier failure at the rocket startup Vector, focusing this new company on building its Daytona rocket. After the tour I concluded as follows:
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