Tag: spaceflight

More Webb images released

9:08 am

Southern Ring Nebula, as taken by Webb
Click for full image.

As planned, NASA this morning released four new science images from the James Webb Space Telescope, in addition to the deep field image released yesterday.

All are spectacular, with each producing new information not previously observed. To see the Stephen’s Quintet image go here. For the exoplanet data, showing the presence of water in its atmosphere, go here. For the Carina nebula image, go here.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows the Southern Ring Nebula as taken by two Webb cameras in different infrared wavelengths. From the press release:

Two stars, which are locked in a tight orbit, shape the local landscape. Webb’s infrared images feature new details in this complex system. The stars – and their layers of light – are prominent in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) [at the top], while the image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the [bottom] shows for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust. The brighter star is in an earlier stage of its stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.

In the meantime, the brighter star influences the nebula’s appearance. As the pair continues to orbit one another, they “stir the pot” of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns.

Because this is an infrared image, the colors are not natural, but were assigned based on the slightly different infrared wavelengths produced by the object’s different features. From the image’s webpage:

Several filters were used to sample narrow and broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter.

Eventually astronomers will use Webb to look at many astronomical objects that Hubble has been observing for the past thirty years, adding a high resolution infrared view that will add to Hubble’s views.

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Superheavy prototype #7 explodes during tanking test

8:37 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Superheavy prototype #7 exploded yesterday during a tanking test in Boca Chica, Texas.

I have embedded the video of the explosion below, cued to just before it occurred.

According to Musk, the engineering teams are presently assessing damage. The booster itself appeared relatively intact afterward, though leaning slightly to one side.

At a minimum this incident will delay the orbital launch attempt, especially if booster #7 must be replaced with booster #8, already being prepped in the assembly building nearby.

» Read more

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First science image released from Webb

3:40 pm

Webb's first deep field image
Click for original image.

The first science image from the James Webb Space Telescope has now been unveiled.

That image is to the right, reduced to post here. From the press release:

Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

The smeared concentric arrangement of many reddish objects surrounding the picture’s center strongly suggests we are seeing distortion by the gravity of this galaxy cluster.

While nothing in this image appears at first glance to be different than many earlier Hubble images, it looks at objects in the infrared that are much farther away than anything ever seen before, farther than Hubble in the optical could see. To understand the new discoveries hidden in such an image will likely take several years of further research. For example, before astronomers can understand what this image shows they need to determine the red shift of each galaxy, thus roughly determining its distance and the overall 3D structure of the objects visible. Moreover, the consequences of the gravitational lensing must be unpacked.

The White House briefing itself was somewhat embarrassing to watch, as Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and NASA administrator Bill Nelson all struggled to explain what this image shows, and failed miserably. Moreover, the briefing had technical problems, started very late, and it appeared that Bill Nelson especially had no idea what he was looking at. The briefing also ended very abruptly when it shifted to reporters’ questions.

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Collapse pits on Mars

2:08 pm

Elongated collapse pit on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on May 21, 2022 and was today’s picture of the day from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed “An Elongated Collapse Pit” by the science team, their caption explains:

This observation can help to tell whether or not there is a subterranean connection to this pit. As an added bonus, the much smaller depression to its south also appears to be another collapse pit.

This image had already been in my queue for a future cool image post, but since the scientists have posted it, it is time that I did as well.

In the inset I have brightened the image drastically to try to illuminate the darkest spots in both pits. The elongated pit appears to slope downward towards a hole in the southeast corner, while the interior of the second pit to the south remains completely dark. Both appear to suggest a void below that both reach.

The wider context image and overview map below shows that there is further evidence of more voids in this region of Mars, dubbed Ceraunius Fossae, because of its many north-south parallel fissures.
» Read more

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More lacy Martian rocks

9:59 am

lacy Martian rock
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Because the Curiosity team is presently conducting a drilling campaign at its present position in the lower mountains of Gale Crater, the rover has not moved in the past few weeks. At these times, the science team also has the rover’s other cameras do extensive surveys of the surrounding terrain, including high resolution mosaics by its high resolution camera.

To the right is one photo from the most recent mosaic, cropped to post here. It was taken on July 10, 2022, and shows one many layered rock on the ground near the rover. Though no scale is provided, I suspect the extended flake from this rock is somewhere between six to twelve inches long.

Another illustration of the alien nature of Mars. This flake could not exist on Earth, where the heavier gravity and atmosphere would have acted to break it.

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Biden to unveil first Webb science image today

9:27 am

This should be entertaining: NASA today announced that the unveiling of the first science image from the James Webb Space Telescope has been moved up to later today, so that President Joe Biden can do the unveiling from the White House. From the NASA tweet:

We can’t contain the excitement for @NASAWebb’s first full-color images!

On Monday, July 11 at 5pm ET (21:00 UTC), President Biden will unveil one of the space telescope’s first images of deep space as a preview of what’s ahead.

It appears that the picture Biden will use in this photo op will be the only deep field cosmological picture scheduled for release:

SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.

The remaining four images will still be released on July 12, 2022, as originally planned.

The live stream of this event will be broadcast on NASA TV.

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SpaceX launches another 46 Starlink satellites

6:49 pm

Capitalism in space: Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX today successfully launched another 46 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

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

A minor note: SpaceX has clearly decided to simplify these broadcasts. Each is now starting much closer to launch, and the announcers have reduced their narration to the absolute minimum. Overall, this seems a wise policy, because though these live streams are good advertising, most of the people listening at this point do not need detailed explanations of everything. If anything, too much chatter is annoying, and as always less is more.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

29 SpaceX
21 China
9 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 41 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 41 to 36. The forty-one launches in just over half of ’22 beats the U.S.’s total for the whole year just two years ago.

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Elon Musk gives a tutorial on the Raptor-2 engine

6:16 pm

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut on Friday released another video from his most recent tour of Starbase at Boca Chica with Elon Musk. I have embedded it below.

Essentially, this 41 minute video is Elon Musk giving us a tutorial on how SpaceX simplified and improved its Raptor engines from its first iteration to the present Raptor-2. He does this while standing in front of a long row of finished Raptor-2s, all meant for installation in the seventh prototype of Superheavy, the booster now on the launchpad with those engines installed and being prepared for its first static fire test prior to the orbital flight.

Musk revealed two interesting factoids during this video. First SpaceX blew up approximately 20 to 30 Raptor engines during the development phase, and melted the chambers on another 50. All of this was perfectly acceptable, because they designed engine manufacture so that a high production rate was built in. As Musk noted, “A high production rate solves many ills.” Losing engines during testing and development was no big deal because they were able to quickly replace them, with revisions and upgrades.

Secondly, Musk claimed that the Raptor-2 engine has a 99% efficiency, a level of efficiency that is unheard of in any engine for any purpose ever. I wonder if that claim will hold up as new companies and engineers work to beat SpaceX in the coming centuries.

» Read more

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A galaxy with swirling arms

9:17 am

A galaxy with swirling arms
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released yesterday by the science team that operates the Hubble Space Telescope. It captures a galaxy about 520 million light years away that appears to have been reshaped due to a galaxy merger.

That merger somehow distorted the disk of the inner galaxy, the brightest area, while also producing two sweeping spiral streams in the surrounding periphery.

Despite its unusual shape, astronomers did not choose to study this galaxy. From the caption:

This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world who classified galaxies to help scientists solve a problem of astronomical proportions: how to sort through the vast amounts of data generated by telescopes. A public vote selected the most astronomically intriguing objects for follow-up observations with Hubble. CGCG 396-2 is one such object, imaged here by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

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The colorful layers of the Martian north pole icecap

1:44 pm

Colorful layers in the Martian north pole ice cap
Click for full image.

Wider view
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image above, rotated, reduced, and annotated to post here, comes from today’s picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which in turn is a retrospective of a captioned image first taken in 2010. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows a larger area to provide some context. For this image north is towards the top. The rectangle indicates the area covered by the picture above.

The ice cap at the north pole is about 600 miles across and a little less than 7,000 feet deep, made up of many layers that are a mixture of water ice and cemented dust and sand. From the picture’s caption:

In many locations erosion has created scarps and troughs that expose this layering. The tan colored layers are the dusty water ice of the polar layered deposits; however a section of bluish layers is visible below them. These bluish layers contain sand-sized rock fragments that likely formed a large polar dunefield before the overlying dusty ice was deposited.

The lack of a polar ice cap in this past epoch attests to the variability of the Martian climate, which undergoes larger changes over time than that of the Earth.

The overview map below provides some further context.
» Read more

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NASA announces the targets picked for Webb’s first science images

10:20 am

NASA today announced the astronomical targets scientists have chosen for the first infrared science images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope which will be unveiled on July 12, 2022.

  • Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.
  • WASP-96 b (spectrum). WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014.
  • Southern Ring Nebula. The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light years away from Earth.
  • Stephan’s Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1877. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.
  • SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.

That only the last image is focused on distant deep space cosmology, the scientific research that Webb’s infrared instruments are optimized for suggests that NASA wishes to highlight the telescope’s other observational possibilities.

The images will be released one by one during a press conference beginning at 10:30 am (Eastern) on July 12th. It is once again important to note that though the images are likely to be spectacular, they will be false color infrared images measuring the heat produced by the objects, not optical images that we could see with our eyes.

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OSIRIS-REx’s sample grab at Bennu in 2020 proved the rubble-pile asteroid has far less cohesion than predicted

10:10 am

The post touchdown crater on Bennu

The OSIRIS-REx science team, using data gathered during the spacecraft’s sample grab at Bennu in 2020, has determined that the rubble-pile asteroid has far less cohesion than predicted, with its rubble behaving less like a solid object and more like the playground ball-pits found in amusement parks.

After analyzing data gathered when NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020, scientists have learned something astonishing: The spacecraft would have sunk into Bennu had it not fired its thrusters to back away immediately after it grabbed dust and rock from the asteroid’s surface.

It turns out that the particles making up Bennu’s exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step onto Bennu they would feel very little resistance, as if stepping into a pit of plastic balls that are popular play areas for kids.

The image above shows what the touch down crater looked like after the sample grab, taken from the video that was part of the press release. The false colors indicate the depth changes produced by the touch down. The final crater was 26 feet across and more than two feet in depth, far larger than expected. Moreover, the energy from the spacecraft’s thrusters as it lifted off had increased the size of that crater further, by about 40%.

These results about the asteroid’s lack of cohesion match the earlier results studying a different impact crater on Bennu.

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Dish Network condemns Starlink and SpaceX study

9:42 am

Constellation wars! In an apparent response to the FCC’s decision last week to reject the Dish network’s request that the agency block Starlink from using the 12GHz frequency band so that Dish could use it, Dish (as part of a coalition) now claims that SpaceX’s study on the use of that band is “scientifically and logically flawed” and used “cherry-picked” data.

While the FCC had rejected Dish’s blocking request, it also said it was still studying whether Starlink’s orbital system and Dish’s ground-based system could both use the frequency at the same time. Today’s statement is obviously Dish’s effort to influence that FCC study.

The coalition’s full statement also said this about the request by Starlink to its customers to send their own comments to the FCC:

In addition to this manipulated filing, Starlink has initiated a public misinformation campaign by falsely telling customers and the public that coexistence is not possible in the band among Starlink and 5G services – despite nationwide data proving otherwise. This tactic, which is commonly used by Elon Musk, is not only disingenuous, but it promulgates an anti-5G narrative that is harmful to American consumers who deserve greater competition, connectivity options and innovation. It also stands to threaten America’s global leadership in the 5G and technology sector as other countries outpace the nation in delivering next-generation services.

This constellation war has hardly begun. Expect politicians to soon get involved, both pro and con, prompted by campaign contributions from the commercial players (which when paid to ordinary we call it “bribes”).

Meanwhile, SpaceX announced yesterday that Starlink is now offering its service to boat owners, though the service is hardly cheap.

Starlink Maritime costs $5,000 per month, plus an initial $10,000 fee that covers two high-performance satellite dishes. It promises to deliver download speeds of 350 Mbps. Regular Starlink internet costs $110 per month, along with $599 for the necessary hardware.

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X-37B sets new in-orbit record

9:23 am

The Space Force’s X-37B reusable mini-shuttle that is presently in orbit has now set a new mission record, spending more than 781 days in orbit.

As of today (July 7), the X-37B has been in Earth orbit for 781 days, breaking its previous record of 780. The reusable vehicle designed and built by Boeing is currently flying on its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which launched on May 17, 2020.

During this long flight one of the spacecraft’s few unclassified experiments successfully tested the conversion of solar power into beamed microwave energy.

The second X-37B in the fleet remains on the ground, having completed its 780 day mission in October 2019. We also do not know when the military will order the return of the X-37B in orbit. Only then will the mission really be a success.

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From the rim to the floor of Valles Marineris

5:01 pm

Overview map

From the rim to the floor of Valles Marineris
Click for full image.

For today’s cool Martian image, we begin from afar and zoom in. The overview map above shows the solar system’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris, 1,500 miles long, and 400 miles wide at its widest. The white dot on the north rim of the section of the canyon dubbed Melas marks the location of the photo to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here and taken on January 28, 2011 by the wide angle context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have added elevation numbers to this picture to give it some understandable scale. From the rim to the interior canyon floor — a distance of about ten miles — the canyon wall drops about 19,000 feet. Compare this with Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon, which from the rim to the Colorado River drops about 4,400 feet in about the same distance. The wall of Valles Marineris is about four times steeper.

Even that doesn’t give you the full scale. Having hiked down to that interior canyon floor, you are still about 10,000 feet above Valles Marineris’s main canyon floor, with fifteen more miles of hiking to go to reach it.

The white rectangle marks the area covered by the MRO high resolution image below.
» Read more

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CAPSTONE completes mid-course correction

10:39 am

Engineers at Advanced Space today successfully completed CAPSTONE’s first mid-course correction, following a quick investigation that determined why communications with the probe was lost for almost a full day.

The communications blackout was apparently due to software issues and human error.

During [in-flight] commissioning of NASA’s CAPSTONE (short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) spacecraft, the Deep Space Network team noted inconsistent ranging data. While investigating this, the spacecraft operations team attempted to access diagnostic data on the spacecraft’s radio and sent an improperly formatted command that made the radio inoperable. The spacecraft fault detection system should have immediately rebooted the radio but did not because of a fault in the spacecraft flight software.

CAPSTONE’s autonomous flight software system eventually cleared the fault and brought the spacecraft back into communication with the ground, allowing the team to implement recovery procedures and begin commanding the spacecraft again.

All looks good for a November 13, 2022 arrival in lunar orbit.

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Scientists: Impacts on rubble-pile asteroid are different than on planets

10:27 am

Landslide on Bennu from impact
Click for full image.

Using data collected by OSIRIS-REx at the asteriod Bennu, scientists have determined that the ejecta from impacts on a rubble-pile asteroid behaves in a very different manner than on planets with higher gravity.

Instead of flying away at about the same speed as the impactor and escaping into space, as expected in the weak gravity, the material is lifted up at a very slow speed, falls back down, and then rolls downhill like a landslide. The graphic to the right from the press release, reduced and enhanced to post here, illustrates what the scientists think happened when one of Bennu’s larger craters was created.

[M]ost of that material, called ejecta, returned to the surface and slid down the face of the asteroid, starting a wide avalanche that slowly rolled toward Bennu’s equator. Perry said the only way this could happen on a small object like Bennu, which is less than 500 meters (1,640 feet) in diameter and has low gravity, is if the dust had low or next to no cohesion.

“Because Bennu is so small, its escape velocity is less than a few tenths of a mile per hour, so any particle ejected faster than that would leave the surface,” he said. “These slow speeds are possible only if Bennu’s surface is weaker than we thought, even weaker than very loose, dry sand. This extremely low surface strength also means material on a slope is easily disturbed, and that’s what led to the landslide.”

In other words, the low cohesion prevents the impact’s energy from being transferred efficiently to the asteroid’s particles. They move, but only slowly, and thus end up sliding away more or less along the asteroid’s surface.

This discovery helps explain how these rubble-pile asteroids accumulate material, despite their low gravity.

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U.S. missile test explodes 11 seconds after launch

9:33 am

A test flight of a Minotaur missile with an updated warhead delivery system exploded 11 seconds after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 6th.

Despite a news release saying the Minotaur II+ test would take place Thursday morning from the northern section of the base, the launch occurred the night before, at 11:01 p.m.

More than an hour after liftoff, Vandenberg officials confirmed the booster had exploded approximately 11 seconds after launching from Test Pad 01. There were no injuries in the explosion and the debris was contained to the immediate vicinity of the launch pad, Vandenberg officials said in a statement released early Thursday.

The military would not explain the change in launch time, nor provide much information about the explosion. According to the article, it is even possible that the contradiction between the announced launch time and when it actually occurred was because “military officials failed to account for the one-hour time difference between California and the home of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.”

Seems utterly absurd, but completely possible considering the general overall incompetence of our modern federal government.

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Virgin Galactic is replacing its WhiteKnightTwo mother ship

9:21 am

Virgin Galactic yesterday announced that it has hired Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, to build two new mother ships to to replace WhiteKnightTwo and launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes.

Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier said: “Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America.” [emphasis mine]

The press release claims the first new mother ship will begin operations in 2025.

Forgive me if I am very very skeptical. The highlighted words tell us a lot about this company. First, we now have confirmation that the company has had problems maintaining WhiteKnightTwo. This fact was strongly implied when all planned flights in ’21 and ’22 were cancelled following that first passenger flight in July ’21 in order to do a full maintenance refit of WhiteKnightTwo. This press release tells us that the company’s management has recognized that WhiteKnightTwo cannot be maintained much longer.

Second, the company continues to overhype its future, even without Richard Branson. The chances of it flying 400 times per year, anytime in the near future, is so slim as to be non-existent.

Third, the need to hire an outside company to build these new mother ships also suggests that Virgin Galactic no longer has the capability of doing it itself.

Right now the company’s stock is selling for about $7 per share, well below its initial price of about $12. Expect it to fall again.

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

8:38 am

Capitalism in space: Earlier this morning SpaceX successfully launched 53 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage was flying its thirteenth flight, and supposedly landed successfully, though the stage’s video cut off just before landing, the drone ship video did not show it on the pad, and the confirmation of that landing was very late. It is possible it landed on a spot that the camera did not show, or that the landing occurred in the ocean and the stage was lost. We shall have to wait and see.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

28 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 40 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 40 to 35.

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Having regained communications with CAPSTONE, engineers prepare for first mid-course burn

8:55 pm

Engineers are now preparing CAPSTONE for its first first mid-course engine burn, slightly late due to a loss of communications during the past two days.

The spacecraft is in good health and functioning properly.

The CAPSTONE team is still actively working to fully establish the root cause of the issue. Ground-based testing suggests the issue was triggered during commissioning activities of the communications system. The team will continue to evaluate the data leading up to the communications issue and monitor CAPSTONE’s status.

If all goes well, that engine burn will occur as early as 11:30 am (Eastern) on July 7th.

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How did sand dunes get to the top of a Martian mesa?

1:51 pm

Sand dunes at the top of a Martian mountain
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows one of the peaks of a 5,000+ foot high mesa inside Juventai Chasma, one of Mars’ deep mostly-enclosed chasms north of Valles Marineris.

I grabbed this picture because its label, “Bedform Change Detection in Juventae Chasma”, suggested something had changed from past photos, probably related to the sand dunes that hug the upper slopes of this peak. Unfortunately, in comparing this image with the earliest high-res image taken by MRO back in February 2018, I could not spot any change, probably because the resolution of the pictures released is not as high as MRO’s raw images.

However, the caption written for that 2018 image tells us where that change has likely occurred:

This image reveals a unique situation where this small dune field occurs along the summit of the large 1-mile-tall [mesa] near the center of Juventae Chasma. The layered [mesa] slopes are far too steep for dunes to climb, and bedform sand is unlikely to come from purely airborne material. Instead, the mound’s summit displays several dark-toned, mantled deposits that are adjacent to the dunes and appear to be eroding into fans of sandy material.

In other words, somewhere in the full resolution image scientists have spotted a change in the bedform sands that make-up these high mountain dunes that hug the peak. Since the data so far has suggested that the source for the sand of these high elevation dunes likely comes from the mesa itself — not from any distant source — any change found will help confirm or disprove that hypothesis.

The white box indicates the area covered by the close-up higher resolution picture below. Also below is an overview map, showing both the location of this mountain in Juventai Chasma as well as Juventai’s location relative to Valles Marineris.
» Read more

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China begins construction of commercial spaceport

9:39 am

The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press today announced the ground-breaking of a spaceport on the southern island of Hainan that will be dedicated to launches by that country’s pseudo-commercial companies.

The location is in Wenchang City, the same location of the country’s Wenchang spaceport used to launch government’s newest Long March rockets. While it isn’t clear from the Chinese news report, this new facility is likely at the same location.

Though China touts this as a commercial facility for private commercial launch companies, everything in China is still controlled and owned by the government. Nothing will happen at this new site that China’s military does not approve.

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Rocket Lab to launch twice in 10 days for NRO

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced yesterday that its next two launches, scheduled for July 12th and July 22nd, will demonstrate the ability of the company to quickly launch reconnaissance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The NROL-162 and NROL-199 missions will carry national security payloads designed, built, and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office in partnership with the Australian Department of Defence as part of a broad range of cooperative satellite activities with Australia. The satellites will support the NRO to provide critical information to government agencies and decision makers monitoring international issues.

These twin missions will be a demonstration of responsive launch under NRO’s Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract for launching small satellite through a streamlined, commercial approach, and are the third and fourth missions contracted to Rocket Lab by the NRO under the contract.

Several federal military agencies have been testing this capability with almost all the new rocket companies, from the large, such as SpaceX, to the small, such as Rocket Lab and Astra.

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Engineers propose flying gliders on Mars

9:00 am

Proposed sailplane flights in Valles Marineris
Proposed sailplane flights in Valles Marineris. Click for full image.

Engineers at the University of Arizona are developing a prototype sailplane that they think could fly for long distances on Mars at higher altitudes than a helicopter and not be reliant on solar batteries.

Using dynamic soaring, the sailplane utilises increases in horizontal wind speed with gaining altitude to continue flying long distances. It’s the same process albatrosses use to fly long distances without flapping their wings and expending crucial energy.

After lifting themselves up into fast, high-altitude air, albatrosses then turn their bodies to descend rapidly into regions of slower, low-altitude air. With the force of gravity providing downward acceleration, the albatross uses this momentum to slingshot itself back to higher altitudes. Continuously repeating this process enables albatross and other seabird species to cover thousands of kilometres of ocean, flap-free.

It’s the inspiration for the sailplane’s own propulsion system, enabling it to cover the canyons and volcanoes dotted across the red planet currently inaccessible to Mars rovers.

The graphic above, figure 1 from the engineers’ research paper, shows one possible sailplane mission, deploying two gliders, one to observe the canyon wall and a second to survey the canyon floor. Both would become a weather station upon landing. While the paper doesn’t state a Mars location for this concept, the graphic strikes a strong resemblance to the section of Valles Marineris where scientists have recently taken “Mars Helicopter” high resolution images using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This paper and those images might be related, or they could be illustrating the general interest by many scientists for this Mars’ location.

Regardless, the engineers are now planning test flights at 15,000 feet elevation, an elevation that will most closely simulate the atmosphere of Mars, on Earth.

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Engineers lose contact with CAPSTONE on its way to Moon

2:24 pm

Shortly after the spacecraft was successfully deployed from its Proton upper stage on yesterday, engineers lost contact with the spacecraft as it headed towards the Moon.

“The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network,” NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in an emailed statement today (July 5).

“If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days,” Frazier added. “Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible.”

The spacecraft will not arrive in lunar orbit until November, but along the way it needs to do a number of course corrections. Thus, there is some time pressure to reestablishing communications. That task now falls with the private company Advanced Space, which won a contract to operate the spacecraft for NASA.

UPDATE: More details are provided by the operators of the spacecraft, Advanced Space press, here. Though they canceled a course correction burn today, they apparently have plenty of time to do it, since the probe is already on a course to reach lunar orbit. The burn was simply intended to increase the accuracy of the trajectory.

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Europe’s new long term space strategy calls for its own independent and competing manned program

10:25 am

Figure 6 from the Terrae Novae policy paper

The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday unveiled a new roadmap for its future space effort, aimed primarily in developing an independent space program capable of launching its own astronauts and taking them to both the Moon and Mars.

The program is dubbed Terrae Novae (“New Worlds”) and aims to put European astronauts on other worlds using its own rockets and landers by the 2030s. The graphic to the right, figure 6 from the policy paper, illustrates this long term goal.

From the full document [pdf]:
» Read more

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ArianeGroup chosen by Europe to develop reusable rockets

9:47 am

The new colonial movement: The European Commission, which makes the major decisions for the European Space Agency, has chosen the European commercial company ArianeGroup to run two programs designed to produce that continent’s first reusable rocket.

From the press release [pdf]:

The SALTO project will facilitate the first flight tests of the Themis reusable stage demonstrator in Kiruna, Sweden. The ENLIGHTEN project will speed up the development and introduction of reusable engine technologies.

The main goal of SALTO will be to develop the kind of vertical landing technology that SpaceX now does routinely. ENLIGHTEN in turn will develop rocket engines using either methane or hydrogen as the fuel. The total budget allocated for both is just under 50 million euros, which seems quite small. The press release also made no mention of a schedule for accomplishing these tasks.

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