Apophis: the asteroid that may someday hit the Earth

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
From the conference’s logo.

Last week planetary scientists held a three-day virtual conference focused on the asteroid Apophis, whose orbit regularly places it close to the Earth with a real possibility that it might someday hit the Earth.

When Apophis was originally discovered early in 2004, it wasn’t at first seen as an out-of-the-ordinary asteroid. Not much was known about it other than its albedo and that it was not trivial in size, probably around 1,000 feet in diameter. All this changed in December 2004, when further observations suggested that it had a 2.7% chance of impacting the Earth in 2029, making it the most dangerous asteroid ever discovered.

Fortunately, all subsequent observations of the asteroid have since eliminated any possibility of an impact, at least through the year 2068. Depending on what happens during the 2029 and 2036 fly-bys of Earth, there is a very small chance that it could hit the Earth in 2068, though the data says the chances of that happening are quite small (1 in 150,000).

On April 13, 2029 however Apophis will still zip past the Earth less than 20,000 miles above its surface, well within the orbit of all geosynchronous satellites. For viewers in Europe and Africa it will be a naked eye object, with a magnitude of -3.

Because the date of that close fly-by is so well known, and because this asteroid still poses a threat to the Earth, the planetary science community is very much interested in taking advantage of that close approach. From the conference’s webpage:

Knowledge is the first line of planetary defense, and the 2029 Apophis encounter is a once-per-thousand-year opportunity for investigating an asteroid as large as 350 meters passing within 6 Earth-radii. Time is of the essence as we have less than a decade to plan Earth-based and possible in-situ missions whose measurements can deliver unprecedented detailed knowledge on the physical nature of Apophis as the prototype example (poster child) of potentially hazardous asteroids.

I attended that conference, and am here now to give a summary.
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Jupiter’s stormy southern polar regions

Jupiter's polar regions
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right shows the southern polar regions of Jupiter. The image, taken by Juno during its 29th close-fly of Jupiter, was enhanced by a citizen scientist who only goes by the nickname Flury-21. This in fact was this person’s first try at enhancing a Juno image. He or she did a nice job, but provided no additional information other than saying that he “used lightroom to enhance the image and mostly used the dehaze effect.”

Works nicely nonetheless to illustrate how the bands that dominate Jupiter’s equatorial and mid-latitude regions disappear at the pole. Instead, the pole is a region of chaotic independent hurricanes, many bigger than North America. Other images from Juno suggest that they change relatively quickly. For example, compare this image of the south pole with an earlier one taken during the 28th fly-by. While we might not be looking at the same hemisphere, it is hard to believe there is no overlap between both images. Yet I can find no corresponding features.

The two images of course were taken months apart, and thus it is not surprising the storms have changed completely. However, I also suspect, given their size, that even over this time span some storms have survived, but changed so much it is hard to link them together. The only way to do this would be to have an orbiter close enough all the time to make movies. Unfortunately, Juno cannot do this, and I don’t expect any orbiter like this to reach Jupiter for many decades.

Boeing hires former SpaceX software engineer

Capitalism in space: Boeing has hired a former SpaceX software engineer to head software development for the company.

Boeing on Friday announced it hired Jinnah Hosein as vice president of software engineering, a new role at the aerospace giant. The job will lead a centralized organization of engineers developing software across Boeing’s portfolio of products. Hosein will report to Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief engineer and senior vice president of engineering, test and technology.

…Hosein’s resume reads like a defense industry wish list of Silicon Valley stops. He worked as Google’s director of software engineering for cloud networking, helped design Tesla’s autopilot software and most recently worked as software lead for self-driving startup Aurora.

But it’s his experiences at SpaceX — where he was key to software development for the Falcon, Falcon Heavy, Dragon and Crew Dragon vehicles — that Boeing may look to draw from the most. Boeing and SpaceX have fiercely competed over NASA’s manned space programs, and SpaceX is a competitor for military space launches against the United Launch Alliance, which is co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Since software was the main issue that grounded Boeing’s 737-Max airplane as well as caused the serious problems on the first unmanned demo flight of the company’s Starliner capsule, this hire appears to be aimed at fixing these software issues. In both cases the management philosophy behind developing and testing software was very flawed, leaving the product saddled with software that either didn’t work properly or was not tested properly in development.

I imagine Boeing’s top management is hoping Hosein can bring to Boeing some of the agile, focused, and very successful management style found at SpaceX.

Canada’s government approves Starlink service

Capitalism in space: Canada’s government yesterday announced that it has given final approval to SpaceX’s Starlink internet service to offer those services in that country.

More here.

This final approval came from the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) agency, which appears designed to protect Canadian businesses from foreign competition. It had appeared initially that they had been stalling giving their approval (maybe for political reasons). The delay however could simply have been the slowness of operation which is typical of such government bureaucracies. As noted at the first link above, however “Clearly, the government heard the demand from consumers to get this service approved.” And since there are no Canadian companies that can offer this service, it was absurd not to okay SpaceX’s operation.

This approval means that Starlink is now posed to begin commercial operations, actually selling its internet service to the public, and doing it ahead of its primary competitor, OneWeb. Considering that OneWeb had started development and satellite launching first, this achievement illustrates again SpaceX’s nimble and fast approach to business. The company does not waste time in anything it does. It might not meet all of its scheduling goals, but not for want of trying.

SpaceX has already been offering the service in its test market in the northern U.S. for the price of $99 per month plus an initial fee of $499 for equipment, with the initial user reports very positive.

Chinese pseudo-company launches first satellite

The new colonial movement: The pseudo-private Chinese company Galactic Energy today successfully completed its first orbital launch, placing a small satellite into orbit using its Ceres-1 rocket.

Galactic Energy is the fourth Chinese private launch company overall to make an orbital launch attempt, all with light-lift solid launchers. Landspace made the first attempt in October 2018, with OneSpace following in March 2019. In July last year iSpace became the first to successfully achieve orbit with its Hyperbola-1 launch.

The 19-meter-long, 1.4-meter-diameter Ceres-1 can loft 350 kilograms to low Earth orbit or 230 kilograms to a 700-kilometer SOO. It consists of three solid stages and an advanced liquid upper stage. [emphasis mine]

That all of these companies are using solid rockets explains why I call them “pseudo private.” They might be raising independent venture capital money to fund their operations, and they might be aimed at earning a profit, but solid rocket technology is always the primary technology used for military missiles, and none of these Chinese companies could do anything without the close and very firm permission and supervision of the Chinese communist government. In fact, their very existence is likely because that Chinese communist government wants them to exist.

Nonetheless, this launch raises China’s launch capabilities. The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

29 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. is still ahead of China, 30 to 29, in the national rankings.

India successfully completes first launch in 2020

For the first time in 2020 India has launched a rocket, successfully placing ten satellites into orbit using its PSLV rocket.

The primary payload was an Indian Earth resource satellite dubbed EOS-1.

When the year started ISRO, India’s space agency, had predicted it would complete twelve launches in 2020, which would have been a record for their nation. Then the panic over COVID-19 set in, and they canceled everything for months on end. This long stand down will likely cause delays in all their long term programs including their effort to launch their own astronauts on their own rocket in their own capsule.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race remain the same:

28 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. remains ahead of China 30 to 28 in the national rankings..

NASA offers public chance to experience next manned mission virtually

NASA is now offering the general public the opportunity to virtually experience the next manned Dragon flight to ISS, set to launch on November 14th.

“Members of the public can attend the launch virtually, receiving mission updates and opportunities normally reserved for on-site guests,” NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday (Nov. 3). “NASA’s virtual launch experience for Crew-1 includes curated launch resources, a digital boarding pass, notifications about NASA social interactions and the opportunity for a virtual launch passport stamp following a successful launch,” the agency added.

While much of this will be fun to do, much of it is also pure hype, designed to sell NASA to the public, even though the mission is being launched and run almost entirely by the private commercial company SpaceX, not NASA.

Company defends its satellite constellation from NASA criticism

The founder of AST & Science, the company that wishes to launch a constellation of 243 communications satellites, has defended its effort from criticisms expressed by NASA in a comment to the FCC.

“We’re not a bunch of cowboys launching satellites,” said Abel Avellan, founder of AST & Science, in an interview. “This is a serious, well-funded project.” … Avellan said the “SpaceMobile” satellites do indeed have a very large cross-sectional area perpendicular to the ground, as this is the only way to deliver direct satellite-to-broadband signals. “There is no magic,” he said. “If you want something to connect directly to a handset, it’s not going to be a CubeSat.”

Each of the satellites will include a large antenna, comprising an area as large as 900 meters squared. However, Avellan said the satellites will fly edge-on, “like a frisbee, but without the spinning.” He said the satellites’ cross-section along the direction of motion is only about 3 meters squared. The company has calculated that the probability of a collision occurring at random—assuming no avoidance maneuver—to be only about 1-in-5,000 over its lifetime, or 1-in-20 across the entire constellation.

It appears that neither the company nor NASA has as yet begun direct discussions about these issues. NASA’s concerns however could seriously hamper the company’s future.

United Arab Emirates announce plans for lunar rover mission

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced plans to launch its first unmanned probe to the Moon, a small rover dubbed Rashid with a target launch date in 2024.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai says its in-house teams will develop, build and operate the 10-kilogram rover, which is named after the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who ruled Dubai at the UAE’s creation in 1971.

The team will hire an as-yet unannounced space agency or commercial partner to carry out the launch and landing, the riskiest part of the mission. If successful Rashid would be one of several rovers made by private firms and space agencies that are set to populate the Moon by 2024.

This project is a great opportunity for the various new private aerospace companies in the U.S. developing interplanetary capabilities for sale to others.

China launches ten satellites for Argentinian company

China today used its Long March 6 rocket to successfully launch ten satellites for the Argentinian company Satellogic S.A.

The satellites form the beginning of a 25-satellite constellation designed to do Earth resource observations. The Chinese rocket in turn is designed to capture the emerging smallsat market.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

28 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. remains ahead of China 30 to 28 in the national rankings.

SpaceX launches Space Force GPS satellite

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched the GPS satellite that on a previous launch had experienced a launch abort at T-2.

This was a completely new Falcon 9 rocket, with two of its original engines replaced after the company had traced the issue that caused the launch abort. The first stage successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, and will fly again on the next GPS launch by SpaceX for the Space Force.

The satellite has been deployed successfully, completing the launch.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

27 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 30 to 27 in the national rankings.

Rocket Lab will try to recover 1st stage on next launch

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced today that it will attempt to recover the 1st stage of its Electron rocket on its next launch, using parachutes to slow its descent into the ocean and then fishing from the sea.

On its next mission set for liftoff later this month, Rocket Lab will try to recover the first stage of its Electron small satellite launcher after parachuting into the Pacific Ocean downrange from the company’s privately-run spaceport in New Zealand, officials announced Thursday.

The attempt to retrieve the Electron rocket’s first stage moves Rocket Lab closer to eventually capturing falling boosters in mid-air with a helicopter, then reusing the hardware. The reuse initiative is aimed at increasing Rocket Lab’s flight rate, and could result in cost savings, according to Peter Beck, the company’s founder and CEO.

The flight is presently scheduled for November 15 from New Zealand. It appears the goal with this recovery is not to reuse the 1st stage, but to recover it so they can determine how it fared during re-entry. For re-use they will capture the first stage using a helicopter, before splashdown and is exposed to saltwater.

When they attempt the helicopter capture on an actual launch remains unclear.

Terraced mesa inside Martian depression

Terraced mesa inside depression
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 1, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a very puzzling terraced mesa inside an enclosed depression or sinkhole (the western half of which can be seen in the full image).

What caused that mesa? A first scan of the image and the data suggests we are looking at sinkage related to the melting of an underground ice table. The latitude here is 34 degrees south, just far enough away from the equator for glacial activity to be possible. Moreover, the small circular depression in the upper right of the image strongly suggests an impact crater into slushy material. The implication is that this depression is the result of the melting or sublimation of underground ice, leaving behind a mesa that is made of solider stuff.

Another possibility is that the terraced mesa is actually the remains of glacial material. In the full image features inside other nearby depressions are terraced also, but are also much more reminiscent of glacial features found in many craters in the mid-latitudes. The depression is also close to the headwaters of Reull Valles, a meandering canyon where many images have shown glacial features (see for example here, here, and here).

These features however could also have nothing to do with water ice.
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Bezos sells another $3 billion of Amazon shares

Jeff Bezos continues to accelerate his sale of his Amazon stock, selling another $3 billion this week.

In August, Bezos offloaded more than $3.1 billion of Amazon shares, after selling more than $4.1 billion worth of shares in February. The sales this week bring his total cash out in 2020 to more than $10.2 billion so far, which is a notable jump from 2019, when Bezos sold $2.8 billion worth of shares.

While Bezos had originally said these sales were for financing his space company, Blue Origin, it now appears that the bulk of this new money is aimed at funding environmental political organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund.

Overview of China’s lunar sample return mission

Chang'e-5 landing site on Moon

Link here. The Chinese mission, the first to bring back lunar samples since the 1970s, is now set for launch on November 24, 2020.

Chang’e-5 includes a lander, ascender, orbiter and returner. After the spacecraft enters the Moon’s orbit, the lander-and-ascender pair will split off and descend close to Mons Rümker, a 1,300-metre-high volcanic complex in the northern region of Oceanus Procellarum — the vast, dark lava plains visible from Earth. Once the craft has touched down, it will drill up to 2 metres into the ground and extend a robotic arm to scoop up about 2 kilograms of surface material. The material will be stored in the ascender for lift-off.

The descent and ascent will take place over one lunar day, which is equivalent to around 14 Earth days, to avoid the extreme overnight temperatures that could damage electronics, says Clive Neal, a geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

…Once the ascender is back in lunar orbit, the samples will be transferred to the returner. This in-flight rendezvous will be complex and “a good rehearsal for future human exploration”, says James Carpenter, a research coordinator for human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. China plans to send people to the Moon from around 2030.

The Chang’e-5 spacecraft will then journey back to Earth, with the lander parachuting toward Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia, northern China, probably sometime in early December.

The location, as shown in the image above, is in the northern mid-latitudes of the Moon’s nearside, and is a place where some relatively recent volcanic activity might have occurred, though still in the far past.

Why Martian mountains are different than on Earth

A mountain peak on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 12, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what to any Earthling’s eye appears to be a somewhat ordinary flat-topped mountain peak with two major flanking ridgelines descending downward to the north and the south, and two minor ridgelines descending to the northwest and southwest.

This peak and its landscape would surely be quite a spectacularly place to visit, should humans ever settle Mars and begin doing sightseeing hikes across its more interesting terrain. I can definitely imagine hiking trails coming up the two minor ridges, with a crest trail traversing the main north-south ridge across the peak.

This is not however a mountain on Earth. It is on Mars, which makes its formation and evolution over time fundamentally different than anything we find on Earth, despite its familiar look.

First, what formed it? Unlike most of Earth’s major mountain chains, the mountains of Mars were not formed by the collision of tectonic plates, squeezing the crust upward. Mars does not have plate tectonics. Most of its mountains formed either from the rise of volcanoes at single hot spots, or from the wearing away of the surrounding terrain to leave behind a peak or mesa.
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First fast radio burst detected in Milky Way

Astronomers using both space- and ground-based telescopes have detected for the first time a fast radio burst occurring inside the Milky Way, finding that it came from a magnetar, a pulsar with an extremely powerful magnetic field.

The radio component was discovered by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a radio telescope located at Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia and led by McGill University in Montreal, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto.

A NASA-funded project called Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) also detected the radio burst seen by CHIME. Consisting of a trio of detectors in California and Utah and operated by Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, STARE 2 is led by Bochenek, Shri Kulkarni at Caltech, and Konstantin Belov at JPL. They determined the burst’s energy was comparable to FRBs.

By the time these bursts occurred, astronomers had already been monitoring their source for more than half a day.

Late on April 27, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory spotted a new round of activity from a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 (SGR 1935 for short) located in the constellation Vulpecula. It was the object’s most prolific flare-up yet – a storm of rapid-fire X-ray bursts, each lasting less than a second. The storm, which raged for hours, was picked up at various times by Swift, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope mounted on the International Space Station.

Later observations detected X-rays from the same source. While this does not prove that all fast radio bursts come from magnetars, it does prove that at least some do.

New owners for Vector to revive company

Capitalism in space: The new owners for bankrupt smallsat rocket company Vector have announced that they plan to revive the company.

In their announcement they confirmed that the key problem that killed the original company were engineering issues with its chosen engine design.

One thing they did wrong was the technology the used for their engines. “They had some Achilles’ heels associated with their technical approach. They were trying to use a propellant combination that was untested in the industry,” said Chris Barker, who serves as Vector’s chief rocket scientist. “They were struggling with trying to get performance that they knew they needed for a small launcher to be successful, and ultimately their test program was unsuccessful.”

Vector had been developing engines that used propylene and liquid oxygen propellants. The new Vector plans to instead use engines powered by a more conventional combination of liquid oxygen and refined kerosene, or RP-1, propellants. Barker has been developing such engines since the 1990s for companies such as Space America and Earth to Sky.

The new owners also stated that initially they plan to target the suborbital business field. Their main focus right now is redesigning the Vector-R rocket in conjunction with their engines.

Russians aim for Dec for fixing ISS leak permanently

The Russians announced yesterday that they plan the full and permanent repair of the small inch-long crack leaking air on ISS to occur in December, after required material is shipped to the station.

According to the official, the crack was the width of a hair and located in a hard-to-reach spot of Zvezda’s shell.

Solovyov did not specify the spacecraft that will deliver the sealing materials to the ISS, but the only one scheduled to fly in December is Cargo Dragon, a reusable freight spaceship of US private company SpaceX. The soonest flight of a Russian cargo spacecraft — Progress MS-16 — has been postponed until December 2021.

They also plan a spacewalk in the next two weeks to inspect the exterior of the Zvezda module where the crack is located.

I have yet to see an image of the crack itself. Why none has been made easily available is somewhat puzzling.

NASA officially expresses concerns about proposed private communications constellation

For what appears to be an unprecedented action, NASA has officially expressed opposition to a proposed private satellite constellation by the company AST & Science.

NASA’s position was released in a comment to the FCC, where the company has requested a communications license to operate its satellites.

At issue are plans put forth by AST & Science, which intends to build a constellation of more than 240 large satellites, essentially deploying “cell towers” in space to provide 4G and possibly 5G broadband connection directly to cell phones on Earth. The company, based in Midland, Texas, calls its constellation “SpaceMobile” and has raised an estimated $120 million.

The space agency felt compelled to comment on AST’s proposal for several reasons. Most notably, the proposed altitude for the SpaceMobile constellation lies near the “A-Train,” a group of 10 Earth-science monitoring satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, as well as partners in France and Japan. “Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects,” the NASA letter states.

The satellites are also very large. In order to provide service, AST plans to build spacecraft with large phased array antennae—900 square meters. According to NASA, in planning for potential conjunctions with other satellites and debris in this orbit, this would require proscribing a “hard-body radius” of 30 meters, or as much as 10 times larger than other satellites.

Maneuvering around the proposed SpaceMobile constellation would be extraordinarily taxing, NASA said. “For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities,” the space agency stated. “This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”

The company has said it is willing to work with NASA to ease its concerns. For NASA to take this particular step however is most strange, especially considering the size of this constellation, 240 satellites. This number is tiny compared to the multi-thousands being proposed by SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb. Their large size footprint certainly could be a factor, but it does seem puzzling for the space agency to pick out this particular constellation for opposition, and none of the others.

Signal to Voyager-2 confirms upgrade of NASA’s Deep Space Network

After months of downtime in order to install a major and very badly needed upgrade to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) (the worldwide array of radio dishes used to communicate with planetary probes throughout the solar system) a test command to Voyager-2 beyond the orbit of Pluto was sent, received, and executed successfully this week, proving the upgrade is working.

The call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware recently installed on Deep Space Station 43, the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2. Located in Canberra, Australia, it is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), a collection of radio antennas around the world used primarily to communicate with spacecraft operating beyond the Moon. Since the dish went offline, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able to send commands to the far-flung probe, which has traveled billions of miles from Earth since its 1977 launch.

Among the upgrades to DSS43, as the dish is known, are two new radio transmitters. One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics needed to run the new transmitters.

The successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will be back online in February 2021.

The upgrade has been overdue for years, and is essential to provide sufficient communications capability for the future interplanetary mission presently planned.

Layered mesa on Mars

Layered mesa on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 24, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a distinctive mesa in a mountainous region in the cratered highlands of Mars, just north of Hellas Basin, the deepest basin on the red planet.

The mesa’s most distinctive feature are its terraced layers, a feature that MRO has found in numerous other places surrounding and inside Hellas Basin (see for example the cool images here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

On Earth the assumption would be that these terraced layers imply different sedimentary layers that erode at different rates, as best illustrated by the Grand Canyon in Arizona. On Mars that assumption is not unreasonable, but unlike Earth, those layers could not have been formed in connection with large ocean bodies creating seafloor layers from the deposit of sealife over centuries. Some other geological process over time formed them, with volcanism, either from volcanoes or impact, being the most likely.
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SpaceX to live stream 50,000 foot hop of Starship

Capitalism in space: Elon Musk yesterday announced that SpaceX will publicly live stream the 50,000-foot hop of Starship prototype #8, expected sometime in the next two weeks. His tweet:

Sure, although it might be quite a short livestream! Lot can go wrong, but we’ll provide video, warts & all. You will see every frame that we do.

Up until now the public has had to depend on the independent live streams being put out by local residents still living in Boca Chica, Texas, which did not know SpaceX’s exact schedule. When SpaceX does it they will likely provide more specific launch times. They will also probably provide detailed accurate commentary.

Also, this update on the status of Starship development notes that the primary goal of that hop is testing the ability of the ship’s fins and systems to control the ship’s initial descent on its return to Earth, flying on its side like the Space Shuttle. If they have problems getting the ship upright for a vertical landing and it ends up in the ocean that will not surprise them. A successful vertical landing would be icing on the cake.

Another movie of OSIRIS-REx’s sample-grab-and-go at Bennu

The OSIRIS-REx science team has released another movie showing the sample-grab-and-go at Bennu, this time from a different camera.

The movie, made up of 189 images taken over three hours by the spacecraft’s navigation camera NavCam-2, can be seen at the link.

In the middle of the sequence, the spacecraft slews, or rotates, so that NavCam 2 looks away from Bennu, toward space. OSIRIS-REx then performs a final slew to point the camera (and the sampling arm) toward the surface again.

As the spacecraft nears site Nightingale, the sampling arm’s shadow comes into view in the lower part of the frame. Shortly after, the sampling head impacts site Nightingale (just outside the camera’s field of view to the upper right) and fires a nitrogen gas bottle, which mobilizes a substantial amount of the sample site’s material. Several seconds later, the spacecraft performs a back-away burn and the sampling arm’s shadow is visible against the disturbed surface material.

The team continues to investigate what caused the extremely dark areas visible in the upper and middle parts of the frame. The upper area could be the edge of the depression created by the sampling arm, a strong shadow cast by material lofted from the surface, or some combination of the two. Similarly, the middle dark region that first appears in the lower left of the image could be a depression caused by one of the spacecraft thrusters as it fired, a shadow caused by lofted material, or a combination of both.

It strikes me that getting post impact images of Nightingale is essential, if at all possible.

A buried crater on Mars

Close overview map

The overview map to the left indicates the general terrain surrounded today’s cool image. The white rectangle is the area covered by this image, taken on July 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. If you look close you can see that this photograph covers the eastern rim of what looks like an ancient and mostly buried crater on Mars. This unnamed crater is about 17 miles across.
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New data: young red dwarf stars are not nice stars for life

New data from both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope has reinforced earlier data that suggested the strong flares emitted by young red dwarf stars make them inhospitable to the development of life on any planet in the habitable zone.

A new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope examined the red dwarf called Barnard’s Star, which is about 10 billion years old, more than twice the current age of the Sun. Red dwarf stars are much cooler and less massive than the Sun, and are expected to live much longer lives because they do not burn through their fuel as fast. Barnard’s Star is one of the closest stars to Earth at a distance of only 6 light-years.

Young red dwarfs, with ages less than a few billion years, are known as strong sources of high-energy radiation, including blasts of ultraviolet light and X-rays. However, scientists know less about how much damaging radiation red dwarfs give off later in their lifetimes.

The new observations concluded that about 25% of the time, Barnard’s Star unleashes scorching flares, which may damage the atmospheres of planets closely orbiting it. While its only known planet does not have habitable temperatures, this study adds to evidence that red dwarfs may present serious challenges for life on their planets.

It is very important to remember that this data makes difficult the formation of life, as we know it. Since we know so little about such processes, as well as the formation processes of solar systems, it is too early to say whether no life can ever form around such stars.

Scientists confirm another 44 black hole mergers detected by gravitational waves

Scientists have now confirmed that since the first detection of a gravitational wave five years ago they have detected another 44 black hole mergers in the same manner.

A global network of scientists has completed the first major analysis of gravitational wave data, providing exciting insights into some of the most exotic objects in the Universe. “We are announcing the discovery of 44 confirmed black hole mergers, which is a more than a four-fold increase in the number of previously known gravitational-wave signals,” says Shanika Galaudage from Australia’s Monash University, who was part of the research team.

…Their results are described in a trio of papers on the pre-print server arXiv. The first paper describes 39 new detections from the first half of the observing run, primarily of binary black hole systems. This brings the total number of gravitational wave events detected to 47, of which 44 are confidently double black holes, two are confidently double neutron stars, and one is still uncertain.

They think they are detecting more black hole mergers because they are heavier and thus emit bigger and more easily detected waves. They are also finding that the black hole mergers fall into two classes, two holes spinning in the same direction and two holes spinning in opposite or randomly different directions. The former formed together as a binary star system. The latter formed independently and somehow ended up linked up and merging.

U.S. court orders India’s s space agency ISRO to pay $1.2 billion

A U.S. court has ordered Antrix, the commercial arm of India’s space agency ISRO, to pay $1.2 billion to Devas, a private company with operations in both India and the United States, for a contract they canceled arbitrarily in 2011.

This is a very complicated story going back many years. ISRO’s Antrix and Devas had agreements beginning in 2005 to work together to develop commercial satellites, with Antrix building the satellites and Devas commercializing bandwidth. In 2011 the India government cancelled the contracts unilaterally.

On February 25, 2011, Antrix issued a termination notice to Devas, which among other things stated that the policy decision was of the central government, acting in its sovereign capacity is the event of force majeure, which was an occurrence on February 23, 2011, PTI report said. “The scope and duration of the said decision cannot be anticipated. It is likely to be indefinite. It is not possible for Antrix to take any effective step to resume the obligations under the agreement,” Antrix was quoted as saying.

One of the reasons for the cancellation were accusations that payoffs were occurring between officials at both Antrix and Devas to make the deal happen.

Devas has been fighting in numerous courts for years to get compensation for that cancellation.

ISRO can probably ignore this U.S. court decision, except that if it does it will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for ISRO to do any work in partnership with the U.S., such as in the Artemis program. As soon as they try to do so, Devas will slap a lien on that operation, demanding payment.

Russian astronaut: Crack on ISS could be from “external impact”

Russian astronaut, Sergei Ryzhikov, today noted that to him the 1-inch crack causing the leak on ISS appeared to have been caused by an “external impact.”

Speaking with Flight Director of the Russian segment of the ISS Vladimir Solovyov, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov said: “If you take a closer look at the picture, there are changes of color in the middle of the crack.”

“We suspect an external impact,” Ryzhikov said adding that the place of the suspected impact should be examined during the crew’s next spacewalk, which is scheduled for November 18.

This conclusion is different than that expressed yesterday by another Russian astronaut, who suggested the crack was from age and wear and tear of the twenty-year-old Zvezda module.

Either way, an inspection of the exterior point of the crack is essential in order to permanently seal it, and that inspection will tell us one way or the other the cause of the crack.

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