Year: 2018

Curiosity resumes science operations

9:50 am

Though NASA has yet to announce this officially, Curiosity’s science team has made it clear that they are in the process this week of resuming full science operations.

Today was the first day of planning with the full science team since Curiosity had an anomaly on sol 2172. It has been a over a month since we last looked at the “workspace,” the region in front of the rover that the arm can reach, and there were some surprises in store for us! Before the anomaly, the rock was covered with gray-colored tailings from our failed attempt to drill the “Inverness” target, as seen in the Mastcam image from sol 2170. In the new image above, however, those tailings are now gone – and so is a lot of the dark brown soil and reddish dust. So while Curiosity has been sitting still, the winds have been moving, sweeping the workspace clean.

Those operations can also be seen in the images the rover is sending down. For the first time in almost six weeks images are arriving daily, from multiple cameras, and in large numbers.

What we yet don’t have is a detailed description outlining why it took so long to get the second computer up and running, and what they are doing, if anything, to repair the computer that produced the problems last month.

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Rocket Lab adds two more satellites to its November 11 launch

9:43 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has signed on a new customer for its next Electron launch on November 11, adding two more satellites to the rocket’s payload.

US/New Zealand orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has signed a contract with Australian Internet of Things (IoT) start-up Fleet Space Technologies to launch two satellites from Fleet’s Proxima series, which will form the foundation of a global IoT communications constellation. The satellites have been added to the manifest for Rocket Lab’s upcoming mission, ‘It’s Business Time’, scheduled for launch on November 11 from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula.

The Fleet satellites will join other payloads for the launch: two Spire Global Lemur-2 satellites, the Irvine CubeSat STEM Program (ICSP) IRVINE01 educational CubeSat, NABEO, a drag sail technology demonstrator designed and built by High Performance Space Structure Systems GmBH and a GeoOptics Inc. satellite, built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

Thus, a lot will be riding on the success of this launch. It will only be the third time the company has attempted to launch Electron. So far, they have only had one successful launch.

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SpaceX confirms it will do first hopper tests of BFR in Boca Chica

9:34 am

Capitalsm in space: SpaceX has now confirmed that it will do the first hopper flight tests of its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) in its new spaceport facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

They hope to start these flight tests as soon as late 2019, but don’t be surprised if they don’t meet that date. It also appears that these test flights will be of the BFR’s first stage as well as its upper stage, presently dubbed the Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS). This upper stage is being designed somewhat like a space shuttle, capable of gliding into the atmosphere in order to shed speed. Unlike the shuttle, however, it will then land vertically.

In related news, the Air Force has admitted that it is having discussions with SpaceX about someday using the BFR to transport cargo from point-to-point, on the Earth.

The article at the link gives the impression that the Air Force is discussing this with multiple companies, but right now the only rocket being designed and built that would be capable of doing this at a reasonable price would be SpaceX’s BFR.

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Neil Armstrong’s personal collection up for auction

9:25 am

Neil Armstrong’s collection of space and personal memorabilia is now being put up for auction.

The items up for auction span Armstrong’s life, from his Boy Scout cap to the Wright Flyer fragments. But other items Heritage thinks will generate interest include a small American flag that went to the moon and back with Armstrong, as well as an envelope signed by him, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and their third crewmate, Michael Collins. The envelope was considered “insurance cover” that family members could sell if the astronauts failed to return.

The auction will be held this week, on November 1st and 2nd. It is the first time material from Armstrong has ever been made available for purchase.

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Parker sets new records in its flight to the Sun

9:19 am

The Parker Solar Probe has set two new space records, first for making the closest approach to the Sun as well as becoming the fastest spacecraft ever.

The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface on Oct. 29, 2018, at about 1:04 p.m. EDT, as calculated by the Parker Solar Probe team. The previous record for closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.”

Parker Solar Probe is also expected to break the record for fastest spacecraft traveling relative to the Sun on Oct. 29 at about 10:54 p.m. EDT. The current record for heliocentric speed is 153,454 miles per hour, set by Helios 2 in April 1976.

We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is only the first orbit. With each later orbit the spacecraft will zip past the Sun faster, and closer.

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Russia to disassemble the next Soyuz rocket scheduled for launch

9:08 am

In order to make sure it was assembled correctly and will separate properly, Russian engineers plan to disassemble the four strap-on boosters of the next scheduled Soyuz rocket and then put it back together for its November launch.

I wonder however if they are studying this assembly process to figure out why the manned Soyuz rocket that failed on October 11 was assembled badly so that they can revise that process. It sounds like they are merely checking to make sure the rocket is put together right, without figuring out what went wrong.

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IAU once again sticks it to an American scientist, devaluing Edwin Hubble

9:00 am

In what is already seen by many scientists as an inappropriate action, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) this week voted to change the name of Hubble’s Law to the Hubble-Lemaître Law.

Hubble’s Law, a cornerstone of cosmology that describes the expanding universe, should now be called the Hubble-Lemaître Law, following a vote by the members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the same organization that revoked Pluto’s status as a planet. The change is designed to redress the historical neglect of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and priest who in 1927 discovered the expanding universe—which also suggests a big bang. Lemaître published his ideas 2 years before U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble described his observations that galaxies farther from the Milky Way recede faster.

There are so many things about this that are wrong it is hard to keep count. First, the IAU was never given the right to change the name of a scientific concept. It’s original job was merely to systemize the naming of astronomical objects, and that alone.

Second, it appears to be based on a misunderstanding of basic science.

The resolution has also come under fire for confusing two different issues: the expansion of the universe and the distance-velocity relation for galaxies, which is also known as the Hubble constant. Hubble never claimed to have discovered cosmic expansion, but did do much of observing work to nail down how fast the universe was expanding. “If the law is about the empirical relationship, it should be Hubble’s Law,” Kragh says. “If it is about cosmic expansion, it should be Lemaître’s Law.”

Third, it relies on bad history.

The text of the IAU resolution, circulated to members ahead of the vote, asserts that Hubble and Lemaître met in 1928, at an IAU general assembly in Leiden, the Netherlands—between the publication of their two papers—and “exchanged views” about the blockbuster theory. Kragh says that meeting “almost certainly didn’t take place” and that IAU’s statement “has no foundation in documented history.”

There are other problems, including the method by which the IAU conducted its vote. The bottom line is that this organization has no business sticking its nose into this issue, and it illustrates again, as happened when it tried to push a bad definition of “planets” on the planetary community in order to devalue the discovery of Pluto by an American, that there is a strong anti-American streak within it.

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The radical and ugly left reveals itself again

9:26 am

They’re coming for you next: At a campaign event yesterday for Marsha Blackburn, the Republican senatorial candidate for Tennessee, leftist protesters once again revealed their ugliness and dependence on smear tactics, and they did so in mere seconds.

Blackburn called for a moment of silence to mourn for the innocent people who had been killed by a anti-Semite in Pittsburgh on Saturday. Less than two seconds into that moment, a protester shouted “Marsha Blackburn is a white supremacist!” Watch below. It only lasts a minute.

This smear makes no sense. Not only is there zero evidence that Blackburn is a “white supremacist,” the slander occurs even as she is mourning the murder of Jews, something no white supremacist would do. How stupid do these leftist protesters really think people are? This isn’t going to convince anyone, and if anything, it reveals the bigoted hate-filled mentality of this protester.

It also offends the sensibility every ordinary person nationwide who watches this, both conservative or liberal. No decent person would spit on the graves of the murdered Jews as this leftist protester does. And the protester is doing this in support of the Democratic candidate in an effort to defeat the Republican.

If you are undecided on who to vote for this coming election, just remember this moment. Every Democratic Party win, anywhere, will be an endorsement of this kind of behavior.

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Japan launches UAE satellite

9:09 am

The new colonial movement: A Japanese H-2A rocket today successfully placed into orbit the United Arab Emirates first home-built satellite.

This gives Japan six launches for 2018, matching that nation’s previous high, accomplished both in 2006 and 2017.

The UAE satellite, KhalifaSat, was essentially a cubesat, and could be considered comparable to the numerous student-built cubesats that have been built and launched by universities as teaching devices.

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China successfully launches Chinese/French ocean research satellite

9:02 am

A joint Chinese/French ocean research satellite was successfully launched by China today using its Long March 2C rocket.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

30 China
17 SpaceX
9 Russia
8 ULA
7 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 30 to 26 in the national rankings. Its 30 launches this year smashes its previous launch high of 20 successful launches, and suggests that China is going to come close to its predicted 40 launches for 2018.

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