Month: December 2020

SpaceX successfully launches Dragon freighter to ISS

9:31 am

Falcon 9 launches Dragon freighter to ISS

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched for the first time its upgraded Dragon freighter to ISS.

The first stage was flying its fourth flight, and successfully landed on the drone ship in the ocean. This was also SpaceX’s 100th successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, with about two-thirds of those flights using a used first stage.

In the cargo was also the first privately built equipment airlock, built by Nanoracks for its use in launching private payloads. This will supplement the Japanese equipment airlock on its Kibo module, both used to move equipment (not people) in and out ISS. Dragon will dock with ISS tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

32 China
23 SpaceX
13 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. now leads China 36 to 32 in the national rankings.

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NASA considering commercial communications satellites for Mars

9:10 am

Capitalism in space: NASA officials have revealed that they are considering hiring commercial communications companies to build and launch a communications network of satellites to support its Mars science missions.

In recent presentations to advisory committees, NASA officials have discussed the possibility of working with industry to place several satellites into orbit around Mars that would serve as relays for other missions, notably the proposed Mars Ice Mapper. Such satellites, they said, could greatly increase the amount of data missions can return to Earth and end reliance on aging science missions that also serve as data relays.

One proposal presented at those meetings features three satellites in equatorial orbits at altitudes of 6,000 kilometers. The satellites would be equipped with radio links for communicating with other spacecraft in orbit and on the surface as well as to and from Earth. The satellites may also include laser intersatellite links to allow them to communicate with each other.

Based on the number of missions ongoing and planned for Mars, the agency has recognized it needs to establish a dedicated system for communicating with those missions, rather than depending on the science orbiters they have in orbit. That they are looking to commercial companies to build this for them, with NASA acting merely as a customer, as an excellent sign that the agency has now completely accept this approach, as I recommended in Capitalism in Space, rather than acting as the big boss that controls everything.

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China launches military surveillance satellite

8:55 am

China yesterday launched a military surveillance satellite using its Long March 3B rocket.

No word on whether the first stage or its strap-on boosters landed on any homes, or whether they had grid fins for better controlling their descent, as China has tested previously.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

32 China
22 SpaceX
13 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 35 to 32. That lead will hopefully widen in less than an hour with the first SpaceX launch of its second generation Dragon cargo freighter to ISS.

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“It’s a slap in my face!”

9:29 pm

The fascist Democratic Party mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, issued an edict last month shutting down all restaurants, including all outdoor dining. Yet, he allowed a movie company to set up its outdoor catering services that offer the same service, in the parking lot in front of the shuttered restaurant, about-to-become bankrupt because of his edict.

But according to Angela Marsden, owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill in Sherman Oaks, local officials permitted a TV production to skirt the rules. Shockingly, the Hollywood crew had set up outdoor eating areas just feet from Marsden’s restaurant.

In her blistering rant, Marsden blasted Garcetti and Newsom for prioritizing Hollywood over small businesses like hers. “So this is my place, the Pineapple Hill Grill & Saloon. If you go to my page you can see all the work I did for outdoor dining, for tables being seven feet apart,” Marsden said. “And I come in today because I’m organizing a protest and I came in to get stuff for that.”

“And I walk into my parking lot — and obviously Mayor Garcetti has approved … this,” she continued, pointing to the production setup, including tables for outdoor dining to be used by the production crew, “has approved this being set up for…this being set up for…for a movie company.”

You must watch her video here. As she says in tears, pointing at her patio, “This is dangerous!” She then points to the movie catering area, which looks exactly the same, if not larger, less than thirty feet away. “And that is safe?” As she notes, “It’s a slap in my face!”

Remember too that this is all part of a lockdown in March that was only supposed to last 15 days, in order “to flatten the curve.” A lie, of course, as have been almost everything coming out of the mouths of government health officials since day one of this epidemic. But then, lying has become standard practice from almost every establishment official in Washington, elected or not, for the last four years, on almost every subject. Trump was colluding with Russia! He colluded with Ukraine! No one in the Obama administration ever spied on him! Trump put kids in cages (built by Obama based on Obama’s policy)! And of course, endlessly: Trump is a racist!

I could go on. They lie, and they lie again, and then they top it off with more lies.

And we are supposed to believe them when they say the vote wasn’t rigged? By this time only fools and children should accept the words out of anyone in government.

If the petty dictators in state governments don’t reconsider and stop destroying so many people’s lives, they shall soon see a lot of blood, and it will be their blood, because those same people will have no choice but to shed it in desperation. Politicians be warned.

I don’t wish it. I only know, as a historian, that this is what will happen if things don’t change soon. And if you don’t believe me you need only read a little bit of history.

Let me add that Julie Kelly says much the same in this essay: Shut up and take it. And I think she says it more thoroughly.

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Chang’e-5 sample capsule docks with return vehicle in lunar orbit

8:37 pm

According to the official Chinese state-run press Chang’e-5’s capsule containing samples from the Moon has successfully rendezvoused and docked with its return vehicle in lunar orbit, the first time an unmanned craft has done such a thing autonomously.

The news report at this point provides no other details, other than to state that the return capsule and orbiter will next separate from the ascent capsule and “wait for the right time to return to Earth.” Earlier reports had suggested an arrival on Earth around December 16, which would suggest an exit from lunar orbit in about a week.

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Arizona House Speaker refuses to recall legislature to choose electors

4:03 pm

The election has been stolen: Rusty Bowers, Arizona Republican House Speaker, has now categorically declared that he “cannot and will not” recall the legislature to review the election results and choose electors based on that, despite the Constitution’s clear language that gives the state legislature that full power.

He noted that such an action would violate the oath lawmakers took to uphold the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions, along with, “the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected.”

Bowers did, however, support an audit of the voting machines in Maricopa County to assuage concerns of tampering, but that call wasn’t taken up by Republican county officials who run elections.

So what will Bowers do if that audit discovers enough vote tampering and cheating to make the entire election suspect and unreliable? Will he, as so many Republican leaders do over and over, shake his head, whine how terrible it is, but he can do nothing? That’s what Republican leaders have been doing for decades, which of course now brings us to this moment.

Note too that Bowers is entirely wrong. Though it is traditional to let the voters decide, the actual words of the Constitution puts the decision with the state legislature. Period. It is Bowers’ responsibility by law to act.

If he does not use his power, as outlined in the Constitution (which by the way is the supreme law of the land), do not expect many Republicans to be elected in future years. First, Democrats are basically being told they have carte blanche to cheat, and cheat they will. It is also clear that the Republican leadership in the state house seems totally sanguine about the way the vote was run, and will likely do nothing to fix it come the next legislature. It took enormous pressure to get Bowers to even request this one audit of Maricopa County. He really does not appear very interested in identifying the problems and fixing them.

Second, why should anyone vote for any Republican, when it is clear they will not do anything?

With the last bit of optimism I have left, below are the phone numbers for the Republican leadership in the Arizona state legislature. If you live in Arizona, call them and tell them they are abdicating their responsibility as lawmakers. More importantly, tell them they are contributing to the fall of the American democracy by their inaction.

  • Senate President: Karen Fann, 602-926-5874
  • Senate Majority leader: Rick Gray, 602-926-5413
  • Speaker of the House: Russell Bowers, 602-926-3128
  • House Majority leader: Warren Petersen, 602-926-4136
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Hayabusa-2’s samples from Ryugu land in Australia

2:07 pm

The return capsule carrying the asteroid samples grabbed by Hayabusa-2 from Ryugu successfully parachuted down in the outback of Australia today.

Officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, confirmed shortly after 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) that the Hayabusa 2’s nearly 16-inch (40-centimeter) sample carrier landed in Australia. Touchdown likely occurred several minutes earlier.

Recovery teams dispatched via helicopter began hunting for the 35-pound (16-kilogram) capsule using estimates of its landing site derived from a radio beacon signal. Mission managers expected it could take several hours to find the capsule and recover it. The landing occurred before dawn in Australia.

Since the article above was posted the capsule was located, and it was found much quicker than first expected.

This was the second sample return mission by the Japanese. The first, Hayabusa-1, successfully returned its capsule in 2010, but because of many technical problems during the mission it only brought back a few microscopic samples. In fact, the technical problems were so bad it was really a miracle the capsule came back at all.

Hayabusa-2 however has been a complete success, showing that they learned from the first mission and applied those lessons to the second.

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LRO snaps picture of Chang’e-5 on Moon

8:52 am

Chang'e-5 on the Moon, taken by LRO
Click for full image.

The science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) late yesterday released an image taken of Chang’e-5 on the surface of the Moon. The image to the right, reduced to post here, is that photo.

China’s Chang’e 5 sample return spacecraft made a safe touchdown on the lunar surface at 10:11 EST (15:11 UTC) 01 December 2020. LRO passed over the site the following day and acquired an off-nadir (13° slew) image showing the lander centered within a triangle of craters.

The LROC team computed the coordinates of the lander to be 43.0576° N, 308.0839°E, –2570 m elevation, with an estimated accuracy of plus-or-minus 20 meters.

If all goes well, the return capsule, which lifted off from the Moon yesterday, will dock with the return vehicle in orbiter later today.

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Astra sets December 7th for next test launch of its orbital rocket

3:44 pm

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company Astra is now targeting December 7th for its second of three test launches in its program to develop an orbital commercial rocket.

Astra plans to launch its two-stage, 38-foot-tall (12 meters) Rocket 3.2 from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, representatives of the California startup announced last month. The window on each day runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST (1900 to 2200 GMT; 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time in Alaska).

The orbital attempt will be the second for Astra, which aims to claim a sizable chunk of the small-satellite launch market with its line of flexible, cost-effective rockets. The first test flight, in September of this year, ended with a bang about 30 seconds after liftoff. Astra’s Rocket 3.1 experienced an apparent guidance issue, prompting controllers to terminate the flight for safety reasons.

They determined the failure was a software issue that they appear to have now fixed.

The company has made it clear that has always expected that it will take three launches to reach orbit, so a failure on this launch would not surprise them. They do seem very confident however that they will succeed this time.

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Arizona legislative Republican leaders call for election audit of Maricopa County

3:17 pm

The Republican leaders of the Arizona state senate and house today called for an audit of the Maricopa County Dominion software and equipment used during election day.

This is a major change of position, as these leaders have until now resisted such action. Maybe their change of heart is because of the evidence revealed at an improvised hearing earlier this week, as well as the problems found with a random selection of only 100 ballots. Or maybe it was this:

Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem on Friday called on his fellow lawmakers to come together and recall Arizona’s certification.

Finchem said county clerks are now coming forward and admitting something is off with the canvassing and the numbers are just not adding up. “We got people coming out of the woodwork,” Finchem said adding that the legislature will just go around Governor Ducey.

“We only need to have 31 members of the House and 16 members of the Senate pass a resolution recalling our electors. It’s that simple,” he said. “Our constituents are blowing up over this.” [emphasis mine]

The Constitution in the matter of choosing the President is very clear: It is the job of the state legislatures, not the voters, not the governors, not the courts, and most especially not unelected officials in election boards. For decades these state legislatures have allowed the popular vote determine the choice, because everyone trusted the counting process. It appears no one does anymore, and when that happens, the state legislatures need to do their job.

The goal should be to determine if the vote is valid, or not. If valid, than Joe Biden won. Period. Congratulations to the Democrats, though I doubt anyone will end up celebrating their rule in the end. Their policy choices and their eager willingness to blackball and persecute their opposition will not bode well for the future.

If not valid, however, the legislature has several choices. They can call for a revote. They can choose the president themselves, picking electors that will reflect that choice. Or they can refuse to certify at all, sending the decision to the federal House of Representatives.

The state legislature has an additional responsibility, irrelevant of the presidential election. They must institute major changes that will prevent such problems ever again.

Finally, kudos must go to my own representative, Mark Finchem, for pushing this hard, and finally getting some results. The battle is not won, but at least the enemy is finally retreating slightly.

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Ice-filled crater on Mars?

12:13 pm

Crater in southern mid-latitudes
Click for full image.

Time for another of the many cool images from Mars that suggest the presence of buried glacial ice. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows an unnamed crater in the cratered southern highlands of Mars at about 44 degrees south latitude. Taken on October 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the crater sits at the very southernmost point of the Tharsis Bulge where the Red Planet’s four more distinctive giant volcanoes are located.

The crater is also in the middle of the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have detected many features that suggest glaciers, including a large number of craters that appear to have ice filling their interior.

Does the material in this crater’s floor suggest eroding and sublimating ice to you? It does to me. The second image below zooms in at full resolution at the north-south trench and the strange patterned terrain to its east.
» Read more

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India’s space agency signs deal with private Indian smallsat company

9:28 am

The new commercial division of India’s space agency ISRO, dubbed the Department of Space (DoS), has signed a development deal with a new private Indian smallsat startup, Agnikul Cosmos, that has plans to build a rocket that will launch from Kodiak, Alaska in ’22.

More information here.

The agreement is designed to provide technical support to the company. Initially the company had only planned to launch from an ISRO launch facility in India. It now appears they are widening their goals to include an U.S. site as well, probably to encourage sales to American satellite companies.

Their rocket, 3D printed, also appears very small, and targets the smallest size smallsat market.

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Hubble captures 20-year fading of planetary nebula

9:10 am

The fading of the Stingray Nebula
Click for full image.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have now tracked the spectacular fading of the Stingray Nebula, which when it was discovered in the mid-1990s was labeled the youngest such object ever found.

Astronomers have caught a rare look at a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceeding rare, say researchers.

Images captured by Hubble in 2016, when compared to Hubble images taken in 1996, show a nebula that has drastically dimmed in brightness and changed shape. Bright blue fluorescent tendrils and filaments of gas toward the center of the nebula have all but disappeared, and the wavy edges that earned this nebula its aquatic-themed name are virtually gone. The young nebula no longer pops against the black velvet background of the vast universe.

Astronomers have found that the central star had been heating precipitiously in the late 20th century, from 40K to 108K degrees Fahrenheit. Since then it has begun to cool. They think that flash of heat, caused by what they think was short period of helium fusion, caused the planetary nebula to brighten, and now fade.

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Trump administration asks Senate to remove SLS requirement for Europa Clipper

8:55 am

The Trump administration has requested the Senate to change the language in its NASA spending bill to remove its requirement that Europa Clipper be launched on SLS.

NASA wants the option to launch the Europa probe using commercial rockets, such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. It also says that there are technical reasons that make using SLS problematic, and worse, the agency simply does not have enough SLS rockets to fly its planned (but unfunded) manned Artemis missions and also launch Europa Clipper.

The House has already removed that requirement in its version of the bill. The Senate has not, probably because the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), is a big fan of SLS (much of it built in his state), and has acted for years to pump money into that project.

If the requirement is not removed, Europa Clipper’s launch will likely be delayed by several years, and cost $1.5 billion more.

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First sunspot image from Inouye Solar Telescope

8:42 am

Sunspot image taken by Inouye Solar Telescope
Click for full image.

The science team for the new Inouye Solar Telescope, now in the final phase of construction, has released the telescope’s first high resolution sunspot image.

The image is to the right, reduced to post here, and was taken almost a year ago, on January 28, 2020.

“The sunspot image achieves a spatial resolution about 2.5 times higher than ever previously achieved, showing magnetic structures as small as 20 kilometers on the surface of the sun,” said [Dr. Thomas Rimmele, the associate director at NSF’s National Solar Observatory (NSO)].

The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The streaky appearance of hot and cool gas spidering out from the darker center is the result of sculpting by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gasses boiling up from below.

…This sunspot image, measuring about 10,000 miles across, is just a tiny part of the Sun. However, the sunspot is large enough that Earth could comfortably fit inside.

The start of official telescope operations is set to begin in ’21, and had been delayed because of the Wuhan flu panic. Construction had begun in ’13.

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World’s largest drone unveiled for launching smallsats

8:41 am

Capitalism in space: Aevum, a new entrant in the race to provide low cost reusable launch services for the emerging smallsat market, has unveiled the world’s largest drone, dubbed RAVN-X, designed to take off and land at airports and then release an upper stage rocket that takes the satellite into orbit.

RAVN-X is not the first air-launched rocket catering to the “smallsat” market. Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus system has flown dozens of times since the 1990s. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne failed in its first launch attempt earlier this year, will try again later this month with an attempt to launch 10 NASA-funded “CubeSats”—small satellites that typically weigh less than 10 kilograms each. But both Pegasus and LauncherOne use traditional, piloted jets, whereas Aevum’s driverless drone is unique, says Phil Smith, a senior analyst at Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm. Still, Smith says, RAVN-X is flying into a crowded market, with more than 100 small launch vehicles in development. “There’s a plethora of systems out there,” he says. “There isn’t room for more than perhaps three to five or so.”

According to the article, Aevum already has a billion dollars in launch contracts with the Space Force. They are targeting ’21 for their first orbital flight.

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Nandi Bushell – Rock and Grohl

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The musical talent and passion are both outstanding. The shallow philosophy, when compared to Aristotle or Plato or Moses (to list only a few), is kind of sad to watch. She really believes that life is that simple. As a child such shallow passion is fine. I fear however that in the arriving dark age no one will ever do anything to make her think more deeply.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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Strong evidence in Michigan that many ballots were scanned multiple times

5:09 pm

An IT contractor who worked in Detroit at the location where votes were being tabulated has testified by sworn affidavit and in public testimony before Michigan legislatures that she saw an estimated 30,000 ballots scanned multiple times, illegally.

On November 10, Carone said in an affidavit that she witnessed “nothing but fraudulent actions take place.” “I observed numerous employees, city workers, running batches of ballots through the tabulators countless times, without discarding them first,” Carone said during the Wednesday evening hearing. She testified next to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Trump, who has been leading most of the litigations efforts pertaining to the election.

Carone testified that on Election Day, the vote tabulating machines would jam up to three times an hour. When the machines would jam, election officials were supposed to reset the count on the machines to ensure that no ballots were scanned more than once, explained the witness. “Instead of discarding, they were just rescanning, rescanning, rescanning. Counting ballots nine to 10 times,” Carone said. She also said there were more than 20 tabulating machines at her ballot counting center.

Once again, this testimony does not prove, on its own, that the election was stolen. It does however demonstrate strong evidence that a full audit, of at least the Detroit voting center, is necessary before any result can be certified.

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Strong evidence of election tampering in Arizona in sample audit of 100 ballots

4:40 pm

After the Republican Party was allowed to do an audit of 100 random ballots and found one voted changed from Trump to Biden, and another Trump vote discarded, election officials have agreed to do an expanded audit of 2,500 ballots.

Ward’s lawyers say the inspection of 100 ballots found that one person’s vote for Trump was ultimately recorded as a Biden vote and that another person’s vote for Trump was cancelled when the reproduced ballot contained votes for both the Republican incumbent and a write-in candidate.

The result? An increase in Biden’s margin by 3%, a change easily enough to overturn an election decided by about a 1/2 percent.. For this reason the election board did not wait for a court order but decided to go ahead with a larger audit.

Though this AP story goes out of its way to minimize the findings here, it is quite alarming to find this much error in only 100 ballots. Anyone (whether Republican or Democrat) should be alarmed and demanding a review, if only to protect the sanctity of all future elections. Anyone that objects, at all, is revealing themselves to be someone who does not want fair elections, and is probably eager to have elections stolen.

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Strong video evidence of election law violations in Georgia during count

3:46 pm

In testimony today before the Georgia state senate, the Trump legal team showed evidence from CCTV cameras of almost two hours of vote counting occurring during a period when all Republican counters and pollwatchers as well as the media had been told to leave because counting was going to cease.

According to Georgia election laws, no votes can be counted without the presence of representatives from both parties along with the pollwatchers and the press. Moreover, the law requires that the chain of possession of all tabulated votes be properly maintained. During the two hours of illegal tabulation, it appears that all of the counted ballots came from four suitcases with no provenience that were pulled from beneath a table where they had been hidden earlier in the day.

Based on the pace of tabulating, the number of ballots counted during those two hours was more than enough to swing the results one way or the other. That all Republicans had been ushered away suggests the ballots were not for Trump.

Does this prove the election was stolen? No, not on its own. However, it does make the entire election result questionable. And if nothing untoward was going on, it behooves the individuals shown on this video to come forward to explain and justify what was done. Until they do so, the Georgia vote count is not trustworthy.

I have embedded below the fold the testimony, with th video presented during this testimony.

» Read more

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Aram Chaos: Illustrating the puzzle of Mars

11:20 am

Aram Chaos
Click for full image.

The geological history of Mars is incredibly complex, and we really don’t know much about it. What we do know right now is based on a limited number of tiny fragments of a much larger story, with those fragments allowing scientists to only make educated guesses on how they fit together.

Many of those guesses will certainly turn out right. Just as many will turn out wrong. At this moment in our exploration of the Red Planet we can only grasp at straws while always keeping an open mind, as later data is surely going to change any conclusions we presently have.

The photo to the right is a good illustration of this struggle. Rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, it was taken on September 27, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what at first glance looks like a stream of white frost or ice descending down a canyon to the south.

That first impression however is entirely wrong. When I asked Chris Okubo of the U.S. Geological Survey, who requested this image from MRO, what it was, he explained,

The white material is not frost. Instead, these are sedimentary rocks comprised primarily of sulfates. The texture to me suggests these are lithified dunes.

Lithified merely means that the dunes have hardened into rock. Sulfates are a salt formed from sulfuric acid, and are on Mars often linked to some complex mineralogy. If you stood there the colors would be white and red, quite beautiful. As Okubo explained,

The sulfates are white to tan in color, but there would also be a lot of red/brown Mars dust on top of it. It would be similar to walking around some of the playas in the desert southwest.

Though these white sulfate deposits have their root in sulfuric acid, Okubo added that they “are in the form of minerals similar to gypsum and so they would be safe to touch.”

What is going on here? As is usually the case, we need to first take a wider view to get some context.
» Read more

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Study: Canada’s nationalized health killed nearly 1,500 Canadians waiting fruitlessly for treatment

11:07 am

Coming to your U.S. health plan soon! A new study has found that almost 1,500 Canadians died in 2018-19 waiting for a life-saving operation, sometimes years, because that nation’s national health system could not serve them.

The survey was also incomplete, covering only about half of Canada’s health system, which means the numbers are almost certainly higher. More significant, the Wuhan panic has made the situation worse.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, there has been a drastic decline in potentially life-saving treatments being conducted by hospitals. According to figures from the Ontario Ministry of Health, between March 15 to September 29, treatments for breast cancer and prostate cancer have gone down 29% and 25% respectively. On average, the province has reported a total of 21% fewer cancer treatments in total.

Surgeries on children were also heavily impacted by the pandemic after reporting a decline of nearly 60%. In comparison, in 2019, 28,844 surgeries were performed on children, while in 2020 there were only 11,230.

But we need to save one life from COVID! One life! It doesn’t matter if thousands of others die from other illnesses, saving people from COVID comes first!

Hat tip Phill Oltmann.

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New Gaia data release tracks distance and motion of 1.8 billion stars

10:49 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released the third round of data from its Gaia satellite, designed to measure precisely the distance and motion of billions of nearby stars.

Gaia EDR3 contains detailed information on more than 1.8 billion sources, detected by the Gaia spacecraft. This represents an increase of more than 100 million sources over the previous data release (Gaia DR2), which was made public in April 2018. Gaia EDR3 also contains colour information for around 1.5 billion sources, an increase of about 200 million sources over Gaia DR2. As well as including more sources, the general accuracy and precision of the measurements has also improved.

This release also included the following discoveries:

  • The Milky Way’s outer regions beyond the Sun contain two populations of stars, one slowly dropping towards the galaxy’s plane, the second flying away quickly.
  • The first precise measure of the solar system’s orbit in the Milky Way
  • A more complete census of all stars within 100 parsecs of the Sun
  • A better map of the interaction between the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way, which also showed that the cloud does have a spiral structure

This precise data will take decades to digest, as past research has been based on only rough distance and motion estimates. Having precise data will change our approximation of each object’s brightness, which will also change much of what we assume about it.

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ESA signs contract for 1st space junk removal

9:39 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed a contract with a private company, ClearSpace SA, for the first dedicated commercial mission to remove a piece of orbiting space junk.

ESA officials signed a contract with ClearSpace on Nov 13. to complete the safe deorbiting of a payload adapter launched aboard the second flight of the Arianespace Vega rocket in 2013.

Unlike traditional ESA contracts that involve the agency procuring and coordinating the mission, ClearSpace-1 is a contract to purchase a service: the safe removal of a piece of space debris. ESA officials said they intend this mission to help establish a new commercial sector led by European industry. The 86 million euros supplied by ESA will be supplemented with an additional 24 million euros ClearSpace is raising from commercial investors. Approximately 14 million euros of the privately-raised funding will be utilized for the mission, while the remaining 10 million will be set aside for contingencies, ESA spokesperson Valeria Andreoni told SpaceNews.

First, that the ESA has decided here to shift from running the mission and to merely being the customer buying the product from a private company is magnificent news. Europe has been, like NASA was in the 2000s, very reluctant to give up its total control in the design, construction, and launch of rockets and spacecraft. That they are now mimicking NASA’s own shift in the 2010s to this private model, as I outlined in detail in Capitalism in Space, means that ESA’s bureaucracy is finally coming around to the idea of freedom, capitalism, and private enterprise. What a thing!

Second, though this mission is commercial, it isn’t really a practical economic solution to the removal of most space junk. The contract will cost $104 million, plus the additional private capital ClearSpace has raised. None of this appears to include the launch cost. Yet, it will only remove one defunct object in orbit.

Such a technology will be useful for removing specific large pieces of space junk that pose a risk should they crash to Earth. It will not be economically useful for removing the small junk in orbit that threatens other working satellites and spacecraft. For that technology to be cost effective it will need to be able to clean up many objects on a single flight.

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Space tourism balloon company raises $7 million

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: The space tourism balloon company Space Perspectives has now raised $7 million for the initial development of their Neptune stratospheric balloon, designed to take tourists up to about 30 miles for long flights at the edge of space.

The company, with about 15 employees currently, will use the funding to continue development of Spaceship Neptune, a stratospheric balloon system designed to carry people to an altitude of 30 kilometers. Such flights would give people an experience similar to some aspects of spaceflight, notably the view.

A first test flight of the system, without people on board, is scheduled for the first half of 2021 from the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “It will really take us through the concept of operations” of the system, Taber MacCallum, co-founder and co-chief executive of Space Perspective, said in an interview. “It allows us to jump into serious hardware testing.”

If all goes well, they plan to begin selling tickets next year as well, with the first commercial flight targeted for ’24. This funding round also likely puts the company ahead of its two Spanish competitors, who are presently tied up in litigation against each other.

The article also quotes company officials as lauding the FAA’s new revised licensing procedures, the first industry response I’ve seen to these new licensing procedures. The new rules [pdf] required a document 785 pages long (actually larger than the FAA’s first proposed revision), making it hard to determine their effect — for good or ill — without actually using them. This positive review by an industry user is a very positive sign.

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