Year: 2021

Strange corroding features on Mars

1:02 pm

Strange corroding features on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on October 4, 2020. It shows what appears to be features that are either corroding or eroding away, with the lower areas filled with rippling sand dunes.

The circular features might be ancient craters. The material that partly fills them might be a layer of dust or sand that the wind is slowly blowing away to dig out the depressions along the southern cliff wall.

According to the MRO science team’s interpretation of the colors produced by the high resolution camera [pdf], the dark blue colors here are likely “coarser-grained materials (sand and rocks)”, while the orange-red material on the higher terrain is likely dust.

Could this material be evidence of buried ice eroding away? At first I thought so, and then I took a look at the photo’s location, as shown in the overview image below.
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Momentus signs deal to deliver two private cubesats to lunar orbit

11:55 am

Capitalism in space: Momentus has signed a deal with a Singapore startup to provide the transportation to lunar orbit of two cubesats using its next generation space tug.

Momentus Inc. (“Momentus” or the “Company”), a commercial space company offering in-space infrastructure services, and Qosmosys, a new space venture founded in Singapore last year, announced today a service agreement to deliver two cubesats to low lunar orbit as early as 2024 via Momentus’ inaugural lunar mission.

The new contract builds and expands on the agreement announced in January 2021 for delivery of up to four cubesats in low Earth orbit by Momentus’ Vigoride service vehicle, starting in 2022. Qosmosys will expand its novel business ideas to the Moon using a specific bus named Zeus-MS, a version of its Zeus platform it has been developing in cooperation with NuSpace from Singapore, and made specific for lunar missions. Zeus-MS is the precursor to a series of multi-mission platforms that will allow organizations and businesses to host their payloads, and will offer individuals a bespoke, unprecedented line of services to the Moon on regularly scheduled flights.

“We are excited to partner with Momentus again, now onboard Ardoride’s inaugural lunar mission in 2024,” said Francois Dubrulle, CEO of Qosmosys. “Our vision is to make space accessible to all, and Momentus will help us achieve this goal through their efficient orbital services.”

Ardoride, the next generation service vehicle after Vigoride, will extend the range and capabilities of Momentus’s services beginning in 2023.

It is unclear who Qosmosys’ customers are for their lunar Zeus-MS cubesat platform, but I have no doubt they have plenty, many from the university community. For example, universities fund student-built cubesats for educational purposes. Why not make this a project to the Moon, rather than just in Earth orbti? The cost difference would not be much using these new private companies.

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Axiom raises $130 million in investment capital

11:41 am

Capitalism in space: The private space station company Axiom announced today that it has obtained $130 million in investment capital during its most recent round of fund-raising.

The funding will allow the company to expand, including doubling its current workforce of about 110 people this year, Michael Suffredini, president and chief executive of Axiom, said in an interview. It will also support quarterly payments to Thales Alenia Space, which is building the pressurized elements of the first modules. The company recently moved into a two-story building in Houston and is buying a new test facility, with plans to establish a campus at Spaceport Houston, also known as Ellington Airport.

“This is a really the major step for us,” he said. “The B round is typically where you get your first large investment, but more importantly than the money is the community of investors that you put together, so that future rounds are largely from those investors.” That group of investors, he said, was “a perfect fit for us and puts us in a good position, however we want to go forward.”

Suffredini also admitted that while helps get those first modules built for launch to ISS in ’24, they will still need “probably between half a billion and a billion dollars” to build their full private space station.

Sounds like a lot, eh? ISS cost about $100 billion, but that is not including the contributions of the U.S.’s international partners. It is also likely a conservative estimate, as it likely does not include any of NASA’s overhead in connection with the station. Construction officially began in 1994, but actually started a decade earlier when President Reagan first proposed its predecessor, the Freedom station, and those costs are not included as well.

So Axiom will build its private station for about a billion, and get it done in about five years. NASA spent anywhere from $100 to $200 billion, and took more than three decades to get it launched and built.

Which product would you buy?

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Watching Perseverance’s landing on Mars

9:51 am

Because it will take eleven minutes for radio communications from Mars to reach Earth, no one on Earth will have any direct contact with the American rover Perseverance as comes in to land in Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18th. When NASA broadcasts the landing here on Earth it will already have happened.

Nonetheless, if you want see as soon as possible if the landing was successful, you can go to NASA public channel here at NASA or here at Youtube. I have also embedded the live stream telecast below the fold in this post.

The landing itself is set for about 3:55 pm (Eastern) on Thursday, February 18th. NASA’s coverage is scheduled to begin at 2:15 pm (Eastern). Expect almost everything you watch to be seeped in NASA propaganda, though of course their overview of the rover, its landing, and its landing site will be informative.

One important note: NASA has been selling the false notion that the primary goal of Perseverance is to search for life on Mars, and sadly much of the mainstream press has been repeating this notion blindly. It is simply not true. The rover’s primary goal, first, last, and always, is to gain more knowledge of the geology of Mars and its past history. If along the way the rover detects evidence of life, all for the better, but that is not what it will be focused on doing during its journey in Jezero Crater.
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SpaceX in Starlink negotiations with the Philippines

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX and a major internet company based in the Philippines have been in negotiations about offering Starlink to its citizens.

US tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is in talks to bring broadband satellite services to the Philippines through a partnership with fibre internet tycoon Dennis Anthony H Uy of Pampanga.

Representatives from SpaceX and Uy’s Converge ICT Solutions Inc met on multiple occasions to discuss a potential venture, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Philippine Daily Inquirer.

SpaceX apparently can’t just set up business to compete with this company, probably because it has deep ties in the government that can block it. Converge probably wants a cut, along with I suspect a number of Philippine politicians.

No deal has so far been made, but Starlink would be ideal in the more rural locations of the Philippines.

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SpaceX launches sixty more Starlink satellites; plus an installation report from one customer

10:06 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage on its sixth flight however failed to land successfully. It is amazing that we now expect these landings to succeed, proving how reliable we now expect SpaceX’s rocket to be.

The 2021 launch race:

5 SpaceX
3 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit

The U.S. now leads China 7 to 3 in the national rankings. Another SpaceX launch is scheduled for tomorrow, followed by a Rocket Lab launch a little more than 24 hours later.

A report from one Starlink customer on his installation experience

The sixty new Starlink satellites bring the constellation to more than 1,100 satellites, allowing SpaceX to continue expanding regions where it is offering the service. Below the fold is an update from reader Steve Golson on his experience installing his own Starlink dish and service in Maine, now running for several days. Rather than cut and past sections, I think it best to quote his email to me in its entirety, including some of the images he sent. The opinions expressed are Steve’s alone, but they are coming from a customer who appears very satisfied with the product, up to now.
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New paper: Underlying ice layer seen in Martian gullies at LOW mid-latitudes

2:18 pm

Snow on Mars?
Click to see full image.

In a paper just published, scientists are proposing that bright areas seen in the low mid-latitude gullies on Mars are the underground ice table newly exposed as surface dust is removed.

This paper is a reiteration in more detail of a previous presentation [pdf] by these same scientists at the 2019 the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas and reported here in March 2019.

The image to the right, from the paper, was taken by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2009, and has been cropped to post here. The white streaks are what the scientists propose is that exposed underground ice table. At 32.9 south latitude, this particular gully would be the closest to the equator that such an ice layer has been identified. All the previous ice layer discoveries have been in the ice scarps found at latitudes above 50 degrees. As the paper’s lead author, Aditya Khuller at Arizona State University, explained in to me in an email, “We believe we are seeing exposures of dusty ice that likely originated as dusty snow.” From their paper:

We suggest … that the light-toned materials are exposed H2O ice. … [T]he appearance, and then subsequent disappearance of these light-toned materials, suggests that they are some form of volatile, such as dusty ice, rather than dust alone. … [The appearance] of these light-toned materials is similar to the >100m thick, light-toned ice deposits exposed on steep mid-latitude scarps, indicating that these materials are probably also ice, with some amount of dust on, and within the ice.

The layer would have likely been laid down as snow during a time period (a long time ago) when the rotational tilt of Mars, its obliquity, was much higher than today’s 25 degrees. At that time the mid-latitudes were colder than the poles, and water was sublimating from the polar ice caps to fall as snow in the mid-latitudes.

The overview map below reveals some additional intriguing possibilities.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: All religious schools

11:10 am

The cancelled Bill of Rights

They’re coming for you next: The homosexual lobby is pushing the Biden administration to deny accreditation to any religious school that did not endorse its political and sexual agendas.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America’s largest and most powerful LGBT lobby organizations, is pushing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to target Christian educational institutions, demanding that the Biden Administration strip colleges that adhere to rules and positions opposing homosexuality of their accreditation. The HRC’s “Blueprint for Positive Change,” which offers 85 recommendations, proposes eliminating non-discrimination exemptions for religious colleges if they refuse to abandon the biblical position on marriage.

The Blueprint states, “Language regarding accreditation of religious institutions of higher education in the Higher Education Opportunity Act could be interpreted to require accrediting bodies to accredit religious institutions that discriminate or do not meet science-based curricula standards. The Department of Education should issue a regulation clarifying that this provision, which requires accreditation agencies to ‘respect the stated mission’ of religious institutions, does not require the accreditation of religious institutions that do not meet neutral accreditation standards including nondiscrimination policies and scientific curriculum requirements.”

In other words, if a religious school forbids homosexual behavior among its students or teaches it is a sin, based entirely on that school’s religious beliefs, it accreditation should be cancelled, and its ability to provide students legally recognized degrees eliminated.

Understand that if you are homosexual you have plenty of very friendly schools to go to that will celebrate your sexual preferences and beliefs. No one is oppressing you because a Christian, Evangelical, or Orthodox Jewish school believe otherwise.

That’s not enough however for the leftist gay lobby. Just because it has successfully created positive options for itself throughout society it must still destroy any options for those who disagree with it. This is the epitome of oppression and intolerance.

At this moment the Biden administration has not accepted these recommendations, but if you think it won’t, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. One of the very first executive orders signed by Biden was one that required schools to let men who “identify” as women compete in women’s sports. They remain men in every biological sense except the clothes they wear, their hairstyle, and (most important) their utterly delusional belief they are a women.

If Joe Biden and the Washington leftist crowd that runs our federal government thinks this edict makes rational sense, we must expect them to do whatever they can to shut down religious schools for daring to express any dissent of the homosexual movement’s agenda.

The first amendment be damned! You are all going to obey our new leftist lords, or you will be silenced!

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Russia launches Progress freighter to ISS

11:40 pm

Russia today successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS using its Soyuz-2 rocket, bring almost three tons of supplies to the station..

The 2021 launch race:

4 SpaceX
3 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit

The U.S. still leads China 6 to 3 in the national rankings. That lead should widen this week with three American launches scheduled, two Starlink launches from SpaceX and one Cygnus freighter from Northrop Grumman.

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UAE releases first Al-Amal image of Mars

9:45 am

Al-Amal's first Mars image
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: The leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday released on his twitter feed the first photo of Mars that was beamed back from its Al-Amal (“hope” in English) orbiter, taken shortly after achieving orbit.

That photo is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the article at the link:

[The photo] was captured by Hope’s EXI instrument from an altitude of 24,700 km (15,350 miles) above the Martian surface at 20:36 GMT on Wednesday – so, one day after arriving at the Red Planet.

The north pole of Mars is in the upper left of the image. At centre, just emerging into the early morning sunlight, is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System. Look right on the boundary between night and day, the so-called terminator.

The three shield volcanoes in a line are Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons. Look east, to the limb of the planet, and you can see the mighty canyon system, Valles Marineris. It’s part covered by cloud.

Right now the spacecraft’s orbit is very eccentric, ranging from 600 to 30,000 miles above the Martian surface. After several orbital trims, Al-Amal will end up in an orbit about 14,000 by about 27,000 miles, with an inclination of about 25 degrees. From that high orbit it will then focus on studying the Martian atmosphere.

Thus, future images will likely be similar to this, global and mostly aimed at tracking visible phenomenon in the atmosphere (dust storms and clouds).

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1st Vulcan test core stage arrives at Kennedy

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: ULA’s first complete Vulcan core stage, meant at this point only for testing launch procedures, has arrived at Cape Canaveral.

After connecting the launch platform and the rocket to gas and electrical systems at the pad, ULA engineers will run the Vulcan booster and the ground infrastructure through a series of exercises, culminating in loading of thousands of gallons of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the rocket.

Once these tests are complete, the stage will be returned to ULA’s facility in Alabama to be refitted with flight worthy BE-4 engines so it can fly on a later mission. The engines presently attached are test engines.

ULA expects the first flightworthy BE-4 engines to be delivered by Blue Origin by the summer. These will then be incorporated into the first Vulcan to fly (hopefully before the end of the year) and carrying Astrobotic’s unmanned Peregrine lunar lander.

That rocket, as will all Vulcan rockets for the foreseeable future, will be entirely expendable. Though ULA says it intends at some point to recover for reuse the engines of the core stage, they have not delineated a time schedule for when that will happen.

At this point the only customer ULA has for this rocket is the government — especially the military. Vulcan cannot compete in price with SpaceX’s rockets, so I doubt any commercial satellite company will be much interested in it. The military will pay the extra bucks, because it wants more than one launch company for redundancy, and it has already committed to buying Vulcans for the next five years.

Of course, that long term commitment to Vulcan by the military will likely change if other cheaper rockets enter the market. At the present the military is limiting bidding on future launches to just SpaceX and ULA. That cannot hold up in court if other viable rocket companies wish to bid. Expect those new companies to do what SpaceX did when the Air Force refused to let it bid on military launches about five years ago, sue, and win in court.

At that point ULA’s an entirely expendable Vulcan will be very vulnerable to losing its last customer. ULA must make this rocket reusable or it will die as a company.

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