Year: 2021

Scientists confirm Parker entered Sun’s corona in April 2021

9:40 am

Scientists yesterday announced that the Parker Solar Probe successfully entered the Sun’s corona for the first time during its April 2021 close fly-by.

More information here, including some excellent short movies made from images created by Parker’s instruments.

The top edge of the corona is dubbed the Alfvén surface, and Parker’s passage across that boundary three different times during the April ’21 fly-by revealed it to be a sharp boundary that also has a great deal of topography. From the second link:

The first time Parker passed the Alfvén surface was the longest; it flew through the atmosphere for about five hours. Even as it continued flying toward the Sun, though, it popped back out, only to submerge again more deeply when it was at its closest approach — but briefly, that time exiting after just half an hour. Then, on its way outward, the spacecraft once again skimmed beneath the surface for a few hours.

“[The Alfvén surface] has to be wrinkly,” Kasper says. “It’s not fuzzy — it’s well-defined while we’re under it — but the surface has some structure to it.” So while the probe sees a smooth change in conditions while crossing the boundary, where the boundary is can change. The reason for this wrinkly surface is still an open question, though the researchers suspect the crossing over a pseudostreamer lower in the corona pushed the boundary out to enable the first crossing.

What’s clear is that inside the Sun’s atmosphere, conditions are different than just outside. Parker saw plasma waves moving back and forth instead of flowing outward. That difference was visible not just to the SWEAP and FIELDS instruments, which measure particles and electric and magnetic fields, respectively, but also to the probe’s WISPR imager.

The Parker science team also indicated that the preliminary data from the probe’s next two fly-bys — the most recent in November that was the closest yet — suggest it passed through the corona then as well.

One of the biggest unsolved mysteries about the Sun’s corona is that it appears to have a temperature in the millions of degrees, far hotter than the Sun’s surface below, something that is counter-intuitive. The expectation was that the atmosphere would be cooler than the surface. Finding out why the corona is hotter is one of the main science goals of Parker. It appears the probe is finally gathering data that might help solve that mystery.

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Webb launch delayed two days because of ground equipment issue

9:42 pm

After engineers at Arianespace’s French Guiana launch facility found an intermittent issue with ground equipment related to the Ariane 5 rocket launching the James Webb Space Telescope, it was decided to delay the launch two days to make sure the problem was resolved.

n a brief statement, NASA wrote on its website late Tuesday that the Webb team is “working a communications issue between the observatory and the launch vehicle system.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said Tuesday that engineers found an “interface problem” in a system that communicates with Webb while it’s on top of the Ariane 5 rocket. “The way to think about it is it’s a ground support equipment thing,” Zurbuchen said Tuesday night in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “Basically, the data cables are dropping some frames.”

Technicians inside the Ariane 5 rocket’s final assembly building in Kourou have tried to diagnose the problem, but so far, haven’t been able to resolve it.

The December 24th target day date remains tentative, and could slip to December 25th, or even later, depending on how successful engineers are at fixing the issue.

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Enrollment plunges when students are no longer forced to take critical race theory class

11:34 am

Freedom of thought might still exist at St. Joseph's
Among the students, freedom of thought might
still exist at St. Joseph’s University.

A victory for free thought: When students at St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania were no longer required to take a class promoting race and the anti-white agenda of critical race theory, enrollment dropped so much that most of the offered classes will likely be canceled.

The university’s campus paper noted:

Multiple sections of the university’s new one-credit diversity course, Inequality in American Society (INT 151), are at risk of getting canceled for the spring 2022 semester due to under enrollment.

As of Dec. 4, only four of the 26 sections offered for the spring 2022 semester are full, according to numbers on the Course Registration website. Twelve of the 26 sections have 50% or more seats still available.

Of course, the teachers who are promoting this racist class want this problem solved by making the class a requirement. More important, these teachers are not really interested in diversity of thought, as illustrated by this comment by professor Brian Yates, the course’s leading advocate:
» Read more

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99.9% of all mass at center of Milky Way is found in central black hole

10:46 am

New measurements of the orbits of several stars circling the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), have confirmed that 99.9% of all mass at the galaxy’s center is concentrated in that black hole.

Astronomers have measured more precisely than ever before the position and velocity of four stars in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole that lurks at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) [1]. These stars — called S2, S29, S38, and S55 — were found to be moving in a way that shows that the mass in the center of the Milky Way is almost entirely due to the Sgr A* black hole, leaving very little room for anything else.

The measurements, which further refine the mass of Sagittarius A* as 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun, show that very little of this mass is found in the surrounding space as gas or dark matter. It is all in the black hole, which might also help explain why the Milky Way’s central black hole is so quiescent. It has very little gas or other stars to feed it and thus produce emissions.

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Conflict in Hubble constant continues to confound astronomers

9:56 am

The uncertainty of science: In reviewing their measurements of the Hubble constant using a variety of proxy distance tools, such as distant supernovae, astronomers recently announced that their numbers must be right, even though those numbers do not match the Hubble constant measured using completely different tools.

Most measurements of the current acceleration of the universe (called the Hubble constant, or H0) based on stars and other objects relatively close to Earth give a rate of 73 km/s/Mpc. These are referred to as “late-time” measurements [the same as confirmed by the astronomers in the above report]. On the other hand, early-time measurements, which are based on the cosmic microwave background emitted just 380,000 years after the Big Bang, give a smaller rate of 68 km/s/Mpc.

They can’t both be right. Either something is wrong with the standard cosmological model for our universe’s evolution, upon which the early-time measurements rest, or something is wrong with the way scientists are working with late-time observations.

The astronomers are now claiming that their late-time observations must be right, which really means there is either something about the present theories about the Big Bang that are fundamentally wrong and that our understanding of early cosmology is very incomplete, or the measurements by everyone are faulty.

Based on the number of assumptions used with both measurements, it is not surprising the results don’t match. Some of those assumptions are certainly wrong, but to correct the error will require a lot more data that will only become available when astronomers have much bigger telescopes of all kinds, in space and above the atmosphere. Their present tools on Earth are insufficient for untangling this mystery.

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More delays for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: According to a report yesterday at Ars Technica, more delays are expected in the delivery of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine to ULA, possibly preventing the first launch of Vulcan from occurring in ’22.

Testing suggests the engine itself is functioning well. However:

Blue Origin is unlikely to deliver two flight-ready versions of the BE-4 rocket engine to United Launch Alliance (ULA) before at least the second quarter of 2022, two sources say. This increases the possibility that the debut flight of ULA’s much-anticipated new rocket, Vulcan, could slip into 2023.

Vulcan’s first stage is powered by two BE-4 engines, which burn methane and are more powerful than the space shuttle’s main engines. The sources said there recently was a “relatively small” production issue with fabrication of the flight engines at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Washington. [emphasis mine]

Translation of the highlighted words: We have built the engine, it is working great, but we have suddenly discovered we haven’t figured out the mass production process for building it quickly and in large numbers so as to support numerous launches by both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets.

ULA claims it can get Vulcan off the ground only a few months after getting those flightworthy BE-4 engines because it has done most of the design work using the dummy “pathfinder” BE-4 engines Blue Origin provided last year. Don’t believe it. The company is going to have to install working engines on Vulcan, and then do static fire tests to validate not only the rocket but its entire launch process. Such testing usually takes months, and is rarely completed in less than half a year, even by SpaceX.

These problems at Blue Origin means that both Vulcan and New Glenn will likely launch more three years behind schedule. Instead of 2020, both will fly no earlier than 2023, at best.

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NASA approves Axiom’s second commercial flight to ISS

9:19 am

In a strangely worded NASA press release, the agency announced that it has “selected” Axiom for the second private commercial manned mission to ISS.

NASA has selected Axiom Space for the second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. NASA will negotiate with Axiom on a mission order agreement for the Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) targeted to launch between fall 2022 and late spring 2023.

As at present there appears to be no other American company planning commercial manned flights to ISS, NASA wasn’t “selecting” Axiom at all. All NASA was doing was approving Axiom’s proposal to fly the mission to NASA’s space station, while confirming that Axiom will pay NASA’s greatly increased charges, raised about 700% more than the older price list.

The language of this announcement, combined with the exorbitant NASA charges, is only going to accelerate the effort of private companies, including Axiom, to build their own independent space stations. It isn’t NASA’s place to “select” any privately funded commercial flight into space, ever. That this government agency is making believe it has that right is only going to alienate the new private space industry, giving them reason to get away from NASA as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, Axiom is already scheduled to fly its first tourist flight to ISS in February 2022. The second flight that NASA “selected” today is to be followed by two more, for a total of four tourist flights. At that point, around 2024, Axiom will then launch its first module to ISS, beginning the process of relying less on NASA and leading to the undocking of Axiom’s station from ISS.

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Superheavy prototype #4 installed on orbital launchpad

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed its fourth Superheavy prototype on the orbital launchpad at Boca Chica, with the possibility of the first static fire test of Superheavy possibly occurring in the next week or so.

Around 10am CST (UTC-6), SpaceX began retracting more than a dozen clamps that hold the 69m (~225 ft) tall Super Heavy – the largest booster ever built – to its transport and work stand. By 11:30am, Booster 4 was safely extracted from the stand and hovering above it as the lift team crossed their Ts and dotted their Is before proceeding. SpaceX’s newest Starbase crane then spun around and crawled a short distance to the orbital launch mount, where it lifted Booster 4 above the mount.

In a process that this particular Super Heavy prototype is thoroughly familiar with, SpaceX then very carefully lowered B4 down into the center of the donut-shaped orbital launch mount, where 20 separate clamps – each capable of deploying and retracting – form a support ring and giant hold-down clamp.

The booster has 29 Raptor engines total, with 20 in the outer ring, 8 in the inner ring, and 1 in the center. It will be quite amazing to watch all these engines finally fire and lift the entire rocket, with Starshp, off the launchpad.

As for the upcoming static fire tests, road closures have been announced starting today through the end of this week.

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Boeing switches Starliner service modules for unmanned demo flight

8:57 am

According to a NASA press release today, Boeing has decided to swap Starliner service modules for the capsule’s first two missions, using the service module intended for the first manned flight on the unmanned demo flight, and assigning the service module for the unmanned demo flight — which had the valve issue — to the first manned flight.

The launch schedule for these two flights is now targeting May for the unmanned demo flight and August for the first manned Starliner demo mission.

Ongoing investigation efforts continue to validate the most probable cause to be related to oxidizer and moisture interactions. NASA and Boeing will continue the analysis and testing of the initial service module on which the issue was identified leading up to launch of the uncrewed OFT-2 mission in August 2021.

In other words, though they are claiming that they have figured out the sticky valve problem in that service module, it is also quite likely that it will not be used in August 2021. I suspect they will eventually put it aside and use another service module for the manned mission, and have only said now that they will use it on the manned mission for PR reasons. It appears they are confident the valve issue is solved for other service modules, but are not yet satisfied this troublesome service module is trustworthy.

The May-August schedule is tight, but doable, assuming the May unmanned flight goes well. If the August manned demo mission also goes well, Boeing will finally be able to begin selling seats on its Starliner capsule, though I would not be surprised if it makes no sales to anyone but NASA for the next few years. Considering its problem-filled development, private users are going to be reluctant to use this capsule until it establishes a successful track record.

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China launches second communications satellite for its manned space station missions

8:39 am

The new colonial movement: China today launched the second Tianlian communications satellite for its manned space station missions, using its Long March 3B rocket.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage used parachutes or grid fins to control its crash landing in the interior of China.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

48 China
28 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China now leads the U.S. 48 to 45 in the national rankings. This launch was the 124th in 2021, making the sixth most active year in rocketry since Sputnik in 1957.

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