Linda Ronstadt & Johnny Cash – I Never Will Marry
An evening pause: Performed live on television, 1969, on the Johnny Cash show.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes that “life imitates art, Ronstadt never married.”
Year: 2021
Paisley terrain on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is actually a somewhat old image from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was taken more than a decade ago, on December 28, 2010, and featured as a captioned image one month later. I post it now because it was recently featured as MRO’s picture of the day, and thought it deserved a new look. As the caption from 2010, written by planetary scientist Alfred McEwen, noted,
Remember those paisley shirts during the summer of love in 1967? If so, this terrain may look somewhat familiar.
How did this terrain really form? One theory is that it’s a landslide deposit, perhaps associated with draining an ancient lake.
The overview map below might help make sense of this theory.
» Read more
Today’s blacklisted American: Rudy Giuliani loses law license for daring to represent Donald Trump
Rudy Giuliani-Blacklisted from practicing law in New York because
he worked to defend his client, Donald Trump.
Today’s blacklisted American: Last week a panel of New York state judges, all Democrats, suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani, claiming that he had “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign.”
A review of the judges’ actual ruling [pdf] reveals the real truth. Giuliani was representing his client by citing actual affidavits (made under penalty of imprisonment if proven false) and other disturbing facts that raised questions about the security and legitimacy of the election results in November 2020.
The judges, being partisan Democrats and supporters of Joe Biden, dispute those facts. In their ruling they itemized many of Giuliani’s claims and then listed why they think they are false. Based on their interpretation of the facts they then decided that Giuliani must lose his law license, essentially because he took a position they disagreed with.
The problem however is that these facts remain disputed.
» Read more
OneWeb signs deal with BT, Britain’s biggest telecommunications company
Capitalism in space: OneWeb has signed a deal with BT (formerly British Telecom) where BT will test the use of OneWeb’s satellites to provide internet to remote regions in Great Britain.
The tie-up with Oneweb will come as a major boost to BT as it ramps up its efforts to roll out full-fibre broadband across the country. The telecoms giant recently hiked its target to 25m premises by the end of 2026. However, BT has previously warned that regulatory hurdles and geographic challenges could slow down the project. The companies said they would explore how a partnership could boost capacity, mobile resilience, backhaul and coverage in remote locations.
This means that OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink are now in direct competition for customers in the rural areas of Great Britain. While a Starlink customer uses their own dish to communicate directly to the SpaceX satellite constellation, OneWeb is designed to have many nearby customers first link via a ground network to a much larger single dish, in this case something that BT would provide, which will then send the data to the satellite constellation.
I have no idea which design is better. For customers however the existence of two options is great, and will guarantee better service and lower prices.
Scientists question existence of liquid water lake under Martian south pole
The uncertainty of science: A re-analysis of the ground-penetrating radar data that suggested there was a liquid water lake under the Martian south pole has found that it might not be liquid water at all, but either “clays, metal-bearing minerals, or saline ice.”
The abstract can be read here.
The radar data, obtained by the European orbiter Mars Express, definitely shows a layer of bright reflection suggesting a layer of something different below the icecap. The research team decided to find out if other things besides liquid water could cause the difference.
They were able to determine what level of electric conductivity the material below the ice would need to have to match the observed signal from MARSIS. Then, they identified materials that are both conductive and present on Mars including clays, metal-bearing minerals and saline ice. “Salty ice or conductive minerals at the base of the ice sheet are less flashy, but are more in line with the extremely cold temperatures at Mars’ poles,” Bierson said.
While not explicitly excluding a liquid brine, the results open new potential explanations for the observed strong radar reflections, some of which do not require liquid brine beneath the Martian south polar ice cap.
Nothing is proven, one way or another. This research has simply underlined the uncertainty of the liquid water claim. We simply do not know what caused the bright radar reflection. All we know for certainty is that it is there.
June 27, 2021 Zimmerman/Pratt on Texas podcast on blacklisting
In addition to the short segment I did on Friday about commercial space exploration for Robert Pratt, I also recorded a 40 minute interview with him discussing the horrible wave of blacklisting and intolerance that is sweeping across America.
That second podcast is now available here. While much of it is a review of my daily column, “Today’s blacklisted American,” Robert and I expanded on the subject. You especially want to hear what I demand we do to stop this intolerance. It is for example not banning critical race theory from schools, a common tactic now being pushed by the generally ineffectual Republican Party in many states.
China releases more images & videos from Zhurong
Click for full image.
Click for full image.
China today released a new panorama as well as several videos taken by its Mars rover Zhurong.
The videos show the rover’s landing as well as two short videos taken from the remote camera it had dropped off shortly after deployment from its lander, the first showing the rover moving away and the second showing it turning in place.. China also released sound recorded during that deployment, as the rover rolled down the ramps. The sound was of course enhanced, but it does allow scientists to learn something about the atmosphere of Mars.
The image above is a cropped section from the panorama. The map to the right, taken on June 11th by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has been annotated by me to show the area I think is seen by this section of that panorama, looking due north. (For a higher resolution version that clearly shows the rover’s tracks since leaving the lander, go here.)
June 25, 2021 Zimmerman/Pratt on Texas podcast
I did a short 9-minute segment talking about space with Robert Pratt yesterday. It is the second segment on his full podcast, available here. I suggest you listen to the whole thing, as he covers news that any American should be interested in.
June 25, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
» Read more
Naudo – Staying Alive
An evening pause: How about a more modern instrument today?
Hat tip Cotour.
Hubble update: Still no solution
An update today from the engineers trouble-shooting the problem on the Hubble Space Telescope that put it into safe mode on June 13 continue to show the problem is complex, and has not yet been traced to its source.
Additional tests performed on June 23 and 24 included turning on the backup computer for the first time in space. The tests showed that numerous combinations of [a number of] hardware pieces from both the primary and backup payload computer all experienced the same error – commands to write into or read from memory were not successful.
Since it is highly unlikely that all individual hardware elements have a problem, the team is now looking at other hardware as the possible culprit, including the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), another module on the SI C&DH [the module that holds the telescope’s computers]. The CU formats and sends commands and data to specific destinations, including the science instruments. The SDF formats the science data from the science instruments for transmission to the ground. The team is also looking at the power regulator to see if possibly the voltages being supplied to hardware are not what they should be. A power regulator ensures a steady constant voltage supply. If the voltage is out of limits, it could cause the problems observed.
They remain hopeful they can find the problem and fix it, though the longer it takes the more worrisome it becomes.
Russia launches new military satellite
Russia today used a Soyuz rocket to successfully put into orbit a new military satellite reconnaissance and surveillance satellite.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
19 SpaceX
18 China
9 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
The U.S. still leads China 27 to 18 in the national rankings.