Month: April 2022

Don’t launch it! Don’t spin it! Fire your orbital payloads from a gun!

11:59 am

Capitalism in space: It appears there is another company attempting to develop a different radical method for getting payloads into space. Instead of launching them on a rocket, or spinning them up to escape velocity (as Spinlaunch proposes), the startup Green Launch proposes to fire them from a cannon!

Green Launch COO and Chief Science officer Dr. John W. Hunter directed the Super High Altitude Research Project (SHARP) program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory some 30 years ago, and in the process led the development of the world’s largest and most powerful “hydrogen impulse launcher.”

This is effectively a long tube, filled with hydrogen, with helium and oxygen mixed in, and a projectile in front of it. When this gas cannon is fired, the gases expand extremely rapidly, and the projectile gets an enormous kick in the backside. The SHARP program built and tested a 400-foot (122-m) impulse launcher in 1992, breaking all railgun-style electric launcher records for energy and velocity, and launching payloads (including hypersonic scramjet test engines) with muzzle velocities up to Mach 9.

This approach, says Green Launch Business Development Director Eric Robinson, scales up far better than a spinning accelerator like the SpinLaunch system.

On its website the company claims this technology could not only be used for bulk payloads, like oxygen or water, but also “acceleration-tolerant payloads in the cube-sat class and smaller.” I am not sure how any complex hardware in any satellite, no matter how small, could withstand such accelerations, but once again, such technology could provide a cheap way to get simple cargo into orbit.

Below is a video of the company’s December 21, 2021 vertical test.
» Read more

10 comments

Ingenuity completes 25th flight, the longest yet

10:51 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On April 8th the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 25th flight on Mars, traveling 2,310 feet at 18 feet per second while flying for 161.3 seconds.

The long distance was designed to take it out from the rough region dubbed Seitah and near the delta that is the prime geological target of the rover Perseverance.

The overview map shows the location of both rover and helicopter as of today. The red dot is Perseverance, the green dot is Ingenuity. The rover has now completed its entire planned travels, as announced in June 2021. Where it goes next has not as yet not been announced. According to the team, they plan to use Ingenuity to scout out possibly routes up onto the delta. This likely means the rover will likely spend some time at the base of the delta, getting as much data as it can, while Ingenuity does this scouting work.

One comment

Boeing and NASA set May 19th for second Starliner unmanned demo launch

10:21 am

NASA yesterday announced May 19th as the new launch date for Boeing’s second attempt to complete the first unmanned Starliner demo mission to ISS.

The uncrewed mission will test the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner spacecraft and Atlas V rocket from launch to docking and return to Earth at one of five designated landing zones in the western United States. Following a successful completion of the OFT-2 mission, NASA and Boeing will determine a launch window for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), Starliner’s first flight with astronauts aboard.

The first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 failed to dock with ISS and had to be cut short due to serious software issues. The launch of the second unmanned demo flight was scrubbed mere hours before launch in August of 2021 due to serious valve issues.

Thus, Boeing’s manned capsule is more than two years behind schedule. Not only has Boeing had to pay more than $400 million for a second demo mission, the delays have caused a lot of business with NASA and with tourists to instead go to SpaceX. Hopefully, the company has finally fixed all issues and will succeed and begin manned operations later this year.

4 comments

TASS: China has suspended science partnerships with Russia

9:59 am

According to Alexander Sergeev, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chinese scientists have also suspended all cooperation with Russia’s Academy of Sciences, as have all western nations due to its invasion of the Ukraine.

“If we talk about the southern or eastern directions, unfortunately, I can say directly that our Chinese scientific colleagues have also pressed the pause [button], and over the past month we have not been able to enter into serious discussions, despite the fact that we had excellent cooperation along with regular communication,” Sergeev said.

It is impossible to say at this point whether the actions of these Chinese scientists to refuse cooperation with Russia is based on a decision of the Chinese government, or simply reflects the decision of the scientists themselves. I would suspect the former, but if so it is quite surprising, as China’s communist government has made no such announcement. It could also be that China has decided it does not want to appear a party to Russia’s invasion in any way, but also does not want to make that decision public. Thus, it might have told its scientists to pause all work, but do this quietly.

Let me add that this statement by Sergeev could also be simply disinformation, demanded on him by Putin’s government. While Russian scientists tend to deal straight with other scientists, the situation is unique. For example, Dmitry Rogozin today claimed in TASS that the private space company Axiom owes Russia about $25 million for the nearly year-long flight of Mark Vande Hei to ISS. The problem is that this is utterly wrong. Axiom had nothing to do with Vande Hei’s flight. He was a NASA astronaut. Rogozin’s statement however is aimed at the Russian public — which has limited resources to question his statements — and is designed to slander both NASA and the private companies that now compete with Roscosmos.

If Rogozin can so nonchalantly issue false statements like this for propaganda reasons, so can Sergeev.

3 comments

China’s Long March 3B/E rocket launches communications satellite

9:50 am

China today successfully placed a commercial communications satellite into orbit using an upgraded version of its Long March 3B rocket, dubbed the Long March 3B/E.

The 3B/E includes a larger first stage using more powerful engines as well as upgraded strap-on boosters. No word if these upgrades included either grid fins or parachutes or any ability to control the crash of the stage or boosters. As the launch was from one of China’s interior spaceports, these stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

13 SpaceX
10 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 20 to 10 in the national rankings.

Leave a comment

Third SLS dress rehearsal countdown scrubbed before completion

1:29 pm

NASA engineers today scrubbed their third attempt to complete a dress rehearsal countdown of the agency’s giant SLS rocket when a leak was detected in a hydrogen fuel line.

The team will not conduct the terminal countdown activities today as planned and will assess next steps after today’s operations.

The problem appears to be “a leak … in the tail service mast umbilical.”

It is not clear yet how much of the countdown and fueling will be completed. Because of a faulty valve in the upper stage, NASA management had already decided to eliminate fueling of the rocket’s upper stage from the rehearsal. The problem today appears to involve the core first stage’s hydrogen tanks, which are presently partly filled only about 5%. Based on their last tweet, it appears they have not drained the tank, though they apparently will not continue the rehearsal today.

UPDATE: NASA just tweeted the following:

Teams have confirmed they have satisfied the test objectives for the ICPS [upper stage] LH2 [hydrogen tank] chilldown and after gathering additional data, will work to drain propellant from the rocket. They will inspect the TSMU umbilical connection, review data, and establish a go-forward plan.

This sounds as if the agency might decide they have completed enough of the dress rehearsal to consider it complete, and will now roll the rocket back to the vehicle assembly building for further check out.

3 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Twitter blocks Libs of Tik Tok for the crime of reposting actual leftist statements

11:44 am

Twitter: Home for censorship
Twitter: Home for censorship.

The new dark age of silencing: Twitter yesterday suspended for twelve hours the account of “Libs of Tik Tok,” preventing the anonymous woman who runs it from continuing to post actual Tik Tok rants by leftists as well as the public school teachers who insist on promoting sexual perversion to children (but then I repeat myself).

The account was suspended for “hateful conduct,” which is a broad and vague category used by Twitter to suspend accounts that violate a policy that is equally broad and vague.

The policy says that “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

So what specifically was Libs of Tik Tok’s “hateful conduct?” We do not know, since Twitter as usual did not provide any specific information. However, Libs of Tik Tok has been in the forefront of making the public especially aware of the large number of very sick and dangerous people who now teach in the public schools. And she does this with very little commentary. Instead, she simply digs about in Tik Tok and finds their own rants, and simply republishes them on Twitter. As they tend to be ugly hateful screes that actually promote the idea of perverting young children without the knowledge of their parents, no commentary is needed. They condemn themselves. More important, their own words have done much to energize parents nationwide to retake school boards and force such evil people from the schools.

If you don’t believe me just take a look at the site. Right now there are several such rants from leftist teachers, insisting that parents should have no say in what the schools teach their young children.

Of course, the leftists who run Twitter cannot have this, since they are allied with these corrupt teachers. Too much free speech reveals their agenda, and that is a threat. So yesterday Libs of Tik Tok was shut down temporarily, though you can bet this is only a shot across the bow. As Libs of Tik Tok has previous written:
» Read more

14 comments

The spread of the oceans’ sea floors appears to be slowing

9:33 am

The uncertainty of science: Based on data covering the last 19 million years, scientists now believe that the rate in which the Earth’s ocean sea floors are spreading has been slowing steadily.

Today, spreading rates top out around 140 millimeters per year, but peaked around 200 millimeters per year just 15 million years ago in some places, according to the new study. The study was published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

The slowdown is a global average, the result of varying spreading rates from ridge to ridge. The study examined 18 ridges, but took a particularly close look at the eastern Pacific, home to some of the globe’s fastest spreading ridges. Because these slowed greatly, some by nearly 100 millimeters per year slower compared to 19 million years ago, they dragged down the world’s average spreading rates.

You can read the actual paper here.

To put it mildly, the conclusion here is uncertain. The difference between 140 and 200 millimeters is less than two and a half inches. A hundred millimeters is less than four inches. Such small differences over millions of years could simple be caused by random fluctuations over time. Furthermore, the scientists did not actually detect the spreading rates from millions of years ago. They instead inferred it based on the data we do have of the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field over time.

Still, this result is very intriguing indeed. More than anything, it should help geologists develop better theories to explain plate tectonics, and what drives it. At the moment no theory adequate explains it.

7 comments

SpaceX goes full speed ahead on construction of Starship launchpad in Florida

9:17 am

Capitalism in space: Faced with regulatory delays caused by the Biden administration that are preventing further Starship launches from Boca Chica, SpaceX has accelerated construction of a new Starship launchpad at its facility in Florida.

Compared to SpaceX’s Starbase tower assembly [in Boca Chica], Florida Starship work appears to be proceeding at a similar pace. SpaceX began assembling the fourth Florida tower section about 30 days after starting the first, while Starbase took about 25 days to reach the same point. However, SpaceX does appear to be taking a slightly different approach for Pad 39A. On top of tower section assembly, SpaceX is constructing an extra four sets of the small concrete foundations and steel frames each tower section is assembled on, implying that Starship’s Florida launch tower could be almost entirely prefabricated before SpaceX begins to combine those sections.

Meanwhile, Boca Chica remains blocked. While the FAA says it will issue approval of its environment reassessment by the end of this month, SpaceX would be foolish to believe this. It has become very clear that the Biden administration has so far allowed the federal bureaucracy free rein to obstruct SpaceX. For the company to think things will suddenly change now is to be living a fantasy. It must move forward to satisfy its investors.

Worsening the situation in Texas was the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to suspend the permit process on a request by SpaceX to expand its Boca Chica facility. It appears SpaceX failed to provide the Corps some required information, possibility because the company sees no reason now to complete this expansion if the Biden administration is going to ban Starship launches from Texas.

Faced with this political situation, Texas governor Greg Abbott yesterday claimed he is fighting the stonewalling by the Biden administration, but provide no specifics:

“What I am going to do if Biden interferes with the ability of SpaceX to launch from Boca Chica; I am going to be working every step of the way to make sure that they are going to be able to launch from Boca Chica. We heard the vision from Mr. Patel himself about what they are working on and our job is to make sure they are able to achieve their vision. And I have worked with Elon Musk very closely with regard to Tesla and the Giga factory in Austin, Texas. And we will be working with him very closely, every step of the way in Boca Chica for the future of SpaceX. We want that future and that vision to come from Boca Chica, from Brownsville, Texas.”

Allow me to translate this political blather into plain English: “I can’t or won’t do anything, but I am now going to make a superficial claim of action so my Texas constituents won’t get angry at me.”

It appears more and more that the first orbital test flight of Starship will take place in Florida, not Texas. And if so, it will be delayed for at least another six months because of this government interference.

8 comments

Europe removes its science instruments from future Russian lunar missions

8:43 am

The Europe Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced that because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine it will no longer fly any science instruments on three upcoming Russian unmanned lunar probes.

ESA will discontinue cooperative activities with Russia on Luna-25, -26 and -27. As with ExoMars, the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions put in place represent a fundamental change of circumstances and make it impossible for ESA to implement the planned lunar cooperation. However, ESA’s science and technology for these missions remains of vital importance. A second flight opportunity has already been secured on board a NASA-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission for the PROSPECT lunar drill and volatile analysis package (originally planned for Luna-27). An alternative flight opportunity to test the ESA navigation camera known as PILOT-D (originally planned for Luna-25) is already being procured from a commercial service provider.

In other words, Europe is switching to the many private American companies that are developing lunar landers for NASA science instruments. It has also signed onto a Japanese lunar mission. All have payload space, and all are willing to take the cash of a new customer.

Meanwhile, this is how Dmitry Rogozin responded to this decision:

“Good riddance! One less European dame off our backs, so Russia should go far with a lighter load,”

To sum this all up, when it comes to space, the Ukraine invasion has been Russia’s loss, and everyone else’s gain. Even if the invasion were to end today, it will take at least a decade to re-establish Russia’s business ties with the west.

Unfortunately, the invasion will cost the Ukraine as well. In making the above announcement ESA officials also said that it is looking for alternatives to the Ukrainian rocket engines used in its Vega-C upper stage.

At the news conference, ESA also discussed the future of its small Vega rocket, which relies on Ukraine-built engines in its upper stage. The engines are manufactured by the Ukrainian company Yuzhmash, which is based in the tech city of Dnipro. Although Dnipro has been under heavy bombardment, there have been no official reports so far about damage to Yuzhmash. It is, however, clear that ESA doesn’t expect to continue its partnership with the company in the future. “We now have sufficient engines for 2022 and 2023,” Aschbacher said. “We are working on options for 2024 and onwards based on different technologies.”

Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s director of space transportation, added: “We are working on engine opportunities within Europe and outside of Europe, which are either tested or, even better, already existing and fully qualified.”

Whether ESA completely breaks off its partnership with the Ukraine however is not certain. Should the war continue to favor the Ukraine, then it could be that partnership will continue. Only time will tell. Right now, it is simply prudent for ESA to look for more stable alternatives.

7 comments

Frozen lava in Mars’ volcano country

5:31 pm

The frozen lava of the Athabasca flood plain
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what appears to be at first glance a relatively featureless plain with a lighter material covered by a patchwork of darker material.

Note however the lack of craters. Except for several faint depressions near the image’s center, there are none. And those depressions look like the expression of craters that have been covered by material. Is the two-toned surface here an expression of past lava flows? Or are we seeing an ice-sheeted plain, with the patches representing higher terrain above that plain?

The overview map below answers the question somewhat clearly.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Today’s blacklisted American: Seattle’s public schools to hold “listening tours” that exclude whites

3:22 pm

Jim Crow celebrated in Seattle!
Seattle, home of the new Jim Crow!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The public school system of the city of Seattle (SPS) has now scheduled a number of “listening sessions” for parents that, while designed to discuss ways to make the schools more welcoming, specifically exclude whites from the sessions, and divide the sessions by race and ethnicity.

SPS and the Seattle Council of Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) is hosting seven listening sessions with superintendent Dr. Brent Jones. The remote tour starts on April 19. One of the sessions is for Black families and a second for Native American families. They also recently added meetings specifically for East African and Black Immigrant Families, plus Multigenerational African American Black Families. The district and PTSA believe these race-exclusionary meetings promote equity. But they may represent illegal discrimination.

While there are sessions open to the general public, most of the sessions are segregated and discriminatory. And God forbid Seattle run a listening session just for whites! Why, that would be racism!

In a sense, this story out of Seattle is not news. I have repeatedly reported stories of Seattle government and corporate officials discriminating illegally against whites while unfairly providing their favorite minorities special privileges. Some examples:
» Read more

6 comments

A tour at rocket startup Phantom Space

2:45 pm

Jim Cantrell at Phantom

Creating a new rocket company is not something anyone can do. Nor is it something that even smart people can do, nonchalantly. The history of rocketry is littered with hundreds of attempts, almost all of which failed.

Jim Cantrell, pictured on the right standing next to one of the first test prototypes for a new rocket being made by his new company, Phantom Space, is one such person. In the mid-2010s Cantrell partnered with a number of others to found the company Vector, hoping to be one of the first smallsat rocket companies to launch a cheap and efficient rocket placing tiny satellites into orbit. At the time, Cantrell and Vector were racing neck and neck with Rocket Lab for the honor of being the first to do so.

While Rocket Lab succeeded in 2018, and has since completed more than twenty launches, Vector ended up on the ash heap of history, going bankrupt in 2019. The company’s failure was mostly due to problems with its rocket engine, which in turn caused one of its major investors to back out.

Cantrell however is apparently someone who does not take defeat quietly. Using what he had learned at Vector, in 2021 he started a new rocket company, Phantom Space, with a target date for its first test launch the summer of 2023.

Today Cantrell gave me a quick tour of Phantom’s operations here in Tucson.
» Read more

9 comments

Webb’s coldest instrument reaches operating temperature

1:32 pm

The engineering team announced today that the mid-infrared instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope has now cooled to its operating temperature of -447 degrees Fahrenheit, less than 7 kelvin degrees above absolute zero.

On April 7, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) – a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) – reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvins (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).

Along with Webb’s three other instruments, MIRI initially cooled off in the shade of Webb’s tennis-court-size sunshield, dropping to about 90 kelvins (minus 298 F, or minus 183 C). But dropping to less than 7 kelvins required an electrically powered cryocooler. Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the “pinch point,” when the instrument goes from 15 kelvins (minus 433 F, or minus 258 C) to 6.4 kelvins (minus 448 F, or minus 267 C).

Before science operations can begin the instruments still need further calibration and testing. Expect the first infrared images sometime in the next month or so.

4 comments

Space Perspectives unveils luxurious interior of Neptune high altitude balloon

9:41 am

Capitalism in space: Space Perspectives has now unveiled the high class stateroom interior that it plans to put inside its Neptune high altitude balloon that will take tourists to 30+ miles altitude.

Space Perspective just released artist’s illustrations of the interior of Spaceship Neptune, which will include 360-degree panoramic windows and even a restroom with a view. The announcement Tuesday (April 12) coincided with the anniversary of the first human spaceflight by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

Based on the imagery, Spaceship Neptune’s cabin appears to come in at least a couple of configurations. One has reclining seats, for example, while another with couches can accommodate a “more intimate dinner for two or special event,” Space Perspective representatives said in a statement on Tuesday.

Space Perspective will provide food and beverage services, and the capsule features mood lighting that can be dimmed to see stars or the curvature of Earth outside. Also included in the capsule’s “Space Lounge” will be a telescope, interactive screens and decorations such as floor lamps and plants to “remind us of the interconnected nature of our planet,” the company added.

The company hopes to begin commercial flights by ’24, each of which will last about six hours. Tickets are priced at $125K each, with the company saying it already has 600 people on its waiting list.

5 comments

Astronomers confirm comet with largest nucleus ever found

9:29 am

Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers determined that the nucleus of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014 UN271) is about 80 miles wide, making it the largest comet on record.

The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.

The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not to worry. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won’t be until the year 2031.

The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.

This measurement does have a great deal of uncertainty, as Hubble cannot yet resolve the nucleus, and thus its diameter was determined by computer models based on the size of the comet’s coma, or surrounding atmosphere.

The comet itself has an orbit 3 million years long, which means it has zipped into the inner solar system many many times. The reason its nucleus remains so large is because its orbit never gets that close to the Sun, so its material does not get burned off so much with each perihelion. That it exists suggests there could be many such large comets which never dip close to the Sun.

4 comments

MAVEN and Al-Amal scientists sign agreement to collaborate

1:20 pm

Scientists running the Mars orbiters MAVEN (from NASA) and Al-Amal (from the United Arab Emirates [UAE]) have signed an agreement to share data and — more importantly — coordinate their observations of the Martian atmosphere.

A new partnership that encourages the sharing of data between NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) project and the Emirates Mars Mission’s (EMM) Hope Probe (Al-Amal in Arabic) will enhance scientific returns from both spacecraft, which are currently orbiting Mars and collecting data on the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The arrangement is expected to add value to both MAVEN and EMM, as well as the scientific communities involved in analyzing the data the missions collect.

MAVEN went into orbit around Mars in 2014. Its mission is to investigate the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars, offering an insight into how the planet’s climate has changed over time. “MAVEN and EMM are each exploring different aspects of the Martian atmosphere and upper-atmosphere system,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “Combined, we will have a much better understanding of the coupling between the two, and the influence of the lower atmosphere on the escape to space of gas from the upper atmosphere.”

The EMM Hope Probe, which went into Mars orbit in 2021, is studying the relationship between the upper layer and lower regions of the Martian atmosphere, giving insight into the planet’s atmosphere at different times of the day and seasons.

What this agreement means is that the two science teams can more quickly match up the data from both orbiters, and figure out the relationships between both.

4 comments

Pushback: Black waitress sues NYC mayor over COVID shot mandate

12:10 pm

Virginia Alleyne, blacklisted by the Democratic Party
Virginia Alleyne, blacklisted by
the Democratic Party

Don’t comply! A waitress who formerly worked at Yankee Stadium but lost her job because of the COVID shot mandate imposed by New York City mayor Eric Adams is now suing him and the city. Her suit is also fueled because of Adams’ arbitrary decision to cancel the mandate for wealthy athletes.

Virginia Alleyne’s Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit claims Hizzoner’s exemption for athletes and performers is “arbitrary and capricious” and an “abuse of discretion.”

“For him to allow millionaires to work and to punish the workers who are the lifeblood of this city is just horrendous,” Alleyne told The Post. “So many workers have lost their jobs, yet he’s rewarding the millionaires because he doesn’t want them coming after him,” she continued. “We are being punished by a blatant and egregious double standard.”

The 57-year-old Upper East Side single mom said she was placed on unpaid leave from her job as a waitress at the stadium’s high-end restaurant Legends Suite Club in September because she is unvaccinated.

This quote from her lawyer illustrates quite starkly how incredibly arbitrary and capricious Adams’ edict is:
» Read more

9 comments

ULA orders 116 rocket engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne for its Vulcan upper stage

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: In order to meet its contract with Amazon to launch a lot of Kuiper satellites, ULA has now ordered 116 rocket engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne for the Centaur upper stage of its new and as-yet unlaunched Vulcan-Centaur rocket.

Aerojet said this was the company’s largest ever contract for the RL10 engine. The large purchase of rocket engines comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement April 5 that it selected Arianespace, Blue Origin and ULA to launch up to 3,236 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband constellation.

CEO Tory Bruno said ULA plans to fly Vulcan’s first mission late in 2022. Winning the Amazon deal would more than double the annual rate of Vulcan launches to as many as 25 per year, and ULA will ramp up production to meet the demand, Bruno said last week at the Space Symposium.

ULA’s engine choice for Vulcan’s upper stage dates back to 2018 when it selected a variant of the RL10, the same engine used to power the upper stages of ULA’s legacy rockets Atlas 5 and Delta 4 Heavy. Over the past 60 years, more than 450 RL10 engines have flown on various ULA heritage vehicles.

Meanwhile, ULA hopes to get its first BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, needed for the Vulcan first stage, this summer. Vulcan-Centaur cannot make its first launch until it gets some flightworthy BE-4 engines, and these are now three years behind schedule.

9 comments

Interstellar meteor impacted Earth in 2014

10:28 am

According to classified military data just released, it appears that an asteroid from interstellar space impacted the Earth in 2014, with some of its pieces possibly hitting the ocean in the south Pacific.

The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was initially flagged by a pair of Harvard University researchers in a study posted on the preprint server arXiv in 2019.

Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard who led the research, said the study has been awaiting peer review and publication for years, but has been hamstrung by the odd circumstances that arose from the sheer novelty of the find and roadblocks put up by the involvement of information classified by the U.S. government.

The speed and angle in which the object hit the atmosphere are why the scientists believe it comes from outside the solar system.

Siraj is actually hoping to mount a mission to recover parts of this asteroid, something that is extremely unlikely. First, the meteor itself was small, so it likely all burned up in re-entry. Second, even if pieces survived, finding them on the bottom of the Pacific is likely impossible.

5 comments

Russia backs off its threats to leave ISS partnership

10:19 am

In several short news posts on Russia’s state-run press today, the Putin government indicated that it has backed off from its threats to end the partnership at ISS quickly.

First, Roscosmos’s head, Dmitry Rogozin, announced that it will proceed with its barter deal with NASA and allow astronauts from NASA and others to fly on Soyuz while Russian astronauts fly on Dragon and eventually Starliner.

“Why give up something that is useful? Anna Kikina [Russian woman cosmonaut] flew to Houston (USA) to familiarize herself with the design of the modules of the ISS American segment and the Crew Dragon spacecraft whose crew she may join. On our part, we are not ruining anything and keep to preliminary accords, although we continue waiting for the government’s decision on the program of cross flights,” Rogozin explained.

Second, Rogozin made statements that suggested Russia will maintain its full partnership on ISS through ’24, and maybe beyond.

Now Russia has to set up its mind about the year until which it cooperates on the ISS project, Rogozin said. “Yes, the Americans want it [cooperation] to last until 2030. The previous talks said that it would be until 2028. But let me repeat again that we have to decide on the main thing: to continue cooperation on the ISS or switch to the ROSS [Russian Orbital Service Station]. Subsequently, we will decide on what to do with our two new modules on the ISS that we docked last year,” Rogozin said.

In other words, Russia ain’t going no where. It might decide eventually to launch a new core module for their own station, and then transfer the newer modules on ISS to it, but none of this will happen until a final date for ISS’s deorbit is established.

Based on Rogozin’s earlier bombastic threats, I had expected Russia to take a harder position. It appears cooler heads in Roscosmos convinced Rogozin and Putin that in terms of cost and safety, a quick exit made no sense.

This decision to back off was also probably influenced by Russia’s losses in the Ukraine. It is no longer in a strong negotiating position in anything, has lost almost all its economic partnerships with the west, and thus does not wish to lose the one partnership that remains, on ISS.

16 comments

Curiosity retreating from Greenheugh Pediment

10:05 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Because of the incredible roughness of the ground on the Greenheugh Pediment, the science team for the rover Curiosity has decided to make a major change in their route. Rather than continue their traverse across this terrain, as planned for years, they have decided to back off in order to protect Curiosity’s dinged wheels, and find a more friendly route up Mount Sharp.

“It was obvious from Curiosity’s photos that this would not be good for our wheels,” said Curiosity Project Manager Megan Lin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “It would be slow going, and we wouldn’t have been able to implement rover-driving best practices.”

The gator-back rocks aren’t impassable – they just wouldn’t have been worth crossing, considering how difficult the path would be and how much they would age the rover’s wheels.

So the mission is mapping out a new course for the rover as it continues to explore Mount Sharp, a 3.4-mile-tall (5.5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. As it climbs, Curiosity is able to study different sedimentary layers that were shaped by water billions of years ago. These layers help scientists understand whether microscopic life could have survived in the ancient Martian environment.

The plan is to retrace the rover’s path back through Gordon Notch and then head uphill though another gap that will take it directly onto the next sedimentary layer, dubbed the sulfate unit. On the overview map above, the red dotted line shows the long-planned route. The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the panorama I posted on April 6th, when Curiosity was at its farthest into the pediment. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s position two days ago. You can see that it has retreated backwards.

This change means the scientists will likely not get a close look at Gediz Vallis Ridge. However, it also means the rover will likely reach Gediz Vallis much sooner that previously planned.

Leave a comment

Neptune’s cooling when it should be warming

9:45 am

Neptune since 2006

The uncertainty of science: Observations of Neptune during the past seventeen years using the Very Large Telescope have shown the planet mostly cooling during this time period, even though Neptune was moving into its summer season.

Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet’s temperature in greater detail than ever before. These data showed that, despite the onset of southern summer, most of the planet had gradually cooled over the last two decades. The globally averaged temperature of Neptune dropped by 8 °C between 2003 and 2018.

The astronomers were then surprised to discover a dramatic warming of Neptune’s south pole during the last two years of their observations, when temperatures rapidly rose 11 °C between 2018 and 2020. Although Neptune’s warm polar vortex has been known for many years, such rapid polar warming has never been previously observed on the planet. “Our data cover less than half of a Neptune season, so no one was expecting to see large and rapid changes,” says co-author Glenn Orton, senior research scientist at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the US.

The sequence of photos above show that change over time. Lower latitudes generally get darker, or cooler, while the south pole suddenly brightens, getting hotter, in 2020.

The scientists have no idea why this has happened, though they have theories, ranging from simple random weather patterns to the influence of the Sun’s sunspot cycle.

8 comments

Rocket Lab breaks ground on Neutron rocket factory

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday broke ground on the construction of its larger proposed Neutron rocket factory at Wallops Island, Virginia, right next door to where the company plans to launch it.

The 250,000 square foot Neutron Production Complex is being constructed on a 28-acre site adjacent to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility and Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The complex will support Neutron production, assembly, and integration, and is expected to bring up to 250 highly-skilled roles to the region. Construction will also soon begin on a launch pad for Neutron at the southern end of Wallops Island, near Rocket Lab’s existing launch pad for the Electron rocket.

Neutron will largely reusable, its first stage returning to Earth for reuse, and carrying with it the skin of the second stage. The design combines this skin with the fairings that protect the payload and second stage engine, so that only the second stage engine is lost in orbit.

4 comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7