Month: August 2022

SpaceX to use both Falcon 9 and Starship to launch 2nd gen Starlink satellites

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: In a letter sent to the FCC, SpaceX has revealed that it has revised its plans for launching the second generation of Starlink satellites, and has decided to launch them with both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets.

SpaceX has decided to use a mix of Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation. Launching some of the satellites with SpaceX’s “tested and dependable Falcon 9” will accelerate the constellation’s deployment to improve Starlink services. SpaceX director of satellite policy David Goldman wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to the Federal Communications Commission. Goldman did not say when SpaceX could start launching the second-generation constellation, which remains subject to FCC approval.

Previously the company’s plan had been to use Starship only, essentially retiring Falcon 9 once Starship was flying. This change could be for two fundamental reasons. First, the company has been launching Starlinks on Falcon 9 like clockwork this year, at a pace that could launch as many as 2,500 Starlink satellites in 2022 alone. With about 70% of that rocket reusable, it might now seem cost effective to continue to use it, even after Starship is flying.

The second reason is more worrisome, and has to do with Starship itself. SpaceX officials might now realize that the delays being imposed by the federal regulatory leviathan on Starship development might be significant enough that it won’t be ready when they need it for the full deployment of Starlink’s second generation constellation. If the FCC approves that deployment (an approval that is presently pending), SpaceX will have to launch at least half the full constellation of 30,000 satellites by around 2024 (thought that date might have been revised slightly).

It now might be necessary to use Falcon 9, because the federal government under Biden is standing in the way of Starship development.

Of course, it is possible that the engineering challenge of building Starship might be another reason. SpaceX might have realized that the rocket will be delayed anyway, and thus needs Falcon 9 to meet its timetable as promised to the FCC.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches satellite

8:47 am

China today successfully used its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket to launch what appears to be a technology test satellite for the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the launch was from an interior spaceport in China, the rocket’s first stages crashed somewhere inland.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
32 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 32 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 50.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Christian chaplain for Austin fire dept fired for believing in Christianity

12:08 pm

Chaplain Andrew Fox, blacklisted
Andrew Fox

The modern dark age: Andrew Fox, who had been the chaplain for the fire department in Austin, Texas, was fired by the department’s fire chief, Joel Baker, because Fox had expressed some opinions on his own independent blog that Baker did not like.

Dr. Fox is an ordained minister who started Austin’s fire chaplaincy program and served as the city’s lead chaplain—a volunteer position—for eight years. After sharing on his personal blog his religious and commonsense view that men and women are biologically different and men should not compete on women’s sports teams, city officials demanded that Dr. Fox recant and apologize for expressing that view, and then proceeded to fire him.

More details here. Fox has now filed a lawsuit [pdf], which notes the following about the website where Fox posted his comments:
» Read more

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August 22, 2022 Quick space links

11:03 am

From BtB’s stringer Jay:

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NASA again approves design concept for Orbital Reef commercial space station

10:53 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space announced today that NASA has completed, apparently for the second time, the design review for the Orbital Reef space station that the company wants to build in partnership with Blue Origin and others, thus allowing the actual design of the station to begin.

This press release announcement, on August 22, 2022, is a bit puzzling, as Sierra Space made almost the exact same announcement in April 2022. What, did NASA have to do this twice? Did issues come up after the first approval? Was the agency reviewing different things?

Regardless, NASA as usual is slowing things down considerably. Sierra Space and Blue Origin, the primary partners in this private space station project, first announced it in October 2021. It took the government almost a year to simply approve the basic concept so that the design phase could finally begin. At this pace it will be 2090 before the station is launched.

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Another Webb infrared image of Jupiter released

8:53 am

Jupiter as seen in the infrared by Webb
Click for original image.

The science team for the James Webb Space Telescope today released another infrared false-color image of Jupiter, this time processed for science instead of calibration of the telescope after launch.

That image is to the right, reduced to post here. From the caption:

Several exposures in three different filters were assembled to create this mosaic, after being corrected for the rotation of the planet. The combination of filters yields an image whose colors denote the height of the clouds and the intensity of auroral emissions.

The F360M filter (mapped to the red-orange colors) is sensitive to light reflected from the lower clouds and upper hazes. The red features in the polar regions are auroral emissions, caused by ions excited through collisions with charged particles at altitudes up to 1000 km above the cloud level. Auroral emission in red is evident in the northern and southern polar regions and reaches high above the limb of the planet. In the F212N filter (mapped to yellow-green colors), the gaseous methane in Jupiter’s atmosphere absorbs light; the greenish areas around the polar regions come from stratospheric hazes 100-200 km above the cloud level. The stratospheric haze that appears green in this composite is also concentrated in the polar regions, but extends down to equatorial latitudes and can also be seen along the limbs (edges) of the planet. The cyan channel holds the F150W2 filter, which is primarily sensitive to reflected light from the Jupiter’s deeper main cloud level at about one bar.

The Great Red Spot, the hazy equatorial region and myriad small storm systems appear white (or reddish-white) in this false-color image. Regions with little cloud cover appear as dark ribbons north of the equatorial region. Some dark regions — for example, those next to the Great Red Spot and in cyclonic features in the southern hemisphere — are also dark-colored when observed in visible wavelengths.

This image is part of the telescope’s early release science program.

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NASA lists 13 candidate landing sites for Artemis-3 manned mission

11:09 am

Candidate landing sites for Artemis-3
Click for original image.

NASA yesterday revealed its first preliminary list of thirteen candidate landing sites for the Artemis-3 manned mission, the first manned mission the agency wants to send to the Moon in 2026.

The image to the right, reduced, enhanced, and annotated by me to post here, shows these thirteen zones in blue. I have added the red dot to mark what I understand to be the planned landing zone of Viper, an unmanned rover that NASA hopes to launch by ’23 at the latest. From the press release:

The team identified regions that can fulfill the moonwalk objective by ensuring proximity to permanently shadowed regions, and also factored in other lighting conditions. All 13 regions contain sites that provide continuous access to sunlight throughout a 6.5-day period – the planned duration of the Artemis III surface mission. Access to sunlight is critical for a long-term stay at the Moon because it provides a power source and minimizes temperature variations.

Note that this mission will land a Starship with crew at this South Pole region. That spacecraft’s large payload capacity likely means that it could conceivably leave behind supplementary supplies for a follow-up next mission, and thus speed up development of the first lunar base.

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Ingenuity gearing up for 30th flight

10:33 am

The engineering team for the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars announced yesterday that they have successfully completed two some spin-up tests and are preparing for the first short hop following the pause in flights during the height of the Martian winter dust season.

To confirm that she is still flightworthy, we performed a 50-rpm spin on Aug. 6, and on Aug. 15 we performed a high-speed spin, which spun up the rotor system to flight-like speeds of 2,573 rpm for several seconds. Telemetry downlinked after both tests indicates Ingenuity is a go for flight.

Our 30th flight will be similar to our second flight. On April 22, 2021, Flight 2 was the first to include sideways movement: We “translated” 13 feet (4 meters) and then returned before landing. Flight 30 will be shorter, translating sideways only 7 feet (2 meters) and then landing, but with the specific goal of providing a data point on Ingenuity’s ability to accurately approach a landing target. Our navigation system’s performance will be of value to the Sample Recovery Helicopter team (part of the Mars Sample Return Program) in their early design work for a next-generation Mars Helicopter navigation system.

The last sentence references the recent decision to use a helicopter on the future sample return mission to land near the cached Perseverance samples and grab them.

The 30th flight is supposed to occur sometime in the next few days.

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SpaceX and China complete launches

12:51 pm

Two launches have just occurred in the 2022 launch race. First, SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its ninth flight.

China in turn used its Long March 2D rocket to launch three military reconnaissance satellites, at what was the early morning hours of August 20, 2022, China time. The launch path took the rocket over China’s interior as well as Taiwan, with the first stage crashing somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
31 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 31 in the national rankings, and the entire world 52 to 49. The 52 launches so far this year is now the fifth best total for the U.S. since the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservatives blackballed with enthusiasm from Harvard

12:38 pm

Harvard faculty: opposed to free speech

Blacklists are back and academia loves ’em! According to a survey put together by the campus newspaper The Harvard Crimson, only 1.5% of Harvard’s faculty identified themselves as conservatives.

You can read the survey here. From the link above:

A total of 333 respondents completed the entire survey, while another 143 partially completed it. The paper distributed it to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applies Sciences professors.

According to the survey, only 16 percent of Harvard faculty characterized their views as moderate and 1.5 percent identified as conservative.

However, it isn’t this decidedly one-sided nature of Harvard’s faculty that is the real problem, but the enthusiasm this leftist community has for this blacklisting. From the survey itself:
» Read more

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Strings in Perseverance’s drill?

12:01 pm

String in Perseverance's drill
Click for full image.

Since August 5th, the Perseverance science team has been trying to figure out the origin as well as the consequences of “two string-like pieces” of foreign object debris (FOD as used by today’s acronym-happy scientists) that they have spotted next to one of the rover’s coring drill bits.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, looks directly down at that core drill bit and shows one of those strings both to the side of the bit as well in full resolution in the inset. From today’s update:

Since first identified Aug. 5 in imagery of the rover’s sample collection system after a 12th rock core sample was taken, the FOD has been the focus of several methodical diagnostic activities in an attempt to better understand the nature of the debris.

We’ve commanded the rover to move, rotate, or vibrate components we think could harbor FOD. And we’ve obtained multiple sets of images of the components from different angles and in different lighting conditions from rover cameras: Mastcam-Z, Navcam, Hazcam, Supercam, and even the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera located on the rover’s turret. Finally, a thorough review of recent coring and bit-exchange activities confirm that they all executed nominally with no indication of interference from the FOD.

Analysis of the latest round of imaging, downlinked earlier today, indicates that while the two small pieces remain visible in the upper part of the drill chuck, no new FOD has been observed. In addition, imagery taken of the ground beneath the robotic arm and turret, as well as the rover deck, also showed no new FOD.

Because these strings do not appear to interfere in any way with the drill’s operation, the science team has decided neither is a cause for concern, and will therefore command the rover to leave this just-completed drill site and move on to the southwest to a location at the base of the delta the rover visited about three months ago.

The strings themselves are likely pieces from the equipment released during the rover’s landing, and might even have come from the tangled string the rover imaged on the nearby ground in July, and that was gone just four days later. The wind had blown it away, and may have even at that time blown pieces into the drill.

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An armored manta-ray-shaped small submarine for commercial and military applications

10:50 am

Kronos sub

A private company, Highland Systems, that was founded in the Ukraine but now is based both in the UK and the UAE, appears to be building an armored manta-ray-shaped small submarine for both commercial and military applications.

It’s designed for a mix of commercial, military and allegedly rescue operations – and from the looks of the stark, largely windowless interior, it certainly doesn’t seem interested in tourism or luxury. A little over 9 m (29.6 ft) long, Kronos will weigh somewhere around 10,000 kg (22,000 lb). Its fat wings will fold upward, allowing you to tow it on a trailer if you wish to cause a series of gawking-related accidents among oncoming traffic.

Plonk it in the water, and it’ll seat 10 passengers plus a driver. The hybrid powertrain marries a diesel generator to a 1,200-horsepower, 2,400-Nm (1,770-lb-ft) electric motor driving a waterjet propulsion system. It can dive to a working depth of 100 m (328 ft), or a max critical depth of 250 m (820 ft), which is pretty decent in the scheme of things. The air supply is good for around 36 hours.

The performance figures are nuts. Highland says it’ll do 80 km/h (50 mph) on top of the water, or 50 km/h (31 mph) underwater; that’s seriously fast through water, just ask Michael Phelps. It carries enough battery on board for a 36-hour all-electric mission, or you can fire up the diesel generator to add a further 18, taking total range up to a very impressive 54 hours of autonomy. There’s adaptive lighting, an automated life support system and air-con – and the schematics show spots for torpedoes as well.

Nor is this entirely a fantasy of the company. It has already built the submarine’s main shell.

As the quote notes, though the company claims this submarine will have civilian uses, the submarine being built now seems entirely military in nature, especially because there is no information at all about the customer paying for its construction. Also, note the torpedoes shown in the schematic above, as well as the packed passengers. Since the company has its roots in the Ukraine, I can just imagine it being used by the Ukraine to transport soldiers to the Crimea on an undercover sabotage mission to destroy Russian assets.

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Indian company delivers Gaganyaan fairing and high altitude launch abort motor to ISRO

10:28 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian private company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, yesterday delivered to India’s space agency ISRO the fairing and high altitude launch abort motor that will be used in Gaganyaan, that nation’s first manned spaceflight.

Though the article at the link does not say so, the fairings and abort motor will likely be used in one of two unmanned launch abort test flights ISRO intends to do before the actual manned mission, now set for sometime in ’24.

Hindustan Aeronautics is also a space company in India that will require watching. It not only built these major components for Gaganyaan, it also has built major components for India’s PSLV and GSLV rockets. It would not surprise me if the company eventually decides to build its own rocket, assuming the India government loosens the stranglehold it presently has over space and lets private companies compete against its government space operations. It was a similar stranglehold by NASA from the 1970s to the 2000s that squelched competition and innovation from the American private aerospace industry. When that ended, the renaissance in commercial space finally could begin.

UPDATE: It appears I was in error assuming Hindustan Aeronauts was a private company, as it is owned by the Indian government. I have edited the post above to reflect this. It appears the stranglehold the government has over India’s aerospace industry is no closer to loosening.

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Firefly completes a dress rehearsal countdown of Alpha rocket; schedules launch

10:14 am

Capitalism in space: Having successfully completed both a full dress rehearsal countdown and static fire test of its fully stacked Alpha rocket, Firefly Aerospace has now scheduled the rocket’s launch for September 11, 2022.

These details come from a tweet by the company, so details are very limited. Nonetheless, this will be the company’s second attempt to complete an orbital launch. The first attempt, in September 2021, failed when one of its first stage engines shut down prematurely.

The company had hoped to attempt this second launch ten months ago, but was forced to delay it when the federal government demanded its chief investor, Ukrainian billionaire Max Polykov, first sell off his share in the company.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Raytheon & Northrop Grumman successfully complete the second flight of a hypersonic missile prototype

10:04 am

Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, working in partnership, have successfully flown a hypersonic missile prototype for the second time in eleven months.

For the latest test, the HAWC prototype was carried under the wing of an aircraft and flown to high altitude, where it was released. A solid rocket booster then accelerated the vehicle to supersonic speed and a scramjet ignited. An engine without moving parts, a scramjet uses its forward motion to compress the incoming air into a shockwave that burns with fuel, producing enough thrust to propel the missile to over five times the speed of sound.

The latest prototype had only minor modifications from the previous flight and met all of its objectives. The data recovered by telemetry will be used to improve the digital models using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, which will increase the efficiency and performance as the weapon concept comes closer to practical deployment.

As this is a military project, not many details about the prototype were released, such as its size, speed, design.etc. One shouldn’t even trust the illustrations of the missile, provided by Northrop Grumman. Each shows the missile with a rounded lifting body shape on its bottom side, likely to protect and guide it on its re-entry, but there is no guarantee the illustrations’ shape matches that of the real missile.

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Maritime Launch Services signs land lease for its Nova Scotia spaceport

9:54 am

Capitalism in space: Maritime Launch Services yesterday obtained a 20-year land lease for its Nova Scotia spaceport from the province of Nova Scotia.

The lease covers 334.5 acres, and is renewable for an additional 20 years.

Unlike other spaceports, Maritime isn’t merely providing a launch site for rocket companies. Instead the company will also launch smallsats itself, using a Ukrainian-built rocket dubbed the Cyclone-4M. Initially the plan was to fly all launches in this manner, but the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has caused Maritime to look for other launch providers as well.

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Starship gets its first communications satellite customer

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: Sky Perfect JSAT, a Japanese satellite communications company, today awarded SpaceX a launch contract using its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket to put its Superbird-9 communications satellite into orbit in 2024.

Superbird-9 will be launched by SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle in 2024 to geosynchronous transfer orbit. SpaceX’s Starship is a fully reusable transportation system that will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle. SKY Perfect JSAT and SpaceX will continue to work together ahead of the launch of Superbird-9 Satellite.

Sky Perfect is the first communications satellite company to choose Starship for a satellite launch. It is however the rocket’s fourth signed customer. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa made a deal in 2018 for a flight around the Moon, while NASA chose Starship in 2021 as the manned lunar lander in its Artemis program. UPDATE: SpaceX also has a second private manned customer, Jared Isaacman, whose present deal with SpaceX calls for two Dragon flights followed by a Starship flight.

Sky Perfect is not a new company, with sixteen satellites already in orbit providing communications, broadband, and entertainment to Japan and the Far East. It likely made this deal because it got a very good launch price, with options to back out if the rocket’s on-going development gets delayed by too much. It also made the deal because it helps to solidify Starship’s future, something Sky Perfect probably sees as a win considering the significant reduction of launch costs expected from Starship/Superheavy.

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A “What the heck!?” crater on Mars

3:16 pm

A
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image falls into what I call my “What the heck?” category. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 31, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It was also picked by the science team as that camera’s picture of the day on July 12, 2022. From the caption:

This seems to belong to a class of craters in the Cerberus Plains that was flooded by lava, which was subsequently uplifted and fractured by an unknown process. This class of filled, uplifted and fractured craters is informally called “the waffle.” A combination of volcanic and periglacial processes seems possible.

In other words, the scientists only have a vague idea what created the broken up floor of this crater. For example, why did only the material in the interior of the crater get uplifted and fractured? Did this uplift occur before, during, or after the lava event?

The overview map below tells us a little about where that lava came from, and when.
» Read more

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Universe’s most massive star is found to be less massive than previously believed

2:18 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have determined that the universe’s most massive star, dubbed R136a1, is actually less massive than previously believed.

By pushing the capabilities of the Zorro instrument on the Gemini South telescope of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, astronomers have obtained the sharpest-ever image of R136a1 — the most massive known star. This colossal star is a member of the R136 star cluster, which lies about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the center of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way.

Previous observations suggested that R136a1 had a mass somewhere between 250 to 320 times the mass of the Sun. The new Zorro observations, however, indicate that this giant star may be only 170 to 230 times the mass of the Sun. Even with this lower estimate, R136a1 still qualifies as the most massive known star.

What astronomers are trying to figure out is the highest possible mass a star can possibly have. This new data suggests that this upper limit is smaller than previously believed.

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Today’s blacklisted American: UC-San Diego to hold segregated events, excluding whites and Asians

11:59 am

University of California-San Diego's segregated Welcome Week
Click for original.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” In its upcoming welcoming program in September for new students, the University of California-San Diego plans to hold racially segregated events that specifically excludes whites and Asian students and families from attending.

The flyer ad to the right, announcing the program dubbed Triton Weeks of Welcome, specifically includes two such events, as indicated in red. Both are exclusively for specific minorities, and those minorities only.

The group running the Black Surf week, Black Like Water, explains the purpose of its racially-segregated event as follows:

Through our research and practice, Black Like Water seeks to promote healing, restoration, and sovereignty in ways that do the liberatory work of combating anti-blackness and interrupting structural racism, but in manners that celebrate the Black diaspora, acknowledge ancestral practices and knowledge, and imagine Black futures.

» Read more

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August 18, 2022 Quick space links

10:50 am

As stringer Jay correctly noted to me in an email today, “Slow news day.” None of the stories below merit a full post, even though they are pretty much all of today’s space news.

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Russian spacewalk ends earlier due to spacesuit power problem

9:34 am

A Russian spacewalk yesterday to continue the configuration of Europe’s robot arm for the Russian half of ISS was cut short after four hours when the power system in Oleg Artemyev’s spacesuit begin producing unexpected “voltage fluctuations.”

“I have a message, voltage low,” Artemyev radioed Russian ground controllers around 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). An engineer at Russia’s mission control center near Moscow warned Artemyev he would lose communications if his suit ran out of power.

Russian flight director Vladimir Solovyov then jumped on the line to tell Artemyev to head back to the safety of the airlock. “Oleg, this is Solovyov,” he said. “Drop everything and start going back (to the airlock) right away. Oleg, go back and connect to station power.”

This problem occurred about two hours into the spacewalk. The second astronaut, Denis Matveev, continued working at the robot arm for another two hours before mission control ordered him to end the walk early.

According to Russian officials, Artemyev was never in any danger, though the urgency in which he was ordered to come inside suggests otherwise. According to another news report, a power loss could have also shut down the spacesuit’s “pumps and the fan.”

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