Year: 2022

NASA shuffles crew for first Starliner manned mission

8:48 am

In a press release yesterday, NASA announced the two-person crew that will fly on the first manned mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to ISS.

[C]ommander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, whom NASA assigned to the prime crew in October 2020, will join NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who will serve as pilot. Williams previously served as the backup test pilot for CFT [crew test flight] while assigned as commander of NASA’s Boeing Starliner-1 mission, Starliner’s first post-certification mission. As CFT pilot, Williams takes the place of NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, originally assigned to the mission in 2018. NASA reassigned Mann to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission in 2021.

The crew for this flight, delayed now more than two years, has changed several times. In 2020 astronaut Chris Ferguson dropped out for personal reasons. Then NASA listed the crew as Wilmore, Mike Finke, and Nicole Mann, with Williams then assigned to Starliner’s next mission, its first long term flight to ISS.

With this change, the crew has been reduced to two, and Finke is now listed as a backup should something further change with the prime crew.

The press release made no mention of an actual launch date, though it did say that Boeing and NASA are still reviewing the data from Starliner’s unmanned demo mission:

The Starliner team is in the process of delivering the initial test flight data to NASA and jointly determining forward work ahead of a crewed flight. These engineering and program reviews are expected to continue for several weeks, culminating in a launch schedule assessment at the end of July, based upon spacecraft readiness, space station scheduling needs, and Eastern Range availability.

The goal had been to fly before the end of this year. It appears NASA and Boeing are still pushing to meet that goal.

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Mister Rogers – Garden of Your Mind

6:01 pm

An evening pause: As a kid, I could never stomach Mister Rogers. The most I could ever watch him was about ten seconds before becoming totally bored. Thus, I was initially very doubtful about scheduling this video — until I watched it. It takes the things Rogers said and did and turns it into a really good rap video!

Hat tip Tom Wilson, aka t-dub.

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Rock growths on Mars!

1:02 pm

Rock growths on Mars!
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right was taken by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity on May 15, 2022, and shows several incredibly strange vertical fingers of rock that appear to grow out of the ground. From the caption:

These likely formed as groundwater trickled through rock in the ancient past, depositing mineral cements over time; many years later, when the rock was exposed to the atmosphere, wind eroded the softer material around the cemented portions.

This formation explanation of course is only an educated guess. There are other possibilities, suggested by how cave formations grow over time, that are less likely but still must be considered. For example, maybe we are looking at a feature that grew upward as condensation from Mars’ once thicker and wetter atmosphere deposited new material on it over time.

Unfortunately, the image release does not provide a scale. My guess is that the longest finger is between six to twelve inches long, but it could be much smaller.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Arizona State University blacklists American flag for flags promoting the queer agenda and the evils of America

12:04 pm

American flag banned by Arizona State University
Banned at Arizona State University so that queers and racists could
be celebrated instead

As part of the celebrations this month for the fake holidays Juneteenth and Pride month, Arizona State University decided the American flag must come down and be replaced with flags celebrating the queer agenda and the Marxist and the racist anti-American agenda that Juneteenth represents.

On Wednesday, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk blasted Arizona State University for replacing American flags lining a street with Juneteenth and Pride flags. Kirk posted photos of ASU’s downtown Tempe, Arizona campus, with streets lined with alternating colorful pride flags, and the Juneteenth flag bearing a large star.

“Originally, the flags outside my apartment on campus were all American flags, then, at the start of June following the Memorial Day holiday, they replaced every other flag with pride or ‘progress’ flags.

“About a week later, my two roommates and I watched through our window as one of the American flags was taken down and replaced with a ‘Juneteenth’ flag. By the next morning, all the American flags were replaced by the Juneteenth flags,” said an ASU student who wished not to be named.

Since I guarantee almost none of my readers know what this fake Juneteenth holiday stands for, here is the BBC’s liberal spin:
» Read more

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First look at the new Starliner flight suit being made by Dover

10:08 am

It appears that the flight suit that the company ILC Dover is making for Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule has been unveiled not by the company but as part of an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Centers’ visitor complex.

Boeing has also signed contracts with two companies to provide two different flight suits.

Announced late last month, Boeing’s choice of ILC Dover’s AES came somewhat out of the blue. The aerospace company had previously selected another spacesuit manufacturer, the David Clark Company, to provide pressure garments for astronauts launching and landing on its CST-100 Starliner capsules.

An example of the David Clark suit, which was first revealed in 2017, has already flown twice to space on Boeing’s two orbital flight tests. Although astronauts have yet to fly on the Starliner, an anthropometric test device (instrumented mannequin) named “Rosie the Rocketeer” was dressed in the suit for the trial missions.

Boeing’s next and, as currently planned, final Starliner test flight will carry a crew, who will also wear the David Clark suit, according to a statement released by the company. The ILC AES will be introduced once Boeing begins flying astronauts on NASA-contracted missions to and from the International Space Station in 2023.

“In the spirit of commercial human spaceflight, we made the decision to bring an additional Starliner spacesuit supplier online to introduce additional redundancy, flexibility and competition for crew accommodations on future flights to low-Earth orbit destinations. We expect to introduce the new suits during operational missions, and are pleased to see the market opening up and allowing more options for Boeing as well as our government and commercial customers,” read the company’s statement.

In my opinion, the graphics at the link of both suits show them both to appear more comfortable and better looking than SpaceX’s Dragon flight suits. That opinion however is just a question of taste and style, and has nothing to do with the suits’ operation or use.

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Russian scientists defy Rogozin, will not reactivate German instrument on Spektr-RG telescope

9:51 am

It appears that the Russian astronomers who use their instrument on the Spekr-RG space telescope are refusing to follow the orders of Dmitry Rogozin to reactivate the German instrument — dubed eROSITA — which the Europeans shut down in response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

[T]he head of the Russian Space Research Institute, Lev Matveevich Zelenyi, spoke out against the unauthorized activation of eROSITA to Gazeta: “Our institute – all the scientists – categorically object to this. This objection is both for political and technical reasons.”

“This is not a Russian device. I can’t judge how realistic this whole thing is, I don’t know if our specialists have processing codes… But even if they have, it will be simply impossible to publish this data – no journal will accept it and will do it right,” he added.

Rogozin however appears adamant about taking over eROSITA. But then again, Rogozin blusters a lot, with many of this worst blusters having no bite behind them.

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Lucy gets a bonus asteroid during its tour of the Trojans

9:44 am

Lucy's planned journey
Click for full image.

While doing observations in March of one of the eight asteroids the Lucy asteroid will visit in the two Trojan asteroid regions fore and aft of Jupiter, scientists discovered it had a companion, thus increasing the total asteroids to be seen close-up by Lucy to nine.

One of the Trojan asteroids on Lucy’s tour, named Polymele, has a companion. Scientists discovered an apparent satellite of Polymele during a ground-based occultation observation in March, when Polymele briefly passed in front of a star, temporarily blocking its light from reaching Earth. The occultation observations were intended to help the Lucy science team determine the shape of Polymele, which only appears as a point of light in telescope images.

“We got a really nice projected shape of Polymele, and then we were very surprised to detect an object about 200 kilometers (120 miles) away from Polymele,” Levison said last week in a presentation to NASA’s Small Bodies Advisory Group. “It’s 5 kilometers (3 miles) in diameter, and it’s sitting almost exactly in Polymele’s equatorial plane.”

Lucy’s science team has temporarily named the object Shaun, after “Shaun the Sheep” in the show “Wallace and Gromit.”

The graphic above, from the Lucy science team, shows the spacecraft’s planned journey during its mission.

Engineers continue their attempts to fully open one of Lucy’s two solar arrays. On June 9th they successfully used the array’s deployment motors again for a short burst to further open the array. The plan is to repeat these short bursts with the hope the array will eventually latch into its intended open position.

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SLS dress rehearsal countdown set for June 20th with launch delayed again

9:28 am

According to NASA officials, the next attempt to complete a dress rehearsal countdown for its SLS rocket will take place on June 20, 2022, with the earliest date an actual launch can occur delayed again, and now set at best for an August 23 to September 6 window.

The article also notes that during a different press conference, NASA administrator Bill Nelson hinted that “there could be slips” in the present target date of ‘2025 for landing humans on the Moon.

Ya think? I guarantee that NASA will not land humans on the Moon in ’25, at least not using SLS. Based on all the issues confronting SLS, as well as NASA’s normal way of doing things, this mission will certainly slip at least one to two more years. And I am being very very very very optimistic.

We must also note that when first proposed by Bush Jr. in 2004, he predicted a NASA manned lunar landing by 2015, which means this launch will be at least one decade behind schedule, with it more likely being later than that.

But then, I can hear our glorious president yelling at me for complaining. “C’mon man! What’s a decade or two when you’re scheduling something important?”

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Capturing the Corleones – Through the Lens of Photographer Steve Schapiro

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Not only does this short documentary provide some fascinating background to the making of The Godfather (1972), it describes some aspects of the art of movies that most people do not know.

Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, my former editor at UPI and author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Biden administration purging conservatives from FBI

1:20 pm

Chris Wray, FBI director and jack-booted thug
Chris Wray, FBI director and jack-booted thug

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: According to numerous whistleblowers talking to the office of Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the FBI has been aggressively blacklisting any employee who happens to express any conservative opinions at all.

Jordan detailed the most recent actions in a June 7th letter [pdf] to Chris Wray, director of the FBI, which was also a follow-up on another such letter sent in May.

We continue to investigate allegations that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is retaliating against FBI employees for engaging in disfavored political speech. On May 6, 2022, we sent you a letter that detailed examples of the FBI suspending the security clearances of FBI employees for their participation in protected First Amendment activity.1 To date, you have failed to acknowledge our letter or begin to arrange for the requested briefing. Since our May 6 letter, we have received new protected whistleblower disclosures that suggest the FBI’s actions are far more pervasive than previously known. Multiple whistleblowers have called it a “purge” of FBI employees holding conservative views. [emphasis mine]

The earlier May 6th letter [pdf] was even more blunt:
» Read more

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Curiosity: Into the mountains

11:48 am

Panorama on Mars, June 15, 2022
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The journey of Curiosity into the mountains of Gale Crater continues. The photo above, taken on June 15, 2022 by the rover’s left navigation camera, looks straight ahead at one possible route into those mountains.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right indicates Curiosity’s position. The yellow lines show the approximate area covered by the photo, by my estimate. The recurring slope lineae is a streak that comes and goes seasonally, and could be caused by some form of seepage. The marker layer, as indicated by the arrows, is a geological layer found at about the same elevation in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

The red dotted line indicates the planned route of Curiosity, which it is presently striving to return to, having been forced to retreat from the Greenheugh Pediment because of its too-rough terrain.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is estimated to be about 450 feet high. Thus, the peak in the center of the panorama, which I think is the large mesa in the lower right corner of the overview map, is probably twice that height, about 1,500 to 1,700 feet high, and much higher than the two mesas that frame it on either side. Distance and perspective hide this difference.

When Curiosity finally gets inside Gediz Vallis and close to the side of that many-layered mesa, the view should be unbelievably amazing.

The science team has not yet revealed the precise route they plan to take to return to the planned route. While they may aim straight over the saddle in the photo above, I suspect they will instead bear west, following ground that is less steep.

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