TT Isle of Man Street Race
An evening pause: For the weekend.
Hat tip Cotour, who adds, “Wait until this comes to Mars.”
Year: 2022
Starliner successfully docks with ISS
Screen capture just after soft docking.
Boeing and NASA today successfully docked an unmanned Starliner capsule to ISS for the first time, completing the up-from-Earth portion of this demo mission to prove out this Boeing spacecraft as a future ferry to bring astronauts to and from the station.
The screen capture to the right, taken from the live feed, shows Starliner just after a successful soft capture docking. This was shortly followed by a hard dock.
They will open the hatch tomorrow after checking out the capsule’s linkage with ISS.
The docking itself was delayed by about 78 minutes, partly to time the docking during a period of good orbital communications and partly because of an issue with NASA’s own docking ring on the station that required engineers to reset it.
A pair of spiral galaxies
Click for full image.
Another cool image to herald in the weekend! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a pair of spiral galaxies about 800 million light years away.
The smaller galaxy is superimposed on the larger one, which is a type of active galaxy called a Seyfert galaxy.
Seyfert galaxies are named for astronomer Carl K. Seyfert who, in 1943, published a paper about spiral galaxies with very bright emission lines. Today we know that about 10% of all galaxies may be Seyfert galaxies. They belong to the class of “active galaxies” – galaxies that have supermassive black holes at their centers accreting material, which releases vast amounts of radiation. The active cores of Seyfert galaxies are at their brightest when observed in light outside the visible spectrum. The larger galaxy in this pair is a Type II Seyfert galaxy, which means it is a very bright source of infrared and visible light.
In other words, both of these galaxies emit a lot of radiation in the infrared, radio, and X-rays due to activity taking place at the supermassive black holes believed to be at their cores.
Dry flows on Mars?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows what appear to be a variety of flows, from alluvial fill to slope streaks to dust coming down the southeastern interior rim of 77-mile-wide Orson Welles Crater on Mars.
The location is almost right on the equator, so none of these flows are ice- or water-related. Nor are such flows unusual in the meandering 800-mile-long canyon that cuts through Orson Wells crater, dubbed Shalbatana Vallis. I featured similar flows at a spot to the north and downstream from this one in May 2021, also on the canyon’s eastern rim.
The overview map below provides some context.
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Pushback: Five bowling alleys sue Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat and would-be dictator
Bring a gun to a knife fight: A coalition of five Michigan bowling alleys has sued Democratic Party Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon for shutting down their businesses for more than a year during the Wuhan panic without providing them any just compensation.
You can read the complaint here [pdf].
Plaintiff’s chief counsel David Kallman told The Epoch Times after the appeals court hearing…
“Michigan is the only state in the nation where a governor’s public health emergency powers were overturned as unconstitutional. If we lose in the court of appeals, we will take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.”Scott Bennett, executive director of the Independent Bowling and Entertainment Centers Association, told The Epoch Times: “The governor’s actions were devastating to our industry. Things went from ‘two weeks to slow the spread’ to indefinite shutdowns.”
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Perseverance’s upcoming travel plans
Click for interactive map.
Today’s update from the Perseverance’s science team provided a rough outline of their travel and drill-sampling plans for the Mars rover in Jezero Crater as it begins its climb up onto the delta that once poured into the crater. The route they plan to travel initially is dubbed Hawksbill Gap.
At Hawksbill Gap, however, we may instead carry out the first portion of the sampling sol path (which includes abrasion and collecting observations using our proximity science instruments) at up to 5 locations along our ascent. After that, we’ll turn around and begin a descent back down Hawksbill Gap and collect rock core samples at 3 of our abrasion locations.
This modified sampling strategy is intended to provide the team with valuable contextual information as we climb Hawksbill Gap and interpret the delta stratigraphy around us. With proximity science data in-hand, we can down-select our sampling sites to ensure we’ll be collecting the most scientifically valuable cores along our descent. Of course, we still maintain the option of collecting sample cores at any point during our ascent, if the team decides a particular abrasion site warrants immediate sampling.
The map above shows my guess (the red dotted lines) as to their potential routes uphill. As the science team has so far not published a map indicating exactly where Hawksbill Gap is, I can only guess at this point. The blue dot indicates Perseverance’s present position, the green dot Ingenuity.
As for the helicopter, there is no word yet whether the engineers have successfully gotten its batteries back to full charge. Until then, it cannot fly, and is also at risk of freezing up in the cold Martian winter.
India delays launch of manned mission to do two abort tests first
The new colonial movement: India’s space agency ISRO has decided to delay the launch of its Gaganyaan manned orbital mission at least one more year (until ’24) in order to do two abort tests of the capsule.
“The first Test Vehicle for this purpose is ready and we will launch it in September this year. The human capsule will be sent up 15 kilometres, we will simulate an abort and then the capsule will be safely brought down by parachutes into the sea,’’ Somanath, who is also Secretary, Department of Space, said.
The second Test Vehicle will be launched in December this year, sent to a greater height and then brought back after a similar simulation is carried out.
The mission had originally been scheduled to launch in ’22, but was delayed significantly by India’s panic over Wuhan.
Zhurong goes into hibernation
According to a report today in China’s state-run press, the team running its Zhurong Mars rover have placed it into a hibernation mode in order to sit out the Martian winter.
To tackle the dust storms and low-temperature challenges, the Chinese rover went into dormancy on Wednesday. It is expected to wake up and resume work in December when the dust clears and Mars enters its spring season, the administration said in a statement.
The rover sits somewhere in the blue circle in the map to the right, created using elevation data and images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This region is about 25 degrees north latitude, so though it is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars, it still gets very cold in winter, down to -180 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Furthermore, the increased winter dust storms block the light from the Sun, which reduces the available power the rover’s solar panels can produce.
Chinese engineers have apparently adapted the hibernation techniques they use on the Moon with their Yutu-2 rover to place Zhurong in hibernation.
Starliner reaches proper orbit despite thruster problems
Unbelievable: During the post-launch press conference last night Boeing officials revealed that, though the final burn to get Boeing’s Starliner capsule into orbit using its own thrusters succeeded, the thrusters did not function as planned.
Boeing Vice President Mark Nappi said a Starliner thruster failed after firing for one second as the spacecraft made a burn to enter orbit after separating from its Atlas V launch vehicle. The flight software switched to a second thruster, which fired for 25 seconds before shutting down prematurely. A third thruster took over and completed the firing, Nappi said.
The thrusters were made by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which also made the valves that did not work in the previous launch attempt in the summer of 2021. Whether the two problems are related is not known at this time.
A NASA official also noted that a cooling unit on the spacecraft operated “sluggishly during ascent,” but began working correctly once in orbit.
Right now NASA and Boeing are planning to proceed with the docking on ISS tonight at 7:10 pm (Eastern). It appears that though two thrusters have failed, they have ten more thrusters that can be used for further maneuvers throughout the mission. Furthermore, these thrusters are not used during the actual rendezvous and docking.
The live stream of the docking goes live at 3:30 pm (Eastern), and is embedded below. Until then enjoy NASA propaganda, some of it might be of interest.
Update: NASA has cut off coverage of the docking on the channel I had embedded previously. I have now embedded an active live feed.
Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2
An evening pause: This is long for an evening pause, but you can let it play in the background if you have other things to do. Recorded live January 2022 in Amsterdam.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket successfully launches Starliner into orbit
Screen capture just after lift-off
Capitalism in space: ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket today successfully launched Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule into orbit on its second attempt to complete an unmanned demo mission to ISS.
The capsule having been deployed by the rocket then followed with a final burn using the capsule’s own engines to get into its proper orbit for rendezvous with ISS tomorrow at 7:10 pm (Eastern). It was during this rendezvous period that Starliner had its problems in the first demo mission in December 2019 that caused the mission to be aborted prior to docking. Hopefully those software issues have been solved and all will go well through tomorrow.
It is interesting to compare the operation and equipment of Boeing/ULA vs SpaceX. While SpaceX has aimed for a sleek look, Boeing/ULA both retain the industrial feel of past rocketry. Neither is wrong, but the difference highlights the consequences of having competing operations. You get variety.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
21 SpaceX
15 China
7 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 30 to 15 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 30 to 25.
Pushback: Two Alaska Airlines flight attendants fired for asking questions file lawsuit
Alaska Airlines: Opposed to free speech and religious freedom
Picture credit: Quintin Soloviev
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Bring a gun to a knife fight: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a September 2021 story about two flight attendants — Marli Brown and Lacey Smith — who were fired by Alaska Airlines because they had the nerve to question the airline’s public support of a gay rights bill, and asked those questions on a forum the airline had itself arranged for employees to comment.
At the time the attendants, represented by the First Liberty Institute, had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which recently issued “right-to-sue” letters to both attendants.
First Liberty has now filed its lawsuit, which you can read here [pdf]. The suit is against both Alaska Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants Association of the AFL-CIO that failed to defend both Brown and Smith. From the complaint:
On February 25, 2021, Alaska Airlines posted an article about its support for the Equality Act to an internal employee message board and solicited employee comments. The Equality Act is proposed legislation that would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes to a variety of federal statutes and would curtail the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In response, Marli and Lacey felt compelled by their Christian faith to post one comment each, asking about the impact of the Equality Act on civil rights for religion and women in the workplace.
Alaska Airlines responded to Marli and Lacey’s posts by immediately removing Marli and Lacey from their flight schedules, terminating their employment, and disparaging their religious expression and beliefs as “discriminatory,” “hateful,” and “offensive.”
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