Year: 2022

Webb instrument has technical issue partly preventing its use

9:31 am

Because a an issue with the mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope, the telescope’s engineering team has paused use of that instrument while it reviews the situation.

On Aug. 24, a mechanism that supports one of these modes, known as medium-resolution spectroscopy (MRS), exhibited what appears to be increased friction during setup for a science observation. This mechanism is a grating wheel that allows scientists to select between short, medium, and longer wavelengths when making observations using the MRS mode. Following preliminary health checks and investigations into the issue, an anomaly review board was convened Sept. 6 to assess the best path forward.

The Webb team has paused in scheduling observations using this particular observing mode while they continue to analyze its behavior and are currently developing strategies to resume MRS observations as soon as possible. The observatory is in good health, and MIRI’s other three observing modes – imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and coronagraphy – are operating normally and remain available for science observations.

I am quoting almost entirely NASA’s short announcement. The announcement is vague, confusing, and (quite typically) written to minimize the reality of the issue. I can’t figure out how MIRI’s other observing modes are available if they have paused use of a mechanism that allows them to choose modes.

Regardless, Webb is awful young to have this kind of problem.

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September 19, 2022 Quick space links

2:45 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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SpaceX fires seven engines on Superheavy prototype #7

1:52 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully did a static fire engine test of seven engines on its Superheavy prototype #7, intended to be the lower stage of the first Superheavy/Starship orbital test.

The link takes you to the full live stream. Below I have cued that live stream to just before the test occurred. Everything seems to go as planned, with no obvious anomalies.

SpaceX continues to be moving closer and closer to that first orbital flight.
» Read more

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Interstellar clouds backlit by nearby massive star

1:27 pm

Interstellar clouds backlit by nearby massive star
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduce to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of what astronomers believe is a newly formed massive star about 9,000 light years away that has periodically spewed out material during eruptions.

The scientists hope to use Hubble to determine the speed in which this material is flying away from the star by taking pictures at intervals and then measuring the amount of change from image to image. This data will also allow the scientists to better gauge the distance to this star, as well as its actual mass, information that will help them better understand what is happening.

I highlight this picture however simply because of its beauty. The interstellar clouds on the left are all apparently backlit by the brightest star on the right, and thus their shape is easy to perceive.

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InSight’s seismometer detects its first new impact on Mars

1:13 pm

Martian impact discovered by InSight
Click for full image.

Using data from InSight’s seismometer that suggested a new impact had occurred at a specific location on September 5, 2022 on Mars, scientists used the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to search and find that impact.

The photo to the right, reduced to post here, is that MRO photo.

The initial impact itself created a small marsquake that was detected by InSight’s seismometer. The instrument recorded seismological data that showed the moment the meteoroid entered Mars’ atmosphere, its explosion into pieces in the atmosphere, and finally, the impact that created a series of at least three craters in the surface.

MRO then flew over the approximate site where the impact was “felt” to look for darkened patches of ground using its Context Camera. After finding this location, HiRISE captured the scene in color. The ground is not actually blue; this enhanced-color image highlights certain hues in the scene to make details more visible to the human eye – in this case, dust and soil disturbed by the impact.

This was thus the first new Martian impact detected based on its actual occurrence, rather than simply finding a change between two photos taken at different times. The latter only tells you a time period when the impact occurred. InSight’s detection here marks the impact’s exact moment.

Nor is this the only such discovery. It appears that InSight detected at least two other impacts (here and here), that only subsequently were linked to MRO impacts. In those cases, the new impact had already been found by MRO, and only afterward were scientists able to identify its seismic vibration in InSight data, thus pinpointing the exact date it took place.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Leftist thugs at University of New Mexico threaten conservative speaker and audience with violence

12:14 pm

Tomi Lahren: targeted for leftist violence
Tomi Lahren: targeted for leftist violence

They’re coming for you next: When the conservative student organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) invited conservative Tomi Lahren to speak at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, a mob of leftist thugs gathered outside, attempted to force their way in, and apparently actually threatened violence against both Lahren, the audience there to hear her speak, and the handful of police officers trying to protect them.

“I start my speech and you can hear the chants and you can hear the screaming and the expletives. And again, nobody really thought anything of it. They’re just, you know, fired up. And I didn’t really think too much of it until they started pushing past the officers and banging on the doors so much that these double doors are visibly moving and shaking and they are smashing into the windows. And that’s when it became incredibly chaotic,” Lahren continued. “Everybody was worried that they were going to get inside. They were pushing officers in front of the doors and pushing them out of the way. I mean, attacking them. It started to get very ugly and very violent, very fast. Of course, we could only see through these little windows in the front the room we were in, so we couldn’t really see exactly what was going on out there.” [emphasis mine]

A very short video shows these protesters chanting and pushing against the door to the room.
» Read more

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Orbital tug company signs launch agreement with German rocket startup

10:06 am

Capitalism in space: The orbital tug company Spaceflight today signed a launch agreement with the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA).

The agreement formalizes the plan for Spaceflight to fly its Sherpa® orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) and other rideshare payloads on upcoming RFA missions from a variety of European launch sites, including from facilities in the United Kingdom, French Guiana and others. The companies are targeting mid-2024 for their first launch.

Rocket Factory is one of three German startup rocket companies pushing to complete the first German commercial launch. While Isar Aerospace had raised the most capital, it remains unclear which of these companies will win.

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Valeri Polykov, holder of the record’s longest stay in space, passes away

10:00 am

Valeri Polykov
Valeri Polykov

Russian astronaut Valeri Polykov, who holds the record for the longest spaceflight yet of any human in history, has passed away at the age of 80.

In 1994 and 1995 Polykov spent 437 days on Russia’s space station Mir, the equivalent of fourteen months and two weeks. His thoughts at launch, as he told me personally when I interviewed him while writing Leaving Earth, were not so confident:

“What if something goes wrong?” [he explained]. “I had sacrificed so much time. The government has spent so much, more than they can afford. And I’ve learned so much for them myself, for them.

“Better I die if something went wrong,” he thought. “Better if I had a gun to shoot myself.”

Nothing went wrong however. Polykov, a doctor, had pushed for this long mission to find out if it would be possible for a person to function after a year-plus of weightlessness upon arrival on Mars. Originally planned to last 18 months, circumstances eventually shortened it to 14 months-plus. When Polykov came home in March 1995, he managed to walk a few steps on his own, shortly after being removed from the capsule. To his mind, he had proved that a person could function on their own on Mars after such a long flight.

Others disagreed. As I wrote in Leaving Earth, though he was almost normal within a week of landing,

Polykov had come back to Earth very weak. For at least those first few hours, he needed help from those around him. Any spacefarer arriving on Mars after a year in space must be prepared to face that same challenge.

Regardless, Polykov, like Brian Binnie, was one of the early giants in space exploration. His contribution must not be forgotten.

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SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie passes away

9:25 am

R.I.P. Brian Binnie, who piloted SpaceShipOne on its second flight that won the Ansari X-Prize back in 2004, passed away on September 15, 2022 at the age of 69.

Brian’s record flight was the second of two SpaceShipOne flights needed to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The prize was given for the first privately-built crewed vehicle to make a flight above 100 km (62.1 miles) twice within two weeks. Mike Melvill made the first flight for the Ansari X Prize competition five days earlier.

The success of this private spaceship proved that private enterprise could do better than government, if given the chance. It laid the groundwork for the renaissance in American rocketry we are seeing today.

His part in this history must not be forgotten.

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Webb takes its first infrared image of Mars

9:12 am

Webb's first infrared image of Mars
Click for full image.

Astronomers have now released the the James Webb Space Telescope’s first infrared image of Mars, taken on September 5, 2022.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows some of the data obtained. Because Mars is so close, it is actually too bright for Webb’s instruments. To get any data, the exposures were very very short, and still the brightest areas — as indicated by large areas of yellow — are overexposed. The cause of the different brightness of Hellas Basin, however, is not simply because the basin — the deepest point on Mars — is cooler.

As light emitted by the planet passes through Mars’ atmosphere, some gets absorbed by carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules. The Hellas Basin – which is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, spanning more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) – appears darker than the surroundings because of this effect. “This is actually not a thermal effect at Hellas,” explained the principal investigator, Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who designed these Webb observations. “The Hellas Basin is a lower altitude, and thus experiences higher air pressure. That higher pressure leads to a suppression of the thermal emission at this particular wavelength range [4.1-4.4 microns] due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data.”

The NASA press release says the scientists are preparing a paper analyzing the spectral data and what it revealed about “dust, icy clouds, what kind of rocks are on the planet’s surface, and the composition of the atmosphere,” I suspect however that Webb’s capabilities for studying Mars are much more limited than implied, and that it will over time take much fewer images of the red planet, compared to Hubble.

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SpaceX launches 54 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9

10:53 pm

After four scrubs on four consecutive days, SpaceX tonight finally successfully put 54 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings halves completed the third and fourth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

42 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 58 to 37 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 58 to 56. At 58 successful launches, 2022 is now the third most active year in the entire history of the United States, with only 1965 and 1966 having more launches.

This post is late because I spend the weekend in the mountains, caving. Twas a much needed break.

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