Year: 2022

Glacial flows pushing out through a Martian crater rim

12:51 pm

Wider view of 6-mile-wide crater
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image once again illustrates how Mars is far from a waterless planet. Instead, there is strong evidence that water ice can be found across most of the Red Planet’s surface, excluding the equatorial regions lower than 30 degrees latitude.

The photo to the right was taken on September 11, 2021 by the wide view context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a 6-mile-wide unnamed crater on Mars, located at 35 degrees south latitude, with what appears to be a glacier in its interior, flowing to the southwest towards several breaches in the crater’s southwest rim. Several of those breaches now sit higher than the flow, suggesting that the glacier itself was once higher and flowed out of those gaps. Now the level has dropped, and the only place the glacier exits the crater is the central gap at the center of the white rectangle.

That white rectangle marks the area covered by a recent MRO high resolution image, taken on March 29, 2022 and cropped and reduced to post below.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Supreme Court Justice Thomas forced to quit as lecturer at GWU

11:40 am

Clarence Thomas: Banned at amazon
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: driven out
as a lecturer at George Washington University

Blacklists are back and our future law students love ’em: Faced with a petition signed by 11,000 individuals demanding he be fired, Supreme Court Justice Thomas has resigned as a lecturer at George Washington University (GWU).

Thomas has been a lecturer at the school since 2011, but has now been removed as faculty from its website. His decision not to return to teaching comes in the wake of protests against conservative supreme court judges following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

The school was hit by a petition calling for the removal of Thomas, with more than 11,000 signatories. But George Washington University is home to just 1,600 students, and bosses there defended Thomas, insisting he was entitled to his views. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate something significant: The bulk of the petition’s signers were not from George Washington University. However, though the school had apparently supported Thomas during this affair, we do not know how many of its 1,600 students signed the petition. What we do know is that there did not seem to be much public support for him from those students.

It is hard to fathom any law student not wanting to meet in person and hear the legal opinions of a Supreme Court justice, no matter where he or she stands on the political spectrum. To try to block such lectures reveals a shocking close-mindedness and hostility to rational thought. The language of the petition illustrates this, filled with false statements, ad hominen attacks, and complete intolerance of other points of view:
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Axiom signs deal with New Zealand

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: The private space station company Axiom has now signed a deal with New Zealand to permit its citizens to propose and fly experiments on future Axiom missions, both to ISS and to Axiom’s own space station, scheduled for launch beginning in ’24.

This is the fourth international commercial agreement Axiom has signed since May, with Italy, Hungary, and the UAE the signatories in the previous deals. The UAE deal also included the launch of a UAE astronaut to ISS for a six month flight.

Axiom hopes to launch its first module to ISS in ’24, with later modules eventually allowing it to undock its section to fly as an independent station when ISS is retired.

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Environmentalists opposed to Starship at Boca Chica appeal dismissal of their lawsuit

9:45 am

Environmentalists from the Sierra Club and one Texas Indian tribe have now appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit aimed at blocking further tests or launches of Starship and Superheavy by SpaceX at its Boca Chica facility.

The Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of South Texas jointly appealed the 445th District Court’s decision July 7 to dismiss a lawsuit concerning SpaceX testing of its next-generation Starship vehicle closing nearby Boca Chica Beach, the coalition said July 28. In the dismissal, Judge Gloria Rincones argued there is “no private right of enforcement” concerning the beach access, according to KRGV.com (opens in new tab). The dismissal took place over the appellants’ protests that closing the beach violates the Texas state constitution, along with access rights by traditional groups.

The Sierra Club’s Brownsville organizer, Emma Guevara, stated the appeal is taking place because the beach is closed weekly to allow “a billionaire [to] launch deadly rockets near homes and wildlife.”

Citing a fireball that briefly and unexpectedly engulfed Starship during testing July 12, Guevera said her family was “forced” to hear the noise, which “launched without any warning for the public.” [emphasis mine]

My my, what a horror! I suppose everyone must stop what they are doing because Guevera and his family might be inconvenienced. And who cares if the lawsuit prevents thousands of south Texas citizens from having jobs and a thriving economy? It is more important Guevera doesn’t have to hear loud noises.

The lawsuit claims that allowing SpaceX to periodically close access to the nearest beach violates the state’s constitution, despite laws passed by both the local and state legislatures allowing for these closures.

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Next private SpaceX manned targeting December launch

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX is now planning to launch in December the next private manned Dragon orbital mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, and led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who led the previous private Inspiration4 mission in September 2021.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three separate crewed launches, all of them funded by Isaacman. This first effort will see Isaacman flying a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft alongside Sarah Gillis, Anna Menon and Scott Poteet. (Both Gillis and Menon work at SpaceX.) The second launch aims to use a Dragon while the third is scheduled as the first crewed mission for Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft.

…Among the mission’s aims is the first spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), of a private astronaut. The crew will use SpaceX-developed EVA suits for the effort. Crew Dragon will be depressurized for the spacewalk in a similar way that NASA’s Gemini capsules were in the 1960s, requiring all crew members to wear suits designed for a vacuum environment.

By not flying to ISS, Isaacman and SpaceX avoid the high fees NASA charges as well as its extensive requirements.

By remaining in orbit however the length of the mission will be limited to only a few days, rather than weeks. Thus, it underlines the growing need for private commercial space stations, not controlled by the government.

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Lucy science team ends attempt to deploy solar array

9:12 am

Lucy's planned journey
Lucy’s planned mission, the yellow dot indicating approximately
its present position. Click for full image.

The Lucy science team has decided to end further attempts to fully deploy one of the spacecraft’s two solar arrays, leaving it just short of fully deployed.

On seven occasions in May and June, the team commanded the spacecraft to simultaneously run the primary and backup solar array deployment motors. The effort succeeded, pulling in the lanyard, and further opening and tensioning the array.

The mission now estimates that Lucy’s solar array is between 353 degrees and 357 degrees open (out of 360 total degrees for a fully deployed array). While the array is not fully latched, it is under substantially more tension, making it stable enough for the spacecraft to operate as needed for mission operations.

The press release announcing this decision is horribly written. First, it buries this decision to the release’s last three paragraphs so that it can rave about the brilliance of Lucy’s engineers and scientists in solving the overall problem. Second, it never actually states that this is the decision that has been made. It implies it.

Regardless, it appears the engineers are satisfied that the almost fully deployed array will hold its position for the rest of the mission. They have decided that the risk of trying to fully deploy it is greater than the risk of having it slightly open.

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ULA launches Space Force reconnaissance satellite

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket early today successfully placed a Space Force reconnaissance satellite into orbit, designed to detect the heat signatures of incoming missiles.

At this moment ULA has only 21 Atlas-5 rockets in its inventory, after which the rocket will be fully replaced with the not-yet launched Vulcan.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

33 SpaceX
27 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 48 to 27 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 48 to 44.

The American total of 48 matches the total launches all last year.

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China launches three satellites with Long March 4B rocket

11:41 pm

China early on August 4, 2022 (China time) successfully placed three satellites in orbit, including a climate satellite it claims will do “carbon monitoring, survey and monitoring of terrestrial ecology and resource, major national ecological projects monitoring and evaluation.” No information at all was released about the other two satellites, both of which were probably cubesats.

This launch actually occurred prior to the Electron launch from Rocket Lab.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

33 SpaceX
27 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 47 to 27 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 43.

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Rocket Lab launches second NRO surveillance smallsat in three weeks

10:14 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place its second National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) surveillance smallsat into orbit in just over three weeks.

For Rocket Lab, this was the sixth launch in 2022, which matches its previous annual high, achieved in both 2019 and 2020. It should easily top that record before the year is out.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

33 SpaceX
26 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 47 to 26 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 42.

Two more American launches are scheduled in the next day. If both are successful, the U.S. will have exceeded its entire launch total for 2021 (48) in only a little more than a half year, and completed the most successful launches since 1967.

The second half of the year should actually be as active as the first half, with three more American smallsat rocket companies (Firefly, Relativity, and ABL) pushing hard for their first successful launches before the year is out, thus joining the already operational smallsat rocket companies Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra.

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