June 2, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Year: 2023
America’s Iron Giants – The World’s Most Powerful Metalworkers
An evening pause: Heavy tech (literally) that makes everything go, was built with slide-rules and pencils — in feet, inches, ounces, and pounds — and still operates.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Avalanche to the east of Gale Crater on Mars
Click for original picture.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an avalanche that slumped downward out of the material that forms the interior western wall of an unnamed 25-mile-wide crater about 100 miles east of Gale Crater, where Curiosity has been roving for more than a decade.
The scientists call these types of Martian avalanches “mass-wasting events”, since the entire mass of the cliff moves downhill in a chunk, rather than as a pile of rocks that grows in size and strength as it picks up material on its way down.
It is not clear how old this slide is. A lot of the material on this slope appears to be Martian dust, some of which has flowed into the avalanche material after it had slide downhill.
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Shadowcam on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter sees no obvious ice in the permanently shadowed interior of Spudis crater
Using Shadowcam, a camera built by Arizona State University that is on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter and is designed to see into very dark regions of little light, scientists have obtained optical images showing the permanently shadowed interior of Spudis Crater, located only about ten miles from the Moon’s south pole.
That picture is below. To the left is an annotated overview created from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) high resolution images. The white box inside Spudis Crater indicates the area covered by the section of the Shadowcam image I have focused on. The red outlines indicate areas that are thought to be permanently shadowed. The relatively flat ridgeline between Shackleton and Spudis is one of the prime future landing sites for NASA’s Artemis program.
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Newly discovered Starliner issues delay launch again
NASA and Boeing revealed today that two newly discovered design issues involving Starliner’s parachutes and the tape used to protect the capsule’s wiring has forced it to cancel the planned June launch, with no firm new launch date scheduled.
The parachute issue involves the parachute cords, specifically the “soft link joints” that connect those lines to the capsule.
[Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner VP] told reporters fabric links that join the parachutes to the lines of the spacecraft, called soft link joints, need to be replaced and possibly recertified to withstand heavier loads and stresses to ensure crew safety. “They were tested recently because of a discovery that we found during the review process where we believed that the data was recorded incorrectly,” Nappi said. “We tested (the soft links), and sure enough, they did fail at the lower limit.” [emphasis mine]
The tape — which has been found to be far more flammable than expected — is difficult to fix.
The second problem found last week is more extensive since the tape used to protect Starliner’s wiring harnesses from nicks or abrasions runs for hundreds of feet through several of the spacecraft’s internal systems. “There is a lot of tape on the wire harnesses,” Nappi said. “We’re looking at solutions that would provide for potentially another type of wrapping over the existing tape in the most vulnerable areas that reduces the risk of a fire hazard.”
That both of these issues were not fixed in development is beyond astonishing and speaks so badly of Boeing’s engineering and management that it is difficult to find words. In fact, for Boeing to use tape that could cause a fire now, more than a half century after the Apollo 1 capsule fire, suggests a level of incompetence that makes one wonder why anyone would ever fly on any of its spacecraft or airplanes. This is certainly not the company that built the 747.
Officials indicated that they might be able fix this issues fast enough that a fall launch could occur, but made no promises.
For Boeing, this new delay only worsens its bottom line. It built Starliner on a fixed-price contract, so every delay and issue must be paid for by it, not NASA. Meanwhile, the delays mean that SpaceX is getting flight contracts to ISS from NASA, contracts that Boeing would have gotten had Starliner been ready as planned. Worse, ISS is now looking at a 2028 retirement. If Boeing doesn’t get Starliner operational soon, there might not even be any contracts for it to win.
I have embedded the full press conference below for those who wish to watch NASA and Boeing officials blather about how they really haven’t done anything stupid here. Really, you have got to believe them!
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May 31, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Clara Cernat & Thierry Huillet – Porumbescu Balada
An evening pause: Hat tip Judd Clark.
Sunspot update: May activity once again far above prediction
With the start of the month it is time once again for our monthly sunspot update, based on the new data that NOAA today added to its own monthly graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. I have posted that graph below, but have added some extra details to provide some context.
In May the number of sunspots zipped upward again, ending up at the second highest monthly count during this ramp up to solar maximum, and the second highest count since the last solar maximum in 2014.
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June 1, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- SpaceX’s Starlink wins Pentagon contract for satellite services to Ukraine
Terms were not released, but this contract is essentially the military’s recognition that if it wants Starlink available for use in the Ukraine it will have to pay for it. As Musk said several months ago, the freebie deal with SpaceX has to end.
- First Dream Chaser launch delayed to no early than the end of this year
This new delay appears mostly related to ULA’s problems in getting the launch rocket, Vulcan, operational.
- Tweet outlining activity launchpad construction activity at Cape Canaveral
I include this link because Jay thinks it is worth seeing, but it is written in the kind of typical Twitter shorthand that I find incredibly uninformative and confusing. All it does is hint at stuff without providing any real information.
- Analysis of Relativity’s Terran-R rocket says its launch price should be $55 million, though the early contracts are paying $45 million
The lower initial contract prices are nothing unusual. Satellite companies routinely get better prices on new rockets. Once established and proven the price then goes up. And at $55 million that price will still be competitive, and likely will soon drop once Relativity begins reusing parts, as it aims to do.
- Pakistan official says it plans to partner with China on its Lunar Base
The specifics still have to be worked out.
Martian rootless cones
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 8, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The camera team labeled this picture simply “Rootless Cones,” which is a feature that is created when the lava that covers the surface is thin, allowing the heated material below (which is not lava) to burst upward, producing the cone and caldera. If you look at the full image you will see other similar clusters of cones scattered about on this very flat and featureless plain. Apparently, the material that this lava plain covered had several similar bursts in a number of areas.
Such cones in this particular lava field are not rare, and in fact are evidence that this particular field is young.
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Pushback: Christian adoption agency wins against NY’s attempt to force it to send kids to queer families
New Hope: willing to fight for its
religious beliefs
Bring a gun to a knife fight: When two different New York state agencies threatened to investigate and penalize the Christian nonprofit New Hope Family Services because it refused to place orphans with queer couples, instead insisting that the children under its care be adopted only by a mother and father, New Hope sued — twice — and has now won two settlements that will allow it to continue to place children in the manner that matches its beliefs.
Faith-based adoption provider New Hope Family Services secured a second victory against New York state officials, after securing a favorable settlement and a payment of $250,000 for attorneys’ fees in a related lawsuit settled last month. In settlement of the second lawsuit—which challenged an attempt by a different New York state agency to punish New Hope for adhering to its religious convictions—New York officials agreed to pay an additional $25,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs, and broadly confirmed New Hope’s right to continue its critical work of placing infants in permanent homes without government harassment.
ESA to live-stream image downloads from Mars Express
To celebrate Mars Express’s 20th year in orbit around Mars, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that tomorrow it will for one hour live-stream the image downloads coming from the orbiter.
I have embedded that live stream below. According to the press release, new images will arrive about once every 50 seconds. The camera that will be taking the pictures however is not one of Mars Express’s main instruments, but designed instead to simply monitor the separation of the Beagle-2 lander from the orbiter in 2003. Since 2007 however the science team has used its low resolution global images of Mars for public relations, education, and even some science research.
That the science team is not providing the live feed from its high resolution camera however illustrates why Mars Express gets so little press coverage, compared to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). All MRO images are released to the public, usually only a month or so after they reach Earth. The ESA however has never made the archive of Mars Express accessible, as far as I have been able to discover. All it does is periodically issue a press release about once every few months touting one new image, even though the spacecraft is taking dozens daily.
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