Ana Popovic – Some blues improv
An evening pause: Hat tip Judd Clark.
Year: 2023
May 11, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Vulcan rocket prepped for wet dress countdown and static fire test
In truth the Vulcan is only the first stage of ULA’s rocket, as the upper stage is the Centaur, which is not stacked for this test, probably because of the static fire test failure last month. Note too that ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno says the Vulcan’s BE-4 engines have now passed qualification firing.
- ISRO begins testing new engines for future rockets
The test also initiated operations on a new engine test stand
- Tianzhou cargo freighter docks with China’s Tiangong-3 space station
The docking took place eight hours after launch.
- Roscosmos and Russian Academy of Sciences propose Venus sample return concept
The release claims this will launch sometime after 2030. My guess is it will be closer to 2040, if at all.
Court victory in PA requiring a clean-up in voter rolls will do nothing to fix that state’s voter tampering
Judicial Watch today announced a court settlement that requires five counties in Pennsylvania to remove more than 178K ineligible registrations from their voter rolls.
Pennsylvania admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years, along with a payment to Judicial Watch of $15,000 for legal costs and fees.
Sounds great doesn’t it? Bah. The five counties involved — Luzerne County, Cumberland County, Washington County, Indiana County and Carbon County — are all in relatively rural areas or cover the smaller cities of Pennsylvania. None of this effects Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, where rampant voter fraud, voter tampering, and election rigging in solid Democratic Party districts appeared to produce enough fake votes in the last two elections to give the statewide vote to the Democratic Party.
Until some action is taken to clean up the fraud in these Democrat strongholds, Pennsylvania is going to go Democrat, no matter what its total population really wants.
China’s X-37B copy appears to have tested docking and rendezvous while in orbit
Tracking data during the 276-day flight of China’s copy of Boeing’S X-37B reusable mini-shuttle suggests that it tested docking and rendezvous operations with an object it released while in orbit.
U.S. Space Forceโs 18th Space Defense Squadron tracking data revealed an object in a closely-matching orbit to the spaceplane Oct. 31, 2022 (NORAD ID 54218 (2022-093J COSPAR ID)).
This companion subsatellite was then used in a series of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) with the spacecraft, according to Leolabs. โAnalyzing data from our global radar network, weโve determined that the Test Spacecraft2 has propulsive capability and engaged in proximity operations with Object J, including what appeared to be at least two and possibly three capture/docking operations,โ a Leolabs statement said.
None of this is a surprise. Such reusable shuttles allow for a great deal of testing and experimentation in orbit, that can then be returned to Earth for analysis.
Hat tip Jay, BtB’s stringer.
Is this ice or lava in the death valley of Mars?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
To put it mildly this is strange terrain. The curving east-west feature resembles a glacial flow, but it also has features that say otherwise. For example, what could cause that gap in the middle of the picture? Such things are not usually seen in an ice flow. Then there is that filled crater on the center left edge of the picture, inside the flow. Though filled with material, the flow itself does not flow around the crater, suggesting the impact occurred after the flow. Moreover the crater is a pedestal crater, whereby the surrounding terrain has eroded away so that the crater ends up standing above it.
These facts suggest that this flow is very old, and has not flowed for a very very very long time. This in turn suggests it isn’t ice but solidified lava, though for a lava flow it also has features that are anomalous when compared to typical flood lava on Mars.
» Read more
Scientists: Stars orbiting close to Milky Way’s supermassive black hole do it alone
The stars orbiting Sag A*. Click for original image.
Based on a ten year study of the motions of nine stars orbiting close to Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, scientists have concluded that they are single stars, not binaries as would be expected.
Using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiสปi Island, Devin Chu of Hilo, an astronomer with the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative, led a 10-year survey that found these โS-stars,โ where โSโ stands for Sagittarius A*, the name of the monster black hole at our galaxyโs core, are all single.
The result is surprising given the S-stars Chuโs team observed included young, massive main-sequence stars that are only about six million years old. Normally, stars at this age that are 10 times more massive than our Sun spend their childhood years paired with a twin in a binary system, or sometimes even as triplets.
This finding suggests that the black hole’s massive gravitational field causes the binaries to be pulled apart, or somehow to merge during their formation.
This data point and the questions it raises pales before the more fundamental question that astronomers have been asking since these stars were first discovered in the 1990s: How is it possible for any stars to form so close to such a disruptive gravitational field?
May 10, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Zorro – One In a Million Moments From Nature
An evening pause: Hat tip Tom Biggar.
May 10, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Rocket Lab is selling the helicopter it had planned to use to catch Electron 1st stages
Their decision to reuse the stages after quickly pulling them from the water made the helicopter extraneous.
- China claims completion of an in-orbit experiment on liquid metal thermal management on its space station
I honestly don’t know what this means. Have they used some form of liquid metal to manage the station’s temperature? Or have they figured out a way to control and manage liquid metals in weightlessness?
- Several solar storms are expected to hit Earth in the next few days
I make two predictions: 1) Nothing of significance will happen, though we will have great auroras. 2) Some news outlets will write a story with some variation of this headline: “Were we lucky to dodge a solar disaster this time?”
A rash on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a “Circular Outcrop of Bright Rock.
What I see is a Martian skin rash. Based on the ripple pattern below the ridge one might think we are looking at sand dunes, except that the rash above the cliff has no such pattern. Instead, the ground in this one particular area looks very roughened in a random sort of way.
The location at 27 degrees south latitude suggests there is little near surface ice at this location to cause this feature. The overview map below provides another but not very helpful possibility.
» Read more
Hiking in a most unusual way, for others
The Tucson crew for Luke 5 Adventures takes a hiker uphill
Since I was blacklisted by the caving community in 2021, I have been searching for a new outdoor hobby that would satisfy my interests and provide me a new social community.
This search has landed me in a very unusual place (a circumstance that for me has actually been very typical in my life). During a loop hike in October last year, Diane and I met a couple who were doing the loop in the opposite direction. The first time we met we chatted for a few minutes, and then moved on in opposite directions. When we met the second time, however, we talked longer and exchanged contact information. It appears that Angelo and Bonnie Piro also love hiking, recently moved to Tucson from New Jersey (which meant I had a lot in common with them), and were looking for people they could hike with.
Since then we have hiked together numerous times. One day in late November Angelo mentioned that they had the day before participated in a short hike whereby they helped transport a 9-year-old boy who could not walk on his own in a one-wheel chair — dubbed Rosie — over a trail, as part of a volunteer organization called Luke5Adventures. From its national webpage:
For those who arenโt physically able to hike it, forge it, climb it, cross it, or ascend it, we
we can make it possible.
As the founder of this organization, Kevin Schwieger, explains on the webpage,
I knew we needed to give this venture a name. My thoughts went to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5, and the account of the group of friends who took their paralytic friend to go see Jesus. The house where Jesus was speaking was so crowded that they could not get in. That didnโt stop them. They were determined to enable their friend to see something amazing. They carried him to the roof, cut the thatch away, and lowered him down through the hole in the roof to see Jesus! I pictured in my mindโs eye, groups of friends by the hundreds, using Rosies to take their new friends to see places and things that heretofore have been impossible. Not figuratively impossible, but, literally impossible.
It seemed to me that volunteering for this organization would give me an opportunity to do some fun outdoor stuff in a way that was new and interesting while doing good as well. It would also likely introduce me to some decent and righteous people with whom I could make some friends. That they were Christians and I was a secular Jew made no different to me, and I was quite confident it would make no difference to them either.
Not surprisingly, I was right.
» Read more
SpaceX successfully launches another 51 Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched another 51 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage successfully completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings completed their second flight in space.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
30 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China 34 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 34 to 29. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, only 30 to 33 in launches this year.