Year: 2024

Another Starship/Superheavy update

9:15 am

Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.

A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.

Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:

…there is still no news on when Flight 3โ€™s mishap investigation will be completed.

That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.

Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.

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Russia to NASA: We’ll wait a bit before putting our astronauts on Starliner

8:54 am

Even though Russia and NASA have a barter deal whereby one astronaut from each country flies free on each flight of its spacecraft, Russia it appears will forego flying any Russians on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the immediate future.

At the May 3 briefing, though, NASA officials said it was unlikely that a Russian cosmonaut would be assigned to Starliner-1 [the first operational flight after the first manned demo flight launching today]. โ€œWe expect, on the Roscosmos side, theyโ€™re more likely to want to see a long-duration flight also, so we think theyโ€™ll want to start to fly with us on Starliner-2,โ€ said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager.

That would appear to disrupt the ongoing series of seat exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos. โ€œWeโ€™re still working through that with our Roscosmos counterparts. Itโ€™s our desire to continue to do integrated crew,โ€ she said, adding that NASA and Roscosmos donโ€™t have an agreement yet in place for exchanging crews in the timeframe that will include Starliner-1.

This isn’t a surprise. Russia made the same decision with SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsule, waiting until it had flown a few times before agreeing to allow its astronauts on it. With Boeing Russia might be more hesitant, consider the problems Starliner has had in development plus the overall quality control issues known to exist at Boeing.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch

9:55 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.

The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.

Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.

The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.

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The pro-Hamas campus mobs were almost as barbaric as Hamas itself

2:29 pm

Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob
Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob

With the mobs of pro-Hamas protesters finally cleared from many occupied college campuses, we are now finding out just how much these rioters resembled the Hamas barbarians whose effort to murder Jews these protesters supported.

To the right is a screen capture from video taken during a short walk through of the inside of the Portland State University’s Millar Library, following the removal of the pro-Hamas rioters. The place was trashed in the most childish way. You can seem more evidence here. As noted by that report:

Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages and screeds covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs. โ€œWeโ€™ve got our work cut out for us,โ€ a facilities manager at Portland State University said Thursday as he examined the destruction left behind after a three-day occupation by pro-Palestinian protesters in Millar Library.

It also was reported that rare archival materials were stolen by the student mob.

The situation was the same at numerous universities. » Read more

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SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th launch, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

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Curiosity’s journey in Gediz Vallis approaching its end

11:28 am

Panorama taken on May 1, 2024
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was created using 31 pictures taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on May 1, 2024. It looks uphill into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon that the rover has been traversing since August 2022.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The red dotted line, on both the panorama and the overview indicate the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line marking the route it actually traveled. The yellow lines indicate approximate the area covered by the panorama.

Coming into view inside Gediz Vallis is that small outcrop in the center of the canyon that the science team has targeted for inspection for years. It will be the last spot the rover visits in Gediz Vallis before turning west to head uphill in a parallel canyon. To see that route look at the map in this September 2023 post. Curiosity will travel west past two canyons before turning uphill again in the third.

Even then, Curiosity will still be in the low foothills at the base of Mount Sharp. The peak, blocked from view by the mountain’s lower flanks, is still 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher up. The journey to get there has really only begun, even after a dozen years exploring Gale Crater.

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Scientists observe orangutan use plant to heal a wound

9:45 am

In what might be the most sophisticated medical treatement yet seen by a wild animal, scientists in 2022 observed an orangutan named Rakus treat a face wound with a poultice it made from a plant known by locals to have medicinal value.

Rakus was observed eating the stems and leaves of the creeper akar kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), which local people use to treat diabetes, dysentery and malaria, among other conditions. Orangutans in the area rarely eat this plant.

In addition to eating the leaves, Rakus chewed them without swallowing and used his fingers to smear the juice on his facial wound over seven minutes. Some flies settled on the wound, whereupon Rakus spread a poultice of leaf-mash on the wound. He ate the plant again the next day. Eight days after his injury, his wound was fully closed.

Other animals have been seen using plants or insects for medicinal reasons, but none had done anything as complicated as Rakus. Nor have researchers of orangetans ever seen another do anything similar in more than two decades of research. It is thus unclear how Rakus knew what to do. Did he figure it out on the spot, or had he seen it done in the past by others when unobserved?

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Lockheed Martin withdraws bid to buy Terran Orbital

9:35 am

Lockheed Martin yesterday withdrew its early March offer to buy the satellite manufacuture Terran Orbital, purchasing the shares it did not already own for approximately $500 million.

No reason was given, but it appears the other shareholders at Terran Orbital objected to the purchase, and Lockheed probably decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

In that proposal, Lockheed offered to acquire the roughly two-thirds of Terran Orbital stock it did not already own. Lockheed also proposed to pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and either assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt, putting the total value of the proposal at more than $500 million.

Lockheed, besides being a major investor in Terran Orbital, is a major customer of the company, buying dozens of its smallsat buses for programs such as satellites for the Space Development Agency. Lockheed said in its offer letter that it accounted for 81% of Terran Orbitalโ€™s backlog.

Terran Orbital responded to the proposal March 4 with a stockholder rights plan, or โ€œpoison pillโ€ move, to prevent a hostile takeover. It acknowledged the proposal and said an independent board committee would evaluate it as part of an ongoing strategic review.

Both companies now say they will continue to work together in the future.

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China launches Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon

9:17 am

Chang'e-6 landing zone

The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched its Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon, its Long March 5 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Unlike the Long March 5B, whose core stage reaches an unstable orbit and later crashes uncontrolled somewhere on Earth, the core stage of Long March 5 does not, and thus returns to Earth immediately, over the ocean.

The graphic from the right, released by China’s state-run press, shows the landing zone in red on the far side. The target is the southern rim area of Apollo Crater, marked by the uneven white outline. Apollo sits inside the South Aitken Basin, one of the Moon’s largest impact basins, 1,600 miles across, and roughly indicated by the black circle. The circle to the left of Apollo indicates Van Karman crater, where Chang’e-4 landed in 2019 with the Yutu-2 rover, both still operating.

The mission includes a lunar orbiter, a lander, an ascent vehicle, and an Earth sample return capsule. If all goes as planned, the samples will return to Earth in 53 days.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 52 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 37.

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