December 6, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Year: 2024
SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites
SpaceX just after midnight (Eastern) tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
128 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 147 to 91, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 128 to 110.
Tim McLaughlin – NYC&C Scale Model Railroad
An evening pause: The view from the front cab during runs of four elevated & subway lines, filmed October 14, 2012.
Hypnotic, and epic in its own way. There are times where it looks and sounds exactly as I remember it, riding on the front car of a NYC subway train, looking out that front window. Nice way to start the weekend.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Strange flat layers on Mars
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 16, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what MRO’s camera team labels as “layers near ridge in Argyre Planitia.”
The layers are strange because there is so little topographic difference between them. Though the ground slopes downward from the south to the north, dropping about 1,300 feet, it does so almost smoothly. The layers show relatively little topographic relief.
And what caused the circular shape? Is it evidence of a buried crater? And if so, why so little relief at its rim?
As always, the overview map provides some answers.
» Read more
Iran launches its Simorgh orbital rocket
Iran today announced it has successfully placed several small payloads into orbit, its Simorgh rocket lifting off from its interior Semnan spaceport.
The Simorgh carried what Iran described as an “orbital propulsion system,” as well as two research systems to a 400-kilometer (250-mile) orbit above the Earth. A system that could change the orbit of a spacecraft would allow Iran to geo-synchronize the orbits of its satellites, a capability Tehran has long sought.
It also carried the Fakhr-1 satellite for Iran’s military, the first time Iran’s civilian program is known to have carried a military payload.
This was Iran’s fourth launch in 2024, doubling the launch record it had set in 2023.
The leader board for the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:
127 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 146 to 91, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 127 to 110.
Hubble takes a different look at quasar 3C 273
Click for original image.
One of the most studied objects in the sky is the quasar 3C 273, located about 2.5 billion light years away and the first quasar ever to be identified, in 1963. What makes it especially interesting is the 300,000-light-year-long jet that shoots out from it.
Astronomers have now used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a different view of 3C 273, using the telescope’s coronograph to block the central bright light so that the surrounding dimmer features can be seen. The two images to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, show what this new image (bottom) reveals when compared to an earlier Hubble image (top).
The new Hubble views of the environment around the quasar show a lot of “weird things,” according to Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”
Some of the objects could be small satellite galaxies falling into the black hole, and so they could offer the materials that will accrete onto the central supermassive black hole, powering the bright lighthouse.
What makes this observation even more outstanding is that the image was produced by using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) as the coronograph to block the bright center of 3C 273. This improvisation of STIS has been done many times before, but it remains a great example of clever thinking by the astronomers who use Hubble.
ESA to provide ground station communications support for India’s manned Gaganyaan missions
The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed an agreement with India’s space agency ISRO whereby ESA will provide ground station communications support for India’s manned Gaganyaan missions.
The first unmanned test flights are planned for next year, with the first manned Gaganyaan mission targeting 2026.
Japan’s space agency admits first launch of its new Epsilon-S rocket will be delayed
Japan’s space agency JAXA yesterday admitted that the first launch of its new Epsilon-S rocket — intended to be cheaper and competitive with the new rockets being developed worldwide — will be delayed because of the explosion that occurred during a static fire test on November 26, 2024.
The news reports in the Japanese press don’t provide much information. It appears the investigation into the explosion is still on-going, and that the cause of the failure has not yet been identified. Because of this, JAXA has been forced to cancel the planned March 2025 date for Epsilon-S’s inaugural flight.
JAXA should get out of the business of building rockets, as its track record is really horrible. The Japanese government has already told it to do so, but it is clearly dragging its feet, not wanting to give up the turf it has controlled for decades.
Why Orion’s heat shield problems give Jared Isaacman the perfect justification to cancel all of SLS/Orion
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
In yesterday’s press conference announcing new delays in NASA’s next two SLS/Orion Artemis missions to the Moon, agency officials were remarkably terse in providing details on why large chunks of Orion’s heat shield material broke off during its return to Earth in 2022 during the first Artemis mission. That damage, shown to the right, is one of the main reasons for the newly announced launch delays.
All they really said was that the damage was caused during re-entry, the atmosphere causing more stress than expected on the heat shield.
Today NASA finally released a more detailed explanation.
Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.
…During Artemis I, engineers used the skip guidance entry technique to return Orion to Earth. … Using this maneuver, Orion dipped into the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to slow down. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere, then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.
[Ground testing during the investigation showed] that during the period between dips into the atmosphere, heating rates decreased, and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This led to the accumulation of gases that are part of the expected ablation process. Because the Avcoat did not have “permeability,” internal pressure built up, and led to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer layer.
In other words, instead of ablating off in small layers, the gas build-up caused the Avcoat to break off in large chunks, with the breakage tending to occur at the seams between sections of the heat shield.
» Read more
Frank Ifield – I Remember You
An evening pause: Performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show 1963.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Europe’s Vega-C rocket returns to flight after being grounded for more than two years
Europe’s Vega-C rocket, built by the Italian company Avio but presently still managed by the European Space Agency’s commercial arm Arianespace, today successfully completed its first launch in two years, lifting off from French Guiana carrying a European Earth observation satellite. As of posting the satellite had not yet been deployed.
The rocket was first grounded when its upper stage failed during a December 2022 launch. The investigation pinpointed the problem as the design of the stage’s engine nozzle. However, the first redesign also failed, requiring a second redesign.
This was the eighth launch worldwide in the past 48 hours, the most ever accomplished in such a short time. All told, five nations completed launches (United States 3, China 2, India 1, Russia 1, Europe 1) from eight different spaceports, with all three American launches completed by SpaceX.
Because this was only the third launch by Europe this year, the leader board for the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:
127 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 146 to 90, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 127 to 109.
Next two Artemis missions delayed again, with the future of SLS/Orion hanging by a thread
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
In a press conference today, NASA officials admitted that their present schedule for the next two Artemis missions will not be possible, and have delayed the next mission (sending four astronauts around the Moon) from the end of 2025 to April 2026, and the next mission (landing astronauts on the Moon) to a year later.
It must be noted that when first proposed by George Bush Jr in 2004, he targeted 2015 for this manned landing. Should the present schedule take place as planned, that landing will now occur more a dozen years late, and almost a quarter century after it was proposed. We could have fought World War II six times over during that time.
Several technical details revealed during the conference:
- It appears a redesign of Orion’s heat shield will take place, but not until the lunar landing mission. For Artemis-2 (the next flight), engineers have determined they can make the shield work safely by changing the re-entry path. They have also determined that the design itself is still insufficient, and will require redesign before Artemis-3.
- Though Orion’s life support system will still be flown for the first time on Artemis-2, the first to carry humans, they have been doing extensive ground testing and have resolved a number of issues. They are thus confident that it will be safe to fly with people on its first flight.
- Though SLS’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters will be stacked for more than one year when Artemis-2 launches in April 2026, they are confident based on data from Artemis-1 that both will still be safe to use.
The political ramifications that lurked behind everything however are more significant.
» Read more