Celtic Thunder – Whiskey In The Jar
An evening pause: Performed live 2011.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Year: 2024
March 19, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who has finally returned from the Solomon Islands after his DX ham expedition (a week late). As he wrote me,
Flights got cancelled on my last week and we were stuck for another week in the Solomons. One of the reasons why we got flown off was it is election time next month, so all the politicians are flying as well. Never fly Fiji Airlines and Solomon Airlines.
I did go to the sites of the battles during the Guadal Canal campaigns during WW2, those are bloody battles that you do not hear or read about.
The Solomon Islands is a third world country and they hate the Chinese. The people are pissed off that their elected officials sold their fishing rights to the Chinese for $85,000. Yes, you read that correctly, a multi-million dollar industry for $85,000 USD. Lots of graft and corruption there. They have so much potential, and they squander it. Only a three hour jump to the west is Fiji, and it enjoys a huge booming tourist economy.
On to the quick links. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- ULA’s CEO touts the Vulcan upper stages now ready in its manufacturing building
Three are shown in the image, suggesting ULA is ready for at least that many launches, assuming Blue Origin delivers the necessary first stage engines.
- Boeing has begun fueling Starliner for launch
Takes about two weeks. Once completed the capsule will be sent to ULA’s assembly building for stacking on the rocket. This loading however says they are now committed to the May launch.
- Video of the flight crew preparing in Kazakhstan for launch to ISS this week
The launch is scheduled for March 21, 2024 on a Soyuz-2 rocket.
- Image of China’s Queqiao-2 lunar relay satellite
It will be used to relay signals from China’s next mission to the far side of the Moon. Launch is expected later today.
- On this day in 1965, Aleksei Leonov did the first spacewalk in history
The spacewalk had been hurriedly put together to beat the planned U.S. spacewalk on an upcoming Gemini mission. As such, Leonov’s spacesuit was not ideal for the task. It expanded so much in space that he had great difficulty getting back inside the capsule.
Make no mistake, Israel is about to begin the final defeat of Hamas in Gaza
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.
If anything should illustrate the bankrupt, mindless, stupid and out-of-touch mentality of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it has been the efforts recently of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) to push for a major slow-down or even shut down of Israel’s war against the murderous Hamas leadership and its minions in Gaza.
Biden wants Israel to slow down and to limit its offensive and not move into the last Hamas stronghold in its southern city of Rafah. Schumer has called for new elections in Israel to remove Netanyahu, who Schumer called “an obstacle to peace.”
Both, along with many members of their party, are presently considering ways to punish Israel if it defies them and invades Rafah, including withholding military aid.
Both men are actually excellent examples of the majority of the modern Democratic Party, willing to excuse rape and murder of women and children, if it furthers their political agenda. Both want the American Muslim vote, and are willing to tolerate any evil by Islamic terrorists to get it. In fact, it is very likely that they are doing this because of a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism and Jew-hate within their party ranks.
What these leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand at all is that Israel is no longer interested in compromising with them, with Hamas, or with any Islamic terrorists anywhere. As Netanyahu made clear in his response to these calls this past weekend, Israel is moving forward in this war, and nothing is going to stop it.
» Read more
Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford passes away at 93
Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford, who also flew two Gemini missions as well as the Apollo-Soyuz mission, passed away yesterday at the age of 93.
Stafford’s first flight was on Gemini 6, which achieved the first rendezvous in space when it maneuvered close to Gemini 7 during its two week mission. He then flew on Gemini 9, which was to attempt the first docking but was stymied when the shroud on the Agena target vehicle failed to release, blocking the docking port. The crew could only rendezvous again.
Stafford then commanded Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing, flying his lunar module to within about ten miles of the Moon’s surface. His final mission was Apollo-Soyuz, the first joint mission between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Of the 24 Apollo astronauts that flew to the Moon, only seven still live. A truly great generation of Americans, possibly the greatest generation of all, is slowly leaving us.
Gehrels Swift space telescope now in safe mode
The Gehrels Swift space telescope, used to get real time observations of gamma ray bursts and other high energy deep space events, is presently in safe mode due to the failure of one of its three gyroscopes.
On March 15, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory entered into safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations due to degrading performance from one of its three gyroscopes (gyros), which are used to point the observatory for making observations. The rest of the spacecraft remains in good health.
Swift is designed to successfully operate without one of its gyros if necessary; however, a software update is required. The team is working on the flight software update that would permit the spacecraft to continue science operations using its two remaining gyros.
The telescope has been operating in orbit for nearly twenty years, far longer than originally planned. Its observations were crucial in discovering that gamma ray bursts occur at vast distances and involve either the core collapse of a star or the merger of two neutron stars.
India’s Vikram lander disturbed the lunar surface the least of all landers
According to an analysis of images taking before and after landing, engineers have concluded that India’s Vikram lander disturbed the lunar surface the least of all landers, due to its use of multiple smaller landing engines.
Presenting the new findings at LPSC on Monday, [ISRO scientist Suresh K] attributed the intriguingly short dust plume to the lack of a central engine on the spacecraft, which resulted in a lower engine thrust during descent. Starting its “rough braking phase” at an orbit of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) above the lunar surface, when the spacecraft reached 0.4 miles (0.8 kilometers) above its targeted landing area, it switched off two of its four 800-newton engines such that two diagonal engines remained operational all the way until touchdown. The mission used the “least powerful engine till date,” [Suresh] K said. “We’ve observed very less disturbance on the surface.”
You can read their paper here [pdf].
Finding ways to reduce the dust kicked up during landings will be critical for the early missions to the Moon, before landing pads can be constructed. This research suggests that when Starship lands, it should use only its outer engines, and gimbal them sideways, in order to reduce the dust thrown up around it.
Scientists: DART impact of Dimorphos changed its orbit and reshaped the asteroid
Click for original graphic.
According to a new study, the DART impact of Dimorphos in September 2022 not only shortened its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos, it reshaped the asteroid itself, warping its widest point sideways from its equator.
You can read the paper here.
More important, the scientists found that the changes evolved over time.
Over the following weeks, the asteroid’s orbital period continued to shorten as Dimorphos lost more rocky material to space, finally settling at 11 hours, 22 minutes, and 3 seconds per orbit – 33 minutes and 15 seconds less time than before impact. This calculation is accurate to within 1 ½ seconds, Naidu said. Dimorphos now has a mean orbital distance from Didymos of about 3,780 feet (1,152 meters) – about 120 feet (37 meters) closer than before impact.
Similarly, the reshaping of the asteroid into its present shape took time. As the scientists noted in their conclusion, “it takes time for a binary system to settle after a kinetic impact event.”
Because of Dimorphus’s rubble pile nature, its shape and orbit should continue to evolve over the coming decades, as more of the ejecta from the impact slowly falls back onto its surface and the asteroid surface adjusts over time. This in turn should also effect the orbit, though by only very tiny amounts.
I continue to wonder if the entire solar orbit of this asteroid binary system was impacted at all by these changes. Any changes would likely be tiny, but it is important to know to see if such an impact can actually do such a thing. To find out will take several more years, as ground telescopes continue to track the asteroid.
In October 2024 the European probe Hera will launch on a mission to this asteroid binary, with its arrival expected in December 2026. At that time we will get a much better look at both asteroids and how the impact affected them.
SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX yesterday evening successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 space race:
27 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 31 to 19, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 23.
Voidwalkeraudio – Desire
An evening pause: The visuals come from the 1927 German film by Fritz Lang, Metropolis, and cover the scene dubbed “Maria’s Dance.” You can see the full movie here, as well as many other places on line.
Hat tip Judd Clark, who adds, “To understand what’s going on here, one needs to see the whole movie, preferably the latest restored version, and to really understand, one needs to read Lang’s wife Thea Von Harbou’s book “Metropolis”.
The vast Martian plains of lava
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled “Lava Embaying Highlands Ridge”, it shows an alcove along a ridgeline that appears filled with material, in this case solid lava.
If you look closely at the ridgeline, you can see several dark streaks on its southern slopes. These streaks could be one of two unique Martian features that remain unexplained. They could be slope streaks, which occur randomly through the year and fade with time, or recurring slope lineae, which occur seasonally at the same locations. In either case, though the streaks look like avalanches, they don’t change the topography, have no debris piles at their base, and even sometimes flow uphill for short lengths. Though there are a number of theories for their formation, many involving dust, none has been accepted as confirmed.
This location and its lava however are the stars of this picture, for a number of reasons, all revealed by the overview map below.
» Read more
What to expect on the next few Starship/Superheavy test launches
Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024
As noted last week by Eric Berger after the third orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship rocket on March 14, 2024, this rocket is presently only a few short steps to becoming an operational expendable rocket that can put 100 to 150 metric tons into orbit for about the cost of a Falcon Heavy launch.
To completely achieve this status SpaceX will still have to accomplish several additional engineering goals during the next few test flights, beyond what it has been done so far. This is what I predict therefore for the next test flight, number four:
Superheavy
SpaceX will once again attempt to softly bring Superheavy down over the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, hovering the stage vertically over the surface for a few seconds to demonstrate it could do the same once it eventually comes down next to the launch tower so that the chopsticks can grab it. To do this the company will have to figure out what went wrong on last week’s flight, when the stage began to tumble as it dropped below 100 kilometers altitude. It also appeared to be unable to fire its engines as planned.
An even more important achievement on this third flight however will be a third straight successful hot fire stage separation, sending Starship on its way to orbit as planned. If Superheavy can do this for the third time, it will prove without doubt that the rocket stage is now capable of doing its number one job, launching payloads. Reusability can follow later.
Starship
» Read more
March 15. 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more