Year: 2024

Curiosity’s view of Gale Crater from its new heights on Mount Sharp

10:18 am

Low resolution version of panorama
Click for full resolution version of panorama. For the original images, go here, here, and here.

Overview map

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three pictures taken on Februay 13, 2024 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity (available here, here, and here). It looks to the north, across Gale Crater and its nearest rim, about twenty miles away. The red dotted line indicates the approximate route Curiosity took to get to this point. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right show the approximate area covered by the panorama.

The images were part of the routine mosaics created by both the left and right navigation cameras for helping engineers plot the rover’s future travels. The pictures that look back at the far rim however also provide important atmospheric data. In this case, the haze tells the scientists how much dust is in the atmosphere. It is presently winter in Gale Crater, which also corresponds to the dust storm season. Thus, the view is very hazy.

Curiosity will likely remain at this location for several more weeks, as the science team is about to begin another drilling campaign. Note the large dark area on the cliff face on the right that is also level with the terrace where Curiosity presently sits. The scientists want to get core data of this layer, and they think they are at a good spot to do so.

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Tomorrow’s landing of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander

9:26 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites
Nova-C is Odysseus’s landing spot

NASA has now announced its planned live stream coverage of tomorrow’s landing attempt of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander near the south pole of the Moon.

Intuitive Machines is targeting no earlier than 5:49 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, to land their Odysseus lunar lander near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon.

Live landing coverage will air on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA TV can be streamed on a variety of platforms, including social media. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates beginning 4:15 p.m., as the landing milestones occur. Upon successful landing, Intuitive Machines and NASA will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as the company begins lunar surface operations.

No live stream is of course active yet. When it goes live tomorrow afternoon I will embed the youtube broadcast here on Behind the Black.

If successful, Odysseus will be the first American landing on the Moon since the manned Apollo missions more than a half century ago. It will also mark the first successful lunar landing achieved by a privately-built spacecraft. Companies from Israel, Japan, and the U.S. have already tried and failed.

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Space Perspective unveils test balloon capsule for unmanned test flights

9:13 am

Space Perspective's Neptune Capsule

The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective yesterday unveiled the test balloon capsule, dubbed Excelsior, which it plans to use for a program of ten flights beginning this year, prior to beginning manned flights on its Neptune manned capsule, shown in the graphic to the right.

Neptune is designed to take eight passengers to altitudes of twenty miles for several hours, not quite space but high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. The company had said in 2022 it would begin commercial flights by the end of 2024, but it now says it is targeting 2025.

Florida-based Space Perspective is one of two American companies attempting to fly high altitude balloon flights for tourists, with Tucson-based World View the other. There is presently no word when World View will begin its first manned flights.

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ISRO: Upper stage engine of largest rocket now approved for Gaganyaan manned mission

8:59 am

India’s space agency ISRO today announced that it has completed engine tests of the upper stage engine of its LVM rocket, a variation of its GSLV rocket and its most powerful, that will be used on its Gaganyaan manned orbital mission presently scheduled for launch in 2025.

In order to qualify the CE20 engine for human rating standards, four engines have undergone 39 hot firing tests under different operating conditions for a cumulative duration of 8810 seconds against the minimum human rating qualification standard requirement of 6350 seconds.

Before the 2025 manned mission, ISRO plans four more launch abort tests (one has already taken place) and three unmanned Gaganyann orbital demo missions. Two of those unmanned demo flights are scheduled for this year.

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Firefly: Software caused failure of upper stage in December

8:49 am

According to the rocket startup Firefly, a software issue prevented the engine on the upper stage of its Alpha rocket from firing its final burn, leaving a Lockheed Martin satellite in the wrong orbit.

In a Feb. 20 statement, Firefly said an error with the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software for the upper stage of the Alpha on the company’s “Fly the Lightning” mission Dec. 22 kept the upper stage from firing as planned to circularize its orbit. That left the upper stage and its payload, a Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite, in an orbit with a low perigee.

The investigation, which included the company’s own mishap team as well as an independent review, found that the error in the GNC software algorithm “prevented the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters ahead of the stage two engine relight.” Firefly didn’t elaborate on the issue, but the RCS thrusters likely would have been used to ensure the stage was in the proper orientation and to settle its tanks so propellant would flow from them into the engine.

From this description it appears the attitude thrusters (RCS) had not worked correctly, and this made it impossible for the main engine to fire, either because the computer sensed it was in the wrong orientation, or its fuel could not flow properly to the engine.

The company says it has made corrections, and still expects to launch four times this year.

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SpaceX launches Indonesian communications satellite

9:01 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched an Indonesian communications satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

Indonesia’s reasons for buying SpaceX’s launch services are explained here. The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

16 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia
2 Japan
2 India
2 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 19 to 16, with SpaceX now tied 16 to 16 with the entire world combined (excluding American companies).

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The Doobie Brothers – Jesus Is Just Alright with Me

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1973. Back then, a song like this was entirely okay for a mainstream band to perform and mainstream TV show to air. Today, such songs are put into a “Christian music” ghetto, regardless of their quality.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Martian gullies caused by glacial and water erosion

2:15 pm

A gully on the north rim of Niquero Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The image shows us the north interior rim of 7-mile-wide Niquero Crater on Mars. From the high to the low points the elevation difference is about 2,500 feet, with a steep downhill slope averaging about 18 degrees. The terrain appears to show several avalanche collapses that pushed lower material out of the way, though at the bottom where that material has been pushed aside there is no obvious large debris pile.

The science team labels this image simply “volatiles and gullies”, a label that carries a host of significant information. These gullies, which were among the earliest found by Mars Global Surveyor in the late 1990s, were the first evidence that the surface of Mars had a lot of near surface ice. It is for this reason that this relatively small crater on Mars has a name. Most craters this small remain unnamed, but the gullies on Niquero’s north slopes required more study, and thus the crater was given a name.

Subsequent orbital imagery has now shown that craters like Niquero, located in latitudes higher than 30 degrees, quite often are filled with glacial debris. In fact, the material that these avalanches pushed aside at the base of the slope is that glacial material, protected by a thin layer of dust and debris. The avalanche essentially disturbed that protected layer, and thus the debris pile (made up mostly of ice) sublimated away when warmed by sunlight. Thus. no big debris pile.

The gullies tend to be on the pole-facing slopes. Scientists believe they are the remnant evidence of ancient glaciers that grew on these slopes because they were protected from sunlight. In subsequent eons, when the climate on Mars changed, those glaciers collapsed, leaving behind the gullies we see now.
» Read more

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It is hardly news that Joe Biden is mentally incapable of being president

12:39 pm

Joe Biden at his February 2024 press conference
Joe Biden at his February 2024 press conference

In the past two weeks the press has been buzzing about a report [pdf] by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur, who decided he could not indict Joe Biden of criminal misuse of classified materials because Biden was “an elder man with poor memory.”

Biden then appeared to confirm Hur’s report with a press conference shortly thereafter, where he made false claims against the report, and acted exactly as a person with serious memory issues. For example, at one point he confused the leader of Egypt with that of Mexico.

What makes this media buzz laughable, especially coming from sources like CNN and the New York Times (the last two links above), is that these facts have been evident since 2020, well before Joe Biden was elected president. On October 26, 2020, just before the 2020 election, I wrote this column: “Joe Biden is just not qualified, for health reasons,” stating the following:
» Read more

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Astronomers: a 9,000-light-year-long stream of gas and dust ripples like a wave due to the Milky Way’s gravity

11:24 am

According to an analysis of data from the space telescope Gaia, astronomers now believe that a 9,000-light- year-long stream of gas and dust that is only 500 light years away from the Sun at its nearest point ripples up and down like a wave, due to the Milky Way’s gravity.

Dubbed the Radcliffe Wave after the institute in which the astronomers were based who first discovered it, the scientists determined its wavelike behavior by mapping the motions of the star clusters along its length. Apparently, over time they are moving up and down, not unlike fans at a stadium doing the wave.

The data also includes these intriguing results:

“It turns out that no significant dark matter is needed to explain the motion we observe,” Konietzka said. “The gravity of ordinary matter alone is enough to drive the waving of the Wave.”

In addition, the discovery of the oscillation raises new questions about the preponderance of these waves both across the Milky Way and other galaxies. Since the Radcliffe Wave appears to form the backbone of the nearest spiral arm in the Milky Way, the waving of the Wave could imply that spiral arms of galaxies oscillate in general, making galaxies even more dynamic than previously thought. “The question is, what caused the displacement giving rise to the waving we see?,” Goodman said. “And does it happen all over the galaxy? In all galaxies? Does it happen occasionally? Does it happen all the time?”

That no dark matter is involved causes a lot of problems for the hypothesis that such material exists, causing the motions of stars in the outer regions all galaxies to orbit the galaxy faster than they should. Why would dark matter cause that increased rotation, but have no impact on this wave? It is a paradox that is not easily resolved.

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India proposes to send its own helicopter to Mars

10:11 am

India has now considering adding its own helicopter to its next Mars mission, dubbed the Martian Boundary Layer Explorer (Marble).

While ISRO’s rotorcraft is still in the conceptual stage, the agency envisions a drone that can fly as high as 100 meters in the thin Martian air. Along with the Marble instrument suite, the drone is expected to carry various sensors, including temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, electric field, trace species, and dust sensors.

Whether this mission will include a lander, rover, or orbiter as well is very unclear, which suggests strongly the entire mission profile is presently very much undecided as yet.

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How SpaceX got Indonesia’s business

9:58 am

Link here. The article describes not only how Elon Musk and SpaceX persuaded the Indonesian government to buy Falcon 9 launches and introduce Starlink into its country, it describes how a Chinese launch failure contributed as well.

When a Chinese rocket malfunctioned shortly after launch in April 2020, destroying Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite, it was a blow to the archipelago’s efforts to strengthen its communication networks. But it presented an opportunity for one man. Elon Musk – the owner of SpaceX, the world’s most successful rocket launcher – seized on the failure to prevail over state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) as Jakarta’s company of choice for putting satellites into space.

The most fascinated aspect of the article for me however was its effort to create a sense that the U.S. government dislikes SpaceX’s independence.

But the U.S. government and military are concerned about their reliance on SpaceX, especially given Musk’s muscular business style, according to one current and one former U.S. official working on space policy. While legacy U.S. defence contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin typically consult the State Department before making foreign deals, Musk and SpaceX dealt directly with Jakarta, the two officials said.

…Nicholas Eftimiades, a former U.S. intelligence officer and expert on Chinese espionage operations at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said SpaceX’s CEO had ruffled some feathers in the U.S. capital: “Elon Musk does things his way and some officials don’t like that”.

The only Pentagon official quoted however had nothing negative to say about SpaceX.

It is likely there are officials in the Pentagon who want SpaceX to crash and fail, especially considering the full court press by many agencies against SpaceX since Biden became president. It is also likely that Reuters, which published this article, wants that full court press to succeed, and is eager to spin any SpaceX success badly, if it can. In general today mainstream press sources like Reuters operate as arms of the Democratic Party. If Biden wants SpaceX killed, so will Reuters.

No matter. The article can’t help describing why SpaceX is successful. It competes aggressively, and wins customers because it produces products that work, reliably.

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