Year: 2024

The mining potential on Mars

11:01 am

The mining potential on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” it was probably taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to properly maintain the camera’s temperature.

Nonetheless, the larger region where this photo is located is one of great interest to scientists as well as to future explorers. First note the colors. The wide variations between the bright orange of that peak (only a few tens of feet high) and the light orange and aqua-green of the bedrock to the north and south suggest a terrain with a lot of different materials within it.

The location is in the dry equatorial regions, so the swirls visible on the plateaus north and south of that small peak are not related to near surface ice. Instead, this is warped bedrock, with those swirls also suggesting material of a varied nature, exposed to the surface by erosion processes.
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Hubble detects changes in atmosphere of exoplanet

10:16 am

Using data from collected in 2016, 2018, and 2019 combined with computer simulations, scientists now believe they have detected changes in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-121b, also nicknamed Tylos.

The Jupiter-sized planet orbits a star about 880 light years away.

WASP-121 b is so close to its parent star that the orbital period is only 1.27 days. This close proximity means that the planet is tidally locked so that the same hemisphere always faces the star, in the same way that our Moon always has the same side pointed at Earth. Daytime temperatures approach 3,450 degrees Fahrenheit (2,150 degrees Kelvin) on the star-facing side of the planet.

The team used four sets of Hubble archival observations of WASP-121 b. The complete data-set included observations of WASP-121 b transiting in front of its star (taken in June 2016); WASP-121 b passing behind its star, also known as a secondary eclipse (taken in November 2016); and the brightness of WASP-121 b as a function of its phase angle to the star (the varying amount of light received at Earth from an exoplanet as it orbits its parent star, similar to our Moon’s phase-cycle). These data were taken in March 2018 and February 2019, respectively.

A computer model was then used to fill in the gaps and provide a simulation of the hot temperatures of that exoplanet’s atmosphere over time. Two videos of that simulation are available at the link.

There of course is a lot of uncertainty in this result, though the fundamental discovery of changes is important. This data proves there is weather on such alien planets, even if that weather is so alien we really don’t understand it in the slightest based on the available data on hand.

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National Labor Relations Board files complaint against SpaceX

9:51 am

Elon Musk, a target for destruction by Joe Biden
Elon Musk, a target for destruction
by Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s continuing legal harassment of SpaceX and Elon Musk was escalated yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a new complaint against the company, accusing it of firing eight employees illegally for writing a public letter criticizing the company in 2022.

The letter, circulated in 2022, criticized Musk’s actions and the allegations of sexual harassment against him, claiming they were negatively contributing to the company’s reputation. The letter also said the company was failing to live up to its “No Asshole” policy and its policy against sexual harassment.

The letter, whose authorship was not known at the time it was first reported, called on SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior,” to “hold all leadership equally accountable” for bad behavior, and to “clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently.”

According to the NLRB, one SpaceX employer held interviews to determine the writers of the letter, after which they were fired. The case will go before the NLRB in March.

Is this another case of blacklisting, similar to the numerous stories I’ve reported for the last four years where someone was fired for having political opinions? I don’t think so, though some could argue otherwise. In those many other cases, the opinions expressed were generally political in nature and unrelated to the work environment itself. If a company is demanding you bow to critical race theory and admit you are racist simply because you are white and fires you when you refuse, that is not the same as writing a letter accusing your employer of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, and then soliciting signatures from the entire workforce before releasing it publicly. The first case is a direct slander against the employee and is an unreasonable demand. The second is a concerted effort to foster a workplace mutiny, something unacceptable to all employers. It seems the company would have the right to remove such malcontents from its place of business.

Gywnne Shotwell, SpaceX’s CEO, made these facts very clear at the time the letter was published.
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SpaceX launches commercial communications satellite

9:27 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched a commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its tenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their ninth and fourteenth flights respectively.

The 2024 launch race:

2 SpaceX
1 India

No one else has launched as yet, though many launches are scheduled through the first ten days of January.

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Carly Simon – That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live in Central Park, New York, 1971. Wonderful song, but her cynicism about marriage in this song sadly predicts the disaster we are in today, living in a society of children raised in broken homes, created by the 60s Baby Boom generation (mine) that decided to reject the fundamentals of its parents. It was foolish and sad, but most of all it was cruel to the innocent children born of that irresponsibility. Those children are now mindlessly wrecking their revenge.

Hat tip Doug Johnson.

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January 3, 2024 Quick space links

3:39 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. I am probably taking most of the rest of the day off, having just gotten back from cataract surgery on one eye. No problems, but I don’t have a lot of energy right now. If I perk up something might happen, but I can’t say if that will be the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunspot update: Are we now in the next solar maximum?

9:57 am

Time for my monthly update on the Sun’s sunspot activity has it proceeds through its eleven-year sunspot cycle. NOAA has released its update of its monthly graph showing the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, and I have posted it below, annotated with further details to provide a larger context.

In December sunspot activity increased slightly for the second month in a row, but only by a little bit. The number of sunspots for the month was still significantly below the highs seen in the summer, and continue to suggest that the Sun has already entered solar maximum (two years early), and like the previous two solar maximums in 2001 and 2013, will be double peaked.
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SpaceX launches six next generation Starlink satellites

9:09 pm

SpaceX tonight completed its first launch in 2024, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California and putting six next generation Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its first flight, successfully landing on the drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings successfully completed their eleventh and ninth flights, respectively. This was the first new stage introduced since August 2023, and continues SpaceX’s pattern of adding about two new first stage boosters per year.

The six Starlink satellites are designed to work directly with the cell phones that people already use, thus increasing the customer base available for the product. As the first generation of this design, it is expected that there will be upgrades with later launches.

At this moment India and SpaceX are the only two entities to launch in 2024, each once.

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January 2, 2023 Quick space links

3:05 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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Dunes on the floor of Valles Marineris

2:17 pm

Overview map

Dunes on the floor of Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a field of scattered elongated dunes on a flat older surface with craters and what appear to be smaller ripple dunes (in the lower left). The large elongated dunes tend to be oriented in an east-west manner, while the older tiny ripple dunes appear to have a north-south orientation.

Very clearly the larger dunes appear to be traveling across that flat older surface, though whether there is any documented movement is unknown. Generally (though there are exceptions) scientists have found most of the dunes on Mars to be either inactive, or if they are moving because of the wind that movement is very tiny per year. In this case there is one dark spot on the dunes, near the center of the picture, where it appears a collapse might have occurred, suggesting recent change.

On the center right of the picture is the end point of a long ridgeline extending 10 to 12 miles to the east and rising about 7,300 feet, as shown in the overview map above. The small rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the photograph.

At the base of that ridgeline can be seen a series of terraces descending to the west, suggesting that this hill might be volcanic in nature, with each terrace indicating a separate lava flow. The location is in the dry equatorial regions, so near-surface ice is likely not an explanation.

In the inset the mountain wall to the north is the large mountain chain that bisects this part of Valles Marineris. It overwhelms this small 7,300-foot-high ridge, rising more than 22,000 feet from these dunes with its high point still one or two thousand feet below the rim of Valles Marineris itself.

Once again, the grand scenery of Mars amazes. Imaging hiking a trail along that ridgeline, with the mountains rising far above you to the north and south.

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