Jayne Mansfield – Concerto No. 6 in A Minor
An evening pause: By Vivaldi, and performed on the Ed Sullivan Show 1957.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Year: 2024
October 4, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. 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.
- ASTSpaceMobile’s 1st Bluebird cell-to-satellite satellite in orbit is about to go operational
The satellites are the largest commercial arrays ever placed in orbit, 700 square feet in area.
- German startup Polaris Spaceplanes raises €7.1 million in private investment capital
It will use the funds to develop its “Aurora multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transport system.”
- On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union opened the space age by launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik
And as they say, the rest is history.
Frozen Martian eddies at the confluence of two glacier rivers
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The science team labels the photo as capturing a “contact near Reull Vallis,” a 1,000-mile-long Martian canyon that flows down the eastern slopes of Hellas Basin, the death valley of Mars.
What I see isn’t a geological contact but a complex jumble of odd-shaped depressions and mesas, surrounded by an eroded surface that seems squashed and deformed by some process. If this is all we had to go on, I would simply label this as another “What the heck?” image on Mars and move on. However, the larger context of the overview map helps explain it all, at least as best as we can explain using orbital data.
» Read more
NASA pushes discrimination to favor minorities in its education workshops
NASA: dedicated to the new segregation!
“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” A NASA press release today proudly touted what it called a “Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement in Colorado,” one of a series of recent science/education workships designed specifically to help “black and Latinx youth and their families.”
Though the events are apparently not segregated, it also appears that white and Asian kids and their parents were not really welcome.
Planetary scientists and engineers from Boulder, as well as scientists from Florida, Maryland, and Alaska participated. ReaCH partnered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver, whose staff participated in the workshop to share their perspectives. Other educators local to the Denver area also participated, along with an educational specialist from NASA@ My Library (another Science Activation program). The workshop culminated in an event at the Shopneck Boys & Girls Club in Brighton, CO; workshop participants facilitated a variety of hands-on planetary activities for approximately 120 children. Workshop participants also shared information about college pathways into science professions with teenagers at the Club.
The location and the local organizations were specifically chosen to aid these specific minorites above anyone else.
» Read more
Sierra Space wins Air Force contract to develop orbital cargo delivery system
The Air Force has now awarded Sierra Space a contract to develop its proposed “Space Ghost” satellite spacecraft, designed to be launched into a stand-by orbit carrying needed cargo, where it can upon command deliver that cargo within 90 minutes anywhere on Earth.
Sierra Space won a contract of undisclosed value as part of the AFRL’s Rocket Experimentation for Global Agile Logistics (REGAL) program. The Air Force is exploring the potential of space vehicles to rapidly transport critical supplies from orbital warehouses back to Earth. This could include reusable reentry vehicles capable of delivering payloads from prepositioned stocks in orbit.
Sierra Space, based in Louisville, Colorado, said its defense technology team designed the Ghost system to be capable of remaining in orbit for up to five years, storing and delivering essential supplies on-demand. Once fully developed, the spacecraft could be used for missions such as delivering rescue kits for downed pilots, medical supplies for disaster relief or logistical support for military operations.
The company began doing drop tests of a Space Ghost prototype heat shield in March, and apparently the data satisfied the Air Force enough to issue this development contract. Whether such a system however makes sense remains unknown. To be able to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth will require putting up a large constellation of Space Ghost satellites, in many different orbits. Moreover, it is unclear how much cargo each satellite would carry.
Avio completes testing of new redesigned nozzle for its Vega-C second stage
The Italian rocket company Avio yesterday successfully completed the second of two static fire engine tests of the newly redesigned nozzle for the second stage of its Vega-C rocket, paving the way for the company to resume launches after the nozzle design failed both during a launch in 2022 and then again during a static fire test in 2023 after its first redesign.
A launch date has tentatively been scheduled for November, but this date is not yet confirmed. For this and the next several launches in 2025, the rocket will still be managed by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial arm, Arianespace. Beginning late next year however Avio will regain complete control of its rocket and will be able to market it internationally, no longer required to deal with this unneeded government middleman. The launch price will then certainly go down, making Vega-C more competitive.
Engineers set new laser communications record to asteroid probe Psyche
Click for original graphic.
As part of a continuing test program, engineers have set a new long distance laser communications record, exceeding 290 million miles, by successfully using a laser to send communicate with the asteroid probe Psyche from Earth.
The graph to the right, not to scale, shows the orbital configuation of the laser record. It appears however that little actual data was sent in this last test. It merely demonstrated that a link could be established. An actual data transfer record by laser occurred in June.
On June 24, when Psyche was about 240 million miles (390 million kilometers) from Earth — more than 2½ times the distance between our planet and the Sun — the project achieved a sustained downlink data rate of 6.25 megabits per second, with a maximum rate of 8.3 megabits per second. While this rate is significantly lower than the experiment’s maximum, it is far higher than what a radio frequency communications system using comparable power can achieve over that distance.
The high data rates promised by laser communications will significantly improve deep space operations. Most especially, the ability to get data back in much larger packets more quickly will reduce the antenna bottleneck on Earth that limits the number of missions as well as the data can be returned daily. More missions will be able to fly, and scientists and engineers will get their results faster.
FAA: No Starship/Superheavy launch before late November
In response to speculation that the fifth Starship/Superheavy test launch could happen in mid-October — based on a recent notice to mariners from the Coast Guard, the FAA on Wednesday made it clear that its stonewalling of SpaceX will continue.
“We are not issuing launch authorization for a launch to occur in the next two weeks — it’s not happening,” an FAA spokesman said Wednesday afternoon. “Late November is still our target date.”
The report comes from the San-Antonio Express-News, and as is typical of the reporting in the propaganda press, the article only gives the FAA’s side of this story, making absolutely no mention of SpaceX’s detailed and very public objections. As far as this news outlet is concerned, the FAA is god, whatever it says must be true. So much for a skeptical free press whose goal is supposed to be to hold government accountable.
ULA successfully completes second test launch of its new Vulcan rocket
ULA this morning successfully completed the second test launch of its new Vulcan rocket, lifting off from Cape Canaveral from Florida.
It placed a dummy test payload into orbit in order to obtain from the Space Force certification that will allow the company to begin operational military launches and actually make money from the rocket. ULA hopes to launch two such Vulcan launches before the end of the year, and then hopes to do ten more Vulcan launches in 2025, along with ten Atlas-5 launches as it closes out that rocket’s inventory before retiring it.
UPDATE: An explosion on of Vulcun’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters during the launch today might prevent a quick certification from the military. Though the rocket successfully put the payload into its correct orbit, it appears the nozzle failed on that booster, throwing it out sideways, fortunately away from the rocket. The video here shows this clearly. I was startled by this explosion during the launch, but then forgot about it (until my readers reminded me) when the payload reached orbit as planned.
The strap-on boosters are manufactured by Northrop Grumman. Before using them again ULA needs to get clarity on this issue. We also must wonder if the FAA will step in as it has for SpaceX to ground ULA. At the moment it has decided not to do so.
This was ULA’s fifth launch in 2024, so there is no change in the 2024 launch race leader board.
95 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 112 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 95 to 84.
Van Halen – Jump
An evening pause: Its an “official video,” so much of this is lip synched footage cobbled together to make what looks like a single performance. Much of it however is the actual performance, and the song is good.
Hat tip James Street.
October 3, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. 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.
- Axiom’s co-founder touts the nearly completed hull of its first space station module
It is being built by Thales-Alenia in Italy, and will be shipped soon to Houston. The company has been posting pictures like this for the past year-plus, but for some reason that module never gets finished.
- Major solar flare in progress
As Jay notes, “Regular news outlets are picking this up with the usual apocalypse chatter.” The big issue is how this might effect emergency communications using ham radio.
- Hera mission to Didymos/Dimorphos asteroid binary came in under budget by $20 million; still targeting October 7th launch, despite SpaceX grounding
ESA used that $20 million to cobble together a mission to Apophis, using Hera architecture.
- Starlink free for 30 days for those impacted by Hurricane Helene or doing rescue work
As always, private citizens and companies are acting faster and smarter than the government, which has actually moved to block such efforts, even threatening volunteers with arrest for providing aid.
- India approves joint India-Japan lunar project now dubbed Chandrayaan-5
It will include a lander built by India and a rover built by Japan.
Pushback: Fired teacher wins $575K free speech settlement from school board
Peter Vlaming
Fight! Fight! Fight! In 2018 Peter Vlaming, a long time French teacher in the West Point School District in Virgina was fired because he would not use the preferred pro-nouns of one of his students. The firing was especially offensive in that Vlaming had done everything reasonable to accommodate the student, including using her preferred male-sounding name while avoiding the use of pronouns. He just could not use male pronouns for a female student. It violated his core beliefs.
The school board considered his silence on this point abusive to the student, and fired him. In 2019 he sued, and on September 30, 2024 his attorneys from the non-profit legal firm, the Alliance Defending Freedom, won him a $575K settlement from school board.
[T]he West Point School Board has agreed to pay $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees. In addition, the school board cleared Peter Vlaming’s firing from his record, and separate from the settlement agreement, changed its policies to conform to the new Virginia education policies established by Gov. Glenn Youngkin that respect fundamental free speech and parental rights.