Year: 2024

Buried peaks in a sea of Martian sand

12:46 pm

Buried peaks in a sea of sand
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 13, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the MRO science team labels as “streamlined features”, though that doesn’t seem to me to be the best description.

Granted, the prevailing winds, from the northeast to the southwest, appear to pushing the sand dune fields to the southwest. The dark line — created recently by a dust devil — indicates the wind direction. The mesas, from 100 to 200 feet high, do not however appear very streamlined. Instead, they simply look like they are poking up through this sea of sand and dunes, with the wind able over time to successfully push that sand uphill a hundred-plus feet into the saddle between the mesas.

The overview map below provides some context and possibly an explanation, though not a very conclusive one.
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It’s the audience that counts

11:27 am

The short clip below from the Stephen Colbert late night show has been making the rounds today. Colbert is interviewing a CNN news anchor and says the following, ““I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”

To his shock the audience laughs, clearly recognizing how inaccurate, stupid, and clueless Colbert’s description of CNN is. Kaitlan Collins, the news anchor, responds, “That supposed to be a laugh line?” and Colbert, clearly uncomfortable, answers, “It wasn’t supposed to be.”

Watch an enjoy:
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More bad journalism, this time about a hypothesized “underground ocean” on Mars

10:14 am

How today's journalists analyze potential stories
How today’s journalists analyze potential stories

Today’s example of modern bad journalism from our dismal mainstream press concerns a paper published yesterday in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences describing the possibility of liquid water in the Martian “mid-crust,” based on InSight seismological data and computer modeling.

I read the paper yesterday and decided that there really wasn’t much there. While the data suggests a lot of liquid water might be saturated within the fractured rocks of this deep underground crustal layer six to twelve miles down, the paper was based on many assumptions and had many uncertainties. It is also not confirmed by other researchers, and remains nothing more than educated speculation at this point.

Not surprisingly, our ignorant mainstream press today has immediately declared the discovery of a vast underground ocean on Mars, ready for the taking and possibly harboring life!
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Orbital tug startup Astroscale expands partnership with European aerospace giant Airbus

9:36 am

The Japanese-based orbital tug startup Astroscale has signed an agreement with the European company Airbus to expand their partnership beyond an earlier agreement to use Airbus’s robot arm on Astroscale’s tug.

Under the MoU, Astroscale and Airbus will explore ways to boost the development of navigation and docking technologies for satellite servicing and debris removal missions they did not specify. According to the news release, the expanded partnership seeks to combine Airbus’s satellite manufacturing and space systems heritage with technologies Astroscale is developing for in-orbit servicing.

Astroscale has been aggressively working to get business both in Europe and the U.S. by opening divisions in both regions. This deal is clearly part of that effort. It also provides Astroscale resources as a new startup it previously did not have.

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Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS delayed until 2025

9:26 am

Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, which had been targeting an October 2024 launch date, has now been delayed until 2025 because of “required interagency approval processes.”

NASA’s only announcement describing the delay was a tweet on X, which stated the following:

The Ax-4 crew members are pending approval to fly to the orbiting lab by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel.

Neither Axiom nor NASA provided further comment or explanation. The mission will fly three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary and be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now fulfills that role for Axiom. Since the three passengers are all government astronauts, it is possible that the bureaucracies from all three nations, plus NASA and its ISS partners, are entangled in negotiations far more complex than necessary.

This situation highlights quite clearly why both billionairs Jared Isaacman and Chun Wang have signed on with SpaceX to flight orbital missions — avoiding a docking with ISS — that require no permissions from NASA. Wang for example announced his deal yesterday, for a flight that is targeting a launch before the end of the year. Though that schedule is tight and might not be met, it appears the mission will likely fly before the Axiom one, which has been planned now for quite awhile.

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Portugal’s air traffic agency signs deal with company wishing to build spaceport in Azores

9:14 am

Santa Maria spaceport

Portugal’s air traffic agency, Portugal NAV, today signed an agreement with the spaceport company Atlantic Spaceport Consortium, to work out the details of placing a commercial spaceport on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores.

Under the cooperation agreement, the pair aim to define the guidelines that a future spaceport will need to adhere to when launching from Santa Maria. This includes defining exclusion zones, examining how to monitor and authorize launch activities, and studying under what conditions to impose partial or total launch restrictions for safety reasons.

The map to the right shows the location of the island, relative to Europe and Africa. No timeliine for construction has been given, though the consortium hopes to launch “a small atmospheric rocket” in September. It has also signed a deal in 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion) with a Ukrainian rocket startup.

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SpaceX announces another commerical passenger flight on a Dragon capsule

10:17 pm

SpaceX today announced it will fly a four-passenger commerical flight, using the Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance and flying the first manned human flight to circle the poles.

The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years.

The “Fram2” mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three-to-five day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.

As with the Jared Isaacman’s previous and future Dragon manned missions, the flight avoids any of the NASA bureucracy and costs by not docking with ISS. The flight is targeting a launch date before the end of this year, but that date is not firm.

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August 12, 2024 Quick space links

5:06 pm

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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The strange carbon dioxide ice cap of Mars’ south pole

12:33 pm

The strange carbon dioxide cap of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on July 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image is labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” which usually means it was taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the picture-taking schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperate. When the camera team needs to do this, they try to picture interesting features availabe at that time slot. Sometimes the image is boring. Sometimes it is surprisingly interesting.

In this case the picture is the latter, and certainly quite alien. The curly parallel dark lines appear to be grooves, and seem to have ripple dunes within them, as if the only dust here got trapped in those low spots. It is also possible that the dunes are frozen and ancient, and are only being revealed as the top layer in each groove goes away.

What could possibly explain what we are looking at? The overview map below gives only a clue.
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Trump to sue Justice Department over Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent indictments

11:36 am

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! According to a report today by Fox News, Trump’s lawyers are about to sue the Justice Department for $100 million, claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent now-dismissed indictments by Jack Smith (who the courts have ruled was appointed illegally) were done with the “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”

Trump attorney Daniel Epstein filed the notice to sue the Justice Department. The Justice Department has 180 days from the date of receipt to respond to Epstein’s notice and come to a resolution. If no resolution is made, Trump’s case will move to federal court in the Southern District of Florida.

…Epstein argued that the DOJ violated Florida law, intrusion upon seclusion, which is recognized as a form of invasion of privacy. Intrusion upon seclusion includes “an intentional intrusion, physically or otherwise, into the private quarters of another person” and the intrusion “must occur in a manner that a reasonable person would find highly offensive.”
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FAA cancels scheduled public meetings to review new Boca Chica environmental assessment

9:52 am

For as yet unknown reasons, the FAA today sent out an email canceling all the public meetings that it had scheduled in mid-July and were designed to allow the public to comment on its new environmental assessment of SpaceX’s application to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica from five to as much as 25 launches per year.

The FAA is cancelling the in-person public meetings on the Draft EA scheduled for: Tuesday, August 13, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT City of South Padre Island Convention Center, 7355 Padre Blvd, South Padre Island, TX 78597 Thursday, August 15, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, 309 E Railroad Ave, Port Isabel, TX 78578 The FAA is also cancelling the virtual public meeting scheduled for: Tuesday, August 20, 2024; 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT The FAA will provide notice for new dates for the meetings and a new date for the close of the comment period in the future.

The FAA’s email also noted that public comments can still be submitted either electronically here or by mail sent to Ms. Amy Hanson, FAA Environmental Specialist, SpaceX EA, c/o ICF 1902 Reston Metro Plaza Reston, VA 20190. In both cases, the commenter must reference Docket No. FAA-2024-2006. The email also stated that the public comment period would be extended beyond its August 29, 2024 closure date.

This cancellation mirrors the situation in 2021-2022, when the FAA was reviewing its previous environmental reassessment of the Boca Chica site. At that time the agency repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, so that the final approval process ended up stretching out more than a half year. Similar delays further stalled the first Starship/Superhavy test flight by another full year.

I once again suspect that higher ups in the White House are applying pressure on the FAA to stall this process, for political reasons, probably because those higher ups want no action taken before the November election. I am guessing, but this is how Washington works. Real achievement by American private citizens must always take a back seat to the power lusts of the DC politicos who now rule us.

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