Author: Robert Zimmerman

NOAA pays smallsat company PlanetiQ $60 million for its weather data

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: NOAA today awarded the smallsat company PlanetiQ a $60 million contract to provide the agency weather data from the company’s planned constellation of 20 satellites.

At present two satellites are in orbit, with more scheduled for launch in 2024. The satellites use data obtained in orbit from the different GPS-type satellite constellations to determine the atmosphere’s temperature, pressure, humidity and electron density.

In 2018 NOAA had awarded PlanetiQ and two other commercial companies, Spire and GeoOptics, small developmental contracts. This appears to be the first full contract, and continues NOAA’s very slow shift from building its own weather satellites to buying data from commercial satellites built by private companies. The agency has resisted this change, but since it can’t get its own satellites built and launched on budget or on time, it is increasingly being forced to do so.

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ISRO successfully tests propulsion system of Gaganyaan’s service module

8:56 am

India’s space agency ISRO revealed today that it has successfully completed the second phase of static fire engine tests of the complete propulsion system to be used by the service module of its Gaganyaan’s manned space capsule.

The first hot test of the Phase-2 test series demonstrated the integrated performance of the Gaganyaan Service Module Propulsion System. The test, conducted for a duration of 250 seconds, involved LAM engines firing in continuous mode, along with RCS thrusters, adhering to the test profile.

As part of the Phase-1 test series of SM SDM, ISRO had previously conducted five hot tests, totalling a duration of 2750 seconds. The earlier phase involved five 440 N LAM engines and eight 100 N RCS thrusters. For the Phase-2 test series, the current configuration includes the full configuration of five 440 N LAM engines and sixteen 100 N RCS thrusters.

ISRO had been hoping to launch the first manned mission in ’24, but that target date remains very uncertain.

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Scientists discover in archival data a slowly pulsing object that has been beating since 1988

8:48 am

The uncertainty of science: Using archival data, scientists have discovered a previously undetected but very strange slowly pulsing object that has been doing so since 1988.

Astronomers have found an ultra-slow, long-lasting source of radio-wave pulses, and they are perplexed as to its true nature. While “regular” radio pulsars have very short periods, from seconds down to just a few milliseconds, this source emits a brief pulse of radio waves about three times per hour. What’s more, it has been doing this for decades. “I do not think we can say yet what this object is,” says Victoria Kaspi (McGill University), a pulsar researcher who was not involved in the new study.

Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin University, Australia) and her colleagues discovered the mysterious source in data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) observatory in Western Australia. They carried out follow-up observations with the MWA and with other radio observatories in Australia and South Africa. Known as GPM J1839-10, the tardy blinker is located at a distance of some 18,500 light-years away in the constellation Scutum. Archival data from the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Indian Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope reveal that it has been pulsating at least since 1988, with a period of just under 22 minutes (1,318.1957 seconds, to be precise).

In a sense, the object is a pulsar, since on a very basic level it does what all pulsars do, send a radio beat in our direction in a precise pattern. The problem is that according to present theories that say pulsars are actually magnetized neutron stars rotating quickly, this object is rotating too slowly to be one.

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SpaceX launches 15 more Starlink satellites into orbit

9:20 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched fifteen more Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings successfully completed their sixth flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

48 SpaceX
26 China (with a launch also planned for tonight)
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 55 to 26, and the entire world combined 55 to 45, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world combined (excluding other American companies) 48 to 45.

An additional note: This was the 100th successful orbital launch in 2023. In the history of space rocketry, reaching 100 launches in a year was generally considered an indication of an active launch year. Now the global rocket industry accomplishes it in just over half the year. Last year set a record with 179 launches. There is now an outside chance of breaking that, topping 200 launches in 2023.

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Ancient lava vent high on a Martian volcano

2:39 pm

Ancient lava vent high on a Martian volcano
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the once violent and active volcanic past of Mars, now long dormant. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “vent and channel” located high on the northeast flanks of the giant volcano Arsia Mons.

The rim around the vent suggests that lava had once bubbled up out of the vent and hardened around it, as most of the lava flowed downhill along the channel. And though this vent appears to be the source of this channel, it is not. The channel continues to the southwest uphill until it reaches the edge of Arsia Mons’ caldera, a region where there are many such vents, many much larger and deeper than this one.
» Read more

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Pushback: Arizona State University loses major donor for its anti-first amendment actions

1:10 pm

Arizona State University: opposed to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In protest of Arizona State University’s anti-first amendment actions, a major donor, Tom Lewis, has withdrawn an annual $400K donation, used to support the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at ASU’s Barrett College facility that Lewis had contributed more than $2 million to found.

His action was prompted by the hostility and opposition to a February 8, 2023 university event by Barrett College’s faculty, including a petition signed by 37 of 47 members, condemning the event, before it had even occurred. From his press release [pdf]:

Because these were mostly conservative speakers, we expected some opposition, but I was shocked and disappointed by the alarming and outright hostility demonstrated by the Barrett faculty and administration toward these speakers. Instead of sponsoring this event with a spirit of cooperation and respect for free speech, Barrett faculty and staff exposed the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.

After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement, effective June 30, 2023.

Adding weight to Lewis’ decision was the fact that several weeks earlier ASU had fired the Lewis Center’s executive director, Ann Atkinson, as well as Lin Blake, the events operator for the theater where the event was held. Atkinson made it clear their termination was retaliation because they had organized the February conference.
» Read more

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Stanford president resigns due to research fraud allegations

12:07 pm

The president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has now resigned because of allegations of fraud and data manipulation in papers published by him and others.

The report finds that overall Tessier-Lavigne “did not have actual knowledge of any manipulation of research data” and “was not reckless in failing to identify” the problems in the papers. Yet it concludes that he did not respond adequately when concerns were raised about the papers on PubPeer or by a colleague at four different points over 2 decades—most recently in March 2021. For example, it chides him for failing to follow up when Science did not publish the corrections he submitted.

The report also faults Tessier-Lavigne for his “suboptimal” decision not to correct or retract the 2009 Nature paper, despite “vigorous discussions” about what to do; instead, he and colleagues published follow-up papers revising the findings. Without “an appropriate appetite” for corrections, “the often-claimed self-correcting nature of the scientific process will not occur,” the report says.

In other words, he too often looked the other way when associates were sloppy or were found to have faked data.

This story is an addendum to one I posted yesterday, where a researcher in 2020 had found 1 in 4 clinical trials to be either unreliable or fraudulent. His revelation however was ignored by the medical community, just as Tessier-Lavigne ignored fraud or sloppiness at his own lab.

Nor has anything really changed in the medical research community. Though Tessier-Lavigne has stepped down, the actual perpetrators of the fraud are facing no punishment.

Despite the findings of data manipulation, the report does not assign responsibility to any specific members of Tessier-Lavigne’s lab or determine whether the data manipulation fit the federal definition of research misconduct, “fabrication, falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism.” Whether the findings should be reported to the federal Office of Research Integrity will be up to Stanford, Filip says.

It appears we can trust little from the modern medical research community. There is certainly good work being done, but telling the difference between the good and the bad is now very difficult, if not impossible.

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Astronomers detect white dwarf star with two faces

9:13 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers using ground-based telescopes have discovered a white dwarf star in which the surface chemistry of its two hemispheres are very different, one strongly dominated by hydrogen while the other instead dominated by helium.

The team used the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) on the Keck I Telescope to view Janus in optical wavelengths (light that our eyes can see) as well as the Near-Infrared Echellette Spectrograph (NIRES) on the Keck II Telescope to observe the white dwarf in infrared wavelengths. The data revealed the white dwarf’s chemical fingerprints, which showed the presence of hydrogen when one side of the object was in view (with no signs of helium), and only helium when the other side swung into view.

The article lists a lot of proposed explanations, most of which suggest the star’s magnetic field is acting to segregate the materials. All assume these observations are certain and that there is no mixing at all, something we should doubt considering the resolution of the data (a mere point that is rotating).

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Venezuela officially signs onto Chinese lunar base project

9:04 am

Venezuela on July 17, 2023 officially signed an agreement with China to participate in China’s lunar base project.

Venezuela is the first nation, after Russia, to sign on to the project.

Since Venezuela has no space industry and is a bankrupt socialist state that can barely feed its people, this at first glance appears to merely be an effort by China for some international PR. One detail from the article however tells us what the deal is really about: “Venezuela will make its satellite control ground station infrastructure available for lunar missions.” In exchange for providing Venezuela some minor educational aid, China gets use of the ground stations that presently exist in Venezuela, and likely the right to build its own there as well.

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July 18, 2023 Quick space links

4:04 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who acts as a second pair of eyes to make sure we don’t miss anything.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ohio Attorney General to college administrators: Discriminate and YOU will be personally liable

1:28 pm

Making the law mean something again
Making the law mean something again

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In what is certain to become the most powerful deterrent to leftist bigotry in academia, Ohio attorney general Dave Yost has notified the administrators in his state’s public colleges that “qualified immunity” will not be available to them if they are personally sued for discriminating against any individuals and lose.

Employees found guilty of such practices as employing application essays to discern an applicant’s race “might not be protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that protects public officials from being personally liable in certain situations,” Yost wrote, according to The Dispatch. “Any attempt to invoke that doctrine would likely be frivolous, and my office may be unable to raise any qualified immunity defense on your employees’ behalf,” Yost wrote.

» Read more

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Glacial evidence in the dry equatorial regions of Mars?

11:15 am

Is this evidence of glacial ice in the Martian dry equatorial regions?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, rotated, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern half of a six-mile-wide unnamed crater with a depth of about 1,500 to 2,000 feet from rim to floor.

What makes this picture significant is the patchy material in the center of that crater floor, some of which looks almost like very old peeling paint. It also resembles the kind of glacial features routinely seen in many craters poleward of 30 degrees latitude on Mars.

Is this another example of such glacial features? If so, its location is what makes it significant.
» Read more

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The results of one in four medical clinical trials are probably fraudulent or unreliable

9:11 am

In 2020 a researcher in Great Britain decided to analyze the raw data used by 500 medical clinical trials, and found that one in four contained fraudulent or unreliable data.

Carlisle, an anaesthetist who works for England’s National Health Service, is renowned for his ability to spot dodgy data in medical trials. He is also an editor at the journal Anaesthesia, and in 2017, he decided to scour all the manuscripts he handled that reported a randomized controlled trial (RCT) — the gold standard of medical research. Over three years, he scrutinized more than 500 studies.

For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And 26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged — either because the authors were incompetent, or because they had faked the data.

Carlisle called these ‘zombie’ trials because they had the semblance of real research, but closer scrutiny showed they were actually hollow shells, masquerading as reliable information. Even he was surprised by their prevalence. “I anticipated maybe one in ten,” he says.

There is the real story, however.

Carlisle rejected every zombie trial, but by now, almost three years later, most have been published in other journals — sometimes with different data to those submitted with the manuscript he had seen. He is writing to journal editors to alert them, but expects that little will be done.

In other words, the peer-review medical community continues to allow fake research to be published, even when it has been warned that research is fake.

But of course, we must trust everything they tell us. They are SCIENTISTS, and we must “follow the SCIENCE!”

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SpaceX to raise another $750 million in stock sale; earnings rise to $8 billion in ’23

8:49 am

According to anonymous sources, a new stock sale at SpaceX is likely to raise another $750 million because of enthusiasm on Wall Street for the stock due to the company’s growing earnings, which are expected to double to $8 billion this year.

Last week, CNBC reported that Elon Musk’s SpaceX valuation reached nearly $150B following an announcement of a stock sale by existing investors. According to a copy of the purchase offer sent by CFO Bret Johnsen, which CNBC obtained, the company has entered into an agreement with new and existing investors to sell up to $750 million in stock at a price of $81 per share. This represents a 5% increase from the previous secondary sale at $77 per share, which valued the company at approximately $140B. SpaceX has not provided any comments regarding the purchase offer.

Though the article does not say, that revenue comes from two sources, SpaceX’s rocket launches and its Starlink constellation. In the first case the company dominates the launch industry, because its launch price is so much cheaper than everyone else. In the second case, Starlink is producing so much revenue because Elon Musk forced the company to move fast and get its satellites in orbit quickly. Though both SpaceX and Amazon announced their internet constellations at about the same time, Amazon has still not launched any satellites, while SpaceX has more than 4,000 in orbit. This active and operating constellation has allowed SpaceX to grab market share that Amazon is now likely never to get, even when it begins launching.

All this makes SpaceX very appealing to investors, which is why its private stock price has gone up. It is also why it has been able to raise now almost $11 billion in private investment capital for building both Starlink and its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

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Rocket Lab launches seven satellites; recovers first stage from ocean

6:46 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place seven smallsats into orbit, lifting off from New Zealand.

The first stage used parachutes to softly splash down in the ocean, where it was recovered for refurbishment and relaunch. As this stage is the first in which this full reuse will be attempted, the ability to refurbish the stage after its salt water swim remains the critical factor. We will not know its state until a complete inspection plus static fire engine tests are completed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 54 to 26, and the entire world combined 54 to 45, while SpaceX alone still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

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July 17, 2023 Quick space links

4:38 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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Flat-topped Martian mesa

3:58 pm

Flat-topped mesa on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on April 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows only one of many flat-topped mesas in a chaos terrain region dubbed Oxia Chaos.

The mesa top is about 540 feet above the floor of the canyon to the north, which in turn is about 840 feet below the flat terrain north of it. That flat terrain to the north is not part of the chaos terrain, however, but the northern rim of the plateau that surrounds the chaos. Moreover, this particular piece of rim is separating from the plateau, as shown near the top of this January 16, 2008 context camera image from MRO. At some point in the future it will break off and fall into that canyon and on top of this mesa.
» Read more

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California Democrats retreat on their effort to defend child slavers

12:34 pm

The Democratic Party: eagerly supporting pedophilia
The Democratic Party: caught in the act of eagerly
supporting pedophiles

Pigs fly! After initially killing a bill on July 12, 2023 that would have increased the penalties on child sex traffickers, the Democrats who completely control the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee reversed course one day later and voted to advance the bill.

With a final vote of 6-0, including two abstentions from progressive Democrats, the bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, after which, if it is approved, can move the bill to be voted upon by the entire State Assembly. If passed, SB 14 will make trafficking of minors a serious felony that would qualify under California’s three strikes law, which keeps dangerous, serial criminals off the streets, and make individuals convicted of the crime ineligible for early release. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the two abstentions by Democrats. Even after a nationwide uproar over their willingness to block harsh penalties on those who traffic young children for sexual slavery, these two Democrats, including Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), still could not bring themselves to vote for the bill.

Nonetheless, the reversal by the rest of the Democrats on the committee marks a major event. » Read more

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Chandrayaan-3 completes second orbital maneuver

9:32 am

Chandrayaan-3's mission profile

According to India’s space agency ISRO, its lunar lander/rover Chandrayaan-3 today completed second orbital maneuver, raising the spacecraft’s orbit around the Earth from 41,762 by 173 kilometers to 41,603 x 226 kilometers.

The graphic to the right shows the entire mission profile of Chandayaan-3. It still has three more orbital adjustments to make in Earth orbit before it does its trans-lunar-injection burn to send it to the Moon. Once it arrives in lunar orbit it will then have to make six orbital adjustments to lower its orbit before making the descent to the surface.

The lunar landing itself is presently scheduled for August 23, 2023.

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An apparent rocket section washes up on Australian coast

9:19 am

What appears to be a section of India’s PSLV rocket washed up on the western Australian coast yesterday, though at the moment the identity of the wreckage as not been confirmed.

Dr Alice Gorman, an expert in the field of space archaeology, said she believes the object is a fuel cylinder that came from the the third stage of India’s polar satellite launch vehicle rocket (PSLV), as many have suggested on social media.

The article includes a picture of that stage in orbit during a 2017 launch, and the similarity is obvious. If true, its specific launch at present remains unknown, though it appears it could have been floating in the ocean for years, a fact that is surprising in itself.

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SpaceX launches using its second Falcon 9 first stage on its sixteenth flight

9:14 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 54 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 rocket used a first stage flying on its sixteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That is the second 1st stage in SpaceX’s fleet to complete that many flights. Both first stages completed their sixteen flights in only three years, which means that those two first stages have actually flown more times than the entire United States rocket industry did annually from 2000 to 2019. I don’t have a full count, but I suspect both stages have launched in those three years more satellites then the totals for almost all other nations, excepting possibly Russia and the U.S. Both probably allowed SpaceX to amortize the cost of those launches considerably, possibly as much as 90%.

Just remember: Rocket industry experts were insisting even as late as 2016 that it was impractical to make rocket stages reusable, that to make a profit “a partially reusable rocket would need to launch 35-40 times per year to maintain a sizable production facility while introducing reused hardware into the manifest.” Based on that calculation, these experts determined with utmost certainty that a partly reusable rocket — like the Falcon 9 — could never make a profit.

Elon Musk must have agreed, and decided he needed an extra profit center for the Falcon 9. Starlink has provided that profit center. It not only needs that many launches, and pays for them, its profit stream from its internet customers is already adding to SpaceX’s bottom line.

Regardless, Musk has proved these “experts” utterly wrong. I always thought they were talking through their hat, but had no way to prove it. Thank you Mr. Musk for proving the point.

Note too that the two fairing halves on this flight were also reused, completing their ninth and tenth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 53 to 26, and the entire world combined 53 to 45, while SpaceX alone now leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

And it is doing this with that impractical, unprofitable, and impossible reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Heh.

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House committee imposes major cuts to Justice, FBI, Commerce

11:15 am

As had been suggested by its decision to not impose any cuts (or increases) to the NASA budget, the House appropriation subcommittee in charge of Commerce, Justice, Science-related agencies imposed all of the 28.8% cuts required by the House leadership on the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Commerce department.

Overall, the bill appropriates $58.4 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the committee, a $23.8 billion cut compared to the current fiscal year. It eliminates 14 “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the covered agencies, cuts spending on “wasteful” climate change programs, and saves more than $50 million by ending the Biden administration’s plan to replace auto fleets at the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice with electric vehicles.

According to the GOP summary, the Commerce Department would see a $1.4 billion cut in discretionary funding, and the Department of Justice would see a $2 billion cut. Federal science agencies together would face a $1.1 billion cut under the bill.

The FBI’s budget is to be cut $1 billion, or 9% (an actual cut, not a reduction in the increase in spending), with $400 million of that coming from salaries and expenses. It also forbids the agency from spending a dime on its planned dream of a new posh and palatial headquarters in the DC suburbs, twice the size of the Pentagon and costing more than $3 billion.

This is exactly what Republicans should have been doing for decades, and were too cowardly to attempt. If an agency of unelected employees in the executive branch abuses its power and causes harm to innocent citizens, something the FBI and the Justice Department have been eagerly doing since Trump became president, then it is the responsibilty and obligation of Congress to use its power of the purse to cut those agencies’ funding.

Even now, however, no one should be confident these cuts will end up in the final bill. This is only the recommendations of one subcommittee. There are still many Republican cowards in the full House, and even more in the full Senate, who will gladly team up with the Democrats (who are all in favor of the abuse of power and the harm to innocent citizens) to reinstate the cuts.

Nonetheless, this is a start. It indicates that we might finally have turned a real political corner towards reform.

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Farewell Skipper

4:01 pm

Skipper and Emma in 2016
Emma and Skipper

Today there will be no political column, because to be honest, there are things in life more important. After fortunately a very short illness, we were forced to put to sleep our dog Skipper, as shown to the right in 2016, with then-a-very-young Emma behind him, plotting evil. Emma passed away prematurely a year and a half ago at only a decade of life. At his passing Skipper was about seventeen years old.

We think Skipper was a mix of Schipperke and Chihuahua. Both breeds are known for their uppity nature. Skipper had that in spades. For almost his entire life he was active, friendly, and independent. He would only do what he wanted to do, which sometimes was great and sometimes not so great. For example, we have a dog door and a very large fenced back yard. He liked to go outside and bark at the coyotes, sometimes facing off against them with only our six-foot-high cattle fence in-between. The coyotes were unphased, but to Skipper, he had declared that our yard was his territory. Stay out!

Until the last year he also like to bark when visitors arrived, but his only desire in doing so was to get petted. If they stopped, he’d bark again. Pet me!

His outside barking was not always perfect however. If we didn’t close the dog door, he would always go outside at about 4 am every night, plant himself five feet from our bedroom window, and bark relentlessly. I’m the boss! One of us would have to get up and bring him in.

Yes, he wasn’t perfect, but Diane had rescued him in 2012 when he had been for several years shifted from one foster home to another. His original owner had died, and the foster organization had been unable to find him a permanent home. We gave one to him, one he liked quite a lot, and for this the heavens smiled.

I’d go on, but I need to dig a grave in the backyard, next to the graves of Emma, Fitz, and Wolfie.

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