Author: Robert Zimmerman

Real pushback: Thirteen university-run child mutilation clinics to shut down this year

1:45 pm

Owned for the purpose of mutilation and castration
Up to now, government-controlled apparently to allow their
mutilation and castration

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because of pressure from state legislatures, up to thirteen university-run child mutilation clinics — falsely called “gender-affirming clinics” — are to shut down before the end of this year, with more shut downs likely next year as well.

Up to 13 pediatric gender clinics at university hospitals could close or scale back by the end of the year, as a result of Republican-led states restricting doctors from removing healthy organs or injecting hormones into minors who are confused about their gender.

In some cases, university youth gender clinics have already scaled back their operations as a result of state law. Litigation against the legislation could slow down or stop some clinics from closing. However, some are being closed while litigation proceeds.

The closures represent a quick change from just a year ago when The College Fix identified at least thirteen Republican-led states that funded pediatric gender clinics through universities, including Oklahoma, Florida and West Virginia.

» Read more

6 comments

Determining whether a Martian crater is impact or volcanic

12:02 pm

Determining whether a Martian crater is impact or volcanic
Click for original image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The picture above, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The camera team labeled this “Crater rim and ejecta,” which subtly reveals the picture’s scientific purpose.

The white dot on the overview map to the right indicates the location of this 15-mile-wide unnamed crater, about 150 miles northwest of where the rover Opportunity landed and traveled south to the rim of Endeavour Crater. It also shows in the inset that the crater appears to sit in the center of an upraised mound, suggesting it was formed not by impact but by volcanic processes.

This picture however says otherwise. The many small mounds and mesas to the south of the crater rim are not what one would expect on the apron of a volcano. Instead, they suggest this crater is an impact, with those mounds the eroded ejecta from that impact, now also partly buried by dust. This hypothesis is strengthened by the data from Opportunity, which found a great deal of impact ejecta during its travels, possibly from the very event that created this crater.

6 comments

Will the wreck of the submersible Titan and the death of its five passengers impact space tourism?

10:57 am

OceanGate's Titan submersible
OceanGate’s Titan submersible

Three articles today all asked the same question as I pose above in the headline, noting the similarity in the business model of the deepsea tourism company OceanGate Expeditions and the burgeoning space tourism business, including both suborbital and orbital flights.

Without question there will be many more such articles in the coming days, as more information is gathered about what caused the failure of the Titan. As these three articles do, all will note the similarities and differences between deep sea tourism and space tourism.

First the differences. » Read more

34 comments

Rocket Lab to attempt full recovery of first stage on next launch

9:46 am

In announcing the launch window, opening July 14th, for its next New Zealand launch, Rocket Lab also revealed that it will attempt the full recovery of the first stage after it splashes down softly in the ocean using parachutes.

Rocket Lab is also planning to conduct a marine recovery of Electron’s first stage as part of this mission. Rocket Lab’s recovery team will retrieve Electron using a customized vessel and transport the stage back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis. Data from this recovered stage will inform Rocket Lab’s ongoing recovery and reuse program.

The company recently decided to forego any further attempts to snatch the first stage in the air before splashdown using a helicopter. Instead, it thinks it can recover the stage in good enough condition out of the water to use it or its engines again.

The launch itself will carry seven smallsats, four for NASA and three for two commercial companies.

Leave a comment

House Democrats propose and Republicans approve Space Force increasing spaceport fees

9:37 am

We’re here to help you! The House Armed Services Committee, controlled by a majority of Republicans, has approved a defense funding bill that includes an amendment, proposed by a Democrat, that would allow the Space Force to charge much larger fees for the use of its spaceports.

Committee members signed off on the legislation June 22, which proposes $874 billion in defense spending. The full House is slated to vote on the bill in July. Included in the bill is an amendment offered by Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., that would allow the Space Force to collect fees from companies for the indirect costs of using the military’s launch ranges, like overhead infrastructure or other charges that a traditional port authority might impose on its users.

Today, per the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, the service is limited to collecting fees for direct costs like electricity at a launch pad. The law also restricts the Space Force from accepting in-kind contributions from commercial companies to upgrade its ranges.

The committee’s bill, if approved, would require commercial launch companies to “reimburse the Department of Defense for such indirect costs as the Secretary concerned considers to be appropriate.”

The bill also includes a Republican amendment that encourages the Space Force to charge other additional fees, or require private companies to do work the Space Force is presently handles.

Though the latter amendment might make sense, both amendments will likely achieve just one thing: making it much more expensive to launch from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg. Whether those increased costs will be kept as low as possible is entirely unknown. We certainly should not trust officials in the federal government to do so.

7 comments

Two ultraviolet images of Mars, taken six months apart

9:28 am

Mars in ultraviolet

The two images to the right, rearranged, cropped, and reduced to post here, were taken six months apart by the Mars orbiter MAVEN using its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS). From the press release:

The IUVS instrument measures wavelengths between 110 and 340 nanometers, outside the visible spectrum. To make these wavelengths visible to the human eye and easier to interpret, the images are rendered with the varying brightness levels of three ultraviolet wavelength ranges represented as red, green, and blue. In this color scheme, atmospheric ozone appears purple, while clouds and hazes appear white or blue. The surface can appear tan or green, depending on how the images have been optimized to increase contrast and show detail.

The first image [top] was taken in July 2022 during the southern hemisphere’s summer season, which occurs when Mars passes closet to the Sun. The summer season is caused by the tilt of the planet’s rotational axis, similar to seasons on Earth. Argyre Basin, one of Mars’ deepest craters, appears at bottom left filled with atmospheric haze (depicted here as pale pink). The deep canyons of Valles Marineris appear at top left filled with clouds (colored tan in this image). The southern polar ice cap is visible at bottom in white, shrinking from the relative warmth of summer. Southern summer warming and dust storms drive water vapor to very high altitudes, explaining MAVEN’s discovery of enhanced hydrogen loss from Mars at this time of year.

The second image [bottom] is of Mars’ northern hemisphere and was taken in January 2023 after Mars had passed the farthest point in its orbit from the Sun. The rapidly changing seasons in the north polar region cause an abundance of white clouds. The deep canyons of Valles Marineris can be seen in tan at lower left, along with many craters. Ozone, which appears magenta in this UV view, has built up during the northern winter’s chilly polar nights. It is then destroyed in northern spring by chemical reactions with water vapor, which is restricted to low altitudes of the atmosphere at this time of year.

Though of course not visible, the landing sites for Viking-1 (1976), Pathfinder (1997), and Franklin (2028) are captured in the bottom global image, as indicated by the white dots I have added. The two left dots are Viking-1 and Pathfinder respectively, located in the northern lowland plain dubbed Chryse Planitia. Franklin will land to the right, in the transition zone between those northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands.

One comment

Ariane-6 engineering test rocket at launchpad for engine tests

9:05 am

Ariane-6 test version at launchpad
Click for original image.

An engineering test version of ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 rocket has arrived at the launchpad in French Guiana, where it will undergo a series of static fire engine and fueling tests.

As seen in this image [to the right] taken on 22 June 2023, the doors of this mobile gantry have been opened and the structure rolled back on rails. The operation, which takes about half an hour, was a trial run in preparation for a series test firings of the Vulcain 2.1 engine. These test firings will be conducted on the launch pad as part of ongoing preparations for the first-ever flight of Ariane 6. Removing the gantry for the first time – and then returning it – also helped validate the Ariane 6 ground infrastructure.

The Ariane 6 rocket visible here is not intended for flight. It is being used to check assembly procedures, electrical and fuel connections, telemetry, etc. Flight models, including the rocket that will make Ariane 6’s inaugural flight, are being built in Europe and integrated by prime contractor Ariane Group. After shipping to French Guiana, Ariane 6 core and upper stages are assembled horizontally, before being transferred to the launch pad and lifted upright inside the gantry, where the solid-fuel boosters and payload are attached. The horizontal assembly method cuts the time and cost of a launch campaign, and is a first for an Ariane rocket.

With only one Ariane-5 rocket launch left on its manifest, the European Space Agency desperately needs to get Ariane-6 off the ground and operational. It was originally supposed to make its first launch in 2020, thus overlapping the final launches of Ariane-5 by several years. At this moment it appears there will be a gap between when one rocket retires and the other begins flying.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 56 more Starlink satellites

8:45 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their 7th and 10th flights, with the latter a new record.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

43 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 40.

Leave a comment

Why is this rare? School board members react in horror when hearing the porn they allow in schools

2:17 pm

Maybe no longer in Brainerd
Maybe the parents of Brainerd have finally decided their children
are theirs, not the government’s

In what seems to be the exception rather than the rule, when parents began reading the pornography that the Brainerd Public school district allowed in its school libraries, the school board members didn’t try to shut them up, but instead were horrified.

When Kevin Boyles, the board chair, attempted to move on from the public comment without addressing the concerns, [D.J.] Dondelinger told him to “hold on a second.” He told Boyles that he would like to make a motion to discuss the book at the next board meeting. “Something needs to be done,” Dondelinger said. “I’m shocked. We need to dig in and find out what the hell’s going on.”

He then proceeded to ask if “this stuff is accessible to fifth graders” and was told by the room of concerned citizens that yes, it was.

Boyles said that they would address the topic at the board’s retreat that took place on June 16, saying that he didn’t think a board meeting was the appropriate venue for a discussion about it initially. “I think it’s fair to say that several of us have questions,” he said.

Dondelinger pushed back, asking for a second to his motion to add the books to the agenda for the next school board meeting, to the applause of the audience.

I have embedded video of this board meeting, cued to when the parents begin reading. If you want to skip listening to badly written porn, Dondelinger’s demand for action begins at the 31 minute point of the video.
» Read more

6 comments

Biden administration announces India will sign Artemis Accords

1:08 pm

Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House June 21, 2023
Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House
on June 21, 2023

As part of the visit of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the U.S., the Biden administration today announced that India has agreed to sign Artemis Accords, becoming the 27th nation to join the American space alliance.

It appears India made this decision after the Biden administration agreed to foster a whole range of cooperative technology exchanges.

Cooperation in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum information science is also being fostered through the establishment of a joint Indo-US quantum coordination mechanism and the signing of an implementation arrangement on artificial intelligence, advanced wireless, and quantum technologies.

Both countries are working together on 5G and 6G technologies, including Open Radio Access Network (RAN) systems, with plans for field trials, rollouts, and scale deployments in both markets. “Here we’ll be announcing partnerships on open ran, field trials and rollouts, including scale deployments in both countries with operators and vendors of both markets. This will involve backing from the US International Development Finance, for cooperation and to promote the deployments in India,” the official said.

The US will support the removal of telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors through the US rip and replace program and welcomes Indian participation in this initiative.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

One would hope that this decision would help separate India from China and Russia, but this is unclear.

There are other questions. » Read more

3 comments

A spectacular Martian glacier

11:24 am

Overview map

A spectacular Martian glacier
Click for original image.

Mars appears to be a planet filled with past surface flows, none of which are active today but all of which came from widely different geological processes. Yesterday’s Martian cool image showed the hardened remains of a lava flow on Mars. Today’s cool image shows us what might one of the best examples of the kind of glacial evidence orbital images have been finding throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red dot in the inset on the overview map above indicates its location on Mars, in the chaos region dubbed Protonilus Mensae that forms the central part of the 2,000-mile-long Martian region in the north mid-latitudes I dub glacier country. In this region almost every high resolution image shows evidence of glaciers, all protected by a thin layer of dust and debris so they do not sublimate away.

This particular glacier fills a canyon carved into the southern cliff of a mile-high mesa five miles by ten miles in size, and drops dramatically almost 4,700 feet in about four miles. In fact, it so epitomizes what glaciers look like that the camera team for MRO’s high resolution camera used a 2020 image to give a quick lesson on how to spot a glacier on Mars.

This 2023 picture was likely taken as part of a long term monitoring program. Though planetary scientists presently do not think the glaciers on Mars are active and moving, this assumption is not yet confirmed. Taking repeated pictures of this same glacier over time will eventually answer this question.

Leave a comment

Update on SpaceX’s work leading to next Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:29 am

Link here. A static fire engine test program has begun for Starship prototype #25, which will fly on top of a Superheavy prototype. Also, work on the launchpad, badly damaged by the first test flight in April, has proceeded quickly.

During the first integrated test flight of Starship, Super Heavy Booster 7’s 30 working engines dug a sizable hole under the OLM [Orbital Launch Mount] during liftoff. The first images of it pictured a dramatic scene and pointed at some tough repair work ahead for SpaceX teams. Over the last two months, the hole was covered and reinforcements have been installed deep into the ground to strengthen the soil.

More recently, teams have been installing several tons of rebar underneath the OLM. While some rebar remains to be installed, as seen from aerial pictures captured by NSF, this work is expected to be finished soon and should be followed by a convoy of concrete trucks to fill up the pit. SpaceX will then install water-cooled steel plates over this concrete which will help support them and serve as an anchor for them.

The update also describes the numerous additional prototypes SpaceX is building at Boca Chica for further flight tests. It also notes this disturbing fact about the company’s planned Starship/Superheavy launch facility in Florida:

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed. The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings.

This slow down is probably because NASA has forbidden Starship/Superheavy launches from this launchpad because it is near the launchpad SpaceX uses for NASA’s manned missions. The agency wants SpaceX to be able to launch Dragon from its other more distant pad, and that work needs to be completed first before the Starship/Superheavy pad can be used.

8 comments

More direct images released of exoplanet 87.5 light years away

9:56 am

Keck images of exoplanet over time

The Keck Observatory in Hawaii has now released its own image of the exoplanet AF Leporis b, following up the images produced by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) released in February.

The direct images Franson’s team captured revealed that AF Lep b is about three times the mass of Jupiter and orbits AF Leporis, a young Sun-like star about 87.5 light-years away. They took a series of deep images of the planet starting in December 2021; two other teams also captured images of the same planet since then.

What make the Keck observations most interesting is that they captured over time the motion of the exoplanet as it orbited its star. The two images to the right show this motion.

The paper, available here, was published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. This particular star also has a debris disk surrounding it, suggesting it is a young solar system still in the process of forming. From the paper’s conclusion:

AF Lep joins other young planet hosts with debris disks such as β Pic, HR 8799, HD 206893, and HD 95086, reinforcing indications of a higher frequency of long-period planets orbiting stars hosting debris disks.

Leave a comment

Startup orbital tug company experiences technical issues on demo flight

9:36 am

The first test rendezvous and docking of two smallsats built by the startup orbital tug company Starfish Space and space station startup Launcher/Vast are facing significant technical issues because both spacecraft are spinning in an unexpected manner.

Soon after Orbiter SN3 separated from the Falcon 9 upper stage, it experienced an anomaly that set it spinning at a rate on the order of one revolution per second, far outside the bounds of normal operating conditions.

By the time Launcher’s team made contact with Orbiter, fuel and power levels were critically low — and the team made an emergency decision to deploy Otter Pup immediately. In a joint statement issued today, Launcher and Starfish Space said that quick action “gave the Otter Pup mission a chance to continue.”

With assistance from Astro Digital and ground station partners, Starfish’s team contacted Otter Pup and determined that it was generating power — but was also spinning because of the circumstances of its emergency deployment.

The plan had been to deploy Otter Pup and have it rendezvous and then dock with Orbiter, demonstrating the maneuverability of both spacecraft as well as their docking equipment. The spinning now threatens the company’s ability to do this. Over the next few months engineers will make attempts to slow the spinning of Orbiter, but it is unlikely a docking can now be attempted.

Leave a comment

Intelsat and SES end negotiations to merge

9:27 am

In a very short press release, the Luxembourg-based satellite company SES today announced that it has broken off negotiations to merge with the satellite company Intelsat. The full text:

SES announces today that discussions regarding a possible combination with Intelsat have ceased. On 29 March 2023, SES had confirmed that the company engaged in discussions with Intelsat and that there could be no certainty that a transaction would materialise.

It appears the two companies could not settle differences on a number of points, and according to this article Intelsat decided to end negotiations yesterday.

There has been a trend among the established satellite companies to consolidate and merge, faced with the stiff competition from the new satellite constellations of Starlink and OneWeb. It is very possible that both of these companies will either revisit the idea of this merger, or begin negotiations with other established satellite companies.

Leave a comment

Ecuador becomes 26th nation to sign Artemis Accords

9:20 am

In a ceremony yesterday in Washington, Ecuador became the 26th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, a bi-lateral agreement with the United States that was designed during the Trump administration to act as a work around to the limitations to private enterprise in space created by the Outer Space Treaty.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

Adding third world nations to the alliance strengthens it, but it is really the clout of major space players like France, Luxembourg, the UK, the UAE, Italy, and Japan that gives the United States a great deal of leverage in establishing future space legal policy, assuming the alliance is used as originally intended. Considering however the Biden administration’s general hostility to the private sector and freedom, it is unclear if that will be the goal.

3 comments

ULA launches Delta-4 Heavy rocket on next-to-last flight

9:02 am

Early this morning ULA successfully place a National Reconnaissance Office classified surveillance satellite into orbit, using its Delta-4 Heavy rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

This was ULA’s its first launch in 2023. At the start of the year, the company’s manifest listed ten launches. Whether is can complete that manifest in the remaining six months is questionable, considering it has rarely managed a launch pace exceeding one launch per month in its entire history.

This launch was also the next-to-last for the Delta-4 Heavy. ULA is retiring that rocket and replacing it with the still-not-flown Vulcan rocket. The plan had been for there to be an overlap in use as one was retired and the other was initiated. That has not happened.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 48 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 48 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

4 comments

SpaceX launches another 47 Starlink satellites into orbit

12:28 am

Just after midnight tonight SpaceX successfully launched 47 more Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairing halves completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 47 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

One comment

June 21, 2023 Quick space links

5:17 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

One comment

Greta Thunberg: All humanity is now extinct on Earth, because we didn’t do anything about global warming

12:40 pm

Greta Thunberg speaks!
Greta Thunberg speaks!

How dare you! On June 21, 2018, Greta Thunberg informed us — as shown in her tweet to the right — that we only had five years left to stop using fossil fuels, and if we didn’t “climate change will wipe out all of humanity.”

I am hardly the only person to note this example of global warming fraudulence. Numerous reporters have also gleefully noted it, with this essay today at American Thinker by Andrea Widburg probably the most damning, not so much for noting the ignorant rantings of this uneducated high school drop-out whom the left made their icon of knowledge and top global warming expert, but for the list she provides of the endless number of other failed doomsday predictions by global warming activists and politicians.

That list was compiled in 2019, and thus it did not yet include Thunberg’s absurd prediction. Nor did it include the endless string of additional false doomsday predictions that this crowd has continued to issue in the years since, all of which I guarantee without any uncertainty will all fail, just as their hundreds of past doomsday predictions have failed.

You see, the point of those predictions was not to educate, but to instill fear, so as to then justify a power grab by the government. As Widburg concludes:
» Read more

25 comments

A lava flow on a Martian lava plain

12:04 pm

A lava flow on a Martian lava plain
Click for original image.

While much of surface of the Martian equatorial regions is comprised of volcanic flood lava, the place where it is most obvious and evident is on the flanks of the three giant volcanoes of the Tharsis Bulge. Here, lava did not simple spout from surface vents to flood low-lying large areas, filling those depressions quickly almost like water. Instead it issued from vents on the slopes of those mountains, or from their calderas at their peaks, and flowed downhill almost like tsunamis of magma.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a great example. Taken on March 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows the foot of one such flow, frozen in place as it oozed down hill from the Arsia Mons, about 300 miles away to the northwest.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Two new European rocket startups sign deal with France to launch from French Guiana

11:28 am

The French space agency CNES today signed agreements with two different European smallsat rocket startups, Spain’s PLD Space and Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), allowing each to launch from France’s old launchpad in French Guiana that was used in the 1970s by its long abandoned Diamant rocket.

From the RFA press release:

Until now, the launch pad in Kourou has only been used by CNES for its Diamant rocket in the 1970s. Now the launch complex is to be given a new purpose, in the tradition of opening access to space through innovative and groundbreaking ventures. As such, RFA is one of the first NewSpace companies to be given the opportunity to use it. The new launch pad will be upgraded and equipped in the coming years with the aim of being used for launches from 2025.

These agreements are part of a slew that have come out of Europe in the past year or so that all indicate that the European Space Agency (ESA) and its partners have finally abandoned any attempts to build rockets, and are instead looking to private enterprise to do it for them. First Germany encouraged private rocket startups, independent of Arianespace and ESA. Then Spain followed with PLD Space. Then Arianespace, the commercial arm of ESA that for decades built all rockets for ESA, announced it was making agreements with these startups to have them launch payloads instead.

These new deals today indicate that France has now joined the rush to private enterprise, which is a very significant development as France as always been the leader in having ESA build its own rockets through Arianespace. It appears it is now looking away from government-run space.

All these actions are also suggest a dim future for ArianeGoup’s Ariane-6 rocket, built under the old system but with an attempt to give private enterprise more power, with ArianeGroup, not Arianespace, owning and controlling it. Its design however was dictated largely by ESA, thus resulting in a rocket that is too expensive and therefore not competitive.

The long term result will be greater competition, both in Europe and worldwide, which in turn is going to fuel a renaissance in rocket development, which in turn is going to speed the exploration and colonization of the rest of the solar system.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

One comment

Rocket Lab’s payload on its first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

10:00 am

Until today it was unclear whether the successful first suborbital launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket on June 17, 2023 carried a payload. Now we know it did:

The launch took place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and demonstrated the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB, program’s first suborbital flight of a hypersonic payload.

MACH-TB is led by the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division. The team selected Leidos as the program’s prime integrator last September, and California-based space company Rocket Lab is one of 12 subcontractors supporting the effort.

It appears the Pentagon program that funded MACH-TB is a different program — from a different Pentagon office — from the one that is funding the next suborbital hypersonic test using Electron. Nor is this unusual for the military. The duplication of these Pentagon programs, with multiple bureaucracies, says a lot more about the utter waste and incompetence and corruption in DC than it does about hypersonic suborbital testing.

For Rocket Lab however this duplication is great news, as it provides the company at least two different customers for its suborbital rocket.

2 comments

FAA finally reduces airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral

9:46 am

On June 15, 2023 FAA announced that it has at last reduced the airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral, thus allowing more launches while reducing the disruption to commercial airline traffic.

The move is part of broader efforts to address the conflicts between launches and commercial aviation, particularly in Florida’s congested airspace. In April, the FAA released a set of factors when considering whether to allow a launch to proceed or ask the launch company to identify alternative windows for the launch.

Among those factors are the timing of the launch, particularly relative to holidays or other special events that cause increases in air traffic, and the duration of the launch window. “The FAA encourages commercial space operations to take place during nighttime hours (to the extent practicable) when other flight operations tend to be reduced,” the guidelines state.

I say “at last” because SpaceX have been pushing for this reduction for years. It knows its rockets will fly very reliably, and even if a rare failure forces their destruction, the territory threatened is much smaller than what was once considered necessary in the past. It just took years to get the federal bureaucracy to recognize these facts.

3 comments

Northrop Grumman’s robotic servicing satellites gets third contract, this time from Intelsat

9:40 am

With an announced contract with Intelsat today, Northrop Grumman has now obtained contracts for all three of its robotic servicing pods that will be launched on its Mission Servicing Vehicle in 2025.

Intelsat ordered the third and last pod available on the debut mission of the company’s new servicing spacecraft, called Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV).

Australian communications satellite operator Optus was the first customer to sign up for the Mission Extension Pods, which are propulsion jet packs that add six years to the life of geostationary satellites. Intelsat in April said it purchased one of the pods, followed by today’s announcement that it ordered a second one.

The MRV is an upgrade from Northrop Grumman’s earlier robot, the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV), which proved that it could autonomously rendezvous and dock with the nozzle of a defunct satellite and provide it with a new thruster and fuel so as to extend its life. With the MRV, multiple revised versions of the MEV are essentially launched at the same time.

Leave a comment

Russia gets a launch contract!

9:31 am

In what has become a very rare event, Russia’s state-run press today announced that Roscosmos has won a launch contract for its Soyuz-2 rocket from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“On June 27th at 3:34 p.m. UAE time [2:34 Moscow time], [UAE’s] MBR Space Centre will launch its maiden mission, PHI-Demo, from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome using the Soyuz-2 rocket as part of the Payload Hosting Initiative,” the media office said in a statement.

The statement says that the initiative, jointly led by MBRSC [UAE’s space agency] and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), is aimed at providing space access and hastening the sustainable progression of novel space technologies.

The satellite will be a secondary payload on the launch of a Russian weather satellite.

It seems this UN office wants to help the Russians, and is working to encourage other nations to use its rockets to get into space. Because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, it has lost all of its international launch business. UNOOSA is apparently working to recover Russia some of that business.

The UAE meanwhile appears to be trying to light the candle from both ends, working extensively with NASA and American private companies while also attempting to partner with Russia and China.

Leave a comment

BepiColumbo completes third Mercury flyby

9:23 am

Mercury as seen by BepiColumbo
Click for original image.

On June 19, 2023, the European Mercury orbiter BepiColumbo made the third of six planned flybys of Mercury on its way to orbit around that planet in 2025.

The closest approach was only 146 miles above the planet’s surface. Though no pictures were taken at that point because it was Mercury’s night side, as the spacecraft moved away it used one of its monitoring cameras, designed primarily to monitor the spacecraft itself, to look back at the planet. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is one of the first taken. From its caption:

The image was taken at 19:49 UTC (21:49 CEST) by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3, when the spacecraft was about 2536 km from the planet’s surface. Closest approach took place at 19:34 UT (21:34 CEST) on the night side of the planet at about 236 km altitude. The back of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s high-gain antenna and part of the spacecraft’s body is also visible in front of Mercury in this image.

Despite the dark nature of the image, several interesting geological features are seen in beautiful detail. Of particular interest is Beagle Rupes, a 600 km-long scarp that snakes over the surface. In this view it is seen cutting through a distinctive elongated crater named Sveinsdóttir, which likely got its shape from an impactor striking the surface at an angle.

The next flyby will occur on September 5, 2024.

One comment
1 … 167 168 169 170 171 … 1,119